[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Hello,
[00:02] Bob Dobbs: this is Bob Dobbs and Cameron McEwen with our
[00:06] Bob Dobbs: 54th episode on analyzing my pamphlet booklet on Donald Trump and the tech body.
[00:14] Bob Dobbs: And we have arrived about page 109.
[00:18] Bob Dobbs: If you look in the table of contents,
[00:20] Bob Dobbs: you'll see we're at page part 3,
[00:24] Bob Dobbs: which is titled The Global Membrane or Android Meme,
[00:27] Bob Dobbs: colon,
[00:28] Bob Dobbs: phase 1.
[00:30] Bob Dobbs: And there's a little quote.
[00:32] Bob Dobbs: in blue,
[00:32] Bob Dobbs: my casual oral comments,
[00:35] Bob Dobbs: and I say Global Membrane is a term McLuhan uses in 64 before his use of the phrase global theater.
[00:41] Bob Dobbs: It's well past the global village era.
[00:44] Bob Dobbs: And Ewen Cameron himself has blogged and found a couple of other places where Global Membrane is said in 62 or so,
[00:50] Bob Dobbs: right?
[00:50] Bob Dobbs: There's a couple of other places before the Nation magazine in 64.
[00:58] Bob Dobbs: So the first thing I say,
[00:59] Bob Dobbs: and I say,
[00:59] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan predicts the Android Meme.
[01:01] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[01:02] Bob Dobbs: we may have discussed this,
[01:03] Bob Dobbs: but we can't remember.
[01:04] Bob Dobbs: We haven't got time to go back and check,
[01:05] Bob Dobbs: but it doesn't hurt to go over it again.
[01:08] Bob Dobbs: So I'm quoting page 148 of Take Today,
[01:11] Bob Dobbs: the executive's dropout,
[01:13] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan Alan Harrington Nevitt say,
[01:16] Bob Dobbs: at electric information speeds,
[01:18] Bob Dobbs: art and science and nature converge through understanding media.
[01:23] Bob Dobbs: So then in blue is my,
[01:26] Bob Dobbs: my computer screen is blue,
[01:28] Bob Dobbs: is my oral...
[01:32] Bob Dobbs: surface talk.
[01:33] Bob Dobbs: So I say,
[01:34] Bob Dobbs: art is puny.
[01:36] Bob Dobbs: Science is no better.
[01:37] Bob Dobbs: These are Gutenberg categories,
[01:39] Bob Dobbs: and they all converge through electronic process patterning or understanding media,
[01:44] Bob Dobbs: which is in quotes,
[01:45] Bob Dobbs: understanding media.
[01:46] Bob Dobbs: That's what we do.
[01:47] Bob Dobbs: We are art.
[01:48] Bob Dobbs: We are science in nature,
[01:50] Bob Dobbs: and we actually can do it.
[01:52] Bob Dobbs: The Android Meme is an artist.
[01:54] Bob Dobbs: It knows how to mold art and matter,
[01:56] Bob Dobbs: and we're doing science with it.
[01:59] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[01:59] Bob Dobbs: I say we're doing science.
[02:01] Bob Dobbs: Is that me?
[02:02] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure.
[02:03] Bob Dobbs: Do I mean people?
[02:04] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what I mean,
[02:05] Bob Dobbs: but let's just say the propagation of something is doing it.
[02:09] Bob Dobbs: We're doing science with it,
[02:11] Bob Dobbs: or putting it into the left hemisphere,
[02:13] Bob Dobbs: say.
[02:14] Bob Dobbs: This quotation above is an anticipation by McLuhan of the Android Meme.
[02:18] Bob Dobbs: And that's the end of that.
[02:20] Bob Dobbs: And then in my serious column,
[02:23] Bob Dobbs: I say,
[02:24] Bob Dobbs: the building of the architecture of the Android Meme from 1960 to 2000 went through two phases.
[02:29] Bob Dobbs: The first phase...
[02:30] Bob Dobbs: 1960 to 85,
[02:31] Bob Dobbs: has presented my article,
[02:32] Bob Dobbs: Cloning ESP,
[02:34] Bob Dobbs: done in 1999.
[02:37] Bob Dobbs: And then there's a comment from me saying,
[02:40] Bob Dobbs: this next section is from the Memoir of Prince Charles of June 4th,
[02:43] Bob Dobbs: 1987,
[02:45] Bob Dobbs: which is found in the booklet for my first album,
[02:47] Bob Dobbs: Bob's Media Ecology,
[02:47] Bob Dobbs: 1992.
[02:50] Bob Dobbs: I took the following long quotation out of the booklet.
[02:52] Bob Dobbs: I took the following long quotation out of the booklet,
[02:57] Bob Dobbs: the quotation from Memoir of Prince Charles.
[02:59] Bob Dobbs: It goes from 1850 up to 1945,
[03:01] Bob Dobbs: but I excluded that here.
[03:03] Bob Dobbs: That's too far back.
[03:05] Bob Dobbs: So that's the Global Village era.
[03:07] Bob Dobbs: We start well past the Global Village,
[03:09] Bob Dobbs: which is 1945 to 1960.
[03:15] Cameron McEwen: Let me just comment about that page.
[03:16] Cameron McEwen: We finished with 109.
[03:20] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[03:20] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[03:20] Bob Dobbs: I just want to say that
[03:23] Bob Dobbs: I say some of the effects of this cloning process are explained by my phrase,
[03:26] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[03:27] Bob Dobbs: mythic stages.
[03:28] Bob Dobbs: And then a quote from the memo,
[03:29] Bob Dobbs: and we did discuss this memo,
[03:33] Bob Dobbs: if you want to hear something near the end of the previous session.
[03:36] Bob Dobbs: But Ewen Cameron going back over it,
[03:37] Bob Dobbs: so what would you like to say?
[03:40] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[03:41] Cameron McEwen: I just want to point out that all of this is written in a kind of historical sense.
[03:49] Cameron McEwen: So when you speak of mythic stages,
[03:53] Cameron McEwen: you mean there's one stage,
[03:54] Cameron McEwen: and then there's another stage,
[03:56] Cameron McEwen: and another stage after that.
[03:59] Bob Dobbs: No,
[04:00] Bob Dobbs: mythic stages is the after you so the solar government is built from 45 to 60,
[04:07] Bob Dobbs: and then the universal government from 60 to 77.
[04:10] Bob Dobbs: From 77 to 90 is the hologram world,
[04:15] Bob Dobbs: and that's a visible figure amidst clashing universal bureaucracies complemented by mythic government lockdown,
[04:21] Bob Dobbs: complements of the satellites around.
[04:23] Bob Dobbs: So
[04:23] Bob Dobbs: 77 to 90 is mythic government.
[04:26] Bob Dobbs: or the mythic stages.
[04:28] Bob Dobbs: And I define myth as a whole culture or mixed corporate media in action.
[04:33] Bob Dobbs: However,
[04:33] Bob Dobbs: the satellite is an extension and theorization of a whole culture.
[04:37] Bob Dobbs: So it's a phase,
[04:38] Bob Dobbs: and then the phase after that is what we call the Internet,
[04:43] Bob Dobbs: and that's the Android Meme.
[04:47] Cameron McEwen: But what's interesting to me in all that is that you do get down to mythic government.
[04:55] Cameron McEwen: where mythic is a singular yeah and then you say myth again a singular is a whole culture
[05:02] Cameron McEwen: of mixed corporate media.
[05:04] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[05:05] Cameron McEwen: So you but when you talk about mythic stages you're at you have a plural.
[05:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah now what that is is different mixtures of media or myth myth around the world you could say first world second world third world fourth world and so those different cultural collections
[05:27] Bob Dobbs: of media
[05:29] Bob Dobbs: That is their mythic stage.
[05:30] Bob Dobbs: And I get the word stage from McLuhan tetrad on the credit card,
[05:34] Bob Dobbs: where the credit card becomes a stage,
[05:37] Bob Dobbs: a launch pad.
[05:39] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[05:39] Bob Dobbs: it's an interesting extension if you look at that tetrad.
[05:43] Bob Dobbs: If you wanted to quickly,
[05:44] Bob Dobbs: if you've got laws of meteorite beside you,
[05:46] Bob Dobbs: grab it.
[05:46] Bob Dobbs: We'll do it.
[05:47] Bob Dobbs: But that's where I'm at.
[05:49] Bob Dobbs: The credit card is a stage.
[05:52] Bob Dobbs: And so the credit card organizes different cultures,
[05:56] Bob Dobbs: mythic.
[05:58] Bob Dobbs: media that they use.
[05:59] Bob Dobbs: So,
[06:00] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[06:00] Bob Dobbs: France wouldn't allow Larry McDonald in there,
[06:02] Bob Dobbs: the Arabs,
[06:03] Bob Dobbs: they don't like a lot of what we have over here in North America.
[06:06] Bob Dobbs: So every zone has a mythic stage within the mythic government phase,
[06:15] Bob Dobbs: okay?
[06:16] Bob Dobbs: And so what holds them together,
[06:18] Bob Dobbs: every one of them has to deal with the credit card or the electronic banking world.
[06:22] Bob Dobbs: So there's several grounds there or several frames.
[06:28] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[06:30] Cameron McEwen: just as an aside for people,
[06:35] Cameron McEwen: if anybody's listening to this,
[06:37] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan always uses the word stage in different senses at the same time.
[06:46] Cameron McEwen: So a stage can be like a theater.
[06:50] Cameron McEwen: As you were just saying,
[06:51] Cameron McEwen: it can be like a launch pad.
[06:54] Cameron McEwen: It can be something that supports.
[06:57] Cameron McEwen: things,
[06:58] Cameron McEwen: as you were saying with the credit card,
[07:00] Cameron McEwen: but it can also be some,
[07:03] Cameron McEwen: we talk about stages through time.
[07:06] Bob Dobbs: Stages of apprehension was his phrase.
[07:08] Cameron McEwen: Exactly,
[07:09] Cameron McEwen: exactly.
[07:10] Cameron McEwen: So,
[07:11] Cameron McEwen: and all of those are always in play.
[07:14] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[07:14] Cameron McEwen: So,
[07:16] Cameron McEwen: one of the things that we have to try to get figured out between us as we go through all this is for me the interesting question is
[07:25] Cameron McEwen: the simultaneity of stages,
[07:28] Cameron McEwen: the simultaneity of their possibilities,
[07:32] Cameron McEwen: the simultaneity of the hold that they have,
[07:44] Cameron McEwen: the plural contest of these things in their simultaneous availability.
[07:53] Cameron McEwen: and
[07:55] Cameron McEwen: What you do is you tend to speak of stages.
[08:00] Cameron McEwen: You seem to emphasize the one after another.
[08:05] Bob Dobbs: When I'm writing,
[08:07] Bob Dobbs: because that's the nature of print or visual communication.
[08:12] Bob Dobbs: Like my Tiny Note chart,
[08:14] Bob Dobbs: what it actually is showing is way different from a flat piece of paper with the stages on them.
[08:21] Bob Dobbs: That's visualization because the paper dictates that.
[08:25] Bob Dobbs: I don't create in anti-environment to print in the content like Joyce does in Finnegans Wake.
[08:30] Bob Dobbs: And maybe what you're doing,
[08:32] Bob Dobbs: you're writing linear stuff,
[08:33] Bob Dobbs: but you're pointing out the simulacrity,
[08:35] Bob Dobbs: which is hard to do in a linear way.
[08:38] Bob Dobbs: You can't not be linear in your writing.
[08:42] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[08:42] Cameron McEwen: But understand,
[08:43] Cameron McEwen: Bob,
[08:44] Cameron McEwen: I'm not making a criticism here.
[08:47] Cameron McEwen: What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to point to something that's very important.
[08:54] Cameron McEwen: for our mutual understanding and for the topics.
[08:59] Bob Dobbs: And for people who read it.
[09:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[09:01] Bob Dobbs: for people who read it.
[09:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[09:03] Cameron McEwen: and who listen to our reading it.
[09:06] Cameron McEwen: So I'm not trying to say,
[09:09] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[09:09] Cameron McEwen: Bob's wrong or something like that.
[09:12] Cameron McEwen: What I'm trying to say is that this whole question of time,
[09:20] Cameron McEwen: plural,
[09:21] Cameron McEwen: right,
[09:21] Cameron McEwen: simultaneity and
[09:24] Cameron McEwen: chronological time.
[09:26] Cameron McEwen: That's kind of at the heart of what we're doing.
[09:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[09:31] Cameron McEwen: And we just need to keep in mind as we go through this stuff that the question of how to articulate that crossing of times is always in the background.
[09:46] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[09:46] Bob Dobbs: And you know,
[09:46] Bob Dobbs: when Kenner,
[09:47] Bob Dobbs: when McLuhan died in 81,
[09:49] Bob Dobbs: Kenner wrote an appraisal of McLuhan.
[09:52] Bob Dobbs: by
[09:53] Bob Dobbs: January, the end of January,
[09:54] Bob Dobbs: in the National Review,
[09:56] Bob Dobbs: and he cited the anecdote.
[09:58] Bob Dobbs: He was driving around with McLuhan probably in the
[10:01] Bob Dobbs: 40s, early 40s.
[10:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[10:02] Bob Dobbs: 40s.
[10:03] Bob Dobbs: And the mother was in the car.
[10:05] Bob Dobbs: And
[10:06] Bob Dobbs: Marshall says,
[10:07] Bob Dobbs: Mom,
[10:08] Bob Dobbs: you have to understand that Pound's Cantos and the stuff I teach is dealing with the fact that all times and spaces are happening now.
[10:17] Bob Dobbs: That was his basic statement to his mother.
[10:20] Bob Dobbs: So he knew that back then.
[10:22] Bob Dobbs: And he said it.
[10:23] Bob Dobbs: And Kenner remembered that.
[10:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[10:26] Bob Dobbs: Had you heard that?
[10:27] Bob Dobbs: Did I ever tell you that before?
[10:29] Cameron McEwen: No.
[10:29] Cameron McEwen: But that's very interesting.
[10:30] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to have to go back to
[10:34] Cameron McEwen: Kenner essay.
[10:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[10:36] Bob Dobbs: January 81 in the National Review,
[10:38] Bob Dobbs: probably at the end of the month,
[10:40] Bob Dobbs: he Wright it.
[10:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[10:42] Cameron McEwen: it'll be easy to find.
[10:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[10:43] Bob Dobbs: and you'll see him give that anecdote.
[10:45] Bob Dobbs: Marshall was,
[10:46] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[10:47] Bob Dobbs: educating his mother.
[10:48] Bob Dobbs: And it's a key statement in showing what he was aware of that early.
[10:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[10:54] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[10:54] Bob Dobbs: in the 40s.
[10:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[10:55] Cameron McEwen: I know for sure he was.
[10:58] Cameron McEwen: We have to remember that around 1950,
[11:03] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan essays on figures like Tennyson have to do with the aesthetic moment.
[11:11] Cameron McEwen: And what is at stake when he's trying to figure out what the aesthetic moment is all about is this question of time.
[11:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[11:21] Bob Dobbs: and he talks about a cinematic,
[11:23] Bob Dobbs: and he has a quote in...
[11:26] Bob Dobbs: and maybe page 23 of Counterblast,
[11:28] Bob Dobbs: 1969,
[11:30] Bob Dobbs: he says,
[11:31] Bob Dobbs: the movie is the one medium that contains all media.
[11:35] Bob Dobbs: That's an important statement about media.
[11:37] Bob Dobbs: Then TV does that in a live,
[11:39] Bob Dobbs: ongoing making process.
[11:41] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[11:42] Bob Dobbs: But as a Gutenberg frame,
[11:44] Bob Dobbs: the movie is Finnegans Wake or Ulysses,
[11:48] Bob Dobbs: all times and spaces.
[11:49] Bob Dobbs: It's got all media.
[11:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[11:51] Cameron McEwen: so when you're...
[11:54] Cameron McEwen: You're putting your finger on a very important point there that relates to what we were saying just a minute ago.
[12:01] Cameron McEwen: The movie puts together all of the other media,
[12:05] Cameron McEwen: but it does so in a linear fashion.
[12:09] Cameron McEwen: And it's just speeding up linearity.
[12:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[12:14] Cameron McEwen: And framing.
[12:16] Bob Dobbs: It's a frame.
[12:17] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.
[12:18] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.
[12:18] Bob Dobbs: And what does Heidegger mean by frame and framing?
[12:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[12:25] Cameron McEwen: for what Heidegger means by that is that the world is always articulated in some way.
[12:39] Cameron McEwen: And modernity is the sense-making of the world in a way that puts it to use.
[12:50] Cameron McEwen: So sense-making is...
[12:53] Cameron McEwen: an articulation of the world where the frame itself is our making the world available to us.
[13:08] Bob Dobbs: Is that the popular statement?
[13:09] Bob Dobbs: There's a narrative.
[13:10] Bob Dobbs: What's the narrative here?
[13:12] Bob Dobbs: Is that what he's sophisticatedly describing,
[13:16] Bob Dobbs: the way cultures and people need a narrative?
[13:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[13:23] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[13:23] Cameron McEwen: there's always,
[13:24] Cameron McEwen: Heidegger would,
[13:25] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[13:25] Cameron McEwen: would agree that there is always a narrative going on.
[13:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[13:31] Cameron McEwen: The question,
[13:32] Cameron McEwen: so starting in the,
[13:34] Cameron McEwen: around 1945,
[13:39] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[13:40] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan,
[13:41] Cameron McEwen: or not McLuhan,
[13:42] Cameron McEwen: Heidegger started to talk more and more about language and about the question of who is it that speaks.
[13:50] Cameron McEwen: So.
[13:52] Cameron McEwen: What Heidegger tried to show is that language talks.
[13:55] Cameron McEwen: It's not that we use language.
[13:58] Cameron McEwen: Language uses us.
[14:00] Cameron McEwen: So in framing is the attempt to use language to put the world to use.
[14:08] Cameron McEwen: So for McLuhan,
[14:11] Cameron McEwen: sorry,
[14:12] Cameron McEwen: for Heidegger,
[14:12] Cameron McEwen: God,
[14:13] Cameron McEwen: I got to get my brain working here.
[14:17] Cameron McEwen: For Heidegger,
[14:18] Cameron McEwen: the reason...
[14:19] Cameron McEwen: that the world is in such dire straits is that we're attempting,
[14:27] Cameron McEwen: even in our perceptions,
[14:29] Cameron McEwen: to put it to use instead of allowing it to put us to use.
[14:34] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[14:35] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[14:36] Cameron McEwen: So he takes the phrase a step back from Schiller.
[14:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[14:40] Bob Dobbs: we use the tools today to do the old job,
[14:42] Bob Dobbs: was the line McLuhan said.
[14:46] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[14:46] Bob Dobbs: and we don't know,
[14:47] Bob Dobbs: well,
[14:47] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan trying to point out the tools are using us.
