Dialogue 62 — Transcript

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Hello,

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: this is Bob Dobbs with Cameron McEwen,

[00:05] Bob Dobbs: and we're continuing our series on my book.

[00:09] Bob Dobbs: And this is episode number 62.

[00:15] Bob Dobbs: We had a big hit with number 61.

[00:17] Bob Dobbs: We made some important new statements around the McEwen world that have never been said before,

[00:23] Bob Dobbs: and that led to some interesting discoveries by

[00:27] Bob Dobbs: Cameron in the last three weeks around Vico.

[00:31] Bob Dobbs: So we're going to go into,

[00:34] Bob Dobbs: following from what was said last week,

[00:36] Bob Dobbs: into

[00:37] Bob Dobbs: Cameron's quote he sent me from Vico.

[00:42] Bob Dobbs: Is that,

[00:42] Bob Dobbs: that's page 1097,

[00:48] Bob Dobbs: Vico New Science?

[00:50] Cameron McEwen: Not 1097 page,

[00:52] Cameron McEwen: it's the paragraph 1097.

[00:57] Bob Dobbs: The book shows that?

[00:58] Bob Dobbs: Numbers,

[00:59] Bob Dobbs: paragraphs?

[01:00] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[01:00] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[01:01] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[01:04] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[01:04] Bob Dobbs: just a second.

[01:05] Bob Dobbs: Someone emailed me.

[01:06] Bob Dobbs: Could this be an intervention?

[01:08] Bob Dobbs: No,

[01:08] Bob Dobbs: no intervention.

[01:10] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[01:12] Bob Dobbs: We're back here.

[01:13] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[01:14] Cameron McEwen: And by the way,

[01:16] Cameron McEwen: if people are interested in looking into Vico,

[01:23] Cameron McEwen: many of his books are available at the Internet Archive.

[01:30] Cameron McEwen: The Internet Archive has these texts fully searchable,

[01:36] Cameron McEwen: and it's a great resource for research.

[01:42] Bob Dobbs: That's archive.org?

[01:47] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[01:48] Cameron McEwen: I'm really not too sure.

[01:49] Cameron McEwen: I just know if you

[01:51] Cameron McEwen: Google

[01:53] Cameron McEwen: Archive

[01:55] Cameron McEwen: Vico New Science,

[01:56] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[01:57] Cameron McEwen: then the link will come up.

[01:59] Cameron McEwen: I never paid much attention to the URL.

[02:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[02:03] Bob Dobbs: I know that everything is kind of saved there.

[02:06] Bob Dobbs: You can find all kinds of ancient stuff that appeared to have been deleted.

[02:12] Bob Dobbs: Show up at archive.org.

[02:13] Bob Dobbs: Let me just check here.

[02:16] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[02:16] Cameron McEwen: but the archive.org is not a Wayback Machine.

[02:24] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[02:24] Cameron McEwen: it's related to the Wayback Machine.

[02:27] Cameron McEwen: The archive is a library.

[02:31] Cameron McEwen: and has either sometimes in full text,

[02:36] Cameron McEwen: sometimes in less than full text,

[02:39] Cameron McEwen: a huge digitized library of text that is often very interesting to use to kind of jump between different

[02:55] Cameron McEwen: vocabularies.

[02:57] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[02:57] Bob Dobbs: so I see...

[02:58] Bob Dobbs: It does say Wayback Machine at the top and then below it says,

[03:01] Bob Dobbs: Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books,

[03:05] Bob Dobbs: movies,

[03:05] Bob Dobbs: software,

[03:06] Bob Dobbs: music,

[03:06] Bob Dobbs: websites,

[03:06] Bob Dobbs: and more.

[03:07] Bob Dobbs: So let me put in Vico and see what happens.

[03:13] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[03:15] Cameron McEwen: with Vico,

[03:16] Cameron McEwen: you'll get thousands and thousands of hits because that will give you not only books with Vico in the title or Vico as the author,

[03:28] Cameron McEwen: but books that mention Vico.

[03:31] Cameron McEwen: So you probably have to drill down a bit.

[03:34] Bob Dobbs: So what's the book you cite?

[03:38] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[03:38] Cameron McEwen: I would put New Science in brackets.

[03:41] Bob Dobbs: New Science,

[03:42] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[03:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[03:43] Cameron McEwen: so Vico,

[03:44] Cameron McEwen: New Science in brackets.

[03:45] Cameron McEwen: And then you'll get,

[03:49] Cameron McEwen: they probably have

[03:50] Cameron McEwen: 10 at least different editions of

[03:55] Cameron McEwen: Vico, New Science.

[03:57] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[03:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[03:59] Bob Dobbs: they got a lot of them.

[04:01] Bob Dobbs: So do you know which one you used?

[04:05] Cameron McEwen: No,

[04:05] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[04:05] Cameron McEwen: they're basically the same.

[04:07] Cameron McEwen: They're the same translation that was published by Cornell in the

[04:13] Cameron McEwen: 1940s.

[04:14] Cameron McEwen: And then that same translation was reissued a few times with some minor changes.

[04:26] Cameron McEwen: The different editions are basically the same.

[04:30] Cameron McEwen: If you scroll over some of the books that you called up,

[04:38] Cameron McEwen: you'll see that some of them you have to borrow from a library,

[04:46] Cameron McEwen: and others are just available automatically as text.

[04:51] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[04:52] Cameron McEwen: So the ones that are available automatically as text are the ones that

[04:56] Cameron McEwen: I find the most huge.

[04:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[04:59] Bob Dobbs: and...

[05:02] Bob Dobbs: um which one has do they all have the paragraph enumeration yes okay so i'm just looking up uh thomas vegan vico uh third

[05:17] Bob Dobbs: edition see what he because i whoever wrote this translated or whatever they did back in the

[05:27] Bob Dobbs: 40s i think it's thomas biggin or it's bergen was don

[05:33] Bob Dobbs: Theall's classmate at Yale.

[05:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[05:36] Cameron McEwen: could well be.

[05:38] Bob Dobbs: So I'm just looking him up to see if we get a little thing on him.

[05:46] Bob Dobbs: See if he went to Yale.

[05:47] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[05:50] Bob Dobbs: Thomas Bergin.

[06:00] Cameron McEwen: You probably got so many hits.

[06:01] Cameron McEwen: that you have to put in Yale and search.

[06:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[06:05] Bob Dobbs: no,

[06:05] Bob Dobbs: this guy,

[06:06] Bob Dobbs: Thomas Goddard Bergin is 1904,

[06:09] Bob Dobbs: so maybe it is his,

[06:14] Bob Dobbs: the other guy,

[06:15] Bob Dobbs: Max somebody,

[06:17] Bob Dobbs: the co-writer,

[06:18] Bob Dobbs: let's see,

[06:21] Bob Dobbs: Max Fisch.

[06:22] Bob Dobbs: Let's see what that is.

[06:29] Cameron McEwen: Fisch became my...

[06:31] Cameron McEwen: Peirce scholar.

[06:35] Cameron McEwen: So Theall might have mentioned that at some point.

[06:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[06:39] Bob Dobbs: So

[06:41] Bob Dobbs: Max Fisch,

[06:44] Bob Dobbs: give us a wiki.

[06:51] Bob Dobbs: Doesn't seem to be anything on him.

[06:53] Bob Dobbs: Hard to find.

[06:54] Bob Dobbs: Am I doing it wrong?

[06:57] Bob Dobbs: Let's get out of this.

[06:59] Bob Dobbs: Let's go over here.

[07:21] Cameron McEwen: still looking and the the object of your search is to find out which guy went to gail in 1904 connection uh with uh theol is that the yeah i'm just seeing which one did theol know uh they i would think it would be bergen myself but uh

[07:45] Bob Dobbs: yeah but they're classmates bergen's born in 1904

[07:50] Bob Dobbs: Don's 1928.

[07:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[07:51] Cameron McEwen: that's McLuhan generation.

[07:53] Cameron McEwen: That's not too different from...

[07:57] Bob Dobbs: No,

[07:57] Bob Dobbs: no,

[07:57] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall's 1928.

[08:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[08:01] Bob Dobbs: So nothing's coming up for Max Fisch,

[08:03] Bob Dobbs: so not solving the problem,

[08:05] Bob Dobbs: so heck with that.

[08:07] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[08:07] Bob Dobbs: so it helped Theall to know the guy,

[08:15] Bob Dobbs: got him into

[08:16] Bob Dobbs: Vico early.

[08:18] Bob Dobbs: which prepared him for Joyce and all that.

[08:20] Cameron McEwen: Uh-huh.

[08:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[08:21] Cameron McEwen: the big

[08:23] Cameron McEwen: Vico scholar was a guy by the name of

[08:28] Cameron McEwen: Don Verene.

[08:29] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name.

[08:34] Cameron McEwen: So he could have been the guy that they all knew.

[08:36] Cameron McEwen: He published stuff that

[08:40] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan read and quoted.

[08:43] Bob Dobbs: How do you spell his last name?

[08:45] Cameron McEwen: V-E-R-E-N-E.

[08:48] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[08:48] Bob Dobbs: Verene,

[08:49] Bob Dobbs: I've seen that.

[08:50] Bob Dobbs: Don Verene.

[08:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[08:59] Bob Dobbs: he's born in 1937.

[09:02] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[09:02] Bob Dobbs: that's young.

[09:05] Bob Dobbs: No,

[09:05] Bob Dobbs: he didn't go to Yale,

[09:07] Bob Dobbs: so it's not him.

[09:09] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[09:10] Bob Dobbs: but that brought up a wiki entry.

[09:12] Bob Dobbs: Why can't we get Max Fisch easily?

[09:17] Bob Dobbs: Max

[09:18] Bob Dobbs: Harold Fisch.

[09:21] Bob Dobbs: Try that.

[09:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[09:33] Bob Dobbs: they have stuff on

[09:35] Bob Dobbs: Peirce by Max Harold Fisch,

[09:37] Bob Dobbs: but there's nothing on him.

[09:42] Bob Dobbs: He stayed low key.

[09:45] Bob Dobbs: Doesn't even seem to have an entry.

[09:48] Bob Dobbs: So,

[09:49] Bob Dobbs: we're stranded.

[09:50] Bob Dobbs: We'll have to talk to Don through ION and find out.

[09:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[09:54] Cameron McEwen: there you go.

[09:56] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[09:58] Bob Dobbs: what you have here?

[09:59] Bob Dobbs: You sent me this quote.

[10:02] Bob Dobbs: And I'll read it.

[10:04] Bob Dobbs: This is paragraph 1097 in Vico's New Science.

[10:09] Bob Dobbs: This commonwealth conceived by Plato was brought into being by providence from the first beginnings of the nations,

[10:17] Bob Dobbs: for it ordained that men of gigantic stature,

[10:21] Bob Dobbs: stronger than the rest,

[10:22] Bob Dobbs: who were to wander on the mountain heights,

[10:25] Bob Dobbs: as do the beasts of stronger natures,

[10:27] Bob Dobbs: should at the first thunder collapse after the universal flood.

[10:32] Bob Dobbs: take refuge in the caves of the mountains,

[10:35] Bob Dobbs: subject themselves to a higher power which they imagined as Jove,

[10:39] Bob Dobbs: J-O-V-E,

[10:41] Bob Dobbs: and amazingly,

[10:42] Bob Dobbs: as they were all pride and cruelty,

[10:45] Bob Dobbs: humble themselves before a divinity.

[10:49] Bob Dobbs: For in this order of human things,

[10:51] Bob Dobbs: we cannot conceive how divine providence could have employed any other counsel to halt them in their bestial wandering through the great forest of the earth.

[11:01] Bob Dobbs: in order to introduce among them the order of human civil things.

[11:06] Bob Dobbs: So he's saying the thunder is what?

[11:08] Bob Dobbs: It's the only way

[11:10] Bob Dobbs: Jove could get to the wandering cavemen,

[11:15] Bob Dobbs: right?

[11:16] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[11:17] Cameron McEwen: thunder and storm,

[11:18] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[11:19] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[11:20] Bob Dobbs: so now you have here your note,

[11:23] Bob Dobbs: the men who entered caves were troglodytes.

[11:26] Bob Dobbs: Troglo is cave,

[11:27] Bob Dobbs: dytes,

[11:27] Bob Dobbs: enterers.

[11:28] Bob Dobbs: That's the original meaning of...

[11:31] Bob Dobbs: Troglodytes are the only meaning?

[11:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[11:34] Cameron McEwen: so troglodyte is Greek,

[11:36] Cameron McEwen: and that's the etymology.

[11:38] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[11:39] Bob Dobbs: Then you have here DYT for dytes,

[11:43] Bob Dobbs: meaning enterers.

[11:45] Bob Dobbs: Dyte here is the same Greek word as adyton,

[11:49] Bob Dobbs: A-D-Y-T-O-N,

[11:50] Bob Dobbs: which means not to be entered,

[11:52] Bob Dobbs: correct?

[11:54] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[11:54] Cameron McEwen: So last time we mentioned the

[11:57] Cameron McEwen: alpha privative, which...

[12:01] Cameron McEwen: means not,

[12:02] Cameron McEwen: the same as in amoral or apolitical or asexual.

[12:07] Cameron McEwen: It's a fairly common construction in English taken from the Greek.

[12:12] Cameron McEwen: And the adyton was that part of a Greek temple that could not be entered except by priests that had been specially trained and

[12:27] Cameron McEwen: dedicated to that temple.

[12:31] Cameron McEwen: So it was the holy of holies in a Greek temple.