[14:50] Bob Dobbs: We think we're using the tools,
[14:51] Bob Dobbs: and when we get new tools,
[14:53] Bob Dobbs: we do it for the old job.
[14:55] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[14:57] Cameron McEwen: And so what that means is in 1800,
[15:01] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[15:03] Cameron McEwen: it was not terrible for the world to try to speed up going from one village to another by using macadam roads or by using the railway or something like that.
[15:19] Cameron McEwen: But when we advanced...
[15:24] Cameron McEwen: into rocket ships and atomic armaments and stuff,
[15:29] Cameron McEwen: doing the old job with the new media can be fatal.
[15:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[15:35] Bob Dobbs: And,
[15:35] Bob Dobbs: well,
[15:36] Bob Dobbs: we get ourselves in,
[15:37] Bob Dobbs: in many levels already.
[15:40] Bob Dobbs: Many levels of fatality have happened.
[15:43] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[15:44] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely correct.
[15:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[15:46] Cameron McEwen: So,
[15:47] Cameron McEwen: for one thing,
[15:48] Cameron McEwen: we've lost tens or hundreds of thousands of languages.
[15:53] Cameron McEwen: each one of which had special insights.
[15:58] Cameron McEwen: When we've lost those languages,
[16:00] Cameron McEwen: we've lost whole cultures.
[16:03] Cameron McEwen: And we've endangered all kinds of wildlife,
[16:08] Cameron McEwen: endangered all kinds of plants.
[16:11] Cameron McEwen: We've turned most of the planet into some sort of monocultural factory that is a...
[16:23] Cameron McEwen: rationalization in one way of production,
[16:27] Cameron McEwen: but in another way is a complete loss of information.
[16:31] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[16:32] Cameron McEwen: And so what we're doing is we're advancing into an ever simpler future,
[16:38] Cameron McEwen: which at the end of the road is annihilation.
[16:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[16:47] Bob Dobbs: So you were saying...
[16:52] Bob Dobbs: What was the idea in there,
[16:54] Bob Dobbs: the reductionism?
[16:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[16:58] Cameron McEwen: we got into Heidegger because you had a load in framing.
[17:02] Bob Dobbs: But you're talking about this process of reductionism.
[17:07] Cameron McEwen: Notice that that's what starts the Gutenberg Galaxy.
[17:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[17:12] Bob Dobbs: I was just going to say that we can't get out of the Gutenberg meme,
[17:18] Bob Dobbs: the power of it.
[17:19] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[17:22] Cameron McEwen: The power of the Gutenberg Galaxy can be seen in its very first step.
[17:31] Cameron McEwen: Its very first step is to take the complexity of speech and reduce it to letters.
[17:38] Cameron McEwen: And there's a tremendous gain economically and in a whole bunch of other ways in that reduction.
[17:44] Cameron McEwen: But there's also loss.
[17:46] Cameron McEwen: And we have not for 2,500 years.
[17:51] Cameron McEwen: or more,
[17:52] Cameron McEwen: we haven't paid attention to that loss.
[17:54] Cameron McEwen: And as we make more and more and more efficiencies,
[17:59] Cameron McEwen: as it seems,
[18:00] Cameron McEwen: there's more and more and more loss.
[18:03] Cameron McEwen: So it's as if we,
[18:07] Cameron McEwen: human beings,
[18:08] Cameron McEwen: are carrying a sack of forgetfulness on their back,
[18:13] Cameron McEwen: and that's getting bigger and and pretty soon it's going to drive.
[18:20] Cameron McEwen: humanity and all of the creatures that depend on humanity to its knees or lower.
[18:29] Cameron McEwen: And the only way to get around that is to turn around and look at the sack.
[18:35] Cameron McEwen: And I think that's one of the things that
[18:37] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake is about.
[18:39] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[18:40] Bob Dobbs: I remember what I was going to say.
[18:42] Bob Dobbs: He Wright in Explorations in the
[18:44] Bob Dobbs: 50s that the printing press
[18:47] Bob Dobbs: went around all of nature and made nature its content and manipulable,
[18:55] Bob Dobbs: manufacturable,
[18:56] Bob Dobbs: or industrialized it.
[18:59] Bob Dobbs: The printing press went around all of nature and made all of nature a robot,
[19:05] Bob Dobbs: a content.
[19:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[19:08] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[19:09] Bob Dobbs: And that's the first devastation,
[19:11] Bob Dobbs: which he called the fall of man,
[19:14] Bob Dobbs: technologically.
[19:16] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[19:16] Cameron McEwen: Although he later,
[19:18] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[19:18] Cameron McEwen: he criticized the Explorations of that.
[19:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[19:22] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[19:23] Cameron McEwen: Because the Explorations is itself a Gutenbergian stance.
[19:27] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[19:27] Cameron McEwen: So a way has to be found to critique what has been going on that doesn't itself fall into what is being criticized.
[19:40] Cameron McEwen: That's a very difficult thing.
[19:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[19:42] Bob Dobbs: And then you started to say something else.
[19:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[19:44] Cameron McEwen: I wanted to say that...
[19:46] Cameron McEwen: the um uh when you were bringing out uh the framing of nature uh by the gutenberg press
[19:56] Cameron McEwen: the later satellites make that explicit.
[20:00] Cameron McEwen: So there you can see the value of your linear story.
[20:08] Cameron McEwen: Your linear story brings out how things that have already happened become explicit.
[20:14] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[20:16] Bob Dobbs: become figures.
[20:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[20:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[20:20] Bob Dobbs: and that's what I do.
[20:21] Bob Dobbs: I lay out what's ground and what's figure in the different phases.
[20:24] Bob Dobbs: That's what the...
[20:26] Bob Dobbs: the part I'm reading from the memo to Prince Charles is about.
[20:29] Bob Dobbs: I'm using the figure and ground and showing how solar government becomes figure and then universal government becomes figure,
[20:35] Bob Dobbs: then mythic government and then holeopathic mythic stages.
[20:41] Bob Dobbs: No,
[20:41] Bob Dobbs: holeopathic retrievals become a phase.
[20:49] Cameron McEwen: Let me just say one thing about holeopathic
[20:55] Cameron McEwen: worlds,
[20:55] Cameron McEwen: plural.
[21:01] Cameron McEwen: The essence of a holeopathic world is that a singular structure is universalized.
[21:11] Cameron McEwen: So if you hone in on any little part of a hologram,
[21:17] Cameron McEwen: you find the same thing as in every other part and the same thing in the the whole
[21:24] Cameron McEwen: has the same structure as the minutest fragment.
[21:28] Cameron McEwen: That's what the hologram is.
[21:31] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[21:31] Bob Dobbs: Let me supplement that.
[21:35] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall pointed out that there are two phases happening in technology,
[21:38] Bob Dobbs: synesthesia and co-anesthetic.
[21:41] Bob Dobbs: I think I've mentioned this before.
[21:44] Bob Dobbs: Synesthesia is the mixture of the senses and the mixture of the extensions,
[21:47] Bob Dobbs: but co-anesthetic,
[21:48] Bob Dobbs: people don't know that term.
[21:49] Bob Dobbs: And what it does,
[21:50] Bob Dobbs: it increasingly,
[21:51] Bob Dobbs: the technological situation,
[21:53] Bob Dobbs: which...
[21:53] Bob Dobbs: the user in the center.
[21:55] Bob Dobbs: He becomes the director of the movie or the TV show.
[21:59] Bob Dobbs: That's co-anesthetic.
[22:01] Bob Dobbs: And that's the holeopathic.
[22:03] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[22:04] Bob Dobbs: you have,
[22:04] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[22:05] Bob Dobbs: Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum being some kind of figurehead or the head of WHO.
[22:10] Bob Dobbs: So they are the center of the Global Membrane.
[22:15] Bob Dobbs: But every individual using digital media is in the same position.
[22:20] Bob Dobbs: They're at the center.
[22:21] Bob Dobbs: And they're equally as powerful,
[22:23] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.
[22:23] Bob Dobbs: speak as whatever they say the new Kissinger is.
[22:28] Bob Dobbs: So that's the co-anesthetic process that's happening of more and more the,
[22:36] Bob Dobbs: what is that called?
[22:37] Bob Dobbs: I forget the term for the macro mirrors the micro,
[22:42] Bob Dobbs: but what is that in complexity,
[22:44] Bob Dobbs: chaos
[22:44] Bob Dobbs: theory?
[22:45] Bob Dobbs: What is that?
[22:46] Bob Dobbs: I guess it's just the nature of the hologram,
[22:48] Bob Dobbs: right?
[22:48] Bob Dobbs: That each little bit contains the whole hologram.
[22:51] Bob Dobbs: Isn't there a word for that.
[22:56] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.
[22:57] Cameron McEwen: But for me,
[22:58] Cameron McEwen: the importance is that the world is not one thing.
[23:10] Cameron McEwen: Being,
[23:10] Cameron McEwen: big B being,
[23:11] Cameron McEwen: is itself plural.
[23:13] Cameron McEwen: So the different possibilities of being,
[23:19] Cameron McEwen: small b,
[23:21] Cameron McEwen: are holeopathic.
[23:23] Cameron McEwen: I just wanted to say that to you.
[23:27] Cameron McEwen: The different possibilities are all holeopathic structures of possibilities in being.
[23:37] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[23:38] Cameron McEwen: So what needs to be thought is,
[23:44] Cameron McEwen: to put in the terms that you were just using,
[23:48] Cameron McEwen: when people are at the center of a hologram,
[23:51] Cameron McEwen: like you mentioned Klaus.
[23:53] Cameron McEwen: Schwab,
[23:54] Cameron McEwen: and then you said,
[23:55] Cameron McEwen: well,
[23:55] Cameron McEwen: but everybody is in that same position.
[23:58] Cameron McEwen: We have to understand that the reversal that's called for is to understand that those holograms are who we are.
[24:10] Cameron McEwen: It's not us organizing the holograms and mastering them in some way.
[24:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[24:19] Bob Dobbs: we're inside them.
[24:20] Bob Dobbs: We are the,
[24:21] Bob Dobbs: it's inside us.
[24:22] Bob Dobbs: We are the holograms.
[24:23] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[24:23] Cameron McEwen: That's exactly right.
[24:25] Cameron McEwen: And so the whole big question becomes,
[24:32] Cameron McEwen: if there is to be a critique of holograms,
[24:38] Cameron McEwen: how are we to do that if we're always inside one?
[24:43] Cameron McEwen: And so then it becomes a question of how do we quest?
[24:48] Cameron McEwen: within the possibilities of being,
[24:51] Cameron McEwen: to find one that allows us to be both inside and outside at the same time.
[24:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[24:58] Bob Dobbs: you hear the postmodern guys,
[25:01] Bob Dobbs: they point out that you can't get outside of anti-environment we're in.
[25:05] Bob Dobbs: There's no outside.
[25:07] Bob Dobbs: It's their way of doing it.
[25:08] Bob Dobbs: And Finnegans Wake is a good way to look at the outside.
[25:13] Bob Dobbs: So on page 52,
[25:15] Bob Dobbs: television kills telephony or telephone and Brothers' broil.
[25:18] Bob Dobbs: The eyes demand their turn.
[25:20] Bob Dobbs: Let them be seen.
[25:21] Bob Dobbs: So the visualization of this situation,
[25:24] Bob Dobbs: which is very strange,
[25:26] Bob Dobbs: he attempted...
[25:27] Bob Dobbs: to show the centralizing visualization with this ridiculous unreadable book.
[25:33] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[25:34] Bob Dobbs: He wants to bring back the book,
[25:35] Bob Dobbs: bring back the eyes.
[25:37] Bob Dobbs: Let the eye process be seen because that's what everybody was doing anyways is stuck with the Gutenberg bias.
[25:45] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[25:46] Cameron McEwen: that's true.
[25:46] Cameron McEwen: But at the same time,
[25:48] Cameron McEwen: he's saying that within the
[25:52] Cameron McEwen: Gutenberg bias is already a step to the outside.
[25:57] Cameron McEwen: just ignored.
[26:02] Cameron McEwen: Gutenberg could not work except by taking a shortcut where the outside of the shortcut is not noticed,
[26:12] Cameron McEwen: but it's there.
[26:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[26:14] Bob Dobbs: so
[26:16] Bob Dobbs: I found my talk at Fordham in 1998 at that Media Ecology Legacy of McLuhan conference that Lance Strate organized.
[26:25] Bob Dobbs: and they began the Media Ecology Association in that year.
[26:28] Bob Dobbs: And I was listening to myself and I said,
[26:30] Bob Dobbs: wow.
[26:30] Bob Dobbs: And so I was pointing out that the satellite floated around all the old media,
[26:36] Bob Dobbs: analog media,
[26:36] Bob Dobbs: which was where the characters in the global theater,
[26:40] Bob Dobbs: where all the older media before the satellite.
[26:43] Bob Dobbs: And there's this satellite cybernaut kind of the satellite floating around and outside of the planetary mix,
[26:53] Bob Dobbs: the mixed media mix.
[26:55] Bob Dobbs: is the co-anesthetic process,
[26:57] Bob Dobbs: more and more.
[26:58] Bob Dobbs: So you're not outside going around the planet,
[27:00] Bob Dobbs: that's an erroneous visualization,
[27:02] Bob Dobbs: but the digital thing is putting you outside by putting you in the center.
[27:07] Bob Dobbs: So the first centering was the internet web 1.0,
[27:11] Bob Dobbs: where you could communicate anybody visually with email and that,
[27:15] Bob Dobbs: and text.
[27:16] Bob Dobbs: But YouTube,
[27:17] Bob Dobbs: web 2.0,
[27:18] Bob Dobbs: allows you to broadcast,
[27:20] Bob Dobbs: be beyond the visual media.
[27:22] Bob Dobbs: And so you're more in the mixture of media and in the center point.
[27:26] Bob Dobbs: So that's like the more advanced,
[27:28] Bob Dobbs: the more holeopathic phase,
[27:31] Bob Dobbs: which
[27:31] Bob Dobbs: Theo called the co-anesthetic.
[27:33] Bob Dobbs: See,
[27:33] Bob Dobbs: you get this point.
[27:34] Bob Dobbs: The co-anesthetic is very important.
[27:36] Bob Dobbs: Everybody knows about synesthesia,
[27:37] Bob Dobbs: but they don't know about co-anesthetic.
[27:40] Bob Dobbs: They're putting us in the center,
[27:41] Bob Dobbs: which is nowhere.
[27:43] Bob Dobbs: And the more you understand that,
[27:45] Bob Dobbs: then that's the outside position.
[27:47] Bob Dobbs: And you're floating around,
[27:49] Bob Dobbs: like originally the satellite,
[27:50] Bob Dobbs: around the planet and its media.
[27:52] Bob Dobbs: But it then shrinks,
[27:54] Bob Dobbs: disappears,
[27:54] Bob Dobbs: and becomes an invisible cyberspace,
[27:57] Bob Dobbs: and you're in the center of it.
[27:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[28:00] Cameron McEwen: But the you needs to be in quotation marks.
[28:04] Bob Dobbs: That's because,
[28:05] Bob Dobbs: yes.
[28:06] Cameron McEwen: It disappears.
[28:07] Bob Dobbs: That's the five bodies.
[28:08] Bob Dobbs: The you is the five bodies.
[28:11] Cameron McEwen: What I hear you saying in terms of Don Theall is that the move from synesthesia to co-anesthetic.
[28:21] Cameron McEwen: is a pluralization.
[28:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[28:24] Cameron McEwen: So that synesthesia seems like it's a singular.
[28:28] Cameron McEwen: It's the bringing together of the senses is what we always do.
[28:32] Cameron McEwen: No problem.
[28:33] Cameron McEwen: But as soon as you look at co-anesthetic,
[28:37] Cameron McEwen: then you understand that that putting together of the senses is not one thing.
[28:44] Cameron McEwen: It's a whole series of possibilities that you do.
[28:48] Cameron McEwen: but only by raising the question of who the hell this you is.
[28:53] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[28:54] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[28:54] Bob Dobbs: let me,
[28:56] Bob Dobbs: what do I say?
[28:57] Bob Dobbs: I try to explain.
[28:57] Bob Dobbs: That's the meaning of holeopathic.
[28:59] Bob Dobbs: So let me see.
[29:01] Bob Dobbs: Do
[29:01] Bob Dobbs: I include that phase in my quoting?
[29:06] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.
[29:07] Bob Dobbs: I got the mythic government.
[29:10] Bob Dobbs: And you go down to make some commentary.
[29:17] Bob Dobbs: So I say.
[29:19] Bob Dobbs: My new discovery is I came up with the phrase holeopathic cliché probes.
[29:22] Bob Dobbs: This is my casual talk.
[29:24] Bob Dobbs: It's important to find out what this means because I'm later going to say a holeopathic cliché probe is a meme.
[29:32] Bob Dobbs: And I say as it gets thinner and thinner and more of a software pattern,
[29:36] Bob Dobbs: it's less a hardware product and becomes an image or a meme.
[29:40] Bob Dobbs: Someone was telling me recently,
[29:41] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[29:42] Bob Dobbs: well,
[29:42] Bob Dobbs: memes are these old clichés that the kids talk.
[29:44] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[29:45] Bob Dobbs: regain,
[29:46] Bob Dobbs: regrab them.
[29:48] Bob Dobbs: Thumbs down.
[29:48] Bob Dobbs: stupid image from the 60s
[29:50] Bob Dobbs: TV or something and they hang it,
[29:51] Bob Dobbs: slash it around as a meme.
[29:53] Bob Dobbs: It's a cliche being reused as a probe and it's tiny.
[29:57] Bob Dobbs: I had the term right there in 1987,
[29:59] Bob Dobbs: holeopathic cliche probes,
[30:01] Bob Dobbs: and they're the later phase of the mythic stages,
[30:04] Bob Dobbs: the holeopathic cliche probes.
[30:05] Bob Dobbs: Mythic stages were the first bigger memes in a slower time,
[30:09] Bob Dobbs: the 70s and 80s,
[30:10] Bob Dobbs: the beginning of digital memes.
[30:12] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan anticipates the memes,
[30:14] Bob Dobbs: which are digital memes in Android Meme.
[30:16] Bob Dobbs: And then I say,
[30:18] Cameron McEwen: What page are you on,
[30:19] Cameron McEwen: Bob?
[30:21] Bob Dobbs: Page 111 going into 112.
[30:25] Bob Dobbs: I'll let you catch up,
[30:26] Bob Dobbs: take a look at what I just read.
[30:28] Bob Dobbs: No,
[30:28] Cameron McEwen: I see where you are now.
[30:30] Bob Dobbs: So then I say,
[30:31] Bob Dobbs: you know where Holy Apathy comes from?
[30:33] Bob Dobbs: That's the shrinking global theater,
[30:35] Bob Dobbs: which is actually the effect of a hologram,
[30:37] Bob Dobbs: which comes through,
[30:38] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[30:39] Bob Dobbs: the word that makes the market in the American White House.
[30:42] Bob Dobbs: People knew there was one issue in 1968,
[30:45] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[30:45] Bob Dobbs: Vietnam,
[30:46] Bob Dobbs: we've got to do something about it.
[30:48] Bob Dobbs: And I said,
[30:48] Bob Dobbs: that's a hologram or news event.
[30:50] Bob Dobbs: But then it keeps shrinking,
[30:51] Bob Dobbs: shrinking,
[30:52] Bob Dobbs: shrinking holeopathic because in homeopathy,
[30:56] Bob Dobbs: the substance gets tinier and tinier and tinier,
[30:58] Bob Dobbs: but it still has the memory of the substance.
[31:00] Bob Dobbs: That's the theory.
[31:03] Bob Dobbs: Then it keeps shrinking,
[31:04] Bob Dobbs: shrinking,
[31:04] Bob Dobbs: shrinking holeopathic over the next 40 years until you've got little kids bigger than the global hologram.
[31:09] Bob Dobbs: That's the result of the holeopathic cliche probes.
[31:12] Bob Dobbs: So I don't say that.
[31:12] Bob Dobbs: That's bigger than the global hologram.
[31:15] Bob Dobbs: That's them co-anesthetic becoming the center more and more.
[31:19] Bob Dobbs: a
[31:19] Bob Dobbs: diluted center or an illusion visually so um that's what i think i'm trying to say there so then i say since there's nothing but replays remember quote the Kostelanetz phase the second phase of extension is a cliche and then retrieval is the third phase to make a cliche but
[31:40] Cameron McEwen: what you say there is very important you say since there's nothing but replays right so that means that
[31:49] Cameron McEwen: The historical stages that you're talking about are not one thing after another thing.
[31:57] Cameron McEwen: They are all replays.
[31:59] Bob Dobbs: Overlaying.
[32:01] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[32:02] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[32:02] Cameron McEwen: So at the same time that there's an east-west or horizontal plane being discussed here,
[32:11] Cameron McEwen: there's also a vertical plane.
[32:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[32:14] Bob Dobbs: with depth.
[32:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[32:16] Cameron McEwen: So that's a very good sentence there.
[32:19] Cameron McEwen: Nothing but replays,
[32:20] Cameron McEwen: remember.
[32:21] Cameron McEwen: The obsolescence phase is a cliché.
[32:24] Cameron McEwen: So that's excellent.
[32:26] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that 100%.
[32:28] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[32:28] Bob Dobbs: great.
[32:28] Bob Dobbs: And so I'm quoting Howard Gossage's essay in
[32:32] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan, Hot and Cold by Stern,
[32:34] Bob Dobbs: where he says,
[32:36] Bob Dobbs: the new technology is the last word,
[32:39] Bob Dobbs: and then we use it and get familiar,
[32:41] Bob Dobbs: so it becomes cliché,
[32:43] Bob Dobbs: and then it becomes art form,
[32:45] Bob Dobbs: and then it becomes archetype.
[32:46] Bob Dobbs: I'm glad I read that back in...
[32:48] Bob Dobbs: 67 68 that's an important four steps that he lays out and you never hear anybody using it and um so we need to think that vertically not just horizontally yes yeah so that's what i mean by the Kostelanetz phase i think i explained that earlier i quote the gossip thing so i'm referring back to the Kostelanetz phase is the cliche and the retrieval is the third phase to make a cliche work you've got to dress it up differently.
[33:15] Bob Dobbs: How you dress up the retrieval is an action of probing which McLuhan described as quote feeling around looking for some new situation.
[33:23] Bob Dobbs: He's retrieving,
[33:24] Bob Dobbs: he's replaying.
[33:26] Bob Dobbs: When jazz was Kostelanetz they brought in the cliche of tribal drum music dressed it up with Elvis,
[33:32] Bob Dobbs: a white guy singing it,
[33:33] Bob Dobbs: Elvis Presley,
[33:34] Bob Dobbs: and called it rock and roll.
[33:36] Bob Dobbs: Elvis was a cliche probe.
[33:38] Bob Dobbs: Another aspect when you read the book from Cliché to archetype McLuhan tends to say quote
[33:43] Bob Dobbs: Archetypes are contained,
[33:45] Bob Dobbs: stable things.
[33:46] Bob Dobbs: End of quote.
[33:47] Bob Dobbs: They are like books,
[33:48] Bob Dobbs: I say.
[33:49] Bob Dobbs: Archetypes are what literate people come up with.
[33:51] Bob Dobbs: Tribal people are constantly changing and moving around.
[33:54] Bob Dobbs: They're a cliché.
[33:55] Bob Dobbs: And the cliché is not stable and concrete like an archetype.
[33:59] Bob Dobbs: It's always being improvised,
[34:00] Bob Dobbs: slanged,
[34:01] Bob Dobbs: and generally how your black comedians act when they're probing.
[34:05] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[34:05] Bob Dobbs: negro comedians,
[34:07] Bob Dobbs: whatever else they call them,
[34:08] Bob Dobbs: African Americans.
[34:09] Bob Dobbs: A cliché is more a probe,
[34:12] Bob Dobbs: more an exp—
[34:12] Bob Dobbs: exploratory expression than an archetype.
[34:15] Bob Dobbs: And that's what he says in,
[34:16] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says in his book.
[34:18] Bob Dobbs: And then the more you become aware of pop culture,
[34:20] Bob Dobbs: depending on how old you are,
[34:21] Bob Dobbs: definitely the probe of rock and roll in the
[34:24] Bob Dobbs: 50s and 60s sounded to adults like it's all the same noise,
[34:27] Bob Dobbs: noise in quotes.
[34:28] Bob Dobbs: Whereas to the kids,
[34:29] Bob Dobbs: it was 50 kinds of snow,
[34:31] Bob Dobbs: which is the old line Ted Carpenter talked about
[34:34] Bob Dobbs: Eskimos. They could see 50 kinds of snows where we didn't see anything.
[34:37] Bob Dobbs: We just saw white,
[34:39] Bob Dobbs: or now called the Inuit.
[34:42] Bob Dobbs: Whereas to the kids,
[34:43] Bob Dobbs: they can see the shades and nuances and levels and depth in the rock music,
[34:48] Bob Dobbs: in the noise.
[34:50] Bob Dobbs: So to the kids,
[34:50] Bob Dobbs: it was 50 kinds of snow,
[34:52] Bob Dobbs: and they'd argue over different bands.
[34:54] Bob Dobbs: But,
[34:55] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[34:55] Bob Dobbs: the dull ears of the literate parents couldn't hear the differences.
[35:00] Bob Dobbs: So then you have to include the dull meaning of cliché.
[35:03] Bob Dobbs: That's what rock is for parents.
[35:05] Bob Dobbs: But it also has to have a sense of newness.
[35:07] Bob Dobbs: That's the probing part.
[35:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[35:09] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan picked up the...
[35:10] Bob Dobbs: The peers pick up the cliche part,
[35:13] Bob Dobbs: the dull part,
[35:14] Bob Dobbs: and the kids pick up the new part.
[35:16] Bob Dobbs: That's nice.
[35:19] Cameron McEwen: The opposite is also true.
[35:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[35:21] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[35:21] Bob Dobbs: Because new becomes old,
[35:23] Bob Dobbs: old becomes new,
[35:23] Bob Dobbs: as he says in Take Today.
[35:25] Bob Dobbs: It flips.
[35:27] Cameron McEwen: But one thing we have to notice is that when you say that archetypes are contained,
[35:37] Cameron McEwen: stable things,
[35:39] Cameron McEwen: they are like books.
[35:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[35:43] Cameron McEwen: That's only one view.
[35:45] Cameron McEwen: that McLuhan had of the archetype.
[35:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[35:48] Bob Dobbs: that's the North of Frye view.
[35:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[35:51] Cameron McEwen: so that's right.
[35:52] Cameron McEwen: So for McLuhan,
[35:54] Cameron McEwen: an archetype like a ground is inherently reversible.
[36:00] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[36:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[36:03] Bob Dobbs: and in City as Classroom he says,
[36:05] Bob Dobbs: a cliche and archetype are interchangeable.
[36:08] Cameron McEwen: Correct,
[36:09] Cameron McEwen: correct.
[36:09] Cameron McEwen: So it belongs to an archetype to express itself.
[36:13] Cameron McEwen: and when it expresses itself it's a cliche and a cliche is something that always points beyond itself and when it points beyond itself it's an archetype yeah so yeah that's very important to say that i don't say that um i
[36:31] Bob Dobbs: keep the literate division but yeah the flux of them is what uh Joyce is showing in Finnegans Wake and this is the resonance yeah this is the key for people they
[36:43] Bob Dobbs: freeze on archetypes in their identity quest,
[36:47] Bob Dobbs: and they get into mysticism,
[36:49] Bob Dobbs: Gnosticism,
[36:49] Bob Dobbs: or Catholicism,
[36:50] Bob Dobbs: or something.
[36:51] Bob Dobbs: They retrieve
[36:53] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg's soul,
[36:56] Bob Dobbs: came from Augustine,
[36:58] Bob Dobbs: and they're trying to retrieve that archetype.
[37:00] Bob Dobbs: They don't get the flux of the identity process now.
[37:04] Bob Dobbs: That's the challenge to the Gutenberg effect,
[37:09] Bob Dobbs: is to see that the archetype is not
[37:12] Bob Dobbs: solid like that anymore.
[37:14] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[37:15] Cameron McEwen: That's for McLuhan.
[37:16] Cameron McEwen: There's several words for that.
[37:19] Bob Dobbs: What are they?
[37:20] Cameron McEwen: One is tactility that you often use,
[37:23] Cameron McEwen: but another word is electric.
[37:25] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[37:26] Cameron McEwen: Electric is the flux between poles.
[37:29] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[37:30] Bob Dobbs: It's not a flow.
[37:32] Bob Dobbs: It's like another version of...
[37:34] Cameron McEwen: Back and forth.
[37:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[37:35] Bob Dobbs: it's the back and forth and it's the overlay.
[37:37] Bob Dobbs: It's the interpenetration.
[37:38] Bob Dobbs: It's hard to visualize.
[37:41] Bob Dobbs: what electricity is.
[37:42] Cameron McEwen: That's right and I'll just point out here that when
[37:46] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan took one of his first philosophy courses,
[37:51] Cameron McEwen: this would have been in 1930 or 1931,
[37:55] Cameron McEwen: he took it from a philosophy professor at the University of Manitoba called Henry Wright and
[38:02] Cameron McEwen: Henry Wright wrote a book in 1926 on the foundations of democracy.
[38:09] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan read this book very,
[38:11] Cameron McEwen: very closely,
[38:12] Cameron McEwen: annotated it over and over and over again.
[38:15] Bob Dobbs: Have you seen it?
[38:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[38:17] Cameron McEwen: it's in his library at Toronto.
[38:19] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[38:20] Bob Dobbs: At the Bear Fisher book.
[38:22] Cameron McEwen: One of the favorite words of
[38:25] Cameron McEwen: Wright Innis book is intercommunication.
[38:28] Cameron McEwen: And
[38:29] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan uses the word intercommunication the rest of his life from that book.
[38:35] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[38:35] Cameron McEwen: And intercommunication is...
[38:37] Bob Dobbs: what we're talking about here between uh cliche and archetype or between uh tactility and electricity that's the third term tactility electricity and intercommunication yeah and you and you see uh Kroker his way of talking about his inner penetration interpenetration and interpellatio they had i don't know if he got them from uh postmodernist guys in france or something but he has different way other
[39:03] Bob Dobbs: words that they came up with which are talking tactility
[39:07] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[39:09] Bob Dobbs: they have other ways of doing it.
[39:12] Bob Dobbs: Maybe imminence is another one.
[39:14] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[39:16] Bob Dobbs: not imminent coming soon.
[39:17] Bob Dobbs: It means pervasiveness,
[39:19] Bob Dobbs: interpenetration.
[39:22] Cameron McEwen: All words can be used within the Gutenberg Galaxy or an attempt to escape the Gutenberg Galaxy or within the Marconi era.
[39:34] Cameron McEwen: So no single word.
[39:38] Cameron McEwen: captures what needs to be said.
[39:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[39:44] Bob Dobbs: there's,
[39:45] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,
[39:46] Bob Dobbs: maybe I saw it in
[39:48] Bob Dobbs: Roland McHugh's Annotations of Finney's Wake,
[39:50] Bob Dobbs: where a clown or somebody is holding three balls,
[39:54] Bob Dobbs: three or four balls,
[39:55] Bob Dobbs: and one's always slipping out.
[39:58] Bob Dobbs: So he's always grabbing the ball that's slipping out,
[40:00] Bob Dobbs: and then he gets it and brings it into the three,
[40:02] Bob Dobbs: but the other one becomes the fourth and falls out.
[40:06] Bob Dobbs: That's...
[40:06] Bob Dobbs: That's our perception under this changing ground situation.
[40:10] Bob Dobbs: We can't hold it all.
[40:11] Bob Dobbs: Do you see what I'm saying?
[40:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[40:14] Cameron McEwen: that's the human condition right there.
[40:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[40:18] Cameron McEwen: The human condition is to be finite,
[40:21] Cameron McEwen: to we only have so much time,
[40:23] Cameron McEwen: we only have so much brain power,
[40:26] Cameron McEwen: we only have so much attention.
[40:28] Cameron McEwen: So when we are looking at one thing,
[40:31] Cameron McEwen: we're not looking at other things.
[40:33] Cameron McEwen: And those other things are always escaping us,
[40:37] Cameron McEwen: and they can be critical.
[40:40] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[40:40] Bob Dobbs: So you get poised.
[40:41] Bob Dobbs: If you know you've got four things and you're catching three,
[40:45] Bob Dobbs: you know you can't get the fourth,
[40:46] Bob Dobbs: then you accept that resonant interval or the incompletion of what you're perceiving.
[40:53] Bob Dobbs: That's the clue.
[40:54] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[40:55] Bob Dobbs: that process of always fumbling and not keeping it all became anti-environment,
[41:00] Bob Dobbs: electrically.
[41:02] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[41:02] Bob Dobbs: The anti-environment,
[41:04] Bob Dobbs: or later the Android Meme,
[41:05] Bob Dobbs: and the tech body do that.
[41:08] Bob Dobbs: They present it to us.
[41:09] Bob Dobbs: So...
[41:10] Bob Dobbs: Our incompleteness in handling this is flat overlaid on us,
[41:17] Bob Dobbs: and that's where I get the quadrophrenia.
[41:19] Bob Dobbs: So our basic schizophrenia or incompletion then gets overlaid by the environmental schizophrenia.
[41:23] Bob Dobbs: So you've got two of them,
[41:24] Bob Dobbs: so that's where quadrophrenia comes.
[41:26] Bob Dobbs: Then you can have different ways of breaking down,
[41:28] Bob Dobbs: like the five bodies or the Android Meme.
[41:30] Bob Dobbs: But to understand the clown figure trying to hold all the balls is a very good image.
[41:40] Cameron McEwen: What do you mean by saying that the tech body brings the incompletion to the floor,
[41:50] Cameron McEwen: I think you said?
[41:51] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[41:52] Bob Dobbs: so you have the chemical body,
[41:56] Bob Dobbs: it has its life and it's finite,
[41:58] Bob Dobbs: and it's always a little behind what's going on.
[42:01] Bob Dobbs: Sometimes they have mastery for a minute or two,
[42:04] Bob Dobbs: then there's always something slipping out of their control.
[42:07] Bob Dobbs: and part of the
[42:09] Bob Dobbs: skill of living is to accept that you're not getting it all so you don't become a nut trying to impose a pattern on somebody because your pattern is always going to be incomplete so you allow the other person to actually fill it in for you what you didn't get to say you know what i mean right so there's a complementarity there that
[42:26] Bob Dobbs: situation between the chemical bodies became externalized as the anti-environment radio tv movie and the whole thing as um you know the the global theater,
[42:35] Bob Dobbs: and then it started to get shrunk,
[42:37] Bob Dobbs: so everybody has...
[42:40] Bob Dobbs: that failure to frame it all in their cell phone.
[42:46] Bob Dobbs: And they're looking at it,
[42:47] Bob Dobbs: and they're trying to figure out how to frame the news or frame the information that's coming in.
[42:51] Bob Dobbs: And they don't recognize,
[42:52] Bob Dobbs: no,
[42:52] Bob Dobbs: anti-environment is not going to complete it for you.
[42:55] Bob Dobbs: It's the same mirror of you,
[42:57] Bob Dobbs: a miming of your cognitive,
[42:59] Bob Dobbs: your drama of cognition.
[43:01] Bob Dobbs: And so it's inside you,
[43:03] Bob Dobbs: and you're inside it.
[43:04] Bob Dobbs: So you've got two dramas of cognition.
[43:07] Bob Dobbs: You've got the natural...
[43:08] Bob Dobbs: first nature or chemical body one,
[43:10] Bob Dobbs: and it's interplaying with the chip body,
[43:13] Bob Dobbs: TV body,
[43:14] Bob Dobbs: or Android Meme dram of cognition.
[43:21] Cameron McEwen: I understand what you're saying,
[43:22] Cameron McEwen: but what I don't understand in a part of what you're saying is you were using the word acceptance,
[43:31] Cameron McEwen: and you were saying,
[43:32] Cameron McEwen: well...
[43:34] Bob Dobbs: When you know...
[43:35] Bob Dobbs: you can't get it i remember reading in Kool-Aid Acid Test that leary um Kesey and them they take they get on their group lsc trips and all that and they would get closer and closer to getting it all at all like implode into a big epiphany but they never could get to the final sense
[43:52] Bob Dobbs: of completing the epiphany and they had to recognize the lsd will make me get think i'm getting closer and closer and i've got to step back from that feeling because i'm not going to to get there.
[44:04] Bob Dobbs: That's what they learned.
[44:05] Bob Dobbs: So that's an example of how you have to live.
[44:09] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[44:09] Cameron McEwen: But it would be still
[44:14] Cameron McEwen: Gutenbergian and still tragic if people think that the great need is to sort of accept one's finitude and
[44:31] Cameron McEwen: to understand that one can't.
[44:33] Cameron McEwen: know it all,
[44:33] Cameron McEwen: can't organize it all,
[44:35] Cameron McEwen: and all that sort of stuff.
[44:41] Bob Dobbs: That's limited.
[44:43] Bob Dobbs: A friend of mine,
[44:43] Bob Dobbs: an older guy,
[44:44] Bob Dobbs: once told me,
[44:45] Bob Dobbs: he said,
[44:45] Bob Dobbs: Bob,
[44:45] Bob Dobbs: you can understand the non-understandable.
[44:49] Bob Dobbs: And that's an important point to get.
[44:51] Bob Dobbs: You get glimpses of mastery of it temporarily.
[44:56] Cameron McEwen: It's not just that we're unable to grasp it.
[45:03] Cameron McEwen: The great problem is that we are subject to forces.
[45:12] Cameron McEwen: This may be where you're getting to with the tech body.