[12:35] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[12:35] Cameron McEwen: The not to be entered.

[12:38] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[12:38] Bob Dobbs: So then,

[12:40] Bob Dobbs: is this the next sentence?

[12:42] Bob Dobbs: I read the excerpt,

[12:43] Bob Dobbs: and then you have,

[12:44] Bob Dobbs: so men entered caves to become civilized.

[12:47] Bob Dobbs: Are you quoting Vico?

[12:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[12:49] Cameron McEwen: well,

[12:49] Cameron McEwen: I'm not quoting.

[12:50] Cameron McEwen: I'm referring to that passage you just read.

[12:54] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[12:55] Bob Dobbs: and these words continue it.

[12:59] Cameron McEwen: No,

[13:02] Cameron McEwen: if it's from Vico,

[13:04] Cameron McEwen: I indent it.

[13:05] Cameron McEwen: And if it's just from me,

[13:08] Cameron McEwen: I write it unindented.

[13:11] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[13:11] Cameron McEwen: That's from me.

[13:12] Bob Dobbs: So this is your interpretation or your idea about it.

[13:15] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[13:16] Bob Dobbs: So men entered caves to become civilized,

[13:19] Bob Dobbs: but they could become civilized only by not taking possession of all of the cave.

[13:24] Bob Dobbs: This was the place of the higher power.

[13:26] Bob Dobbs: Higher power in quotes.

[13:27] Bob Dobbs: where they had to,

[13:28] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[13:28] Bob Dobbs: humble themselves before divinity.

[13:31] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[13:32] Bob Dobbs: so what I get from this is it's a description by Vico of the solitary private individual,

[13:41] Bob Dobbs: which was McLuhan's phrase,

[13:43] Bob Dobbs: before the comforts of tribal communication.

[13:47] Bob Dobbs: Do you get that from this?

[13:49] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[13:51] Cameron McEwen: I've kind of changed my idea about what pre-tribal awareness is.

[13:58] Cameron McEwen: means and what it sort of implicates for McLuhan.

[14:02] Cameron McEwen: I think it's wrong to take it in a historical sense,

[14:06] Cameron McEwen: as if in the history of human beings,

[14:10] Cameron McEwen: first there were solitary,

[14:14] Cameron McEwen: quote-unquote,

[14:15] Cameron McEwen: metaphysical men,

[14:17] Cameron McEwen: and then there became tribal men and women,

[14:20] Cameron McEwen: and then history sort of took off.

[14:24] Cameron McEwen: I think that's not what he was talking about.

[14:27] Cameron McEwen: I think what he was talking about is synchronic history,

[14:33] Cameron McEwen: that is to say,

[14:34] Cameron McEwen: simultaneous history.

[14:37] Cameron McEwen: And so their pre-tribal awareness would be the spark of creativity that allows human beings to become human beings.

[14:50] Cameron McEwen: So in a baby,

[14:53] Cameron McEwen: there has to be something already there.

[14:56] Cameron McEwen: that allows the child to learn language,

[15:02] Cameron McEwen: to enter into a world that is not its world.

[15:09] Cameron McEwen: And I believe that the pre-tribal awareness refers to this spark of creativity that is prior to everything,

[15:20] Cameron McEwen: not just historically or chronologically,

[15:24] Cameron McEwen: but at every moment of all human experience.

[15:27] Cameron McEwen: So something that's active in your conversation,

[15:32] Cameron McEwen: in my conversation,

[15:34] Cameron McEwen: and in everybody's understanding of our conversation right now.

[15:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[15:39] Bob Dobbs: so that's what he says when the citadel of consciousness is not affected by media.

[15:46] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[15:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[15:48] Bob Dobbs: that's the attachment,

[15:50] Bob Dobbs: the spark,

[15:50] Bob Dobbs: the something that engages media,

[15:53] Bob Dobbs: but brings its own sub-creativity or something to it.

[15:57] Bob Dobbs: It's making.

[15:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[15:59] Cameron McEwen: and that's why he said that the secret to human communication is to realize that all communication is artistic.

[16:10] Cameron McEwen: So for

[16:11] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, in order to understand human communication,

[16:14] Cameron McEwen: you had to understand the arts.

[16:19] Cameron McEwen: So his criticism of Innis was that Innis had great insight into many things,

[16:26] Cameron McEwen: but he didn't know much about art.

[16:28] Cameron McEwen: And so he was unable to understand the types of human communication.

[16:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[16:38] Bob Dobbs: To...

[16:40] Bob Dobbs: To understand the arts.

[16:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[16:46] Bob Dobbs: well,

[16:46] Bob Dobbs: let's look at the second quote you sent me.

[16:49] Bob Dobbs: Maybe this gets to what I'm thinking of.

[16:51] Bob Dobbs: So,

[16:56] Bob Dobbs: what do you think of the...

[17:00] Bob Dobbs: So,

[17:01] Bob Dobbs: I thought the quote in the Rolling Stone 1970 said something from way back.

[17:07] Bob Dobbs: That implies...

[17:09] Bob Dobbs: historical.

[17:12] Cameron McEwen: No,

[17:13] Cameron McEwen: not necessarily.

[17:14] Cameron McEwen: You see,

[17:14] Cameron McEwen: that's the Gutenbergian interpretation of way back is way back in chronological time.

[17:25] Cameron McEwen: But way back for McLuhan is a retracing,

[17:29] Cameron McEwen: a retrieval,

[17:31] Cameron McEwen: and it goes into the genesis of experience.

[17:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[17:36] Bob Dobbs: the way back for him is

[17:40] Bob Dobbs: retracing the stage of apprehension so that you get to the initial hypnosis of the first media.

[17:46] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[17:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[17:47] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[17:49] Bob Dobbs: So you have here

[17:50] Bob Dobbs: Global Village,

[17:51] Bob Dobbs: and these two quotes,

[17:53] Bob Dobbs: we're not sure are completely pure McLuhan,

[17:57] Bob Dobbs: right?

[18:01] Cameron McEwen: You're looking at...

[18:03] Bob Dobbs: Pre-trial awareness again,

[18:04] Bob Dobbs: question mark.

[18:05] Bob Dobbs: That's your other email from the 7th.

[18:08] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[18:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[18:08] Cameron McEwen: I got it.

[18:09] Cameron McEwen: So those are,

[18:10] Cameron McEwen: I start off with two quotations,

[18:14] Cameron McEwen: or actually,

[18:15] Cameron McEwen: every quotation in this mail is from

[18:18] Cameron McEwen: Global Village.

[18:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[18:20] Bob Dobbs: but see,

[18:22] Bob Dobbs: I just realized it's December

[18:24] Bob Dobbs: 2nd, so you've got War and Peace from Global Village,

[18:26] Bob Dobbs: then you have

[18:29] Bob Dobbs: Bruce Powers'

[18:30] Bob Dobbs: collaboration with McLuhan.

[18:32] Bob Dobbs: That's Global Village,

[18:32] Bob Dobbs: 1989.

[18:34] Bob Dobbs: That seems to be...

[18:37] Bob Dobbs: December 7th.

[18:38] Bob Dobbs: So let's look at War and Peace in Global Village,

[18:40] Bob Dobbs: what you have there first.

[18:42] Bob Dobbs: So that's pure McLuhan,

[18:43] Bob Dobbs: supposedly.

[18:46] Cameron McEwen: Everything here is a quotation,

[18:49] Cameron McEwen: nothing from me.

[18:50] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[18:50] Bob Dobbs: no,

[18:50] Bob Dobbs: I get that.

[18:51] Bob Dobbs: So the first quote is page 21 of War and Peace in the Global Village,

[18:54] Bob Dobbs: that's 1968.

[18:56] Bob Dobbs: The reversal of nature that has taken place since the fall of man.

[19:02] Bob Dobbs: The reversal of nature is the process of art and...

[19:06] Bob Dobbs: Hypnosis?

[19:08] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[19:08] Cameron McEwen: So,

[19:09] Cameron McEwen: well,

[19:10] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[19:11] Cameron McEwen: for McLuhan,

[19:12] Cameron McEwen: insight and hypnosis are not two opposed things.

[19:20] Cameron McEwen: When we oppose insight and hypnosis,

[19:25] Cameron McEwen: we situate ourselves in a Gutenbergian perspective,

[19:29] Cameron McEwen: a pro and con.

[19:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[19:31] Cameron McEwen: So hypnosis is bad,

[19:33] Cameron McEwen: creativity is good.

[19:34] Cameron McEwen: good,

[19:34] Cameron McEwen: let's get more of creativity,

[19:37] Cameron McEwen: let's demonize hypnosis.

[19:39] Cameron McEwen: No,

[19:40] Cameron McEwen: that's not the way McLuhan's mind works.

[19:43] Cameron McEwen: All culture is a certain kind of hypnosis,

[19:47] Cameron McEwen: is a certain kind of bias.

[19:49] Cameron McEwen: But bias is not necessarily bad,

[19:52] Cameron McEwen: it's not even avoidable.

[19:55] Cameron McEwen: So the question is,

[19:56] Cameron McEwen: for McLuhan is,

[19:58] Cameron McEwen: how do we situate ourselves in a bias that

[20:04] Cameron McEwen: reveals the way to investigate biases.

[20:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[20:09] Bob Dobbs: you're always stressing the almost endless exploration of one's bias.

[20:14] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[20:15] Bob Dobbs: That doesn't end.

[20:17] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[20:17] Bob Dobbs: So the reversal of nature,

[20:19] Bob Dobbs: is that bias?

[20:22] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[20:22] Cameron McEwen: because you remember he says in the Christian Humanism lecture of 54,

[20:31] Cameron McEwen: he says he talks about the taking up of nature by all human perception.

[20:42] Cameron McEwen: which he says is the great mystery that humans are able to create a world,

[20:52] Cameron McEwen: internalize a world through an exercise of imagination.

[20:58] Cameron McEwen: And it's that exercise that makes them human.

[21:01] Cameron McEwen: So in that exercise and taking up a world or in taking a world and recreating that world,

[21:10] Cameron McEwen: Humans exercise what he calls making.

[21:14] Cameron McEwen: They don't exercise matching.

[21:16] Cameron McEwen: So there's always a certain limitation,

[21:19] Cameron McEwen: a certain blindness to what humans do.

[21:22] Cameron McEwen: But the mystery is not that humans are limited.

[21:27] Cameron McEwen: It's that humans can be creative in their limitation.

[21:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[21:32] Bob Dobbs: So the bias enters from the fall.

[21:38] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[21:39] Cameron McEwen: But the...

[21:39] Cameron McEwen: the fall of man is also a gift.

[21:43] Cameron McEwen: So at the end of

[21:44] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake,

[21:48] Cameron McEwen: with the keys to given,

[21:53] Cameron McEwen: the fall of man is a kind of gift of creativity that,

[22:02] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[22:02] Cameron McEwen: can be misused and can blind,

[22:05] Cameron McEwen: but it's also the great secret.

[22:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[22:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[22:11] Bob Dobbs: he used to say it's a mystery why the eye flips the image when it comes through the eyeball.

[22:19] Bob Dobbs: And I always took that as a metaphor,

[22:23] Bob Dobbs: a physiological situation that becomes a metaphor for how humans take in imaginatively the world.

[22:30] Bob Dobbs: They make from it.

[22:32] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[22:32] Bob Dobbs: So it's echoed in the physiological process of the eye.

[22:38] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[22:38] Bob Dobbs: That's a side note.

[22:39] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[22:40] Cameron McEwen: But it's not that the physiological process is the basis.

[22:44] Cameron McEwen: It's the physiological process is part of the metaphor.

[22:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[22:49] Bob Dobbs: So the fall of man is,

[22:52] Bob Dobbs: I think he says,

[22:53] Bob Dobbs: original sin is ignoring what's going on,

[22:57] Bob Dobbs: unawareness.

[22:59] Bob Dobbs: That's not noticing your bias.

[23:01] Bob Dobbs: So when you get lazy about,

[23:06] Bob Dobbs: I want to say,

[23:07] Bob Dobbs: maintaining purity of perception.

[23:10] Bob Dobbs: That's what Nelson Thall said,

[23:11] Bob Dobbs: Bob's always cleaning his senses like a windshield wiper.

[23:19] Cameron McEwen: Which is good,

[23:20] Cameron McEwen: but we need to stay away from ideas like as if humans could be pure,

[23:29] Cameron McEwen: as if humans could become fully conscious of their situation.

[23:39] Cameron McEwen: What humans are capable of is investigation of their situation,

[23:45] Cameron McEwen: and it's that that McLuhan wants to instigate.

[23:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[23:51] Bob Dobbs: the Zen doctrine,

[23:52] Bob Dobbs: or whatever doctrines come up with in the esoteric shaman world about overcoming your mind,

[24:00] Bob Dobbs: not being trapped by your mind,

[24:02] Bob Dobbs: is the same trick,

[24:04] Bob Dobbs: the same...

[24:06] Bob Dobbs: game you play with yourself and your perception is what McLuhan's talking about.

[24:10] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[24:10] Cameron McEwen: yes,

[24:11] Cameron McEwen: except there's thousands of varieties of Zen and thousands of varieties of Buddhism and thousands of varieties of Catholicism,

[24:21] Cameron McEwen: etc.

[24:22] Cameron McEwen: So we need to be wary of using those kinds of words to describe what McLuhan was doing.

[24:33] Cameron McEwen: We have to reverse it.

[24:34] Cameron McEwen: that and say that what McLuhan was trying to do was introduce a way of investigating how to understand those words.

[24:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[24:45] Bob Dobbs: because there was so much baggage that had come with them.

[24:48] Bob Dobbs: So that's what I was going to add is with Ion,

[24:55] Bob Dobbs: he talks about the mind has the biggest hold on people.

[24:58] Bob Dobbs: It's the hardest thing to see through.

[25:03] Bob Dobbs: But then he talks about the,

[25:05] Bob Dobbs: there's no time,

[25:06] Bob Dobbs: but then there's a false premise of time.

[25:08] Bob Dobbs: So I said,

[25:08] Bob Dobbs: well,

[25:08] Bob Dobbs: how about we have the false premise of mind or rational ratio use or noticing ratios?

[25:16] Bob Dobbs: So you engage the mind or the senses.

[25:20] Bob Dobbs: without being fooled by them,

[25:23] Bob Dobbs: but you don't not engage them.

[25:25] Bob Dobbs: See,

[25:25] Bob Dobbs: there's the trick.

[25:26] Bob Dobbs: How do you do that?

[25:27] Bob Dobbs: So

[25:28] Bob Dobbs: I have deep conversations with you,

[25:31] Bob Dobbs: but

[25:31] Bob Dobbs: I drop them as soon as we're finished,

[25:34] Bob Dobbs: or I wait to see what I remember from them to see what's worth holding on to.

[25:41] Bob Dobbs: You see what I'm saying?

[25:43] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[25:44] Cameron McEwen: I think you're putting your finger on the great difficulty,

[25:47] Cameron McEwen: And that is that...

[25:49] Cameron McEwen: Human beings have,

[25:51] Cameron McEwen: as far as we know,

[25:53] Cameron McEwen: from the very beginnings of history,

[25:57] Cameron McEwen: right?

[25:57] Cameron McEwen: History historically meant the time since we have text.

[26:07] Cameron McEwen: Nowadays,

[26:08] Cameron McEwen: when we have

[26:09] Cameron McEwen: DNA exploration and very great archaeological exploration,

[26:15] Cameron McEwen: people tend to use history to mean

[26:19] Cameron McEwen: as far back as we can go.

[26:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[26:21] Cameron McEwen: But traditionally,

[26:22] Cameron McEwen: history meant roughly the time from 5,000 years ago,

[26:29] Cameron McEwen: around 3,000

[26:30] Cameron McEwen: B.C., when writing began in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

[26:38] Cameron McEwen: History was the time since when we have had texts.

[26:43] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[26:43] Cameron McEwen: And since when we have had texts,

[26:46] Cameron McEwen: Human beings were already conscious of the great complications of human being.

[26:54] Cameron McEwen: And I tend to use the phrase human being not as a substantive to mean a thing,

[27:02] Cameron McEwen: but human being to mean human action,

[27:06] Cameron McEwen: human perception.

[27:08] Cameron McEwen: So the most insightful humans have always had...

[27:15] Cameron McEwen: great awareness of what it means to be a human being.

[27:20] Cameron McEwen: But they've never been able to communicate that.

[27:25] Cameron McEwen: So what you're talking about with the problem of trying to understand the use and the non-use of mind,

[27:36] Cameron McEwen: you're putting your finger on what this problem of communication is.

[27:42] Cameron McEwen: How does the great

[27:45] Cameron McEwen: insight that is as old as anything we know about humans from 5,000 years ago?

[27:53] Cameron McEwen: How does that great insight at last get communicated now that we're in a time with nuclear weapons and all of the dangers involved with them?

[28:04] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[28:11] Bob Dobbs: When I do my radio shows,

[28:12] Bob Dobbs: I engage in topical things.

[28:15] Bob Dobbs: Plus deep things,

[28:16] Bob Dobbs: but topical things.

[28:19] Bob Dobbs: And I pretend to be interested in them,

[28:22] Bob Dobbs: and I try to come up with different ways of thinking about it or X-raying it.

[28:28] Bob Dobbs: But the rest of the week,

[28:30] Bob Dobbs: I'm not paying attention to the news too much.

[28:33] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[28:34] Bob Dobbs: I'm not that involved.

[28:36] Bob Dobbs: It's almost I engage in the comfort of tribal communication as a Gutenbergian or as a sharing.

[28:44] Bob Dobbs: It's even a form of communion or,

[28:46] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[28:46] Bob Dobbs: a religious act.

[28:48] Bob Dobbs: But I am not,

[28:50] Bob Dobbs: I don't have an opinion,

[28:51] Bob Dobbs: finally,

[28:52] Bob Dobbs: about what I'm talking about.

[28:54] Bob Dobbs: There's not going to be a mental thing I will arrive at.

[28:58] Bob Dobbs: Say,

[28:59] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[28:59] Bob Dobbs: now I know the words.

[29:00] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I mean?

[29:02] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[29:03] Bob Dobbs: That's how I approach this problem,

[29:06] Bob Dobbs: you're saying,

[29:06] Bob Dobbs: is significant.

[29:10] Bob Dobbs: In an active public...

[29:11] Cameron McEwen: You've done that since...

[29:12] Cameron McEwen: the early 1980s.

[29:13] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[29:16] Bob Dobbs: I've been faking communication for 40 years.

[29:22] Bob Dobbs: So good to have someone recognize that.

[29:25] Bob Dobbs: So then we can be on the same playing field,

[29:27] Bob Dobbs: because you can recognize that because you're doing that in some way too.

[29:34] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[29:39] Cameron McEwen: You have a greater faith and communication than I do.

[29:43] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[29:44] Cameron McEwen: but you have.

[29:44] Cameron McEwen: I feel like I'm writing for an audience in a thousand years.

[29:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[29:48] Bob Dobbs: I know.

[29:49] Bob Dobbs: I was just going to say that,

[29:50] Bob Dobbs: that you show your put-on by doing all this,

[29:55] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[29:55] Bob Dobbs: encyclopedic inventorying and indifferent to anybody reading it,

[30:00] Bob Dobbs: almost.

[30:01] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[30:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[30:03] Bob Dobbs: You're writing to yourself in much the way.

[30:06] Bob Dobbs: So that's good.

[30:08] Bob Dobbs: So.

[30:09] Bob Dobbs: So the reversal of nature has taken place since the fall of man.

[30:13] Bob Dobbs: That's saying the medium is the message.

[30:17] Bob Dobbs: He used to say that Christ was the incarnation,

[30:22] Bob Dobbs: was the incarnation of fall,

[30:25] Bob Dobbs: in the way...

[30:27] Bob Dobbs: the Christ lived his life,

[30:31] Bob Dobbs: he had great detachment,

[30:32] Bob Dobbs: yet involvement.

[30:34] Bob Dobbs: He did that.

[30:35] Bob Dobbs: He entered into the fall of man,

[30:37] Bob Dobbs: but it seemed,

[30:39] Bob Dobbs: the legend is that he was not affected by it.

[30:45] Cameron McEwen: No,

[30:47] Cameron McEwen: that's the Gnostic legend.

[30:50] Cameron McEwen: The

[30:51] Cameron McEwen: Christian legend is that he was fully.

[30:56] Cameron McEwen: affected by it unto death.

[30:59] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[31:00] Cameron McEwen: That's what the cross says.

[31:02] Bob Dobbs: And what does the Gnostic say?

[31:04] Bob Dobbs: That he wasn't?

[31:05] Cameron McEwen: The Gnostic says,

[31:07] Cameron McEwen: there's two,

[31:07] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[31:08] Cameron McEwen: there's many varieties of Gnosticism,

[31:10] Cameron McEwen: but the two extremes are that

[31:14] Cameron McEwen: Christ never ceased to be anything but God.

[31:18] Cameron McEwen: Therefore,

[31:18] Cameron McEwen: on the cross,

[31:19] Cameron McEwen: he didn't suffer,

[31:20] Cameron McEwen: he didn't die.

[31:21] Cameron McEwen: He was just there as kind of a joker.

[31:25] Cameron McEwen: And the other one was that the other Gnostic interpretation,

[31:29] Cameron McEwen: the other extreme of

[31:31] Cameron McEwen: Gnosticism, was that

[31:34] Cameron McEwen: Christ fully became man,

[31:36] Cameron McEwen: but he ceased to be God.

[31:38] Cameron McEwen: So on the cross,

[31:40] Cameron McEwen: what happened was that the man,

[31:43] Cameron McEwen: Jesus,

[31:44] Cameron McEwen: died,

[31:45] Cameron McEwen: and that was it.

[31:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[31:48] Bob Dobbs: you said the other extreme is the non-Gnostic.

[31:52] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you were saying?

[31:54] Cameron McEwen: No.

[31:55] Cameron McEwen: The two extremes of Gnosticism are that either Christ never ceased to be anything but God,

[32:02] Cameron McEwen: or he ceased to be God and became man,

[32:06] Cameron McEwen: and on the cross he just died.

[32:09] Cameron McEwen: And that was the end of them.

[32:11] Cameron McEwen: Those are both

[32:12] Cameron McEwen: Gnostic extremes.

[32:14] Bob Dobbs: So what is the non-Gnostic statement?

[32:17] Cameron McEwen: The non-Gnostic statement is that Jesus was the...

[32:24] Cameron McEwen: epiphany of

[32:26] Cameron McEwen: Christ and that he fully died on the cross but in fully dying he was revealing the nature of the Godhead so that's that's mystery talk you

[32:42] Bob Dobbs: gotta work on that one like what is that what you just say right sure but one of the things that happens

[32:52] Cameron McEwen: especially it's happened since maybe 1850 or even 1800,

[32:59] Cameron McEwen: is that people have lost the insight of how complicated religion is.

[33:08] Cameron McEwen: Religion is not just understanding some esoteric theology.

[33:15] Cameron McEwen: When a religion is alive in a culture,

[33:20] Cameron McEwen: The smart people know it and the dumb people know it.

[33:23] Cameron McEwen: The old people know it and the young people know it.

[33:27] Cameron McEwen: The wise people know it and the ignorant know it.

[33:30] Cameron McEwen: So religion has to do,

[33:32] Cameron McEwen: can,

[33:34] Cameron McEwen: or how can I put this?

[33:36] Cameron McEwen: Part of religion has to do with doctrines,

[33:39] Cameron McEwen: but other parts of religion has to do with jokes.

[33:43] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[33:43] Cameron McEwen: So up until recently in Quebec,

[33:47] Cameron McEwen: nearly all swear words.

[33:50] Cameron McEwen: were words that involved the

[33:56] Cameron McEwen: Christian liturgy,

[33:58] Cameron McEwen: right?

[33:59] Cameron McEwen: Tabernacle and words like this.

[34:01] Cameron McEwen: So religion in a society goes from everything,

[34:06] Cameron McEwen: from very difficult to understand theology to jokes and plays and just sort of normal cultural interchange.

[34:19] Cameron McEwen: So we've lost a sense of that.

[34:21] Cameron McEwen: And now we think that religion has to do with some sort of big mystery and all this sort of stuff.

[34:27] Bob Dobbs: And fanatical certainty about it.

[34:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[34:30] Cameron McEwen: that's ridiculous.

[34:32] Cameron McEwen: That's what religion is not.

[34:34] Cameron McEwen: And one of the reasons that most people are not religious anymore is that we simply have lost that sense of the broadness of religion.

[34:49] Bob Dobbs: So we are explaining why they have.

[34:52] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan tried to explain why they did lose it.

[34:57] Bob Dobbs: Or to give ideas,

[35:00] Bob Dobbs: temporary certainties about what,

[35:04] Bob Dobbs: like he used to say,

[35:05] Bob Dobbs: I'm giving people concepts so they can get a grip on reality.

[35:08] Bob Dobbs: So he accepted people getting a sense of certainty or knowing from reading McLuhan.

[35:14] Bob Dobbs: But he himself didn't get stuck there.

[35:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[35:20] Cameron McEwen: but as soon as you start talking about a sense of certainty and stuff,

[35:25] Cameron McEwen: you're getting into a sort of

[35:29] Cameron McEwen: Descartesian vocabulary,

[35:32] Cameron McEwen: and

[35:32] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was fighting against that his whole life.

[35:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[35:36] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[35:38] Cameron McEwen: in the

[35:39] Cameron McEwen: 1930s, when he was reading Maritain,

[35:42] Cameron McEwen: Gilson,

[35:43] Cameron McEwen: and eventually converted,

[35:47] Cameron McEwen: he was...

[35:49] Cameron McEwen: getting away from the idea that religion had anything to do with certainty.

[35:55] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[35:56] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[35:57] Bob Dobbs: do you see anybody else approaching religion the way he did,

[36:03] Bob Dobbs: and the way you just tried to define?

[36:05] Bob Dobbs: Anybody,

[36:06] Bob Dobbs: any contemporaries of him were similar,

[36:10] Bob Dobbs: or was he unique for his era?

[36:14] Cameron McEwen: No,

[36:14] Cameron McEwen: I think...

[36:21] Cameron McEwen: The world is full of people who have great understanding of their faith.

[36:31] Cameron McEwen: Nowadays,

[36:31] Cameron McEwen: they're mostly invisible.

[36:34] Cameron McEwen: But if you go to a church service and you kind of look around,

[36:39] Cameron McEwen: you can,

[36:39] Cameron McEwen: just from the faces of people,

[36:42] Cameron McEwen: you can see the ones that are actually living in a faith,

[36:49] Cameron McEwen: and then others.

[36:50] Cameron McEwen: who are sort of fulfilling some sort of obligation or curiosity or whatever,

[36:57] Cameron McEwen: who are also there.