[45:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[45:15] Cameron McEwen: We're subject to forces where somebody can be entirely in a position of acceptance of their own finitude and their own inability to organize everything and all this sort of stuff,
[45:30] Cameron McEwen: and they can be blown up,
[45:32] Cameron McEwen: right?
[45:33] Cameron McEwen: In war,
[45:34] Cameron McEwen: they can get cancer or they can be going around in a...
[45:40] Cameron McEwen: great bubble of acceptance and hurting their own children in some way.
[45:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[45:46] Bob Dobbs: that's a kind of repression.
[45:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[45:49] Bob Dobbs: that's accepting a definition of yourself,
[45:52] Bob Dobbs: a limitation.
[45:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[45:54] Cameron McEwen: so the calling of human beings isn't to Self-Condemned,
[46:06] Cameron McEwen: that eventually
[46:10] Cameron McEwen: amounts to a self-organization that admits that there's something else to the world,
[46:17] Cameron McEwen: right?
[46:17] Cameron McEwen: That admits that it can't organize everything,
[46:20] Cameron McEwen: it doesn't know everything,
[46:22] Cameron McEwen: and sort of that's what the self is or something.
[46:27] Cameron McEwen: But no,
[46:29] Cameron McEwen: beyond that sort of self-organization that claims not to organize everything...
[46:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[46:37] Bob Dobbs: the phrase is arguing for your limitations.
[46:40] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[46:40] Cameron McEwen: That's a kind of framing that is a Gutenbergian goal.
[46:46] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[46:48] Cameron McEwen: it's like the
[46:52] Cameron McEwen: Caspar David
[46:53] Cameron McEwen: Friedrich painting of the wanderer at the top of the mountain and below him is the fog and clouds so that there's no problems up there.
[47:07] Cameron McEwen: There's no Hans Selye.
[47:09] Cameron McEwen: people below him there's just him on the mountaintop um that's that kind of Gutenbergian um perspective perspective that includes what can't be seen because the fog is there yeah right that still is entirely good meridian right
[47:31] Bob Dobbs: so that's and that's due to the book enhancing the matching and and the book makes you think
[47:36] Bob Dobbs: It's a delusion that you can get to a point,
[47:39] Bob Dobbs: a conclusion with a period.
[47:41] Bob Dobbs: That's what it is.
[47:42] Bob Dobbs: It enhances that sensory bias.
[47:46] Bob Dobbs: Sensory something.
[47:49] Bob Dobbs: So the making...
[47:51] Cameron McEwen: It's the bias that makes possible the book,
[47:54] Cameron McEwen: not the book that makes possible the bias.
[47:57] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[47:58] Bob Dobbs: So the making process that is before the book and after the book under electric conditions.
[48:05] Bob Dobbs: you can get pattern recognition,
[48:08] Bob Dobbs: which is what McLuhan called the third Copernican revolution,
[48:11] Bob Dobbs: is you actually can enjoy the mind coming to conclusions.
[48:15] Bob Dobbs: It's like we do it.
[48:17] Bob Dobbs: We get insights.
[48:18] Bob Dobbs: We get excited by a pattern.
[48:20] Bob Dobbs: And that's there as a sensory pleasure,
[48:22] Bob Dobbs: but it'll fall away.
[48:25] Bob Dobbs: That's what you have to recognize.
[48:26] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[48:26] Bob Dobbs: it's going to fall away.
[48:28] Bob Dobbs: But you can enjoy the sensation of thinking you've got it all.
[48:32] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[48:32] Cameron McEwen: And each one of those things is a hologram.
[48:35] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[48:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[48:36] Bob Dobbs: it contains everybody and you flipping back and forth.
[48:41] Bob Dobbs: You flip into the many,
[48:43] Bob Dobbs: and then the many flips into the one,
[48:45] Bob Dobbs: which is what...
[48:47] Bob Dobbs: Let's see if I come up with that part.
[48:50] Bob Dobbs: Let's see,
[48:54] Bob Dobbs: just going down here.
[49:01] Bob Dobbs: Mythic stages.
[49:02] Bob Dobbs: I've got to get to the Holy of Paths.
[49:04] Bob Dobbs: explain it.
[49:07] Bob Dobbs: Where is that?
[49:08] Bob Dobbs: I'm scrolling down.
[49:11] Bob Dobbs: Where are you now?
[49:19] Cameron McEwen: 116?
[49:19] Cameron McEwen: You're going by a lot of stuff there.
[49:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[49:21] Bob Dobbs: but I'm trying to find that part of the Explorations of the holeopathic phase and
[49:26] Bob Dobbs: I may not have included that.
[49:29] Bob Dobbs: I will just search holeopathic,
[49:31] Bob Dobbs: see where it goes.
[49:36] Bob Dobbs: So there's that.
[49:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[49:41] Bob Dobbs: I have here,
[49:41] Bob Dobbs: I actually do have it.
[49:44] Bob Dobbs: It's drug-taking too,
[49:45] Bob Dobbs: but it's a combination with the hidden operations of the computer,
[49:48] Bob Dobbs: like the service environment was the hidden television.
[49:50] Cameron McEwen: Where are you?
[49:52] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[49:52] Bob Dobbs: it's
[49:56] Bob Dobbs: 110 in the blue part after I talk about mythic government.
[50:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[50:03] Bob Dobbs: And so near the bottom of the blue part.
[50:05] Bob Dobbs: Then all the beats.
[50:07] Bob Dobbs: There's hidden television and it's accompanied by...
[50:10] Bob Dobbs: no the computer is the hidden thing it's accompanied by laser beams and genetic engineering then all that becomes a visible hologram which is on the way to becoming holeopathic amidst the clashing visible bureaucracies complemented by the hidden landscape which is the mythic government and what's myth it's any mixture of media that a culture thinks it represents and
[50:34] Bob Dobbs: i think that's where i don't i don't go any further it's you know Let me just...
[50:38] Bob Dobbs: Try this,
[50:38] Bob Dobbs: holeopathic,
[50:39] Bob Dobbs: cliche probes,
[50:41] Bob Dobbs: a little further down.
[50:44] Bob Dobbs: I did that,
[50:45] Bob Dobbs: holeopathic,
[50:46] Bob Dobbs: 112,
[50:55] Bob Dobbs: 150.
[50:57] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[50:57] Bob Dobbs: do I go way down there?
[51:01] Bob Dobbs: So later on page 150...
[51:06] Bob Dobbs: I say holeopathic is a word that combines the two processes of homeopathy and the hologram.
[51:11] Bob Dobbs: Since the technologies of the industrial and subsequent electronic revolutions have been subsumed by the burgeoning television environment after 1945,
[51:19] Bob Dobbs: one might as well say that,
[51:20] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[51:21] Bob Dobbs: everything had disappeared.
[51:23] Bob Dobbs: However,
[51:23] Bob Dobbs: in holeopathic terms,
[51:25] Bob Dobbs: one should understand that everything,
[51:26] Bob Dobbs: or at least the memory of everything,
[51:28] Bob Dobbs: was being diluted to ever more invisible,
[51:31] Bob Dobbs: inaudible,
[51:32] Bob Dobbs: but potent effect,
[51:34] Bob Dobbs: capital letters.
[51:35] Bob Dobbs: This is a proven holeopathic principle,
[51:37] Bob Dobbs: see Benveniste,
[51:38] Bob Dobbs: who was a friend of Baudrillard,
[51:39] Bob Dobbs: and I talked to Baudrillard about Benveniste.
[51:41] Bob Dobbs: He's the guy who proved it in 88 in Nature Magazine.
[51:44] Bob Dobbs: Then Randy and the skeptics went after him,
[51:47] Bob Dobbs: wrecked his lab,
[51:49] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[51:49] Bob Dobbs: really hurt him.
[51:51] Bob Dobbs: And this memoried everything was an inhabitable anti-environment far as human beings were concerned,
[51:57] Bob Dobbs: even though only one-third perceptible to them,
[52:00] Bob Dobbs: because the effects of anti-environment always precedes its causes.
[52:03] Bob Dobbs: Hence the use of the term hologram.
[52:05] Bob Dobbs: Since most everything was being retrieved,
[52:08] Bob Dobbs: there's your endless replays,
[52:09] Bob Dobbs: there was a necessarily archetypal quality to the situation.
[52:12] Bob Dobbs: Also,
[52:12] Bob Dobbs: since it was an ever-changing and ever-fluid context,
[52:15] Bob Dobbs: there was a complementary process of intensity creating the holeopathic cliché probe.
[52:20] Bob Dobbs: And that's the alchemy you've lived in from 1986 to 2012.
[52:24] Bob Dobbs: These holeopathic cliché probes constitute further refinements of the form and content of the newspaper,
[52:29] Bob Dobbs: movie,
[52:30] Bob Dobbs: radio,
[52:30] Bob Dobbs: television,
[52:30] Bob Dobbs: and computer anti-environment.
[52:32] Bob Dobbs: and their Explorations of each other under the panoptical surveillance scanning of the anti-environment.
[52:37] Bob Dobbs: Advertising and the Nielsen ratings were the gluons that simulated economic control of these media ratings.
[52:46] Bob Dobbs: So then,
[52:48] Bob Dobbs: do I need to say that part?
[52:52] Bob Dobbs: Do I continue?
[52:56] Bob Dobbs: Moving down past the blue part,
[52:58] Bob Dobbs: Our communication anti-environment from the printing press onward layered over and through our older linguistic anti-environment.
[53:05] Cameron McEwen: Are you still up at 150 or are you back?
[53:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[53:08] Bob Dobbs: I'm continuing from 150.
[53:10] Bob Dobbs: I'm down getting near 150.
[53:12] Bob Dobbs: ION 151.
[53:15] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[53:15] Cameron McEwen: we have to remember that we're skipping over 40 pages here.
[53:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[53:19] Bob Dobbs: I'm just trying to find the part where there's a point about the holeopathic I want to describe.
[53:24] Bob Dobbs: So let me see.
[53:25] Bob Dobbs: Where is that?
[53:25] Bob Dobbs: So I'm going down.
[53:28] Bob Dobbs: I have the Holeopathic cliche probes on page 152 becomes a digital meme.
[53:33] Bob Dobbs: And then I say,
[53:38] Bob Dobbs: however,
[53:38] Bob Dobbs: other portions of the Android Meme underwent psychological decentralization and splayed effects of the phase two of the Android Meme,
[53:45] Bob Dobbs: which constitute a huge replay of phase one of the Android Meme as content,
[53:50] Bob Dobbs: in brackets,
[53:50] Bob Dobbs: Holeopathic cliche probes.
[53:52] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan anticipates the Holeopathic cliche probes with his use of the module.
[53:56] Bob Dobbs: So I quote McLuhan doing the module.
[53:59] Bob Dobbs: And that's the last place.
[54:02] Bob Dobbs: We're holeopathic.
[54:04] Bob Dobbs: And so I say,
[54:05] Bob Dobbs: I had to come up with something that is like a meme,
[54:07] Bob Dobbs: holeopathic cliche probe.
[54:10] Bob Dobbs: No one knows what that means,
[54:11] Bob Dobbs: so I had to find old words,
[54:13] Bob Dobbs: and I did.
[54:14] Bob Dobbs: I can't make that.
[54:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[54:15] Bob Dobbs: there it is.
[54:17] Bob Dobbs: And these two paragraphs explain module.
[54:21] Bob Dobbs: So then I go down.
[54:24] Bob Dobbs: and I get into the mini-module,
[54:27] Bob Dobbs: that's McLuhan terms,
[54:28] Bob Dobbs: and I say that's intuiting the holeopathic meme.
[54:32] Bob Dobbs: So
[54:33] Bob Dobbs: I don't get to,
[54:36] Bob Dobbs: because when I did this in 1987,
[54:42] Bob Dobbs: Rush Limbaugh in the 90s and 2000s never hadn't happened yet.
[54:45] Bob Dobbs: So what you had,
[54:46] Bob Dobbs: who became powerful in the retrieved simulation of the anti-environment was Rush Limbaugh.
[54:54] Bob Dobbs: And then you had Clinton,
[54:56] Bob Dobbs: who was taking the White House and being inflated to incredible levels.
[55:01] Bob Dobbs: So what you had,
[55:02] Bob Dobbs: the world started to see what McLuhan said in the
[55:06] Bob Dobbs: 60s, future wars will be two generals having a duel.
[55:11] Bob Dobbs: And they'll represent,
[55:12] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[55:13] Bob Dobbs: whole complex media nations and other media mythic stages.
[55:18] Bob Dobbs: But the point is,
[55:19] Bob Dobbs: is that more and more,
[55:21] Bob Dobbs: the individual getting co-anesthetic and being at the center is the holeopathic environment.
[55:29] Bob Dobbs: So you have battles between holeopathic cliche probes.
[55:32] Bob Dobbs: That's George Soros versus
[55:35] Bob Dobbs: Bernie Sanders or
[55:39] Bob Dobbs: Rush Limbaugh versus Clinton.
[55:41] Bob Dobbs: all these figures that they became huge.
[55:44] Bob Dobbs: You understand how they became huge in the
[55:47] Bob Dobbs: 90s and in the internet period?
[55:50] Bob Dobbs: We were watching the creation of generals who were going to have duels.
[55:55] Bob Dobbs: You follow that?
[55:57] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[55:59] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[55:59] Cameron McEwen: if I were to say what I hear you saying,
[56:08] Cameron McEwen: I would simply say that...
[56:11] Cameron McEwen: The holograms are different ways of living in and envisioning and understanding everything.
[56:22] Cameron McEwen: Yep.
[56:22] Cameron McEwen: So that all and each one of these is a possibility that is prior to humans and that organizes humans,
[56:34] Cameron McEwen: not vice versa.
[56:36] Cameron McEwen: So as you were saying,
[56:38] Cameron McEwen: humans are at the center of these things.
[56:40] Cameron McEwen: but not at the center as in a control room.
[56:44] Cameron McEwen: They're in the center as being controlled.
[56:47] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[56:48] Bob Dobbs: and thinking they're at the center.
[56:50] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[56:51] Cameron McEwen: So when these things are at the same time holeopathic,
[57:01] Cameron McEwen: that means that we've come to a stage in human history where the biggest things of all you
[57:10] Cameron McEwen: have become visible and have become something that in a certain way we understand so that we can use their power but when
[57:27] Cameron McEwen: we do so we only endanger ourselves because we as you were just saying a second ago we confuse the idea of
[57:40] Bob Dobbs: are controlling with are being controlled yes so we confuse active and passive yes so now why do they say in the internet the first really um dominant meme and content inflation
[57:57] Bob Dobbs: going on was conspiracy theory all the conspiracy all the guys who had a certain uh pattern recognition they didn't know it it was holeopathic and they started to see
[58:10] Bob Dobbs: that the Rothschilds or the Rockefellers or the Antichrist was running everything.
[58:15] Bob Dobbs: I'm calling that a holeopathic central
[58:18] Bob Dobbs: Web 2.0 experience.
[58:20] Bob Dobbs: So everybody was potentially the Antichrist,
[58:24] Bob Dobbs: the guy running everything.
[58:26] Bob Dobbs: And so in pop culture,
[58:28] Bob Dobbs: you had
[58:29] Bob Dobbs: Michael Jackson,
[58:30] Bob Dobbs: a massive phenomenon,
[58:31] Bob Dobbs: and then Madonna,
[58:32] Bob Dobbs: and then whoever came after them,
[58:34] Bob Dobbs: Beyonce and all these people.
[58:36] Bob Dobbs: That's in music.
[58:36] Bob Dobbs: And then you'd have a dominating person.
[58:39] Bob Dobbs: in Hollywood for a while and all media would be around them.
[58:43] Bob Dobbs: Movies we made about,
[58:45] Bob Dobbs: whatever that actress is,
[58:46] Bob Dobbs: came from friends.
[58:48] Bob Dobbs: She was Brad Pitt's first wife,
[58:50] Bob Dobbs: Brad Pitt and Angelina.
[58:52] Bob Dobbs: More and more,
[58:53] Bob Dobbs: now this is Queen for a day,
[58:55] Bob Dobbs: but in the Holeopathic phase,
[58:59] Bob Dobbs: Angelina Jolie had to work with the United Nations,
[59:02] Bob Dobbs: go to Africa and feed people and be a Mother Teresa.
[59:05] Bob Dobbs: They had to be the saint.
[59:07] Bob Dobbs: They had to be the counter to the holeopathic Antichrist.
[59:11] Bob Dobbs: So more and more,
[59:12] Bob Dobbs: we were up against people making $500 million,
[59:16] Bob Dobbs: like Rush Limbaugh or Joe Rogan or Howard Stern.
[59:19] Bob Dobbs: More and more,
[59:21] Bob Dobbs: we centralized and imploded into icons,
[59:25] Bob Dobbs: and so people looked like they were more and more fans and dupes and part of these
[59:31] Bob Dobbs: Hollywood cults,
[59:33] Bob Dobbs: while their actual life was they're all over the place.
[59:36] Bob Dobbs: web 2.0 broadcasting and commenting and Trump epitomized that even more extreme the whole world overreacted Trump right so he was a major holeopathic completion there and then the tech body comes in after that or underneath that so you're saying that we move beyond collectivities which
[59:57] Bob Dobbs: were solar government uh universal government mythic stages now individuals were
[1:00:05] Bob Dobbs: at the Co-anesthetic Center,
[1:00:06] Bob Dobbs: and they were what we were battling against.
[1:00:10] Bob Dobbs: what all the
[1:00:11] Bob Dobbs: Matrix members were forced to think about.
[1:00:15] Bob Dobbs: You see?
[1:00:16] Bob Dobbs: That's what I'm saying.
[1:00:17] Bob Dobbs: The holeopathic super-angelization of,
[1:00:20] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:00:21] Bob Dobbs: an individual chemical body,
[1:00:23] Bob Dobbs: even though they're made up of five bodies and are everywhere in everybody's hair,
[1:00:28] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:00:29] Bob Dobbs: and in everybody's body.
[1:00:31] Bob Dobbs: You see what I'm saying?
[1:00:32] Cameron McEwen: I follow the narrative.
[1:00:33] Cameron McEwen: Excuse me.
[1:00:35] Cameron McEwen: And it makes sense to me.
[1:00:37] Cameron McEwen: But you used the phrase,
[1:00:39] Cameron McEwen: we are battling against.
[1:00:41] Cameron McEwen: That I don't understand.
[1:00:45] Bob Dobbs: We are battling the holy path of the king.
[1:00:48] Cameron McEwen: Who's the we?
[1:00:50] Bob Dobbs: All the people who are super angelic,
[1:00:52] Bob Dobbs: holeopathic centers themselves,
[1:00:54] Bob Dobbs: who are ready to take over from Joe Rogan and be the center position in the Android Meme,
[1:01:01] Bob Dobbs: to be the dominant figure.
[1:01:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:01:05] Cameron McEwen: so what you're saying there is that sort of the next appearance of the holeopathic control center is
[1:01:21] Cameron McEwen: every human being at every moment being at the center of these things,
[1:01:29] Cameron McEwen: seemingly in control and being in no control.