[36:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[36:59] Cameron McEwen: And then if you visit monasteries and,

[37:02] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[37:03] Cameron McEwen: talk to the abbot and even talk to just,

[37:09] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[37:09] Cameron McEwen: poor monks somewhere,

[37:12] Cameron McEwen: you find out that there are people with great insight.

[37:15] Cameron McEwen: It's just their insight is not...

[37:20] Cameron McEwen: widely available and it's not paid any attention to in the modern world.

[37:25] Cameron McEwen: So I don't think

[37:26] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was unique at all,

[37:28] Cameron McEwen: and I don't think he considered himself unique in the religious sense.

[37:34] Cameron McEwen: What he was trying to do,

[37:35] Cameron McEwen: however,

[37:36] Cameron McEwen: was get people to be able to experience reality.

[37:44] Cameron McEwen: And once you experience reality.

[37:47] Cameron McEwen: you see the place in reality of religion.

[37:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[37:51] Bob Dobbs: and so the artist part of McLuhan,

[37:54] Bob Dobbs: or anybody who gets accepted to be part of the public dialogue,

[38:00] Bob Dobbs: is that he finds a metaphor or expression that people are piqued by.

[38:07] Bob Dobbs: So he took the word media,

[38:09] Bob Dobbs: which was not discussed really much,

[38:12] Bob Dobbs: and he made that into a poem.

[38:14] Bob Dobbs: And that's why he...

[38:16] Bob Dobbs: moved out of being ordinary.

[38:19] Bob Dobbs: And so you could say art and science are people that grab on the archetypes or cliches of the day and somehow take a shot at it with an awareness that other people have,

[38:32] Bob Dobbs: but they have picked the correct word,

[38:35] Bob Dobbs: the word with the most juice,

[38:37] Bob Dobbs: le mot juste,

[38:37] Bob Dobbs: the word with the,

[38:39] Bob Dobbs: or the movie or the scenario with the most perfect pitch so to speak.

[38:43] Bob Dobbs: That's the resonance with your time.

[38:46] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[38:46] Cameron McEwen: The word that makes the market.

[38:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[38:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[38:50] Cameron McEwen: No,

[38:50] Cameron McEwen: what you just said is very,

[38:51] Cameron McEwen: very important.

[38:53] Cameron McEwen: So,

[38:54] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[38:55] Cameron McEwen: in the birth of chemistry,

[39:00] Cameron McEwen: a lot of pre-chemical,

[39:02] Cameron McEwen: that is to say alchemical findings or mineralogical findings were used.

[39:12] Cameron McEwen: So,

[39:13] Cameron McEwen: for example.

[39:15] Cameron McEwen: Gold is an element,

[39:16] Cameron McEwen: silver is an element,

[39:17] Cameron McEwen: iron is an element,

[39:18] Cameron McEwen: sulfur is an element.

[39:20] Cameron McEwen: All these things were known for thousands of years.

[39:24] Cameron McEwen: So what chemistry did was take these things that had been known forever,

[39:32] Cameron McEwen: copper,

[39:32] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[39:34] Cameron McEwen: and showed these old things in a new context.

[39:40] Cameron McEwen: And what you were just saying about McLuhan was that...

[39:43] Cameron McEwen: He began to understand in the

[39:46] Cameron McEwen: 1950s that he might be able to use the term media as mass media was being spoken about at the time with the sort of the coming in of especially of television.

[40:04] Cameron McEwen: People were beginning to wonder in their sort of everyday lives and in journalism.

[40:11] Cameron McEwen: What the heck is going on with media?

[40:13] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan thought,

[40:15] Cameron McEwen: well,

[40:15] Cameron McEwen: maybe I can use...

[40:18] Cameron McEwen: people's dawning awareness of media to get them to focus on how something larger than them can get inside them and shape their world.

[40:33] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[40:35] Bob Dobbs: and then he,

[40:38] Bob Dobbs: the,

[40:39] Bob Dobbs: okay let's say in a slower society,

[40:41] Bob Dobbs: the Gutenberg era,

[40:44] Bob Dobbs: you become a temporary and environment.

[40:46] Bob Dobbs: through a novel,

[40:48] Bob Dobbs: through a scientific experiment.

[40:50] Bob Dobbs: But what's interesting about today is that everybody or the information society is looking for someone to have that that you can maybe put out there for a day or two.

[41:04] Bob Dobbs: So you get the Warhol thing of everybody gets attention for 15 minutes.

[41:10] Bob Dobbs: That was a new dilemma for being the traditional role.

[41:15] Bob Dobbs: in Gutenberg Man of getting attention because you found out the right word with the most juice.

[41:21] Bob Dobbs: Now it's what would you say gets attention or is it impossible to project yourself,

[41:29] Bob Dobbs: your metaphor over the civilization today,

[41:32] Bob Dobbs: over the Global Membrane and have any impact like McLuhan did or Nietzsche,

[41:40] Bob Dobbs: people before.

[41:42] Bob Dobbs: See the dilemma?

[41:44] Bob Dobbs: What is the way to do it today?

[41:47] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[41:47] Cameron McEwen: you see,

[41:47] Cameron McEwen: first,

[41:49] Cameron McEwen: it was McLuhan that gave Warhol the idea about how you manufacture fame.

[41:57] Cameron McEwen: So the idea that fame can be manufactured meant that anybody could do it,

[42:05] Cameron McEwen: and eventually everybody would do it.

[42:08] Cameron McEwen: And so that's sort of what's going on.

[42:11] Cameron McEwen: So then

[42:12] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan thought,

[42:13] Cameron McEwen: well,

[42:13] Cameron McEwen: if that's...

[42:15] Cameron McEwen: If you can manufacture fame,

[42:17] Cameron McEwen: maybe what I can do is I can become famous,

[42:20] Cameron McEwen: and when I'm famous,

[42:23] Cameron McEwen: I can show how stupid it is.

[42:26] Cameron McEwen: So

[42:28] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan had a lot of routines that people like Andy Kaufman later did to show the same thing.

[42:37] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[42:38] Cameron McEwen: So when

[42:40] Cameron McEwen: Andy Kaufman got up on stage and said,

[42:42] Cameron McEwen: well,

[42:43] Cameron McEwen: now I'm going to read...

[42:44] Cameron McEwen: the great Gatsby,

[42:45] Cameron McEwen: right?

[42:46] Cameron McEwen: And he would go on and on and on.

[42:49] Cameron McEwen: He was making fun of the process in which he was participating and in which the audience was participating.

[42:58] Cameron McEwen: So he was saying to them,

[42:59] Cameron McEwen: what are you doing sitting here listening to some moron who's up on a stage when the only thing that makes us meaningful is the stage and you people sitting in the audience.

[43:12] Cameron McEwen: There's nothing else.

[43:14] Cameron McEwen: right right so McLuhan did the same thing McLuhan read in some of his lectures he went on and on and on with quotations and this was

[43:27] Cameron McEwen: 10 or 15 years ahead of andy Kaufman but nobody seems to have realized that McLuhan invented this routine that's right he invented a lot of comedy routines that's right now that's really important uh

[43:42] Bob Dobbs: And I thought I was the only one who saw this.

[43:44] Bob Dobbs: I did see someone say,

[43:46] Bob Dobbs: it might have even been Dan Aykroyd,

[43:49] Bob Dobbs: said that the funniest

[43:51] Bob Dobbs: Canadian was Marshall McLuhan.

[43:53] Bob Dobbs: And a lot of people wouldn't understand why they would consider McLuhan funny,

[43:57] Bob Dobbs: but they didn't see much of McLuhan.

[44:00] Bob Dobbs: They didn't see him in different situations.

[44:01] Bob Dobbs: But you and I,

[44:02] Bob Dobbs: we looked at all kinds of interviews.

[44:03] Bob Dobbs: We've seen him be anti-virus to all kinds of things.

[44:06] Bob Dobbs: He could be funny.

[44:07] Bob Dobbs: He even said,

[44:08] Bob Dobbs: my style is the style of Pat Paulson.

[44:11] Bob Dobbs: who was a comedian who ran for president in an absurd way.

[44:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[44:15] Bob Dobbs: it's really important that

[44:17] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan actually started,

[44:20] Bob Dobbs: you could say,

[44:21] Bob Dobbs: a cool style of comedy.

[44:24] Bob Dobbs: He was,

[44:25] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[44:25] Bob Dobbs: better or more innovative than Lenny Bruce,

[44:29] Bob Dobbs: Mort Sahl,

[44:31] Bob Dobbs: and any other comedian,

[44:32] Bob Dobbs: Steve Martin.

[44:33] Bob Dobbs: He was the first funny,

[44:36] Bob Dobbs: subtle,

[44:36] Bob Dobbs: funny guy in public.

[44:39] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[44:40] Bob Dobbs: And that may mean that he is still funnier than everybody.

[44:46] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[44:46] Cameron McEwen: I think there's something to what you're saying.

[44:49] Cameron McEwen: But at the same time,

[44:51] Cameron McEwen: it needs to be realized that most of the time when he was being famous,

[44:59] Cameron McEwen: he wasn't being famous in the mode of

[45:03] Cameron McEwen: Mort Sahl and people like that and Lenny Bruce.

[45:05] Cameron McEwen: He was being famous in the mode of Barbara Walters.

[45:11] Cameron McEwen: He was being famous in the mode of,

[45:14] Cameron McEwen: now I'm being very serious talking about the medium and the message and stuff,

[45:19] Cameron McEwen: but it was a joke.

[45:21] Cameron McEwen: Barbara Walters was the funny one,

[45:23] Cameron McEwen: not Lenny Bruce.

[45:24] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[45:25] Bob Dobbs: So,

[45:25] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[45:26] Bob Dobbs: he would often get whoever was talking to him quite impressed with the insights and then pull the rug out with some silly comment or what appeared to be silly or definitely the guy or woman wasn't ready for this shift he made,

[45:42] Bob Dobbs: and that was him being comical.

[45:45] Cameron McEwen: Especially when he was talking to Tom Snyder.

[45:49] Bob Dobbs: Those are good ones.

[45:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[45:52] Bob Dobbs: well,

[45:52] Bob Dobbs: there's so many of them.

[45:54] Bob Dobbs: You did it with everybody.

[45:55] Bob Dobbs: There's this ridiculous,

[45:58] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how available it is,

[45:59] Bob Dobbs: but I saw it maybe once at TV Ontario in Toronto.

[46:02] Bob Dobbs: They had a good archive of him being interviewed up at York,

[46:06] Bob Dobbs: and he had a silly wig on the top of his head.

[46:11] Bob Dobbs: And I found out later that he,

[46:15] Bob Dobbs: that Matie Molinaro,

[46:17] Bob Dobbs: had just become his agent.

[46:18] Bob Dobbs: in 68,

[46:19] Bob Dobbs: 69,

[46:20] Bob Dobbs: I guess when he got back from Fordham.

[46:21] Bob Dobbs: And so she was telling him he's got to do something with his image.

[46:26] Bob Dobbs: She probably said,

[46:27] Bob Dobbs: put a wig on.

[46:28] Bob Dobbs: So he made it painfully obvious and stupid the way he was wearing his wig.

[46:36] Bob Dobbs: You ever see that,

[46:37] Bob Dobbs: an image like that?

[46:38] Bob Dobbs: He didn't do it too much.

[46:40] Bob Dobbs: It's about 1970.

[46:43] Cameron McEwen: At just that time,

[46:44] Cameron McEwen: he must have had a huge scar.

[46:47] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[46:47] Cameron McEwen: that's a good point.

[46:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[46:50] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[46:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[46:51] Cameron McEwen: Probably

[46:52] Cameron McEwen: Corinne also had said,

[46:55] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[46:55] Cameron McEwen: that's it's not a good look.

[46:56] Cameron McEwen: It looks like somebody has just taken an axe to you,

[47:01] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[47:02] Cameron McEwen: either wear a hat or wear this wig or something.

[47:05] Cameron McEwen: But,

[47:06] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[47:07] Cameron McEwen: I guess what

[47:09] Cameron McEwen: Marshall did was say,

[47:10] Cameron McEwen: OK,

[47:11] Cameron McEwen: if these girls are going to make me hide my scar,

[47:15] Cameron McEwen: at least I can.

[47:17] Cameron McEwen: sort of make a joke out of it.

[47:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[47:19] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[47:20] Bob Dobbs: And it illustrates the act of putting on and how certain acts of putting on are so inappropriate and out of sync with the medium that you're in.

[47:32] Cameron McEwen: What you just said is a very good example of him taking the word that makes the market and then sort of archetypalizing it.

[47:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[47:42] Cameron McEwen: So when he puts on,

[47:45] Cameron McEwen: which he could do with a wig,

[47:47] Cameron McEwen: but he could also do by acting in a certain way as a comedian,

[47:52] Cameron McEwen: let's say.

[47:56] Cameron McEwen: What he was doing was putting on a world.

[48:00] Cameron McEwen: So this reverts back to what we were saying earlier about the distinctive act of human being is to put on a world,

[48:10] Cameron McEwen: to be creative in a way that other beings are not.

[48:17] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan was doing was by putting on things in an obvious way,

[48:23] Cameron McEwen: he was trying to point out how putting on is our distinctive feature.

[48:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[48:28] Bob Dobbs: our creativity,

[48:29] Bob Dobbs: that it is our talent or blessing.

[48:33] Cameron McEwen: But also our blindness,

[48:35] Cameron McEwen: because our putting on is always limited.

[48:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[48:38] Bob Dobbs: see,

[48:39] Bob Dobbs: this is what you would wait for in classes,

[48:42] Bob Dobbs: tape recordings of them in class or something,

[48:44] Bob Dobbs: When the...

[48:46] Bob Dobbs: We'll say the aware McLuhan would suddenly speak through to the students something he would say.

[48:51] Bob Dobbs: He's there being very precise for a while,

[48:54] Bob Dobbs: and then he says something and he says,

[48:56] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[48:56] Bob Dobbs: I might have got that backwards,

[48:57] Bob Dobbs: and then just moves on.

[48:58] Bob Dobbs: He gets very lazy for a second about what he said.

[49:03] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I mean?

[49:03] Bob Dobbs: Sure.

[49:04] Bob Dobbs: Where he's being very precise otherwise and making sure you're watching what you're saying and expressing.

[49:10] Bob Dobbs: So that's what was fun about researching McLuhan.

[49:14] Bob Dobbs: was this comedic element that you always found in any recordings and in his writings.

[49:21] Bob Dobbs: That was the key.

[49:23] Bob Dobbs: And that's why I love going to the Monday night seminars,

[49:25] Bob Dobbs: because it would happen every night with a guest or something,

[49:30] Bob Dobbs: or something funny.

[49:33] Bob Dobbs: Something,

[49:35] Bob Dobbs: you could say,

[49:36] Bob Dobbs: immature,

[49:38] Bob Dobbs: silly,

[49:39] Bob Dobbs: something no serious professor would do.

[49:42] Bob Dobbs: he would

[49:43] Bob Dobbs: What do you call that?

[49:44] Bob Dobbs: He'd drop his mask of being an adult or something and be just being.

[49:50] Bob Dobbs: He'd be a being who's wondering what it is,

[49:54] Bob Dobbs: regardless of categories that you're exploring.

[49:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[49:58] Cameron McEwen: there's actually a long tradition of this.

[50:00] Cameron McEwen: It could probably be traced back at least to Aristophanes.

[50:06] Cameron McEwen: But

[50:07] Cameron McEwen: Kierkegaard, for example,

[50:09] Cameron McEwen: in the 19th century,

[50:11] Cameron McEwen: did studies of this,

[50:12] Cameron McEwen: and he called it dropping the guitar,

[50:15] Cameron McEwen: which I think is a great phrase.

[50:19] Bob Dobbs: Kierkegaard said this.

[50:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[50:22] Bob Dobbs: so imagine somebody very intensely doing a Spanish tune with a classical guitar,

[50:36] Cameron McEwen: and suddenly they drop it,

[50:37] Bob Dobbs: right?

[50:41] Bob Dobbs: You don't see that often.

[50:42] Cameron McEwen: That's a great way to attempt to communicate.

[50:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[50:44] Bob Dobbs: you don't see that.

[50:45] Bob Dobbs: Nobody drops playing guitar,

[50:47] Bob Dobbs: drops their guitar.

[50:48] Bob Dobbs: I've never seen that.

[50:50] Cameron McEwen: Nice.

[50:50] Bob Dobbs: I've seen a drummer lose a stick or something,

[50:53] Bob Dobbs: but,

[50:54] Bob Dobbs: and now Patti Smith had to accept the

[51:00] Bob Dobbs: Nobel Prize for Literature on behalf of Dylan.

[51:04] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if you know this story.

[51:06] Bob Dobbs: It's like five,

[51:07] Bob Dobbs: seven,

[51:07] Bob Dobbs: eight years ago.

[51:08] Bob Dobbs: You can look it up.

[51:09] Bob Dobbs: And she screwed up her lecture.

[51:14] Bob Dobbs: She was there in front of these,

[51:16] Bob Dobbs: the formality of the occasion threw her off.

[51:18] Bob Dobbs: because she's used to hanging out in the village and being casual.

[51:22] Bob Dobbs: So she got stiff and uncomfortable,

[51:24] Bob Dobbs: and she forgot something.

[51:26] Bob Dobbs: I can't remember if she was doing a song by him or lyrics,

[51:29] Bob Dobbs: but she forgot.

[51:29] Bob Dobbs: And she got very embarrassed because she couldn't regain her composure.

[51:34] Bob Dobbs: And I can't remember if she did,

[51:36] Bob Dobbs: but she felt really bad about it after and wrote articles about how embarrassed he was and apologized for it.

[51:45] Bob Dobbs: I think she missed.

[51:47] Bob Dobbs: The McLuhan angle.

[51:49] Bob Dobbs: She should have accepted.

[51:51] Bob Dobbs: She should have done something with it.

[51:53] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[51:54] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[51:56] Bob Dobbs: not get frightened.

[51:57] Bob Dobbs: But,

[51:58] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[51:58] Bob Dobbs: if people get like that,

[52:00] Bob Dobbs: if you get frightened,

[52:01] Bob Dobbs: it's hard to stop someone from going through it.

[52:04] Bob Dobbs: But you might want to read that.

[52:05] Bob Dobbs: That's a pretty good example of a formal situation where people don't want to blow it.

[52:11] Cameron McEwen: And it's almost when they therefore blow it.

[52:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[52:16] Bob Dobbs: and that's probably the tension in the Oscars.

[52:21] Bob Dobbs: I don't watch the Oscars anymore.

[52:22] Bob Dobbs: People don't watch it.

[52:23] Bob Dobbs: It's lost its ability to be tense,

[52:25] Bob Dobbs: but it used to be tense about how people would accept their winning,

[52:31] Bob Dobbs: how others that came beyond them,

[52:32] Bob Dobbs: how they accepted losing.

[52:34] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[52:36] Bob Dobbs: This surveillance of raw human communication going on,

[52:40] Bob Dobbs: you could say,

[52:42] Bob Dobbs: based on a...

[52:45] Bob Dobbs: fraudulent seriousness that must be respected,

[52:49] Bob Dobbs: supposedly.

[52:51] Bob Dobbs: And so you'll see people attempt different ways to break through the seriousness.

[52:56] Bob Dobbs: And sometimes,

[52:57] Bob Dobbs: remember

[52:58] Bob Dobbs: Jack Vance,

[52:59] Bob Dobbs: I think that's his name,

[53:00] Bob Dobbs: he got on there and he did one-arm push-ups.

[53:05] Bob Dobbs: He fell on the floor and just started doing one-arm.

[53:09] Cameron McEwen: You remember that?

[53:09] Cameron McEwen: I never paid any attention to that stuff.

[53:12] Cameron McEwen: This is an area that I know nothing about.

[53:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[53:15] Bob Dobbs: now you're talking seriously.

[53:16] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[53:17] Bob Dobbs: this is not my field to watch the Oscars.

[53:22] Bob Dobbs: People say that often.

[53:23] Bob Dobbs: This is not my area of expertise.

[53:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[53:28] Bob Dobbs: so the other one was,

[53:29] Bob Dobbs: another way was Brando sending a female

[53:33] Bob Dobbs: Native American.

[53:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[53:35] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[53:36] Cameron McEwen: I do remember that.

[53:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[53:38] Bob Dobbs: So

[53:39] Bob Dobbs: I always imagined what...

[53:41] Bob Dobbs: What would I do in that situation?

[53:43] Bob Dobbs: How could I be original?

[53:44] Bob Dobbs: And

[53:45] Bob Dobbs: I was telling somebody the other day that if I had that kind of situation where

[53:50] Bob Dobbs: I had gotten some kind of notice and I had to thank everybody,

[53:57] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[53:58] Bob Dobbs: first of all,

[53:59] Bob Dobbs: I'd say so-and-so from about 55 years ago who pissed me off one day.

[54:04] Bob Dobbs: I would single him out and tell him my rebuttal to what he had done.

[54:09] Bob Dobbs: And I'd single out a bunch of people for about 15 minutes that I had grievances or whatever about them.

[54:16] Bob Dobbs: And they wouldn't even be watching probably.

[54:20] Bob Dobbs: And then they would get reports,

[54:22] Bob Dobbs: Bob won this thing and he brought up you.

[54:27] Bob Dobbs: In other words,

[54:27] Bob Dobbs: I would like to draw attention to those people who stayed hidden in the crowd and never wanted to stand out.

[54:35] Bob Dobbs: But you make them an issue.

[54:37] Bob Dobbs: That strikes me as quite entertaining.

[54:42] Cameron McEwen: But notice it's doubled because you're trying to do something that makes you stand out because other people don't do this.

[54:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[54:53] Cameron McEwen: And your method of doing it,

[54:55] Cameron McEwen: your method of standing out is to make other people stand out.

[54:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[54:59] Bob Dobbs: Totally inappropriate.

[55:01] Bob Dobbs: It might work.

[55:03] Bob Dobbs: So

[55:04] Bob Dobbs: I hope no one hears this.

[55:05] Bob Dobbs: I don't want this to get out before I do it.

[55:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[55:09] Cameron McEwen: Excuse me.

[55:10] Cameron McEwen: Before I forget,

[55:10] Cameron McEwen: I want to point out that you brought up Dan Aykroyd,

[55:16] Cameron McEwen: who was a Canadian.

[55:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[55:18] Cameron McEwen: So the part of getting.

[55:21] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan,

[55:23] Cameron McEwen: at least at the cultural level,

[55:26] Cameron McEwen: may have to do with being Canadian.

[55:29] Cameron McEwen: There's a kind of twist to the experience of life that

[55:39] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan had and I think most Canadians have.

[55:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[55:44] Bob Dobbs: it is a phenomenon to be Canadian.

[55:48] Bob Dobbs: There is the image that Canadians used to have,

[55:50] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what they have now.

[55:54] Bob Dobbs: And Marshall McLuhan was,

[55:55] Bob Dobbs: what did he say?

[55:56] Bob Dobbs: He loved being a Canadian because the heat was off him,

[55:59] Bob Dobbs: and he could watch the noisemakers,

[56:02] Bob Dobbs: America,

[56:03] Bob Dobbs: and be free from being stuck in the mix of them and competing with them.

[56:09] Bob Dobbs: So he felt happy to be on the sidelines.

[56:12] Bob Dobbs: And he even said on the album,

[56:15] Bob Dobbs: I think,

[56:16] Bob Dobbs: the medium is a massage,

[56:18] Bob Dobbs: Someone asked him about the phrase,

[56:19] Bob Dobbs: the medium message.

[56:20] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[56:20] Bob Dobbs: well,

[56:21] Bob Dobbs: it's an aside.

[56:22] Bob Dobbs: Now look at that,

[56:23] Bob Dobbs: an aside.

[56:24] Bob Dobbs: It's like you're watching America,

[56:27] Bob Dobbs: and you write a few books almost phatically,

[56:31] Bob Dobbs: and they're just asides.

[56:33] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[56:35] Bob Dobbs: They're just words to somebody on the side of no great moment,

[56:41] Bob Dobbs: but they're just addressed to you,

[56:44] Bob Dobbs: which is interesting.

[56:45] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[56:46] Cameron McEwen: So,

[56:46] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[56:47] Cameron McEwen: One of the distinctive differences,

[56:50] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[56:50] Cameron McEwen: between

[56:52] Cameron McEwen: Canadians and Americans,

[56:54] Cameron McEwen: and by the way,

[56:55] Cameron McEwen: Canadians and Americans aren't defined by the

[56:57] Cameron McEwen: 49th parallel.

[56:59] Cameron McEwen: So there's people in

[57:00] Cameron McEwen: Minnesota, for example,

[57:02] Cameron McEwen: that are very Canadian,

[57:04] Cameron McEwen: and there's people in Toronto that are very American.

[57:07] Cameron McEwen: So we're using the term Canadian and American pretty loosely.

[57:12] Cameron McEwen: But it's native to Canadians to self-

[57:17] Cameron McEwen: puncture.

[57:19] Cameron McEwen: Canadians take themselves less seriously than Americans do.

[57:24] Cameron McEwen: So when Americans think of themselves as number one in the world or in the planetary system or whatever,

[57:34] Cameron McEwen: generally they are serious about it.

[57:38] Cameron McEwen: They deeply believe that.

[57:40] Cameron McEwen: But for a Canadian,

[57:42] Cameron McEwen: the whole idea of being number one is actually funny.

[57:46] Cameron McEwen: A Canadian cannot hear,

[57:49] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[57:50] Cameron McEwen: I'm number one or we're number one or anything like that without laughing.

[57:54] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[57:54] Cameron McEwen: it's just comedic.

[57:57] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[57:58] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[57:58] Bob Dobbs: so then that becomes complicated because

[58:05] Bob Dobbs: Canadians feel superior because they're not trying to be number one.

[58:09] Bob Dobbs: That's one way they have a cliche attitude.

[58:13] Bob Dobbs: Other times means they're always...

[58:15] Bob Dobbs: second and they blow it.

[58:17] Bob Dobbs: They can't take the heat of being in the competition to be number one,

[58:22] Bob Dobbs: whatever that situation is.

[58:25] Cameron McEwen: There's certainly aspects of those built in there,

[58:30] Cameron McEwen: no question.

[58:33] Bob Dobbs: We're just talking about a situation of communication,

[58:35] Bob Dobbs: being a comedian and we're talking about the service and disservice of the situation.

[58:42] Cameron McEwen: Which gets back to where we started.

[58:45] Bob Dobbs: started because taking in the world is always a service disservice yep and the i think it was really great what we said last 10-15 minutes about McLuhan as a comedian that is not discussed very much is it i don't know anybody who's talked about the way we just did McLuhan's

[59:04] Bob Dobbs: comedy um yeah no i don't i'm not aware of that that was a good one we made some uh break we were number one there for that

[59:12] Cameron McEwen: 10 minutes Yeah.