[1:01:32] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:01:32] Bob Dobbs: And you notice...
[1:01:34] Bob Dobbs: I don't think they asked Marilyn Monroe back
[1:01:37] Bob Dobbs: 60 years ago how she would solve the world's problems.
[1:01:42] Bob Dobbs: She would have some...
[1:01:42] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:01:43] Cameron McEwen: they probably did.
[1:01:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:01:44] Bob Dobbs: but to give a little puny,
[1:01:46] Bob Dobbs: puny opinions.
[1:01:48] Bob Dobbs: When you get to the Rush Limbaugh's and
[1:01:51] Bob Dobbs: President Clinton or other cultural,
[1:01:54] Bob Dobbs: singular,
[1:01:55] Bob Dobbs: holy path,
[1:01:55] Bob Dobbs: they quote Antichrist,
[1:01:58] Bob Dobbs: or leaders of the United Nations.
[1:02:01] Bob Dobbs: They were required to be comprehensively tetrad managing everything.
[1:02:05] Bob Dobbs: They had to know about everything that was going on and all the problems.
[1:02:09] Bob Dobbs: So that Greta
[1:02:10] Bob Dobbs: Thunberg, that little kid who became a Green Deal Monstre Gai a few years ago,
[1:02:16] Bob Dobbs: that's an example of a holeopathic process there.
[1:02:19] Bob Dobbs: They hoiked up this little girl,
[1:02:20] Bob Dobbs: and she went around telling the Pope and everybody to get their shit together.
[1:02:24] Bob Dobbs: Right?
[1:02:24] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[1:02:25] Cameron McEwen: right.
[1:02:25] Cameron McEwen: So if I understand you correctly...
[1:02:28] Cameron McEwen: what you're doing is you're bringing together a hologram,
[1:02:31] Cameron McEwen: which is everything.
[1:02:32] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[1:02:33] Cameron McEwen: Every hologram is the whole universe according to a single structure.
[1:02:37] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:02:38] Cameron McEwen: Holeopathic is the infinite miniaturization of that possibility.
[1:02:51] Cameron McEwen: So that suddenly it becomes apparent.
[1:02:55] Cameron McEwen: to everybody not so that they notice but it's right in front of their face that every way of structuring the entire universe is now before us as a tiny little Lippmann a tiny little gene
[1:03:12] Bob Dobbs: that we understand as generating those holograms yeah which i call in the chart the quark toon your quark
[1:03:20] Bob Dobbs: And for most people,
[1:03:21] Bob Dobbs: you're absurd and hilarious.
[1:03:23] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:03:23] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:03:24] Bob Dobbs: Nancy Pelosi's a quark tune.
[1:03:26] Bob Dobbs: So another aspect of the holeopathic is the quark tune phenomenon.
[1:03:30] Bob Dobbs: And let me just say that next thought was,
[1:03:39] Bob Dobbs: what?
[1:03:40] Bob Dobbs: Just a second.
[1:03:41] Bob Dobbs: I was holding it there while you were talking.
[1:03:45] Bob Dobbs: The next thing to say about the holeopathic.
[1:03:47] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:03:48] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:03:48] Bob Dobbs: You have the.
[1:03:50] Bob Dobbs: after image of chemical body social structure.
[1:03:54] Bob Dobbs: So another meaning of the shrinking to the tinier is you get lower and lower people down in the social scale,
[1:04:02] Bob Dobbs: the social hierarchy of industrial society or literate society.
[1:04:07] Bob Dobbs: So more and more,
[1:04:08] Bob Dobbs: the bottom of the world social system becomes queen.
[1:04:12] Bob Dobbs: Like there was this lady in Ecuador,
[1:04:14] Bob Dobbs: Bolivia.
[1:04:15] Bob Dobbs: She led the peasants.
[1:04:17] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:04:17] Bob Dobbs: she was
[1:04:18] Bob Dobbs: peasant peasant peasant to extreme like nowhere that come from a little starving village and she became a huge icon south america representing some movements and and populist thing but she's from the most poorest situation so we that's another part of the shrinking as you go down to the bottom more and more and
[1:04:38] Bob Dobbs: um they become uh significant and that's part of the social justice warrior Black Lives Matter
[1:04:46] Bob Dobbs: the victims matter,
[1:04:49] Bob Dobbs: the welfare mother is queen and everybody should give them a job.
[1:04:54] Bob Dobbs: You see that part of the chemical body social structure of the tiniest and the most insignificant becoming super powerful,
[1:05:02] Bob Dobbs: at least hogging the McNamee,
[1:05:04] Bob Dobbs: the Android Meme.
[1:05:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:05:07] Cameron McEwen: So for me,
[1:05:08] Cameron McEwen: what you're doing there
[1:05:09] Cameron McEwen: is that you're trying to articulate a whole new scientific field or fields,
[1:05:18] Cameron McEwen: plural.
[1:05:19] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:05:20] Cameron McEwen: So that if we look at the physical world,
[1:05:25] Cameron McEwen: you can have a mountain or you can have a whole weather front or a hurricane or something like this.
[1:05:32] Cameron McEwen: And we know that at the basis of these things are microscopic or...
[1:05:39] Cameron McEwen: smaller than microscopic,
[1:05:42] Cameron McEwen: subatomic particles.
[1:05:43] Bob Dobbs: The chaos butterfly is an expression of that.
[1:05:46] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.
[1:05:47] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.
[1:05:48] Cameron McEwen: So what you're saying,
[1:05:51] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[1:05:52] Cameron McEwen: is that something like that is true of the interior landscape,
[1:06:00] Cameron McEwen: of the world of human experience.
[1:06:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:06:03] Cameron McEwen: But all we know at this point,
[1:06:08] Cameron McEwen: is how to use the partial intuitions we have of this,
[1:06:16] Cameron McEwen: which we use to make corporations or to wage wars or to utter propaganda or something like this.
[1:06:27] Cameron McEwen: We do not know how to articulate what,
[1:06:32] Cameron McEwen: in fact,
[1:06:32] Cameron McEwen: we're doing.
[1:06:34] Cameron McEwen: And if I understand you,
[1:06:36] Cameron McEwen: you're trying to say,
[1:06:37] Cameron McEwen: I'm
[1:06:38] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to tell you how to look at this stuff that is aside from how you're captured.
[1:06:45] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:06:46] Bob Dobbs: exactly.
[1:06:47] Bob Dobbs: And I just thought of this image.
[1:06:49] Bob Dobbs: A cliche of our time is to see a fan,
[1:06:56] Bob Dobbs: a little god with their cell phone,
[1:06:59] Bob Dobbs: but they don't understand they are,
[1:07:00] Bob Dobbs: and they bump into a celebrity.
[1:07:03] Bob Dobbs: They even have stood in a lineup to ask questions or get autographs.
[1:07:08] Bob Dobbs: And they,
[1:07:08] Bob Dobbs: when they actually meet the chemical body,
[1:07:10] Bob Dobbs: they're in,
[1:07:11] Bob Dobbs: they get stunned.
[1:07:12] Bob Dobbs: They become speechless.
[1:07:13] Bob Dobbs: And later they say,
[1:07:14] Bob Dobbs: what the hell is wrong with me?
[1:07:15] Bob Dobbs: Why couldn't I say anything?
[1:07:16] Bob Dobbs: Because they're seeing,
[1:07:18] Bob Dobbs: uh,
[1:07:19] Bob Dobbs: it doesn't make sense what they're seeing because with the multi-body spaces,
[1:07:22] Bob Dobbs: infinite spaces,
[1:07:23] Bob Dobbs: that's what the,
[1:07:24] Bob Dobbs: the,
[1:07:25] Bob Dobbs: the star is.
[1:07:26] Bob Dobbs: But you meet the chemical body,
[1:07:27] Bob Dobbs: it doesn't make sense.
[1:07:28] Bob Dobbs: This little fucking body here is this huge thing that I live inside of and my dreams revolve around.
[1:07:34] Bob Dobbs: Now that's probably always been the case in show business.
[1:07:37] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:07:37] Bob Dobbs: people are more and more stunned by encountering in the chemical body this multi-bodied holeopathic cliche probe that you think is at the center of everything and you use to keep yourself from being aware of being at the center of everything.
[1:07:53] Cameron McEwen: That's right,
[1:07:54] Cameron McEwen: that's right.
[1:07:54] Cameron McEwen: So if you just think of the difference in men's hairstyles between let's say 1950 and now,
[1:08:04] Cameron McEwen: if somebody um
[1:08:06] Cameron McEwen: were on YouTube and they actually combed their hair,
[1:08:11] Cameron McEwen: it would look absurd.
[1:08:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:08:14] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:08:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:08:15] Cameron McEwen: Whereas in 1950,
[1:08:17] Cameron McEwen: you had to use grill cream or something.
[1:08:20] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:08:22] Bob Dobbs: And,
[1:08:22] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:08:25] Bob Dobbs: Ion jokes about either Bernie Sanders or Boris Johnson.
[1:08:28] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[1:08:28] Bob Dobbs: they combed their hair with a balloon.
[1:08:33] Bob Dobbs: And you look at Boris Johnson,
[1:08:34] Bob Dobbs: how messy his hair is.
[1:08:38] Cameron McEwen: That's correct.
[1:08:39] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:08:39] Cameron McEwen: So these people are puppets of what you're talking about.
[1:08:44] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:08:45] Bob Dobbs: This incredible squared tactility cartoon cubed is what's going on.
[1:08:52] Bob Dobbs: And so they don't have the normal visual proprietary or proportions or sensibility.
[1:08:58] Bob Dobbs: Like Ian says,
[1:08:59] Bob Dobbs: my mother knew you had to have sensible shoes.
[1:09:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:09:04] Bob Dobbs: And I remember your mother being shocked.
[1:09:06] Bob Dobbs: When everybody started wearing sneakers in the 70s,
[1:09:08] Bob Dobbs: she said,
[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: what the hell's going on?
[1:09:10] Bob Dobbs: That's gym equipment.
[1:09:11] Bob Dobbs: You don't wear that out in society.
[1:09:13] Bob Dobbs: But everybody started wearing sneakers.
[1:09:15] Bob Dobbs: And that was shocking to her.
[1:09:16] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:09:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:09:17] Bob Dobbs: That's losing a visual order that she was numbed by.
[1:09:22] Bob Dobbs: But anyways,
[1:09:23] Bob Dobbs: it's so ridiculous the way people are now.
[1:09:26] Bob Dobbs: The way they look.
[1:09:28] Bob Dobbs: Another holeopathic cliche probes the Kardashians,
[1:09:30] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:09:31] Bob Dobbs: These ridiculous people who have big bums and they become
[1:09:35] Bob Dobbs: iconic global Acadia University shapers for a while and where did she come from her father was the the oj simpson trial guy you know what i mean and so you get now there's a there remember uh what's
[1:09:52] Bob Dobbs: his name at atlantic monthly Lewis Lapham
[1:09:57] Bob Dobbs: He says when he saw the crowd celebrating the white car that O.J.
[1:10:05] Bob Dobbs: was in and escaping through L.A.
[1:10:07] Bob Dobbs: on the highway,
[1:10:09] Bob Dobbs: and Lewis Lapham said,
[1:10:10] Bob Dobbs: I saw this new pagan reality.
[1:10:14] Bob Dobbs: These millions of pagan idiots totally hypnotized and cheering on
[1:10:19] Bob Dobbs: O.J. Simpson.
[1:10:20] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[1:10:20] Bob Dobbs: that's when I realized McLuhan was on to something.
[1:10:23] Bob Dobbs: And what I'm saying is he does the preface.
[1:10:26] Bob Dobbs: to the
[1:10:27] Bob Dobbs: MIT reissuing of Understanding Media in 1994-95 in there,
[1:10:32] Bob Dobbs: and he cites the
[1:10:34] Bob Dobbs: O.J. situation as his epiphany,
[1:10:38] Bob Dobbs: that,
[1:10:38] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[1:10:39] Bob Dobbs: actually something has changed here,
[1:10:40] Bob Dobbs: that people are different,
[1:10:42] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan was on about this,
[1:10:43] Bob Dobbs: and us literate snobs in New York thought he was wrong or ineffectual or not right.
[1:10:50] Bob Dobbs: But that's a holeopathic cliche probes probe,
[1:10:53] Bob Dobbs: O.J.
[1:10:53] Bob Dobbs: Simpson,
[1:10:54] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:10:56] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:10:56] Cameron McEwen: absolutely,
[1:10:57] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.
[1:10:58] Cameron McEwen: Let me just plug my diagrams for a minute,
[1:11:02] Cameron McEwen: or my figures.
[1:11:05] Cameron McEwen: What they try to do is they try to present holeopathic possibilities that can generate holeopathic worlds.
[1:11:18] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:11:18] Bob Dobbs: who tried to do that?
[1:11:20] Cameron McEwen: That's what I'm trying to do with my little diagrams.
[1:11:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:11:23] Bob Dobbs: you're trying to visualize or do something.
[1:11:26] Bob Dobbs: on the holy path,
[1:11:26] Bob Dobbs: the cliche pro principle.
[1:11:28] Bob Dobbs: So you've realized what you're trying to do.
[1:11:30] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:11:31] Bob Dobbs: Good.
[1:11:33] Bob Dobbs: And so then you were saying,
[1:11:34] Cameron McEwen: so knowing that.
[1:11:36] Cameron McEwen: I can't get anybody to actually do it,
[1:11:41] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:11:42] Cameron McEwen: As soon as they put pen to paper or start using a drawing program on the computer or something like this,
[1:11:50] Cameron McEwen: something grabs them and they can't do it.
[1:11:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:11:53] Bob Dobbs: because they...
[1:11:53] Bob Dobbs: And so then you see the evolution of painting.
[1:11:56] Bob Dobbs: So you get abstract expressionism.
[1:11:58] Bob Dobbs: They're trying to deal with the electric tactility of the radio era.
[1:12:01] Bob Dobbs: Then Pollock comes along in the TV era,
[1:12:04] Bob Dobbs: and all he can do is try to express the visual inexpressible.
[1:12:09] Bob Dobbs: The intangible is drip paint on a canvas,
[1:12:12] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: You see the arts trying to visualize in the old visual medium of art.
[1:12:21] Bob Dobbs: And,
[1:12:21] Bob Dobbs: of course,
[1:12:21] Bob Dobbs: it fails.
[1:12:22] Bob Dobbs: And then.
[1:12:23] Bob Dobbs: Then it flips into
[1:12:24] Bob Dobbs: Andy Warhol just holding up a canned soup or some manufactured package,
[1:12:29] Bob Dobbs: which is the old anti-environment,
[1:12:31] Bob Dobbs: as art form.
[1:12:33] Bob Dobbs: While being in a factory,
[1:12:35] Bob Dobbs: a software factory,
[1:12:37] Bob Dobbs: processing people who come by and get interviewed on his little
[1:12:42] Bob Dobbs: TV camera,
[1:12:44] Bob Dobbs: he was miming what was going on that McLuhan was describing.
[1:12:48] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:12:48] Cameron McEwen: that's true,
[1:12:49] Cameron McEwen: but they notice the...
[1:12:54] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:12:55] Cameron McEwen: what can we say?
[1:12:56] Cameron McEwen: There's always a reverse current going on.
[1:12:59] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[1:13:00] Cameron McEwen: So it's true that
[1:13:02] Cameron McEwen: Warhol captured the market.
[1:13:07] Bob Dobbs: Media processing.
[1:13:08] Bob Dobbs: Media processing.
[1:13:11] Cameron McEwen: However,
[1:13:12] Cameron McEwen: when the abstract expressionists were going about their business,
[1:13:19] Cameron McEwen: and when that got reduced to just dripping...
[1:13:23] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:13:23] Cameron McEwen: you know what?
[1:13:24] Bob Dobbs: You know where it became?
[1:13:25] Bob Dobbs: In Warhol's time,
[1:13:27] Bob Dobbs: the retort to Warhol was concept art.
[1:13:32] Bob Dobbs: That's what happened in the 60s at the same time as Worrell.
[1:13:35] Bob Dobbs: Worrell was minimalism and conceptual art,
[1:13:38] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:13:38] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:13:39] Bob Dobbs: That was another kind of abstraction.
[1:13:43] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:13:44] Cameron McEwen: But what was going on with those artworks,
[1:13:48] Cameron McEwen: unknown to them,
[1:13:50] Cameron McEwen: and what we're trying to do...
[1:13:52] Cameron McEwen: but in a more conscious way.
[1:13:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:13:54] Cameron McEwen: Because they were attempting to find a way to articulate the...
[1:14:03] Bob Dobbs: The diagrams that you're making.
[1:14:05] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:14:06] Cameron McEwen: that's right.
[1:14:06] Cameron McEwen: Or you could say the holeopathic...
[1:14:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:14:08] Bob Dobbs: me.
[1:14:09] Cameron McEwen: ...reads that you are explaining the genesis of.
[1:14:16] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:14:16] Bob Dobbs: And Marshall's word for it was module.
[1:14:19] Bob Dobbs: the increasing modular one of his words yeah yeah not it's not a used word so i i found that was the word and the way he used it in cliché to archetype that's the closest to a meme uh a tinier shrinking meme that i could come up with because i was trying to keep
[1:14:38] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan in the game and find stuff that he was keeping up with the changes well his the main word that he used in the last 20 years of his life for this.
[1:14:49] Cameron McEwen: It's simply structure.
[1:14:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:14:53] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:14:53] Bob Dobbs: Maybe in figure and ground?
[1:14:57] Bob Dobbs: Saying figure and ground is a Gestalt thing?
[1:14:59] Bob Dobbs: Gestalt structure?
[1:15:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:15:01] Cameron McEwen: when he was having his long interview with Nina Sutton,
[1:15:09] Cameron McEwen: he said that when he found figure and ground,
[1:15:13] Cameron McEwen: that that became the dominant,
[1:15:18] Cameron McEwen: I don't want to say figure again,
[1:15:20] Cameron McEwen: but the dominant theme of his work.
[1:15:22] Bob Dobbs: Theme of structure.
[1:15:24] Cameron McEwen: Was figure and ground.
[1:15:26] Cameron McEwen: from 1964 on.
[1:15:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:15:30] Cameron McEwen: He read about figure and ground just months after he finished Understanding Media.
[1:15:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:15:36] Bob Dobbs: and he wasn't happy with Hot and Cool.
[1:15:40] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:15:40] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:15:42] Cameron McEwen: it had obvious limitations,
[1:15:43] Cameron McEwen: sure.
[1:15:44] Bob Dobbs: But,
[1:15:44] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:15:45] Bob Dobbs: you're saying he started relying in the end on structure.
[1:15:49] Bob Dobbs: That's not structuralism,
[1:15:51] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[1:15:52] Bob Dobbs: It might be something like post-structuralism,
[1:15:55] Bob Dobbs: But.