[59:15] Bob Dobbs: I know what I've got there.

[59:17] Bob Dobbs: So back to these quotes then.

[59:21] Bob Dobbs: The second quote from

[59:22] Bob Dobbs: War and Peace

[59:23] Bob Dobbs: in the Global Village.

[59:24] Bob Dobbs: These media and dot,

[59:26] Bob Dobbs: dot,

[59:26] Bob Dobbs: dot space satellites,

[59:28] Bob Dobbs: dot,

[59:28] Bob Dobbs: dot,

[59:28] Bob Dobbs: dot,

[59:29] Bob Dobbs: alter our feelings and sensibilities,

[59:31] Bob Dobbs: especially when they are not attended to.

[59:34] Bob Dobbs: There it is.

[59:35] Bob Dobbs: Everything should be attended to,

[59:37] Bob Dobbs: and it's hard to do that.

[59:39] Bob Dobbs: This is a principle that applies to all technologies.

[59:42] Bob Dobbs: And words and situations and human beings you encounter.

[59:48] Bob Dobbs: Whatever.

[59:49] Bob Dobbs: It applies to all people,

[59:50] Bob Dobbs: whatever.

[59:51] Bob Dobbs: Explaining the pathos and impercipience of historical man.

[59:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[59:57] Bob Dobbs: historical man is the Gutenberg man.

[59:59] Bob Dobbs: As he thinks,

[1:00:01] Bob Dobbs: there's past,

[1:00:01] Bob Dobbs: present,

[1:00:02] Bob Dobbs: and future,

[1:00:02] Bob Dobbs: maybe.

[1:00:03] Bob Dobbs: Think that's what he's getting at?

[1:00:06] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:00:12] Cameron McEwen: I think at its deepest,

[1:00:15] Cameron McEwen: what he's saying is that human beings exist.

[1:00:23] Cameron McEwen: in this vertical process of experience or vertical process of perception.

[1:00:38] Bob Dobbs: What's that?

[1:00:39] Bob Dobbs: Why do you say vertical?

[1:00:40] Bob Dobbs: Because there's vertical symbolism.

[1:00:43] Cameron McEwen: Because the vertical as opposed to the horizontal.

[1:00:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:00:50] Bob Dobbs: but there's the way McLuhan uses it.

[1:00:51] Bob Dobbs: How are you using it when you say vertical?

[1:00:57] Cameron McEwen: When he says,

[1:01:00] Cameron McEwen: when he talks about all at onceness or simultaneity,

[1:01:06] Cameron McEwen: what he's saying is that the genesis of perception is not horizontal or is not diachronic or is not chronological.

[1:01:17] Cameron McEwen: The genesis of...

[1:01:20] Cameron McEwen: experience is something that has always already happened.

[1:01:25] Cameron McEwen: And so historical man is the man or the human being who exists in an environment of pathos and impercipience.

[1:01:40] Cameron McEwen: That can't be avoided.

[1:01:42] Cameron McEwen: That's pathos and impercipience is,

[1:01:46] Cameron McEwen: so to say,

[1:01:47] Cameron McEwen: bias.

[1:01:49] Cameron McEwen: Human beings are biased,

[1:01:52] Cameron McEwen: and by attending to their bias,

[1:01:56] Cameron McEwen: they cannot get out of bias.

[1:01:59] Cameron McEwen: All they can do is try to find a better bias,

[1:02:03] Cameron McEwen: or a bias that explains,

[1:02:05] Cameron McEwen: or that at least investigates,

[1:02:07] Cameron McEwen: biases.

[1:02:09] Cameron McEwen: So historical man is a man that is biased,

[1:02:16] Cameron McEwen: and what...

[1:02:17] Cameron McEwen: media and satellites do is multi-level.

[1:02:23] Cameron McEwen: On the first level,

[1:02:25] Cameron McEwen: they alter our feelings and sensibilities.

[1:02:27] Cameron McEwen: But on a second level,

[1:02:29] Cameron McEwen: they suggest a way of investigating our feelings and sensibilities by realizing the distance between us and space satellites,

[1:02:42] Cameron McEwen: let's say.

[1:02:44] Cameron McEwen: That between is the middle.

[1:02:46] Cameron McEwen: which is the medium.

[1:02:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:02:49] Bob Dobbs: now,

[1:02:51] Bob Dobbs: two points.

[1:02:54] Bob Dobbs: I was going to ask you,

[1:02:55] Bob Dobbs: I was going to say one word,

[1:02:55] Bob Dobbs: and remember I said that word,

[1:02:57] Bob Dobbs: and I forgot it.

[1:02:57] Bob Dobbs: But anyways,

[1:02:59] Bob Dobbs: vertical,

[1:03:00] Bob Dobbs: you know how McLuhan in

[1:03:02] Bob Dobbs: Menippean satire poetry and T.S.

[1:03:05] Bob Dobbs: Eliot,

[1:03:06] Bob Dobbs: you know that essay where he talks about the vertical man and horizontal man?

[1:03:12] Bob Dobbs: Vertical man in that tradition is literate and...

[1:03:16] Bob Dobbs: and dialectic or chronological.

[1:03:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:03:25] Cameron McEwen: I'm using the term vertical exactly not in that sense.

[1:03:32] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan often talked about verticality and horizontality as two opposed things which shouldn't be opposed.

[1:03:43] Cameron McEwen: So he tried to...

[1:03:45] Cameron McEwen: show that

[1:03:46] Cameron McEwen: Lewis, let's say,

[1:03:48] Cameron McEwen: was a vertical guy,

[1:03:50] Cameron McEwen: but he might have been better to have had more sort of horizontality or time to him.

[1:04:01] Cameron McEwen: And with

[1:04:02] Cameron McEwen: Elliott, he said he was too horizontal and might have been better to have had more verticality like Lewis.

[1:04:11] Cameron McEwen: So he...

[1:04:13] Cameron McEwen: In that lecture,

[1:04:14] Cameron McEwen: I think it was 1954,

[1:04:18] Cameron McEwen: he criticized both the horizontal and the vertical when they were taken as isolated from the other one.

[1:04:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:04:29] Bob Dobbs: now,

[1:04:34] Bob Dobbs: so if I ever see you mentioning vertical and horizontal man,

[1:04:37] Bob Dobbs: you're not quoting that article on Eliot and Menippean poetry.

[1:04:41] Bob Dobbs: You're not using that way.

[1:04:42] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:04:42] Cameron McEwen: I could be.

[1:04:43] Cameron McEwen: Sometimes I could be and sometimes not.

[1:04:46] Cameron McEwen: It all depends on the context.

[1:04:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:04:49] Bob Dobbs: would you indicate which you were using?

[1:04:52] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:04:52] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:04:52] Cameron McEwen: of course.

[1:04:53] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:04:53] Cameron McEwen: Just like I did now,

[1:04:54] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:04:54] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:04:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:04:55] Bob Dobbs: the other point was when I first read Innis and I'd be thinking about the title of his book,

[1:05:01] Bob Dobbs: The Bias of Communication,

[1:05:03] Bob Dobbs: I would apply it to normal psychological.

[1:05:08] Bob Dobbs: Bias.

[1:05:09] Bob Dobbs: What people say,

[1:05:09] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:05:09] Bob Dobbs: you're biased and all this stuff.

[1:05:11] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:05:11] Bob Dobbs: in a mundane level,

[1:05:14] Bob Dobbs: he's saying the bias of communication.

[1:05:16] Bob Dobbs: He never mentioned that level,

[1:05:19] Bob Dobbs: did he?

[1:05:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:05:22] Cameron McEwen: who's he?

[1:05:23] Bob Dobbs: Innis.

[1:05:26] Bob Dobbs: He was always talking on a,

[1:05:27] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what you call it,

[1:05:30] Bob Dobbs: intellectual level,

[1:05:31] Bob Dobbs: a cultural level,

[1:05:33] Bob Dobbs: the bias of communication,

[1:05:35] Bob Dobbs: not psychologically,

[1:05:37] Bob Dobbs: say.

[1:05:38] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:05:39] Cameron McEwen: I think one of the things that McLuhan learned from Innis was that the individuality.

[1:05:50] Cameron McEwen: of human beings is very strongly impacted by their society and by their culture.

[1:05:59] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:06:01] Cameron McEwen: Innis was not only wrong in investigating individual human beings in terms of their technologies.

[1:06:12] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan found that very enlightening.

[1:06:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:06:16] Bob Dobbs: so what level do you mean that Innis was wrong?

[1:06:22] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:06:23] Cameron McEwen: you were the one that said

[1:06:25] Cameron McEwen: Innis didn't get to this psychological level,

[1:06:29] Cameron McEwen: and I was saying that all depends on how you look at it.

[1:06:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:06:33] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:06:33] Bob Dobbs: I didn't mean that he didn't get to it.

[1:06:35] Bob Dobbs: He didn't talk that level,

[1:06:37] Bob Dobbs: but an average literate person might think,

[1:06:42] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:06:42] Bob Dobbs: this is a self-help book about the bias of communication.

[1:06:45] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:06:47] Bob Dobbs: I'm biased,

[1:06:48] Bob Dobbs: and I would call that a psychological level.

[1:06:51] Bob Dobbs: He certainly...

[1:06:52] Bob Dobbs: didn't do that.

[1:06:54] Bob Dobbs: And he actually came up with a very original way to look,

[1:06:56] Bob Dobbs: to apply that phrase,

[1:06:58] Bob Dobbs: the bias of communication.

[1:07:00] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely,

[1:07:00] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[1:07:01] Cameron McEwen: But what you're saying may tie in with

[1:07:06] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan critique of Innis,

[1:07:09] Cameron McEwen: and that because Innis wasn't an expert in art,

[1:07:15] Cameron McEwen: didn't know much about mythology,

[1:07:18] Cameron McEwen: as Innis himself admitted in a letter to McLuhan.

[1:07:25] Cameron McEwen: Innis was not able to talk very much about the genesis of bias.

[1:07:32] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan's thought that that was the key to investigating bias.

[1:07:37] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan idea was by getting to the genesis of bias.

[1:07:44] Cameron McEwen: And with

[1:07:46] Cameron McEwen: Innis, when he got...

[1:07:50] Cameron McEwen: in this what might be called the metaphysics of bias,

[1:07:54] Cameron McEwen: he became very pessimistic and he talked about the necessity of solipsism because he thought that whatever investigation you do of bias is always already biased and

[1:08:11] Cameron McEwen: you can never get to the end of that.

[1:08:13] Cameron McEwen: So because bias can never really be investigated because it's always your investigation is always

[1:08:20] Cameron McEwen: limited by bias,

[1:08:22] Cameron McEwen: what that means is that at the basis of civilization is a kind of emptiness,

[1:08:31] Cameron McEwen: a solipsism that eats itself.

[1:08:34] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:08:35] Cameron McEwen: Innis was quite a pessimistic guy at the end of his life.

[1:08:40] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:08:41] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:08:44] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan would flip back from the psychological to the sociological.

[1:08:49] Bob Dobbs: In a state on the sociological,

[1:08:51] Bob Dobbs: say,

[1:08:51] Bob Dobbs: cultural level.

[1:08:53] Bob Dobbs: So one night,

[1:08:54] Bob Dobbs: so that's part of McLuhan's comedy,

[1:08:57] Bob Dobbs: going from psychological to sociological.

[1:09:00] Bob Dobbs: So one night,

[1:09:01] Bob Dobbs: and obviously a new person,

[1:09:02] Bob Dobbs: a woman was sitting there,

[1:09:04] Bob Dobbs: and I was sitting beside her,

[1:09:05] Bob Dobbs: and at the end of it,

[1:09:07] Bob Dobbs: she felt,

[1:09:08] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:09:08] Bob Dobbs: she was just probably amazed at what was going on and didn't,

[1:09:11] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what she understood,

[1:09:12] Bob Dobbs: but she said,

[1:09:15] Bob Dobbs: I see McLuhan as a great help psychologically for me.

[1:09:19] Bob Dobbs: In other words,

[1:09:19] Bob Dobbs: I saw that she was hearing it on the psychological level.

[1:09:22] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[1:09:22] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:09:23] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:09:23] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:09:23] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[1:09:24] Bob Dobbs: now,

[1:09:24] Bob Dobbs: I put this on,

[1:09:25] Bob Dobbs: but I wanted her to hear this view because it did not occur to her,

[1:09:29] Bob Dobbs: I'm sure.

[1:09:30] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[1:09:30] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:09:31] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:09:31] Bob Dobbs: there's no psychology of McLuhan.

[1:09:33] Bob Dobbs: He saw them sociological,

[1:09:34] Bob Dobbs: cultural,

[1:09:35] Bob Dobbs: vast processes over spans of time and experience.

[1:09:40] Bob Dobbs: And she didn't know what to say to that.

[1:09:42] Bob Dobbs: And I knew she had not known that's what McLuhan was doing because people bring their personal...

[1:09:49] Bob Dobbs: If they're not thinking big,

[1:09:51] Bob Dobbs: it's not a habit of them to think big,

[1:09:53] Bob Dobbs: so to speak,

[1:09:56] Bob Dobbs: they're thinking little.

[1:09:57] Bob Dobbs: And so they thought McLuhan was offering advice on a little way,

[1:10:01] Bob Dobbs: on the little level.

[1:10:02] Bob Dobbs: And of course they would find that,

[1:10:03] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:10:03] Bob Dobbs: he's odd,

[1:10:04] Bob Dobbs: he's going off on all these other things that don't seem to be relevant to my psychological issues.

[1:10:08] Bob Dobbs: But every now and then he does say something that I can use.

[1:10:11] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan was aware that he was being interpreted psychologically and sociologically.

[1:10:18] Bob Dobbs: and you tend to be one or the other,

[1:10:20] Bob Dobbs: but then his humor would be he'd bring in and point out it can be taken on two levels.

[1:10:25] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:10:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:10:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:10:28] Bob Dobbs: So I would look at that.

[1:10:29] Bob Dobbs: That's what I started off saying,

[1:10:31] Bob Dobbs: that the bias of communication,

[1:10:33] Bob Dobbs: in us didn't mean the psychological,

[1:10:34] Bob Dobbs: but I would think about that,

[1:10:35] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:10:36] Bob Dobbs: on the psychological level,

[1:10:37] Bob Dobbs: the bias of communication,

[1:10:39] Bob Dobbs: and watch people interact with that theme in mind of where the bias is or something.

[1:10:46] Bob Dobbs: So now you were about to say something.

[1:10:49] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:10:49] Cameron McEwen: I was going to say we should think of McLuhan's comment.

[1:10:54] Cameron McEwen: I forget where,

[1:10:54] Cameron McEwen: maybe in Gutenberg Galaxy,

[1:10:55] Cameron McEwen: he talks about Heidegger as surfing the modern world.

[1:11:01] Bob Dobbs: The electronic wave.

[1:11:03] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:11:04] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:11:07] Cameron McEwen: I think that kind of thought could be helpful to people psychologically.

[1:11:15] Cameron McEwen: The woman may have been saying to you,

[1:11:18] Cameron McEwen: I didn't realize before that somebody could see all these problems.

[1:11:24] Cameron McEwen: and think of them as funny or think of them as trivialities.

[1:11:30] Cameron McEwen: And that's helpful to me because

[1:11:33] Cameron McEwen: I was thinking these problems were overwhelming,

[1:11:36] Cameron McEwen: but now I understand they're underwhelming.

[1:11:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:11:42] Bob Dobbs: I've said this before,

[1:11:44] Bob Dobbs: but,

[1:11:47] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:11:48] Bob Dobbs: journalists,

[1:11:49] Bob Dobbs: the responses to Marshall McLuhan,

[1:11:51] Bob Dobbs: man,

[1:11:51] Bob Dobbs: this guy is so profound.

[1:11:53] Bob Dobbs: It's hard to understand.

[1:11:54] Bob Dobbs: Or other people say,

[1:11:55] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:11:55] Bob Dobbs: he's a bit of a joker here.

[1:11:57] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:11:57] Bob Dobbs: there's a Gutenbergian or something.

[1:12:00] Bob Dobbs: So people would take one angle in journalism,

[1:12:04] Bob Dobbs: and maybe that's what you're supposed to do in journalism.

[1:12:07] Bob Dobbs: You can't.

[1:12:07] Bob Dobbs: Your editors wouldn't let you get complicated because it's all geared for a person with a grade 8 education.

[1:12:11] Bob Dobbs: It's the myth,

[1:12:12] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: So it takes a while to find someone talking on the different levels,

[1:12:18] Bob Dobbs: and you certainly can see that's what's going on in Finnegans Wake wake.

[1:12:21] Bob Dobbs: the different levels,

[1:12:22] Bob Dobbs: sociologically,

[1:12:23] Bob Dobbs: psychologically,

[1:12:24] Bob Dobbs: every other level he's thrown in there.

[1:12:27] Cameron McEwen: But what you're saying about journalism was true at every level.

[1:12:32] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:12:33] Cameron McEwen: I happened to reread an essay by James Carey,

[1:12:40] Cameron McEwen: who is a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois,

[1:12:44] Cameron McEwen: from,

[1:12:46] Cameron McEwen: I think it was 1970.

[1:12:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:12:48] Cameron McEwen: it was 1970,

[1:12:49] Cameron McEwen: because McLuhan was...

[1:12:51] Cameron McEwen: still alive.

[1:12:52] Cameron McEwen: And what

[1:12:55] Cameron McEwen: Carey does is take McLuhan one-sidedly as being the unreserved champion of the electronic.

[1:13:05] Cameron McEwen: And that one-sided reading of McLuhan is a continuing sort of shtick of the academic world.

[1:13:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:13:22] Cameron McEwen: So Kroker,

[1:13:23] Cameron McEwen: his book on

[1:13:25] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and Havelock still takes.

[1:13:29] Cameron McEwen: Not McLuhan and Havelock,

[1:13:30] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[1:13:31] Bob Dobbs: Innocent Grant.

[1:13:33] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:13:33] Cameron McEwen: the new book.

[1:13:35] Bob Dobbs: Is he in a new book on Havelock?

[1:13:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:13:39] Bob Dobbs: Kroker has?

[1:13:42] Cameron McEwen: Wow.

[1:13:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:13:42] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:13:42] Cameron McEwen: you know that,

[1:13:43] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[1:13:43] Cameron McEwen: I think you've read the book.

[1:13:45] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:13:45] Bob Dobbs: it's not.

[1:13:47] Bob Dobbs: There's no book on Havelock.

[1:13:48] Cameron McEwen: The book that was just published a few years ago.

[1:13:50] Cameron McEwen: by University of Toronto Press,

[1:13:52] Cameron McEwen: by

[1:13:53] Cameron McEwen: Kroker, is specifically on

[1:13:57] Cameron McEwen: Havelock being more insightful about the modern world than McLuhan.

[1:14:05] Bob Dobbs: Wow,

[1:14:05] Bob Dobbs: let me check that.

[1:14:07] Bob Dobbs: I don't seem,

[1:14:07] Bob Dobbs: that doesn't sound familiar right now.

[1:14:10] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:14:11] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[1:14:12] Bob Dobbs: Havelock,

[1:14:13] Bob Dobbs: let's see what comes up.

[1:14:15] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:14:16] Cameron McEwen: just look up

[1:14:17] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, Kroker.

[1:14:19] Cameron McEwen: University of Toronto Press,

[1:14:21] Cameron McEwen: and you'll have it.

[1:14:24] Cameron McEwen: We've even talked about the book before.

[1:14:27] Bob Dobbs: This is strange.

[1:14:29] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:14:29] Bob Dobbs: so I'll go to Amazon.

[1:14:30] Cameron McEwen: Everybody's subject to these kinds of memory holes.

[1:14:37] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:14:38] Bob Dobbs: so Kroker,

[1:14:40] Bob Dobbs: Havelock,

[1:14:41] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:14:42] Bob Dobbs: Amazon.

[1:14:44] Bob Dobbs: What do we got here?

[1:14:47] Bob Dobbs: Results,

[1:14:47] Bob Dobbs: nothing.

[1:14:50] Bob Dobbs: It doesn't work.

[1:14:54] Bob Dobbs: Let me just put in Kroker and see what comes up there.

[1:14:58] Cameron McEwen: You'll have lots.

[1:14:59] Cameron McEwen: It'll be one of the top hits because the book is recent.

[1:15:07] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:15:07] Bob Dobbs: he's got here

[1:15:10] Bob Dobbs: Technologies of the New Real.

[1:15:12] Cameron McEwen: That's it.

[1:15:14] Bob Dobbs: That doesn't have Kroker in it.

[1:15:15] Bob Dobbs: I thought you were talking about Havelock being in the title.

[1:15:19] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:15:19] Cameron McEwen: no.

[1:15:20] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:15:20] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[1:15:21] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[1:15:22] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:15:22] Bob Dobbs: I think there is a section on he's celebrating Havelock or something.

[1:15:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:15:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:15:27] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[1:15:28] Cameron McEwen: And specifically in contrast to McLuhan,

[1:15:32] Cameron McEwen: and the McLuhan that he's contrasting Havelock to is the one-sided McLuhan that can't see any problem to modernity,

[1:15:42] Cameron McEwen: celebrating the electronic,

[1:15:43] Cameron McEwen: all this sort of stuff.

[1:15:44] Bob Dobbs: It's disgusting,

[1:15:46] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:15:47] Bob Dobbs: So that goes on for 50 years.

[1:15:50] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:15:50] Bob Dobbs: I'm still going on.

[1:15:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:15:52] Bob Dobbs: until we showed up,

[1:15:53] Bob Dobbs: nobody was dealing with the multi-leveled McLuhan.

[1:15:57] Bob Dobbs: And so I think that's what I was going to bring up next.

[1:16:01] Bob Dobbs: The,

[1:16:07] Bob Dobbs: so yeah,

[1:16:08] Bob Dobbs: people,

[1:16:09] Bob Dobbs: the narrow view of McLuhan.

[1:16:14] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:16:14] Bob Dobbs: Jim Carey.

[1:16:15] Bob Dobbs: So he.

[1:16:18] Bob Dobbs: He was lionized by Lance Strate.

[1:16:23] Bob Dobbs: So when I went to 1998,

[1:16:30] Bob Dobbs: we were invited,

[1:16:31] Bob Dobbs: Mark Stahlman and I,

[1:16:32] Bob Dobbs: to the New York communication gathering.

[1:16:36] Bob Dobbs: Not the one at Lincoln Center about McLuhan.

[1:16:39] Bob Dobbs: This was just the McLuhan,

[1:16:41] Bob Dobbs: the McLuhan,

[1:16:41] Bob Dobbs: the communication discipline.

[1:16:44] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:16:44] Bob Dobbs: James Carey,

[1:16:45] Bob Dobbs: I think it was there.

[1:16:46] Bob Dobbs: If it wasn't,

[1:16:47] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:16:47] Bob Dobbs: I'm pretty sure it was there.

[1:16:49] Bob Dobbs: was the featured keynote speaker.

[1:16:53] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:16:54] Bob Dobbs: I never,

[1:16:55] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:16:55] Bob Dobbs: liked him.

[1:16:56] Bob Dobbs: I knew he was limited.

[1:16:58] Bob Dobbs: And I got an earful all the time from Don Theall.

[1:17:01] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall took on his battle with Carey personally.

[1:17:05] Bob Dobbs: He targeted Carey all the time.

[1:17:08] Bob Dobbs: He was outraged at Carey.

[1:17:10] Bob Dobbs: And,

[1:17:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:17:11] Bob Dobbs: Theall knew that McLuhan was not getting a fair deal by all these people.

[1:17:16] Bob Dobbs: And Don was always trying to...

[1:17:18] Bob Dobbs: pointed out,

[1:17:19] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:17:19] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[1:17:20] Bob Dobbs: the different levels of McLuhan.

[1:17:22] Bob Dobbs: And so I ended up talking to Carey after in whatever,

[1:17:30] Bob Dobbs: in smoothing,

[1:17:33] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:17:34] Bob Dobbs: after the conference.

[1:17:35] Bob Dobbs: We're sitting around talking.

[1:17:36] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:17:37] Bob Dobbs: I'm being polite.

[1:17:38] Bob Dobbs: I'm not telling him you're an asshole.

[1:17:41] Bob Dobbs: You're all wrong.

[1:17:42] Bob Dobbs: I'm just being pleasant.

[1:17:44] Bob Dobbs: And he says,

[1:17:45] Bob Dobbs: what's your name again?

[1:17:46] Bob Dobbs: And I said,

[1:17:48] Bob Dobbs: Bob Dobbs.

[1:17:49] Bob Dobbs: And he goes,

[1:17:50] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:17:50] Bob Dobbs: so you're Bob Dobbs.

[1:17:54] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[1:17:56] Bob Dobbs: I had to deal with you,

[1:17:57] Bob Dobbs: or I've heard a lot about you,

[1:17:59] Bob Dobbs: which totally surprised me.

[1:18:00] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:18:02] Bob Dobbs: That

[1:18:03] Bob Dobbs: I was some kind of something in his mind in the McLuhan world.

[1:18:07] Bob Dobbs: That was interesting.

[1:18:09] Bob Dobbs: That,

[1:18:09] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:18:10] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:18:10] Bob Dobbs: you're the guy who

[1:18:13] Bob Dobbs: I don't understand.

[1:18:15] Bob Dobbs: doesn't like me or whatever he never said what it was but it was odd you know usually if you're startled by somebody you wouldn't let it on i don't think you wouldn't say that they've you wouldn't indicate that you've

[1:18:31] Bob Dobbs: been preoccupied by them unless you really admired them and you wanted to talk to them on that level but uh that's my experience of carrie and uh he uh

[1:18:44] Bob Dobbs: He was on the,

[1:18:45] Bob Dobbs: he was,

[1:18:47] Bob Dobbs: what,

[1:18:47] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what he was saying with that.

[1:18:50] Bob Dobbs: Like,

[1:18:50] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:18:51] Bob Dobbs: you're someone really way off.

[1:18:53] Bob Dobbs: Or he didn't,

[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: could have meant that.

[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: Or you're someone that I don't understand what point you're making.

[1:19:00] Bob Dobbs: So anyways,

[1:19:00] Bob Dobbs: that's my experience with James Carey.

[1:19:02] Bob Dobbs: He died shortly after that.

[1:19:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:19:05] Cameron McEwen: So,

[1:19:06] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:19:07] Bob Dobbs: here's something he told me.

[1:19:08] Cameron McEwen: He didn't die shortly after that.

[1:19:11] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:19:11] Bob Dobbs: that was

[1:19:12] Bob Dobbs: 19. He died.