[1:15:55] Bob Dobbs: his use of structure was a convenient world to say there's something here that is thicker,
[1:16:02] Bob Dobbs: deeper,
[1:16:03] Bob Dobbs: denser,
[1:16:04] Bob Dobbs: and figure and ground was the other Explorations of structure.
[1:16:08] Bob Dobbs: But you see what I'm saying?
[1:16:10] Bob Dobbs: Structure was a word that resonated all kinds of things to people,
[1:16:14] Bob Dobbs: so it was useful.
[1:16:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:16:17] Cameron McEwen: so structure for
[1:16:20] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is another way of articulating medium.
[1:16:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:16:23] Bob Dobbs: and this
[1:16:24] Bob Dobbs: a holeopathic odd thing it's hard to be a tactile eye it's hard to have visualized tactility it was he would say oblique he often said it's equally hard to have oral
[1:16:43] Cameron McEwen: or al or au yeah um uh tactility um tactility is inherently both oral and auditory
[1:16:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:16:54] Bob Dobbs: and it's empty.
[1:16:55] Bob Dobbs: There's no content.
[1:16:57] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:16:58] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:17:00] Bob Dobbs: what did I just say there a second ago?
[1:17:02] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:17:03] Cameron McEwen: it has no content,
[1:17:04] Cameron McEwen: but it has all content.
[1:17:06] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:17:08] Bob Dobbs: and
[1:17:08] Bob Dobbs: I said a word there,
[1:17:10] Bob Dobbs: right there just before you went in to figure out.
[1:17:11] Bob Dobbs: Forget what I said.
[1:17:14] Bob Dobbs: The structure,
[1:17:15] Bob Dobbs: the tactile eye,
[1:17:19] Bob Dobbs: the verbum.
[1:17:20] Bob Dobbs: You ever see this tetrad verbum?
[1:17:24] Cameron McEwen: I've seen it for sure.
[1:17:26] Bob Dobbs: We've talked about it before,
[1:17:27] Bob Dobbs: but there it is.
[1:17:28] Bob Dobbs: He was verbing.
[1:17:30] Bob Dobbs: He's being a verbum.
[1:17:31] Bob Dobbs: He was grunting.
[1:17:32] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:17:34] Bob Dobbs: His word structure was a final grunt,
[1:17:36] Bob Dobbs: which contained all possible frequencies and intonations and vibrations in it.
[1:17:44] Bob Dobbs: That's the word making the market.
[1:17:47] Bob Dobbs: The grunt makes the market.
[1:17:49] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:17:49] Bob Dobbs: that became figure first Trump.
[1:17:52] Bob Dobbs: who couldn't finish his sentences,
[1:17:54] Bob Dobbs: and then Biden couldn't finish his syllables,
[1:17:57] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:17:58] Bob Dobbs: They were getting more and more grunt.
[1:18:03] Bob Dobbs: And then Biden ends up walking around looking for someone to shake hands with,
[1:18:07] Bob Dobbs: but everything has disappeared,
[1:18:08] Bob Dobbs: so there's nobody there for him to have an audience with.
[1:18:12] Cameron McEwen: But when you talk about stuff like this,
[1:18:14] Cameron McEwen: Bob,
[1:18:15] Cameron McEwen: do you think that there's some sort of progression going on that's actually progress?
[1:18:23] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:18:23] Bob Dobbs: it's not progress.
[1:18:25] Bob Dobbs: It's just more intensity.
[1:18:28] Bob Dobbs: What is that phrase?
[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: Both and?
[1:18:31] Bob Dobbs: Both and,
[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: or some people use the word and.
[1:18:37] Bob Dobbs: There's this situation,
[1:18:39] Bob Dobbs: and.
[1:18:40] Bob Dobbs: And the and is what's coming for the refinement of the broke spiral thing you're inside of.
[1:18:46] Bob Dobbs: That shrinking and miniaturizing.
[1:18:49] Bob Dobbs: The and,
[1:18:50] Bob Dobbs: it's italicized.
[1:18:52] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:18:52] Cameron McEwen: So do you.
[1:18:53] Cameron McEwen: When you talk about this stuff,
[1:18:54] Cameron McEwen: do you see yourself sort of Poe's maelstrom heading down and you don't know where it's going?
[1:19:04] Cameron McEwen: Or do you see yourself as seeing a way out that you need to explain to people?
[1:19:14] Cameron McEwen: Where do you locate your narrative?
[1:19:17] Bob Dobbs: I think McLuhan,
[1:19:18] Bob Dobbs: you'd walk along with McLuhan,
[1:19:20] Bob Dobbs: he'd be cocky.
[1:19:22] Bob Dobbs: talking and describing what you're walking through right couldn't shut up
[1:19:27] Bob Dobbs: I see myself that way in the radio show so people call up and we're having a journey where we're playing music talking and callers and all this stuff and ions doing this thing and it's sort of a cacophony but we're in charge we're we got we're sculpting it we're paying attention and correcting as it goes along and so somebody call up to Bob
[1:19:48] Bob Dobbs: I have no idea what what you're saying,
[1:19:51] Bob Dobbs: but I totally agree.
[1:19:54] Bob Dobbs: And I agree with them.
[1:19:55] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:19:57] Bob Dobbs: And so you include the nonsense that we don't know what the hell we're doing,
[1:20:01] Bob Dobbs: but we seem to be making great progress in the moment.
[1:20:04] Bob Dobbs: making patterns yeah that sense of the absurd is always going on so i'm always laughing while people are getting turned on to what i'm saying because i know it's not working or it's it's ineffectual or it's incomplete but
[1:20:20] Bob Dobbs: it doesn't appear that way in the moment that's the i guess that's like jazz you know improvising they're going along making up and making noise but they think they're getting somewheres or that they're creating beauty yeah
[1:20:34] Cameron McEwen: So there you know that I appreciate this aspect of you.
[1:20:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:20:39] Cameron McEwen: because we've often talked about it.
[1:20:41] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:20:41] Cameron McEwen: the same at the same time that there's this very funny,
[1:20:48] Cameron McEwen: very in the moment guy with a sense of the absurd.
[1:20:55] Cameron McEwen: There's also the sense of this guy who's
[1:21:00] Cameron McEwen: so dedicated to dialogue that there's no idiot,
[1:21:05] Cameron McEwen: there's nobody dead,
[1:21:07] Cameron McEwen: there's nobody that isn't even born yet that you won't talk to.
[1:21:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:21:12] Bob Dobbs: that's right.
[1:21:13] Bob Dobbs: That's the everything.
[1:21:14] Bob Dobbs: That's the everything.
[1:21:16] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:21:17] Bob Dobbs: And I'm also,
[1:21:18] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:21:18] Bob Dobbs: pedantic.
[1:21:19] Bob Dobbs: I'm insisting on something to be understood.
[1:21:22] Bob Dobbs: That's funny.
[1:21:26] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:21:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:21:30] Cameron McEwen: You're sort of,
[1:21:31] Cameron McEwen: if I can imagine you for a moment,
[1:21:34] Cameron McEwen: I see you in the control room of a radio station,
[1:21:42] Cameron McEwen: let's say.
[1:21:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:21:44] Cameron McEwen: But the radio station is within a rocket ship,
[1:21:47] Cameron McEwen: and the rocket ship is exploding in all directions.
[1:21:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:21:52] Bob Dobbs: right and you're sitting there with your headphones on ignoring the explosions that's right yeah yeah yeah claiming all is well i'm making total sense and everybody should be getting it that's
[1:22:09] Bob Dobbs: exactly what goes on and then what's right and i was i had fun doing that for years but at the end of 2000 and by March 2009 I finally was on a station
[1:22:22] Bob Dobbs: with a guy who would let me talk for 55 minutes.
[1:22:25] Bob Dobbs: So I went from July 2008 to March 2009.
[1:22:30] Bob Dobbs: I had 55 minutes every week and I got to say everything.
[1:22:33] Bob Dobbs: I got it all spelled out,
[1:22:34] Bob Dobbs: explained everything.
[1:22:35] Bob Dobbs: Took nine months and I knew
[1:22:37] Bob Dobbs: I had nothing more to say.
[1:22:39] Bob Dobbs: And fucking luckily ION showed up.
[1:22:41] Bob Dobbs: So yes,
[1:22:42] Bob Dobbs: I'm there in the control of talking,
[1:22:44] Bob Dobbs: but it's got this other voice that can't stop babbling.
[1:22:47] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:22:48] Bob Dobbs: A parallel babbler.
[1:22:50] Bob Dobbs: And he took over filling in the content that I needed at that time.
[1:22:55] Cameron McEwen: So where was this radio station?
[1:22:58] Bob Dobbs: It's Achieve Radio.
[1:22:59] Bob Dobbs: It's what we're on now.
[1:23:00] Bob Dobbs: What happened is that
[1:23:02] Bob Dobbs: James, a guy in L.A.,
[1:23:04] Bob Dobbs: had a show on some right-wing station that was run by a Minuteman kind of guy.
[1:23:11] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:23:11] Bob Dobbs: a survivalist down in Texas or someplace.
[1:23:14] Bob Dobbs: So James got on there.
[1:23:16] Bob Dobbs: And then I came on saying stuff that this...
[1:23:19] Bob Dobbs: military right wing and his audience had no fucking clue what i was talking about but what was funny i can't seem to be making sense and he was a friend of ron paul who was running for president this is in the spring of 2008 and he he said bob i've got to i know you're on to something we've got to meet with ron paul you've got to tell ron paul what you're telling me this is what he needs because he was failing on the media charisma level you remember that ron paul was he had
[1:23:46] Bob Dobbs: the popularity in the numbers,
[1:23:47] Bob Dobbs: but
[1:23:48] Bob Dobbs: He just didn't have the image of the charisma of a Clinton or something.
[1:23:54] Bob Dobbs: So he was always trying to get
[1:23:58] Bob Dobbs: Ron Paul to listen to him,
[1:23:59] Bob Dobbs: but the people around Paul wouldn't let,
[1:24:02] Bob Dobbs: call him John,
[1:24:03] Bob Dobbs: in.
[1:24:03] Bob Dobbs: And so we never got there.
[1:24:05] Bob Dobbs: But I kept talking and explaining Ron Paul and everything all through the spring.
[1:24:09] Bob Dobbs: And then he went paranoid.
[1:24:11] Bob Dobbs: He decided that we had a lot of money,
[1:24:13] Bob Dobbs: and he was losing money at the station.
[1:24:15] Bob Dobbs: So he demanded.
[1:24:16] Bob Dobbs: He met with James.
[1:24:17] Bob Dobbs: The man is James.
[1:24:18] Bob Dobbs: He gave him a lot of money to support his cause.
[1:24:22] Bob Dobbs: And James didn't have the money to do it.
[1:24:23] Bob Dobbs: He was deluded on us.
[1:24:25] Bob Dobbs: And so we couldn't do it.
[1:24:27] Bob Dobbs: So he got mad.
[1:24:28] Bob Dobbs: And by the end of May,
[1:24:30] Bob Dobbs: he comes on the show and he starts arguing with me.
[1:24:35] Bob Dobbs: And he gets so pissed off.
[1:24:37] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[1:24:38] Bob Dobbs: I know people in the Secret Service.
[1:24:40] Bob Dobbs: I am going to have them kill you.
[1:24:44] Bob Dobbs: He went paranoid.
[1:24:44] Bob Dobbs: He flipped.
[1:24:45] Bob Dobbs: Because we weren't giving him the emotional support of what he thought,
[1:24:48] Bob Dobbs: expressed through giving him some money or a loan or something.
[1:24:51] Bob Dobbs: So after the show was over,
[1:24:53] Bob Dobbs: James said,
[1:24:54] Bob Dobbs: John,
[1:24:55] Bob Dobbs: you've got to go and delete that.
[1:24:57] Bob Dobbs: You can't.
[1:24:58] Bob Dobbs: say things like that on the radio.
[1:25:00] Bob Dobbs: You are legally culpable there for that.
[1:25:03] Bob Dobbs: And so
[1:25:04] Bob Dobbs: I got my friend to quickly save it,
[1:25:07] Bob Dobbs: but John did go in and delete him saying that.
[1:25:10] Bob Dobbs: But we got it on tape,
[1:25:11] Bob Dobbs: so we always have it.
[1:25:12] Bob Dobbs: It's right there on my timeline.
[1:25:13] Bob Dobbs: You can hear this guy losing his cool.
[1:25:16] Bob Dobbs: So that was like May 28th or something.
[1:25:18] Bob Dobbs: So we come back on a June 4th,
[1:25:21] Bob Dobbs: and he invades the thing again.
[1:25:24] Bob Dobbs: He's not accused.
[1:25:25] Bob Dobbs: He knows not to say he's going to kill me.
[1:25:27] Bob Dobbs: but he's accusing me of being part of the elite and all Hollywood bullshit.
[1:25:31] Bob Dobbs: And so we get through that show.
[1:25:33] Bob Dobbs: Then on June
[1:25:34] Bob Dobbs: 11th, he comes on,
[1:25:35] Bob Dobbs: interrupts,
[1:25:36] Bob Dobbs: and then he has a tantrum,
[1:25:37] Bob Dobbs: and he leaves.
[1:25:38] Bob Dobbs: And he basically says,
[1:25:39] Bob Dobbs: you're through.
[1:25:40] Bob Dobbs: You're not here anymore.
[1:25:42] Bob Dobbs: And we got fired.
[1:25:43] Bob Dobbs: We weren't allowed on the station anymore.
[1:25:44] Bob Dobbs: And so for three weeks,
[1:25:46] Bob Dobbs: James looked around,
[1:25:47] Bob Dobbs: and he found this station called Achieve Radio,
[1:25:50] Bob Dobbs: which was eight years old at that point.
[1:25:55] Bob Dobbs: And it was the first New Age...
[1:25:58] Bob Dobbs: digital radio,
[1:26:00] Bob Dobbs: autonomous,
[1:26:02] Bob Dobbs: whatever you call that,
[1:26:02] Bob Dobbs: decentralized internet where you could have a radio station and be on the internet and get an audience.
[1:26:07] Bob Dobbs: And so this guy had psychics and astrologers and all these people on there.
[1:26:11] Bob Dobbs: But James found him and he convinced him to let us be on his station.
[1:26:18] Bob Dobbs: And we didn't...
[1:26:24] Bob Dobbs: What was that?
[1:26:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:26:26] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:26:26] Bob Dobbs: that was 2008.
[1:26:27] Bob Dobbs: ION hadn't happened yet.
[1:26:29] Bob Dobbs: So we get on,
[1:26:30] Bob Dobbs: and I'm explaining this advanced McLuhan stuff and Kroker stuff,
[1:26:34] Bob Dobbs: and
[1:26:35] Bob Dobbs: Bill, the owner,
[1:26:36] Bob Dobbs: has no fucking clue what I'm saying.
[1:26:38] Bob Dobbs: We're totally different from all the psychics in that,
[1:26:41] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:26:42] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:26:43] Bob Dobbs: I got to comment on psychic stuff and satirize them all.
[1:26:47] Bob Dobbs: So we did that to nine months,
[1:26:49] Bob Dobbs: and then ION showed up.
[1:26:50] Bob Dobbs: So we put ION on there,
[1:26:53] Bob Dobbs: and the first time we put them on,
[1:26:55] Bob Dobbs: James wasn't sure because he was a guy who had a business of helping people get out of credit problems.
[1:27:01] Bob Dobbs: And he couldn't become totally nutty looking because he had a business.
[1:27:06] Bob Dobbs: So he said,
[1:27:07] Bob Dobbs: you can't bring on the medium.
[1:27:09] Bob Dobbs: You can't bring on the Carolyn Marvin of Ion.
[1:27:12] Bob Dobbs: And I said,
[1:27:13] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:27:13] Bob Dobbs: I'll say he's a part of the Secret Council 10,
[1:27:16] Bob Dobbs: and he knows a lot,
[1:27:17] Bob Dobbs: and we're just going to interview him.
[1:27:20] Bob Dobbs: So Ion comes on as Ian,
[1:27:22] Bob Dobbs: okay?
[1:27:23] Bob Dobbs: He's Iowa.
[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: Because I ate it.
[1:27:26] Bob Dobbs: And so he does a good job for about 50 minutes.
[1:27:29] Bob Dobbs: And then he may have done it on purpose.
[1:27:32] Bob Dobbs: He starts saying,
[1:27:33] Bob Dobbs: you humans have no clue.
[1:27:36] Bob Dobbs: He started calling everybody humans as if he wasn't one.
[1:27:40] Bob Dobbs: And so it ended with that sort of little fiasco.
[1:27:43] Bob Dobbs: But I don't know if anybody noticed it.
[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: But it was hilarious from my point of view that he cracked.
[1:27:48] Bob Dobbs: He didn't get through the whole show with the disguise.
[1:27:51] Bob Dobbs: So...
[1:27:51] Bob Dobbs: So we did that and then ION didn't come on for many months,
[1:27:54] Bob Dobbs: but we were on an LA radio and that's the whole scene.
[1:27:56] Bob Dobbs: But eventually,
[1:27:58] Bob Dobbs: James decides that
[1:28:00] Bob Dobbs: ION is cool.
[1:28:01] Bob Dobbs: So we start in October 2009,
[1:28:04] Bob Dobbs: we start being regular.
[1:28:06] Bob Dobbs: At first he had us on for an hour,
[1:28:09] Bob Dobbs: he had a three hour slot.
[1:28:11] Bob Dobbs: And Jay always said,
[1:28:12] Bob Dobbs: there's a problem here,
[1:28:13] Bob Dobbs: it seems like it's five minutes,
[1:28:14] Bob Dobbs: it's not long enough.
[1:28:15] Bob Dobbs: Give us two hours.
[1:28:17] Bob Dobbs: So we convinced James to give us two hours.
[1:28:19] Bob Dobbs: And that still wasn't long enough.
[1:28:22] Bob Dobbs: So eventually...
[1:28:22] Cameron McEwen: This is all still on Achieve Radio?
[1:28:24] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:28:25] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:28:26] Bob Dobbs: Jim has wondered,
[1:28:27] Bob Dobbs: what the hell is going on here?
[1:28:29] Bob Dobbs: And so eventually,
[1:28:31] Bob Dobbs: by February 2010,
[1:28:33] Bob Dobbs: we were on for three hours every week.
[1:28:36] Bob Dobbs: So that was good.
[1:28:37] Bob Dobbs: And J.W.
[1:28:38] Bob Dobbs: felt like it was worth going unconscious to Aberhart State,
[1:28:41] Bob Dobbs: and he thought something had got done.
[1:28:43] Bob Dobbs: It was just a feeling of incompletion before.
[1:28:46] Bob Dobbs: So we started talking and performing.
[1:28:48] Bob Dobbs: video.
[1:28:49] Bob Dobbs: We didn't even know what iron was.
[1:28:50] Bob Dobbs: It just got wilder and wilder.
[1:28:52] Bob Dobbs: And Bill,
[1:28:54] Bob Dobbs: he told me later that he had never heard such con men as us guys.
[1:28:59] Bob Dobbs: And he said,
[1:29:00] Bob Dobbs: these are con men,
[1:29:01] Bob Dobbs: but they are incredible.
[1:29:02] Bob Dobbs: They make people believe them.
[1:29:05] Bob Dobbs: He was very impressed with our con.
[1:29:07] Bob Dobbs: And it took,
[1:29:08] Bob Dobbs: he had us on the show.
[1:29:10] Bob Dobbs: Gradually,
[1:29:10] Bob Dobbs: other psychics and astrologers heard us.
[1:29:13] Bob Dobbs: And they said,
[1:29:13] Bob Dobbs: fuck,
[1:29:14] Bob Dobbs: we're not being associated with those maniacs.
[1:29:17] Bob Dobbs: So they all quit.
[1:29:19] Bob Dobbs: And we ended up,
[1:29:20] Bob Dobbs: a few years later,
[1:29:20] Bob Dobbs: being the only thing Bill had.
[1:29:22] Bob Dobbs: We've kept his station going for the Lance Strate years.
[1:29:25] Bob Dobbs: I pay like $30 an hour.
[1:29:27] Bob Dobbs: Back then it was $20 an hour.
[1:29:28] Bob Dobbs: So we pay for all the things that keep Bill alive.
[1:29:31] Bob Dobbs: Without us,
[1:29:32] Bob Dobbs: he'd shut down.
[1:29:32] Bob Dobbs: But everybody else either died or left.
[1:29:35] Bob Dobbs: So we drove everybody off,
[1:29:37] Bob Dobbs: and Bill still...
[1:29:39] Bob Dobbs: He's on our products.
[1:29:40] Bob Dobbs: It saved his life a couple of times.
[1:29:42] Bob Dobbs: He knows we've got something going,
[1:29:43] Bob Dobbs: but he still can't fucking believe it.
[1:29:46] Bob Dobbs: And he still thinks we're con men at this late stage.
[1:29:50] Bob Dobbs: So that's the hilarity of the effect of what we did on Achieve Radio,
[1:29:54] Bob Dobbs: the first new age digital station.
[1:29:59] Bob Dobbs: Back in 2002 it started.
[1:30:01] Bob Dobbs: And he was a pilot.
[1:30:03] Bob Dobbs: So he did crop dusting,
[1:30:07] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:30:07] Bob Dobbs: flying.
[1:30:08] Bob Dobbs: and fertilizing things and so he he hung out with a lot of you know Vietnam veterans and all that stuff uh and cia people so he was a Chardin tough guy uh and uh but he had some psychic experiences so he thought okay let's broadcast this phenomenon because nobody else was doing it but
[1:30:28] Bob Dobbs: he got sick of them all and uh he uh he tolerates us because we pay we're efficient and we keep it going but he still can't fucking believe it
[1:30:38] Cameron McEwen: So that is going on to this day.
[1:30:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:30:42] Bob Dobbs: that started in 2000 in October 2009.
[1:30:45] Bob Dobbs: So it is almost 13 years.
[1:30:48] Bob Dobbs: And Bill has had to use suspended judgment.
[1:30:51] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:30:51] Bob Dobbs: He just said he just put up with his disbelief and didn't let it bother him.
[1:30:57] Bob Dobbs: And so he has support us.
[1:30:59] Bob Dobbs: And we have endless hours.
[1:31:02] Bob Dobbs: You never could have a station like we have.
[1:31:05] Bob Dobbs: We can go as long as we want.
[1:31:06] Bob Dobbs: There's no commercials,
[1:31:07] Bob Dobbs: no station ID.
[1:31:09] Bob Dobbs: We can play all the music we want.
[1:31:10] Bob Dobbs: He's got a great inventory.
[1:31:13] Bob Dobbs: Behind the scenes that I use,
[1:31:14] Bob Dobbs: I just click on song.
[1:31:15] Bob Dobbs: It's the freest anti-environment ever.
[1:31:19] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:31:20] Bob Dobbs: There's no corporate interference at all.
[1:31:24] Bob Dobbs: And so we have,
[1:31:25] Bob Dobbs: you can't go onto any network,
[1:31:26] Bob Dobbs: even 30 years ago,
[1:31:28] Bob Dobbs: and do
[1:31:28] Bob Dobbs: Ted Carpenter shows without commercials.
[1:31:31] Bob Dobbs: Impossible,
[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: But we get away with it on Bills.
[1:31:35] Bob Dobbs: So we have created what
[1:31:37] Bob Dobbs: Peter Lambert Wilson calls an autonomous,
[1:31:39] Bob Dobbs: temporary autonomous zone.
[1:31:42] Bob Dobbs: And it attracts people.
[1:31:43] Bob Dobbs: Our freedom of expression and the range of what we do attracts people because they can see the fun we have of the autonomy and the freedom of expression.
[1:31:53] Bob Dobbs: So it's a lot of fun.
[1:31:57] Bob Dobbs: And that energy is what keeps,
[1:31:59] Bob Dobbs: that's the end that is going on.
[1:32:04] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:32:04] Bob Dobbs: I'm doing with headphones and giving sober analysis among the other noise around me,
[1:32:10] Bob Dobbs: that in laughing,
[1:32:12] Bob Dobbs: if you can maintain your poise in that chaos,
[1:32:17] Bob Dobbs: like Joyce doing Finnegans Wake,
[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: it's an expression of what we're living.
[1:32:22] Bob Dobbs: Because the Android Meme and tech body just keeps going and nobody can stop it.
[1:32:27] Bob Dobbs: And it keeps being a cliche probe,
[1:32:29] Bob Dobbs: but having this extra energy because it ups the phenomenon.
[1:32:33] Bob Dobbs: from Trump Biden,
[1:32:35] Bob Dobbs: two extreme phenomena,
[1:32:37] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:32:38] Bob Dobbs: What would be next?
[1:32:39] Bob Dobbs: Next would be me in the White House with Iod,
[1:32:43] Bob Dobbs: okay?
[1:32:44] Bob Dobbs: That would be the next extreme and A and D,
[1:32:50] Bob Dobbs: and,
[1:32:50] Bob Dobbs: and,
[1:32:51] Bob Dobbs: and,
[1:32:51] Bob Dobbs: that's what's going on.
[1:32:52] Bob Dobbs: Overlaying endlessly.
[1:32:54] Bob Dobbs: I used to say on the album,
[1:32:55] Bob Dobbs: it's on the album,
[1:32:56] Bob Dobbs: we've been improvising and overlaying information on layers of information since 1945.
[1:33:02] Bob Dobbs: That's when literate history ended.
[1:33:06] Cameron McEwen: But what you're doing is making explicit what always goes on.
[1:33:10] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:33:11] Bob Dobbs: We are acting the drama of human,
[1:33:13] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:33:14] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan Wright in Catholic Humanism that we figured by the 20th century how to create culture.
[1:33:21] Bob Dobbs: So we are expressing how culture and reality happens.
[1:33:26] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:33:27] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:33:28] Cameron McEwen: So that's,
[1:33:29] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:33:30] Cameron McEwen: So that's been the...
[1:33:31] Cameron McEwen: theme of our conversation today the every culture is a hologram and the seeds of that hologram are holeopathic yes and so when you talk about how culture happens what you're saying is that a a
[1:33:50] Cameron McEwen: certain uh holeopathic gene or combination of holeopathic genes are activated and when
[1:34:00] Bob Dobbs: they unfold they are a culture yes and and we are we are all living a conscious understanding of the making of culture even though we wouldn't know most people couldn't articulate it yeah we well in order to be a human being we have to understand
[1:34:19] Cameron McEwen: it in a certain sense yeah but up until now all human beings have understood it in the sense of being uh of only unconsciously understanding
[1:34:30] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:34:31] Bob Dobbs: And now they would need to be conscious,
[1:34:33] Bob Dobbs: and that's the crisis.
[1:34:35] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:34:36] Cameron McEwen: Correct,
[1:34:36] Cameron McEwen: because becoming conscious is extremely painful.
[1:34:40] Cameron McEwen: That's why nobody wants to do my diagrams.
[1:34:43] Bob Dobbs: It's extremely painful.
[1:34:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:34:46] Cameron McEwen: of course.
[1:34:47] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:34:48] Cameron McEwen: So Heidegger,
[1:34:49] Cameron McEwen: for example,
[1:34:49] Cameron McEwen: said all being is painful.
[1:34:54] Cameron McEwen: Why is that?
[1:34:55] Cameron McEwen: What is the pain that's built into being?
[1:34:59] Cameron McEwen: The human beings live the tactile gap between...
[1:35:06] Cameron McEwen: the um uh holeopathic genes and the holeopathic and world of their experience yeah the end when they when they transfer from the small to the great they go through an impenetrable darkness and
[1:35:26] Cameron McEwen: that impenetrable darkness scares the hell out of people even though they're doing it every second
[1:35:31] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:35:32] Bob Dobbs: and that's what he says more in peace,
[1:35:33] Bob Dobbs: that the new probe of the 20th century was pain itself.
[1:35:38] Bob Dobbs: He explored through pain,
[1:35:39] Bob Dobbs: and he cites the cardinal who goes to Africa.
[1:35:42] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:35:43] Cameron McEwen: That's what's so funny about McLuhan is what he always said,
[1:35:46] Cameron McEwen: I've never experienced any pain,
[1:35:48] Cameron McEwen: and then he says,
[1:35:50] Cameron McEwen: except that that's the only thing I ever talk about.
[1:35:53] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:35:54] Bob Dobbs: Like he said,
[1:35:55] Bob Dobbs: I've never been depressed.
[1:35:56] Bob Dobbs: I think he even said,
[1:35:57] Bob Dobbs: I've never even been happy.
[1:35:59] Bob Dobbs: Does he say that?
[1:36:01] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:36:02] Cameron McEwen: he says that happiness is for idiots.
[1:36:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:36:04] Bob Dobbs: he's not concerned about being happy.
[1:36:06] Bob Dobbs: That's the least of my interests,
[1:36:09] Bob Dobbs: which is what everybody else supposedly is trying to get.
[1:36:12] Bob Dobbs: So he's one of the first to say that,
[1:36:16] Bob Dobbs: say it that way.
[1:36:18] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:36:18] Bob Dobbs: I'm not interested in happiness.
[1:36:19] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:36:21] Bob Dobbs: I'm into suffering,
[1:36:22] Bob Dobbs: he says.
[1:36:23] Cameron McEwen: One of my professors at the University of Alberta graduate school,
[1:36:28] Cameron McEwen: Herman Tennyson,
[1:36:29] Cameron McEwen: wrote an article.
[1:36:30] Bob Dobbs: titled happiness is for pigs so so that is a some people would say that's the Christian dynamic right that's being a Christian and now Buddhism says all is suffering but most
[1:36:46] Bob Dobbs: Christians don't go around saying that they are exploring pain for for discovery you know probably for ignorance for discovery
[1:37:00] Bob Dobbs: Monks and nuns will celebrate pain.
[1:37:03] Bob Dobbs: That's what you do when you get that position in the church.
[1:37:07] Bob Dobbs: But the layman doesn't do that.
[1:37:08] Bob Dobbs: The layman is sort of looking for happiness from it,
[1:37:11] Bob Dobbs: for security,
[1:37:12] Bob Dobbs: for comfort.
[1:37:13] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan among the laymen would not accept that.
[1:37:18] Bob Dobbs: He was a shit disturber.
[1:37:20] Bob Dobbs: Hey,
[1:37:20] Bob Dobbs: buddy,
[1:37:21] Bob Dobbs: you're feeling too comfortable here.
[1:37:25] Cameron McEwen: But every one of these words that we're using,
[1:37:29] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:37:29] Cameron McEwen: the Christian,
[1:37:30] Cameron McEwen: the Buddhist,
[1:37:31] Cameron McEwen: the layman,
[1:37:32] Cameron McEwen: all of this stuff,
[1:37:33] Cameron McEwen: every one of these words only has meaning within a certain context.
[1:37:40] Cameron McEwen: And when we say within a context,
[1:37:43] Cameron McEwen: what do we mean?
[1:37:45] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:37:45] Cameron McEwen: what we mean is within a hologram that's been generated holeopathic.
[1:37:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:37:52] Cameron McEwen: So in order to make sense,
[1:37:54] Cameron McEwen: as opposed to just talking nonsense.
[1:37:57] Cameron McEwen: that is inherently comic,
[1:38:01] Cameron McEwen: but also inherently depressing,
[1:38:05] Cameron McEwen: we have to talk about these processes of sort of cosmic generation.
[1:38:13] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:38:14] Bob Dobbs: I now recall another common statement said to friends of mine who hear me on the radio and like it and all that.
[1:38:21] Bob Dobbs: They say,
[1:38:21] Bob Dobbs: Bob,
[1:38:22] Bob Dobbs: the only person out there...
[1:38:24] Bob Dobbs: who's telling you extremely bad news while laughing and enjoying yourself.
[1:38:30] Bob Dobbs: There's another dynamic,
[1:38:31] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:38:32] Bob Dobbs: There's a split.
[1:38:32] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:38:32] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[1:38:32] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:38:32] Cameron McEwen: that's the way it is.
[1:38:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:38:36] Bob Dobbs: The exuberance.
[1:38:37] Bob Dobbs: What is it?
[1:38:38] Bob Dobbs: The Fed chairman said irrational exuberance.
[1:38:44] Bob Dobbs: Alan Greenspan.
[1:38:45] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:38:46] Bob Dobbs: He's the guy who said that.
[1:38:47] Bob Dobbs: Irrational exuberance.
[1:38:48] Bob Dobbs: And he was correct.
[1:38:49] Bob Dobbs: The economy was.
[1:38:50] Bob Dobbs: The end,
[1:38:51] Bob Dobbs: the endless end,
[1:38:52] Bob Dobbs: irrationally exuberance is what was going on.
[1:38:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:38:55] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[1:38:55] Cameron McEwen: and it's going on right this second.
[1:38:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:38:58] Bob Dobbs: we're doing it,
[1:38:59] Bob Dobbs: and the whole world is,
[1:39:01] Bob Dobbs: and journalism,
[1:39:02] Bob Dobbs: which is now the establishment,
[1:39:03] Bob Dobbs: like the medieval oligarchy,
[1:39:06] Bob Dobbs: aristocracy,
[1:39:07] Bob Dobbs: was obsolete,
[1:39:08] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:39:08] Bob Dobbs: as the printing press and mercantilism came in,
[1:39:11] Bob Dobbs: and so they were holding on to Fortin and was losing battle.
[1:39:14] Bob Dobbs: That's what journalism is.
[1:39:16] Bob Dobbs: They're the aristocrats of the old analog media,
[1:39:19] Bob Dobbs: and they're useless.
[1:39:20] Bob Dobbs: hopeless and hated,
[1:39:22] Bob Dobbs: but they're stuck there as the priesthood.
[1:39:28] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.
[1:39:28] Bob Dobbs: What?
[1:39:30] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:39:30] Cameron McEwen: nothing.
[1:39:30] Cameron McEwen: I was agreeing with you.
[1:39:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:39:31] Bob Dobbs: the priesthood.
[1:39:33] Bob Dobbs: There's this...
[1:39:36] Bob Dobbs: A guy named Klein and
[1:39:40] Bob Dobbs: Lior, the Israeli person,
[1:39:44] Bob Dobbs: she posted this interview.
[1:39:46] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:39:47] Bob Dobbs: Klein is a reporter for CBS or something,
[1:39:53] Bob Dobbs: and he has a talk show.
[1:39:54] Bob Dobbs: So he has on a journalist.
[1:39:56] Bob Dobbs: And they get on there,
[1:39:58] Bob Dobbs: and they decided that
[1:40:00] Bob Dobbs: Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan are the most accurate people.
[1:40:03] Bob Dobbs: from the 20th century of describing the dilemma us journalists are in.
[1:40:07] Bob Dobbs: So the journalists discussing journalism and the problems.
[1:40:10] Bob Dobbs: And they go through a very inadequate talk about McLuhan.
[1:40:14] Bob Dobbs: Basically,
[1:40:14] Bob Dobbs: they just know the medium is the best feature,
[1:40:16] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:40:16] Bob Dobbs: They just know that lied.
[1:40:17] Bob Dobbs: And they think that was incredible.
[1:40:19] Bob Dobbs: And Neil Postman,
[1:40:20] Bob Dobbs: they think Neil Postman better at it than McLuhan.
[1:40:23] Bob Dobbs: So it's just all,
[1:40:24] Bob Dobbs: what do you call it,
[1:40:25] Bob Dobbs: inbred,
[1:40:25] Bob Dobbs: insular New York nonsense.
[1:40:27] Bob Dobbs: But the funny thing is they start describing the problems.
[1:40:30] Bob Dobbs: And they Trump discovered that you could use rage as a negative thing.
[1:40:35] Bob Dobbs: If you've got bad publicity,
[1:40:37] Bob Dobbs: the people would like it.
[1:40:38] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:40:39] Bob Dobbs: And Trump and so as journalists who were there to say,
[1:40:42] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:40:42] Bob Dobbs: there's good as all this information.
[1:40:44] Bob Dobbs: Here's the good stuff.
[1:40:45] Bob Dobbs: And that's the bad stuff.
[1:40:46] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:40:47] Bob Dobbs: the audience is playing a game on the journalists and flipping it.
[1:40:50] Bob Dobbs: So they can't decide what's good or bad anymore.
[1:40:53] Bob Dobbs: So they're useless.
[1:40:55] Bob Dobbs: And they discuss this.
[1:40:56] Bob Dobbs: And so Lear comes on and posts.
[1:40:59] Bob Dobbs: boy this is a real train wreck in terms of talking about McLuhan and so i listened to i said no no lear this is fantastic because they're honest and they described the dilemma of being a journalist i'll send it to you you should listen to it it's very uh their own agony of how they realize they're fucking obsolete really badly you know well
[1:41:18] Cameron McEwen: it's what i think you're describing here is the journalists realizing that they're doing a replay of pro wrestling yes and and it's not fun
[1:41:28] Bob Dobbs: And it's backfiring.
[1:41:29] Bob Dobbs: No matter what they do,
[1:41:31] Bob Dobbs: it backfires on them.
[1:41:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:41:33] Bob Dobbs: They can't get any Pryde.
[1:41:35] Cameron McEwen: But that could be used,
[1:41:36] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:41:36] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:41:37] Cameron McEwen: that's what you realize that everything you do backfires.
[1:41:41] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:41:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:41:42] Bob Dobbs: I celebrate it.
[1:41:45] Bob Dobbs: I do.
[1:41:45] Bob Dobbs: And,
[1:41:45] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:41:47] Bob Dobbs: I,
[1:41:48] Bob Dobbs: and see,
[1:41:48] Bob Dobbs: I is very funny.
[1:41:49] Bob Dobbs: So I gets on there and says,
[1:41:51] Bob Dobbs: he's gradually made.
[1:41:52] Bob Dobbs: built me up through the years.
[1:41:53] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[1:41:54] Bob Dobbs: now Bob's in charge.
[1:41:55] Bob Dobbs: He's the boss.
[1:41:55] Bob Dobbs: He has no idea what he's talking about or what he's in charge of.
[1:41:59] Bob Dobbs: He's constantly making remarks about my incompetence,
[1:42:03] Bob Dobbs: which I'm laughing at and licking up and enjoying this put down of me.
[1:42:12] Bob Dobbs: Right?
[1:42:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:42:14] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.
[1:42:15] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:42:16] Cameron McEwen: I don't know too much about what I have said about you,
[1:42:18] Cameron McEwen: but what you're reporting here is absolutely correct.
[1:42:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:42:22] Bob Dobbs: it's damn hilarious.
[1:42:25] Bob Dobbs: Michael,
[1:42:25] Bob Dobbs: longtime listener,
[1:42:26] Bob Dobbs: says,
[1:42:27] Bob Dobbs: I don't think anybody has laughed as much as Bob's laughed the last 13 years with ION.
[1:42:33] Bob Dobbs: There's been a lot of laughter.
[1:42:37] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:42:37] Cameron McEwen: there always is with you,
[1:42:39] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[1:42:39] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:42:40] Bob Dobbs: it's always.
[1:42:41] Bob Dobbs: I used to say I have a sunny disposition.
[1:42:44] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:42:45] Bob Dobbs: once this professor told me,
[1:42:47] Bob Dobbs: he said,
[1:42:48] Bob Dobbs: Bob,
[1:42:49] Bob Dobbs: wipe that inane grin off your face.
[1:42:55] Cameron McEwen: So yeah,
[1:42:56] Bob Dobbs: what why should I yeah come on now man?
[1:43:00] Bob Dobbs: Don't you understand the tactile the tactility of this situation?
[1:43:04] Bob Dobbs: What's actually Bob?
[1:43:05] Bob Dobbs: I don't know but it doesn't have any content
[1:43:10] Bob Dobbs: And we're all tactile I know that we've extended it so
[1:43:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah, but cluing gives you lines to say things further than know what people had said
[1:43:21] Bob Dobbs: He adds something to it.
[1:43:23] Bob Dobbs: Just his statement,
[1:43:25] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what I think until I say it.
[1:43:27] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:43:28] Bob Dobbs: things like that no one had said.
[1:43:30] Bob Dobbs: So he found ways to say nonsense and have meaning for it.
[1:43:36] Bob Dobbs: What was considered nonsense.
[1:43:40] Cameron McEwen: At least in my view,
[1:43:42] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan understood what had the potential for infinite probing.
[1:43:49] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:43:49] Cameron McEwen: So when he...
[1:43:50] Cameron McEwen: When he says stuff,
[1:43:53] Cameron McEwen: then he's not even remotely trying to say something definitive.
[1:44:00] Cameron McEwen: He's trying to say something that will bear examination forever.
[1:44:05] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:44:06] Bob Dobbs: I think I've told you this.
[1:44:07] Bob Dobbs: The most startling thing,
[1:44:08] Bob Dobbs: one night in the Monday seminar,
[1:44:09] Bob Dobbs: he's talking to a professor,
[1:44:10] Bob Dobbs: and I was standing there listening to them talk.
[1:44:13] Bob Dobbs: And the guy was going on and explaining stuff.
[1:44:15] Bob Dobbs: And then he stopped and waited for McLuhan to praise him or something or to comment.
[1:44:20] Bob Dobbs: And Marshall says,
[1:44:21] Bob Dobbs: you're trying to tell me something.
[1:44:25] Bob Dobbs: And the professor stared at what?
[1:44:27] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan just kept looking at him and that was the point.
[1:44:30] Bob Dobbs: It was all phatic and the guy didn't know it.
[1:44:32] Bob Dobbs: And Marshall said,
[1:44:33] Bob Dobbs: you're trying to tell me something.
[1:44:35] Bob Dobbs: As if something could be said verbally.
[1:44:37] Bob Dobbs: Fantastic.
[1:44:38] Bob Dobbs: Great statement.
[1:44:41] Bob Dobbs: I never told you that before.
[1:44:42] Bob Dobbs: That's new.
[1:44:44] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:44:44] Cameron McEwen: that's funny.
[1:44:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:44:46] Bob Dobbs: it's incredible.
[1:44:46] Cameron McEwen: And
[1:44:48] Cameron McEwen: I like your use of the word phatic.
[1:44:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:44:52] Cameron McEwen: That's all right.
[1:44:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:44:53] Cameron McEwen: conversation.
[1:44:55] Bob Dobbs: You know how he used it?
[1:44:57] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:44:57] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:44:58] Cameron McEwen: in your description of it.
[1:44:59] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:45:00] Bob Dobbs: yes.
[1:45:00] Cameron McEwen: Because in other words,
[1:45:02] Cameron McEwen: the key thing in what was said was what was not said.
[1:45:06] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:45:07] Bob Dobbs: And there's this article when McLuhan died,
[1:45:13] Bob Dobbs: I think it is,
[1:45:14] Bob Dobbs: the guy at Ramparts,
[1:45:15] Bob Dobbs: he knew McLuhan well,
[1:45:17] Bob Dobbs: and he tells the anecdote that And...
[1:45:20] Bob Dobbs: He's talking,
[1:45:20] Bob Dobbs: Marshall's talking at the table in the diner,
[1:45:22] Bob Dobbs: maybe there's the topless person,
[1:45:25] Bob Dobbs: that whole scenario,
[1:45:26] Bob Dobbs: and Tom Wolfe and that are there,
[1:45:28] Bob Dobbs: and somebody speaks up and says,
[1:45:30] Bob Dobbs: Marshall,
[1:45:31] Bob Dobbs: you go on and on and on and say the same thing.
[1:45:34] Bob Dobbs: I think it was Ghazali,
[1:45:35] Bob Dobbs: somebody like that got irritated with him.
[1:45:37] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[1:45:38] Bob Dobbs: don't you ever have anything else to talk about?
[1:45:40] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan says,
[1:45:41] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:45:41] Bob Dobbs: that's what I meant when I didn't say it.
[1:45:46] Bob Dobbs: And the guy remembered that.
[1:45:47] Bob Dobbs: He was blown away.
[1:45:49] Bob Dobbs: That's what I meant when I didn't say it.
[1:45:51] Bob Dobbs: I use that often.
[1:45:54] Bob Dobbs: People say,
[1:45:54] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:45:54] Bob Dobbs: you left out all this stuff.
[1:45:55] Bob Dobbs: And I say,
[1:45:56] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:45:56] Bob Dobbs: that's what I meant when I didn't say it.
[1:45:58] Bob Dobbs: It's a great line.
[1:45:59] Bob Dobbs: But the,
[1:46:00] Bob Dobbs: what would you,
[1:46:01] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[1:46:01] Bob Dobbs: the phatic point.
[1:46:02] Bob Dobbs: He has the phrase macroscopic gesticulation in War and Peace.
[1:46:07] Bob Dobbs: The global cultures are macroscopically gesticulation.
[1:46:10] Bob Dobbs: That's the way,
[1:46:11] Bob Dobbs: that's another way of either phatic phatic communion or Menippean phatic is what he's pointing out to.
[1:46:16] Bob Dobbs: Macroscopic gesticulation is the global phatic interplay and he makes phatic phatic communion a very important phrase in his first essay on Joyce in 53 in the interior landscape.
[1:46:27] Bob Dobbs: Phatic phatic communion is really important and you know that came from a guy named
[1:46:30] Bob Dobbs: Malinowski, an anthropologist who met I.A.
[1:46:34] Bob Dobbs: Richards and John Gordon in 1922 and they were putting together the book The Meaning of Meaning and he just came back from you know the
[1:46:43] Bob Dobbs: Pacific Island native things.
[1:46:46] Bob Dobbs: And he reports a bunch of stuff,
[1:46:49] Bob Dobbs: and they're so blown away.
[1:46:50] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[1:46:50] Bob Dobbs: wait a minute,
[1:46:50] Bob Dobbs: we've got to have you do an after,
[1:46:53] Bob Dobbs: an appendix or an after statement.
[1:46:56] Bob Dobbs: And so they held up the publication of the meaning of meaning so he could put in his essay explaining how these tribal people did Phatic.
[1:47:04] Bob Dobbs: He named Phatic communication.
[1:47:06] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:47:07] Bob Dobbs: That's where it came from.
[1:47:08] Cameron McEwen: That's the
[1:47:10] Cameron McEwen: Trobriand
[1:47:11] Bob Dobbs: Island. Yes,
[1:47:12] Bob Dobbs: that's right.
[1:47:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:47:13] Cameron McEwen: so that's what you're saying there is all.
[1:47:16] Cameron McEwen: correct yeah and the at the same time that was
[1:47:22] Cameron McEwen: 22 I believe in in 1919 already TS Eliot had talked about the communication that happens beyond the words maybe for poetry is before understanding that
[1:47:43] Cameron McEwen: sentence yeah yeah yeah yeah
[1:47:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:47:45] Bob Dobbs: they were all picking up on it.
[1:47:46] Cameron McEwen: They were both phatic communication.
[1:47:47] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:47:47] Bob Dobbs: and so James Joyce and Marcel Duchamp both declared that book very important to them,
[1:47:54] Bob Dobbs: The Meaning of Meaning.
[1:47:57] Cameron McEwen: Interesting.
[1:47:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:47:58] Bob Dobbs: and they were both friends of Peggy Guggenheim.
[1:48:01] Bob Dobbs: And her best friend married Joyce's son.
[1:48:05] Bob Dobbs: Forget her name.
[1:48:06] Bob Dobbs: But they were all part of the same circle in Paris.
[1:48:09] Bob Dobbs: Joyce,
[1:48:10] Bob Dobbs: Duchamp,
[1:48:11] Bob Dobbs: and Peggy Guggenheim.
[1:48:12] Bob Dobbs: Uh-huh,
[1:48:13] Cameron McEwen: uh-huh.
[1:48:15] Bob Dobbs: She would host them.
[1:48:15] Bob Dobbs: She was the rich girl from New York.
[1:48:18] Bob Dobbs: But in that circle is where the idea of phatic communion came out of,
[1:48:23] Bob Dobbs: through Mr.
[1:48:24] Bob Dobbs: Trobriand Islander.
[1:48:28] Cameron McEwen: So that's right when that's the end of Ulysses and when
[1:48:33] Cameron McEwen: Joyce is trying to decide what he does next.
[1:48:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:48:38] Cameron McEwen: And this whole idea that you can communicate.
[1:48:44] Cameron McEwen: beyond the word,
[1:48:47] Cameron McEwen: which is what McLuhan was saying to that guy that was explaining everything to him in the seminar.
[1:48:55] Cameron McEwen: But I guess that's one way of thinking about Finnegans Wake.
[1:48:58] Cameron McEwen: Definitely.
[1:49:00] Cameron McEwen: You don't understand what the hell is going on here,
[1:49:04] Cameron McEwen: but something is communicated to you.
[1:49:07] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:49:07] Bob Dobbs: Like people cannot not communicate no matter what's going on.
[1:49:13] Cameron McEwen: They're always communicating.
[1:49:15] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[1:49:16] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[1:49:17] Cameron McEwen: So we live in a resonance that we can partially pass on ourselves.
[1:49:24] Cameron McEwen: But the deep resonance is communication.
[1:49:30] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:49:30] Bob Dobbs: and so a big influence on Joyce,
[1:49:33] Bob Dobbs: the Richard Ellman say,
[1:49:34] Bob Dobbs: was this Jesuit priest,
[1:49:37] Bob Dobbs: Marcel
[1:49:37] Bob Dobbs: Jousse,
[1:49:38] Bob Dobbs: Joyce.
[1:49:40] Bob Dobbs: And he was a father,
[1:49:43] Bob Dobbs: and he talked about the role of gesture as the ground of all communication.
[1:49:48] Bob Dobbs: And that was really important for Joyce.
[1:49:49] Bob Dobbs: He applied that.
[1:49:51] Bob Dobbs: So the gesture is like phatic.
[1:49:53] Bob Dobbs: Like,
[1:49:54] Bob Dobbs: remember,
[1:49:54] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says,
[1:49:55] Bob Dobbs: I love the way he nods.
[1:49:56] Bob Dobbs: He really communicates.
[1:49:57] Bob Dobbs: That's a gesture when you nod,
[1:49:59] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[1:50:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:50:01] Bob Dobbs: And so that's what they're getting at,
[1:50:02] Bob Dobbs: this most intimate level of communication that's always been going on and even gets mixed up with ESP,
[1:50:07] Bob Dobbs: or ESP is really that.
[1:50:09] Bob Dobbs: And so Joyce said gesture comes before semantic overlay.
[1:50:15] Bob Dobbs: And that's what
[1:50:16] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says about Gertrude Stein.
[1:50:19] Bob Dobbs: She was trying to show the gestures underlying semantic overlay.
[1:50:22] Bob Dobbs: That's what he says in Counterblast.
[1:50:24] Cameron McEwen: And that's what you're laughing at.
[1:50:26] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:50:27] Bob Dobbs: I totally instinctively get that since I was a kid.
[1:50:32] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:50:33] Cameron McEwen: everybody does.
[1:50:34] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:50:35] Cameron McEwen: It's just a question of how conscious they are of that instinct.
[1:50:41] Bob Dobbs: That is probably the childish,
[1:50:43] Bob Dobbs: they all celebrate the child's this or that,
[1:50:45] Bob Dobbs: but that's...
[1:50:46] Bob Dobbs: the children have a sense of the absurdity of something and how do you keep playing within it,
[1:50:51] Bob Dobbs: that's the spark that people lose.
[1:50:55] Bob Dobbs: They lose,
[1:50:56] Bob Dobbs: they become serious,
[1:50:57] Bob Dobbs: they forget the absurdity of it.
[1:50:59] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:50:59] Bob Dobbs: I remember in an early interview with Zappa,
[1:51:01] Bob Dobbs: he says,
[1:51:02] Bob Dobbs: it's absurd to being alive.
[1:51:03] Bob Dobbs: And so not many people would say that.
[1:51:06] Bob Dobbs: Maybe a Samuel Beckett would,
[1:51:07] Bob Dobbs: but he said it in one of his first interviews.
[1:51:09] Bob Dobbs: That's correct.
[1:51:09] Bob Dobbs: That's a good thing to point out.
[1:51:11] Bob Dobbs: It's absurd being alive,
[1:51:12] Bob Dobbs: and it is.
[1:51:13] Bob Dobbs: It's ineffable.
[1:51:15] Bob Dobbs: You can't fucking express what it is.
[1:51:18] Bob Dobbs: You only laugh.
[1:51:20] Cameron McEwen: But you see,
[1:51:20] Cameron McEwen: the existentialists took absurdity to be something regrettable,
[1:51:27] Cameron McEwen: something painful,
[1:51:29] Cameron McEwen: something terrible.
[1:51:30] Cameron McEwen: But absurdity is something funny,
[1:51:34] Cameron McEwen: something that we ended up in a room we didn't even notice a door.
[1:51:40] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:51:41] Bob Dobbs: and I think someone defines laughter as a reconciliation of yes and no.
[1:51:44] Bob Dobbs: That's why it's a pleasure.
[1:51:45] Bob Dobbs: It actually solves the situation.
[1:51:48] Cameron McEwen: That's good.
[1:51:50] Bob Dobbs: So let's end with that point.
[1:51:51] Bob Dobbs: We've been going for a couple hours.
[1:51:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:51:54] Cameron McEwen: that's fine.
[1:51:55] Cameron McEwen: That's fine.
[1:51:56] Bob Dobbs: So we actually got something.
[1:51:58] Bob Dobbs: We had a good conversation there.
[1:52:01] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:52:01] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:52:03] Cameron McEwen: you usually say that I talk too much,
[1:52:05] Cameron McEwen: and you didn't talk enough.
[1:52:07] Cameron McEwen: Tonight,
[1:52:07] Cameron McEwen: you talked more than I did.
[1:52:09] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:52:10] Bob Dobbs: and we got into the laughter part,
[1:52:12] Bob Dobbs: which was good.
[1:52:12] Bob Dobbs: You picked up on the laughter level.
[1:52:16] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:52:16] Bob Dobbs: great.
[1:52:17] Bob Dobbs: I always saw that twinkle in McLuhan.
[1:52:20] Bob Dobbs: You know that summer of 68 when he's on a panel with
[1:52:24] Bob Dobbs: Mayr, Fulford,
[1:52:25] Bob Dobbs: himself,
[1:52:26] Bob Dobbs: and Muggeridge?
[1:52:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:52:29] Bob Dobbs: In that dialogue,
[1:52:30] Bob Dobbs: boy,
[1:52:30] Bob Dobbs: do you see him...
[1:52:32] Bob Dobbs: Slightly twinkling at a lot of the times.
[1:52:34] Bob Dobbs: He's not saying that much.
[1:52:36] Bob Dobbs: I remember my friend got really upset that McLuhan didn't say enough.
[1:52:39] Bob Dobbs: But look at his face.
[1:52:40] Bob Dobbs: He's smiling at the absurdity of these four experts that everybody's listening to.
[1:52:45] Bob Dobbs: And from his point of view,
[1:52:46] Bob Dobbs: they weren't doing too well at communicating what was going on.
[1:52:50] Bob Dobbs: But you see the twinkle in his eyes.
[1:52:51] Bob Dobbs: Have you ever seen that?
[1:52:52] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:52:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:52:53] Cameron McEwen: sure.
[1:52:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:52:54] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[1:52:54] Cameron McEwen: I do.
[1:52:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:52:55] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:52:55] Cameron McEwen: He's exercising phatic.
[1:52:59] Bob Dobbs: Phatic,
[1:53:00] Bob Dobbs: did you say?
[1:53:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:53:02] Cameron McEwen: the phatic.
[1:53:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:53:03] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:53:04] Bob Dobbs: He's a phatic,
[1:53:04] Bob Dobbs: and he gets the absurdity.
[1:53:06] Bob Dobbs: So he kept his childhood sensitivity.
[1:53:11] Cameron McEwen: Sure enough.
[1:53:12] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[1:53:13] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:53:14] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:53:14] Bob Dobbs: lots of luck to us in maintaining that cruise.
[1:53:19] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:53:19] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[1:53:19] Bob Dobbs: Hey,
[1:53:20] Bob Dobbs: keep going here.
[1:53:22] Bob Dobbs: All right.
[1:53:23] Bob Dobbs: Thank you very much.
[1:53:24] Bob Dobbs: What's your name again?
[1:53:25] Bob Dobbs: Who am I talking to?
[1:53:28] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:53:29] Bob Dobbs: talk to you later,
[1:53:29] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron.
[1:53:30] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:53:31] Cameron McEwen: thanks.
[1:53:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:53:31] Cameron McEwen: Bye.