[1:19:13] Cameron McEwen: Didn't he die around 2010 or something?

[1:19:16] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure.

[1:19:17] Bob Dobbs: Let me look at that because this is 1998.

[1:19:20] Bob Dobbs: Let me see.

[1:19:21] Bob Dobbs: James Carey.

[1:19:25] Bob Dobbs: I might also bring in something besides talking about me.

[1:19:29] Bob Dobbs: He died in

[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: 2006.

[1:19:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah. Okay.

[1:19:33] Cameron McEwen: So a decade later.

[1:19:38] Bob Dobbs: He revealed something to me.

[1:19:41] Bob Dobbs: indicated what the problem was.

[1:19:43] Bob Dobbs: He told me that

[1:19:46] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan would come and he'd invite McLuhan to speak in the late 60s and he would try to recruit McLuhan to help his students avoid the draft or if they got into problems around

[1:20:02] Bob Dobbs: the draft he needed help because he offered help.

[1:20:05] Bob Dobbs: He was a he helped students in some way.

[1:20:10] Bob Dobbs: on the anti-war level.

[1:20:12] Bob Dobbs: And he didn't think McLuhan was,

[1:20:17] Bob Dobbs: he thought McLuhan was irresponsible.

[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: He would not deal with that level in the students'

[1:20:21] Bob Dobbs: lives.

[1:20:25] Cameron McEwen: Right at that point,

[1:20:26] Cameron McEwen: Eric was in the military.

[1:20:29] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:20:30] Bob Dobbs: Eric was not.

[1:20:31] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:20:31] Cameron McEwen: I'm sorry.

[1:20:32] Cameron McEwen: I was thinking of when

[1:20:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was in touch with Carey,

[1:20:36] Cameron McEwen: not when you were talking.

[1:20:39] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:20:40] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:20:40] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:20:42] Cameron McEwen: One of the interesting things about McLuhan and Carey is that

[1:20:45] Cameron McEwen: Carey wrote these ridiculous papers about McLuhan,

[1:20:49] Cameron McEwen: and McLuhan didn't get angry about it.

[1:20:51] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:20:52] Cameron McEwen: He just...

[1:20:52] Cameron McEwen: He started writing to Carey and saying,

[1:20:55] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:20:55] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:20:56] Cameron McEwen: you haven't thought about this.

[1:20:57] Bob Dobbs: You didn't think about that.

[1:20:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:20:59] Cameron McEwen: let's get together and have a smoke or something.

[1:21:03] Cameron McEwen: He didn't care that Carey was impercipient.

[1:21:06] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:21:07] Bob Dobbs: that was part of his comedy.

[1:21:09] Bob Dobbs: He would not take it personally.

[1:21:11] Bob Dobbs: That was a new strategy.

[1:21:12] Bob Dobbs: He's not an ordinary mailer,

[1:21:14] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:21:14] Bob Dobbs: who would get mad.

[1:21:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:21:16] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:21:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:21:18] Bob Dobbs: And so that was a new way.

[1:21:19] Bob Dobbs: And,

[1:21:19] Bob Dobbs: of course,

[1:21:20] Bob Dobbs: other people say that,

[1:21:20] Bob Dobbs: but McLuhan's.

[1:21:21] Bob Dobbs: He just won't get involved.

[1:21:23] Bob Dobbs: He's too detached.

[1:21:24] Bob Dobbs: He's too frivolous,

[1:21:25] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[1:21:26] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't understand what the issues are.

[1:21:28] Bob Dobbs: And that's what James Carey was saying.

[1:21:30] Bob Dobbs: Man,

[1:21:31] Bob Dobbs: you should be helping these kids.

[1:21:32] Bob Dobbs: You should be down here with Allen Ginsberg and

[1:21:36] Bob Dobbs: Abbie Hoffman and helping us deal with the tyrannical Nixon.

[1:21:40] Bob Dobbs: Because this was about 68,

[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: 69.

[1:21:43] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[1:21:46] Bob Dobbs: And so I don't know if I said this to him,

[1:21:48] Bob Dobbs: but I told other people the story.

[1:21:50] Bob Dobbs: And I said,

[1:21:51] Bob Dobbs: Look,

[1:21:51] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was a consultant on many levels.

[1:21:54] Bob Dobbs: He wasn't there talking just to the students.

[1:21:57] Bob Dobbs: He was talking to everybody.

[1:21:58] Bob Dobbs: Whenever he had a chance to communicate,

[1:22:00] Bob Dobbs: he was talking to the president.

[1:22:01] Bob Dobbs: He was talking to the United Nations,

[1:22:03] Bob Dobbs: to the military,

[1:22:04] Bob Dobbs: other cultures.

[1:22:05] Bob Dobbs: Why should he be concerned about this little culture,

[1:22:09] Bob Dobbs: the United States,

[1:22:10] Bob Dobbs: and their particular problems?

[1:22:12] Bob Dobbs: He thought he had a view that helped you get to transcend your local bias and local worries and concerns.

[1:22:21] Cameron McEwen: I noticed that he wasn't,

[1:22:24] Cameron McEwen: when you said he was talking on all these different levels,

[1:22:27] Cameron McEwen: that you were absolutely correct.

[1:22:30] Cameron McEwen: But it's not the case that he was ignoring some levels like the American experience or the American situation.

[1:22:40] Cameron McEwen: It was that he didn't seem to be talking about the American situation because he was talking on so many different levels.

[1:22:49] Cameron McEwen: But in fact,

[1:22:50] Cameron McEwen: in order to understand the American situation,

[1:22:53] Cameron McEwen: you had to talk on all those different levels or else you weren't getting it.

[1:22:58] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:22:58] Bob Dobbs: and he was actually offering important perspectives for the students who were in the dilemma of the draft.

[1:23:05] Cameron McEwen: Correct,

[1:23:06] Cameron McEwen: correct.

[1:23:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:23:07] Bob Dobbs: and so

[1:23:08] Bob Dobbs: Carey was very conventional that way,

[1:23:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:23:11] Bob Dobbs: quote stupid.

[1:23:11] Cameron McEwen: He was a one-level guy,

[1:23:13] Cameron McEwen: and,

[1:23:14] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:23:15] Cameron McEwen: in the essays that I was reading,

[1:23:17] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:23:17] Cameron McEwen: it's ridiculous how...

[1:23:19] Cameron McEwen: He attempts to talk about McLuhan by talking about everybody else.

[1:23:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:23:24] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:23:25] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:23:25] Cameron McEwen: So you brought up Abbie Hoffman,

[1:23:27] Cameron McEwen: and his essays are full of references to other people,

[1:23:33] Cameron McEwen: as if other people could be used as counters or as categories or something,

[1:23:41] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:23:41] Cameron McEwen: You always know when people are not thinking,

[1:23:43] Cameron McEwen: when they use names as ideas.

[1:23:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:23:47] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:23:47] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[1:23:48] Cameron McEwen: Dostoevsky

[1:23:48] Cameron McEwen: this and Plato that.

[1:23:54] Bob Dobbs: Ridiculous.

[1:23:54] Bob Dobbs: Or even the way critics,

[1:23:55] Bob Dobbs: a lot of people,

[1:23:56] Bob Dobbs: younger people,

[1:23:57] Bob Dobbs: you see them,

[1:23:58] Bob Dobbs: academics,

[1:23:59] Bob Dobbs: they say,

[1:23:59] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:24:00] Bob Dobbs: I was Nietzschean for a couple of years and then I became Jacques Derrida.

[1:24:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:24:07] Bob Dobbs: And now I'm battling about whether to be a McLuhanite or not.

[1:24:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:24:13] Bob Dobbs: it's pretty stupid.

[1:24:14] Bob Dobbs: So the...

[1:24:17] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:24:17] Bob Dobbs: what is that thing about Diogenes?

[1:24:20] Bob Dobbs: He went around looking for an honest man,

[1:24:22] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:24:23] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:24:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:24:24] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:24:25] Cameron McEwen: in the McLuhan...

[1:24:25] Cameron McEwen: When he couldn't find it,

[1:24:26] Cameron McEwen: he started to just live in the barrel.

[1:24:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:24:29] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:24:30] Bob Dobbs: I would say

[1:24:31] Bob Dobbs: 60 years,

[1:24:32] Bob Dobbs: I went around looking for someone who had an intelligent response to McLuhan.

[1:24:36] Bob Dobbs: I didn't find many.

[1:24:38] Cameron McEwen: No.

[1:24:40] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:24:41] Cameron McEwen: most people haven't bothered to read them.

[1:24:43] Cameron McEwen: They just use them as a category.

[1:24:46] Cameron McEwen: As we're saying that people like to do.

[1:24:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:24:51] Bob Dobbs: I don't know why.

[1:24:54] Bob Dobbs: I think people should think more on a bigger level.

[1:24:57] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what makes someone think on a big level.

[1:25:00] Bob Dobbs: I don't even know if that's the right term.

[1:25:02] Bob Dobbs: But there's a level people don't think on.

[1:25:05] Bob Dobbs: And a friend of mine said,

[1:25:07] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:25:07] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:25:07] Bob Dobbs: I'm not very good at thinking on a big level.

[1:25:10] Bob Dobbs: What the fuck,

[1:25:11] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[1:25:12] Bob Dobbs: You live in a big world.

[1:25:14] Bob Dobbs: You're a big person.

[1:25:15] Cameron McEwen: you know whether you think about yourself but um when when people think at all

[1:25:24] Cameron McEwen: As McLuhan tried endlessly to point out,

[1:25:26] Cameron McEwen: but nobody got it,

[1:25:27] Cameron McEwen: I don't think,

[1:25:28] Cameron McEwen: when people think at all,

[1:25:29] Cameron McEwen: they're internalizing a world,

[1:25:31] Cameron McEwen: a whole world.

[1:25:33] Cameron McEwen: So you're saying quite properly that people aren't thinking big,

[1:25:40] Cameron McEwen: but they're perceiving big.

[1:25:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:25:42] Cameron McEwen: They just don't know what they're perceiving.

[1:25:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:25:46] Bob Dobbs: and they don't seem to have any interest in talking about it.

[1:25:49] Bob Dobbs: They don't know it can be talked about or something.

[1:25:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:25:52] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:25:52] Cameron McEwen: they're afraid to.

[1:25:55] Cameron McEwen: It's frightening to go beyond one's very limited parameters.

[1:26:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:26:07] Bob Dobbs: There's no way you're going to get me to climb up a mountain.

[1:26:14] Bob Dobbs: These cliff people,

[1:26:15] Bob Dobbs: these people crawl up the side of a wall.

[1:26:19] Bob Dobbs: I don't trust myself.

[1:26:21] Bob Dobbs: Is that me going beyond my comfort boundaries or is that me being sensible?

[1:26:27] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I mean?

[1:26:28] Bob Dobbs: And so if I am limited and I should practice that,

[1:26:34] Bob Dobbs: then I would say,

[1:26:35] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:26:35] Bob Dobbs: I think in ways that people,

[1:26:37] Bob Dobbs: I mountain climb in my mind that people won't dare do.

[1:26:43] Bob Dobbs: That might be the difference.

[1:26:45] Bob Dobbs: What do you think of that?

[1:26:46] Bob Dobbs: Do you have any activity that you refuse to do?

[1:26:50] Bob Dobbs: Like would you parachute out of a plane?

[1:26:53] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:26:54] Cameron McEwen: probably not.

[1:26:55] Cameron McEwen: Probably not.

[1:26:55] Cameron McEwen: There's lots of things that

[1:26:59] Cameron McEwen: I should have done,

[1:27:04] Cameron McEwen: that

[1:27:06] Cameron McEwen: I could have done.

[1:27:08] Cameron McEwen: Life is one endless road of choices,

[1:27:14] Cameron McEwen: and many of them we make through cowardness or laziness.

[1:27:20] Cameron McEwen: That's just what life is.

[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: but this guy

[1:27:26] Bob Dobbs: I met,

[1:27:27] Bob Dobbs: and he sent me videos of himself crawling up.

[1:27:31] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:27:31] Bob Dobbs: they do this small cliff climbing,

[1:27:35] Bob Dobbs: very steep stuff,

[1:27:36] Bob Dobbs: and you've got to,

[1:27:37] Bob Dobbs: I don't mean how you do it.

[1:27:40] Cameron McEwen: Rock climbing.

[1:27:41] Bob Dobbs: Rock climbing.

[1:27:42] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:27:43] Bob Dobbs: I just keep thinking,

[1:27:44] Bob Dobbs: I'm not going to take the chance.

[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: I slip,

[1:27:46] Bob Dobbs: and you could slip,

[1:27:47] Bob Dobbs: and then you're paralyzed or dead.

[1:27:49] Bob Dobbs: you know why how could that be interesting so or uh exciting but anyways people have different things apparently that gets their adrenaline going and they like the adrenaline rush but um i find those people or some people that can do that stuff they won't they

[1:28:05] Bob Dobbs: won't think big so they they're afraid of mental mountain climbing or going up the edge which is uh i'm not that you know i'll think in the you

[1:28:17] Bob Dobbs: I don't know thoughts that frighten me.

[1:28:20] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how to,

[1:28:21] Bob Dobbs: I wouldn't know how to say,

[1:28:22] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:28:23] Bob Dobbs: I'm afraid to go there.

[1:28:24] Bob Dobbs: I'm not going to think about that.

[1:28:26] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:28:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:28:29] Cameron McEwen: so people that do rock climbing are brave,

[1:28:36] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:28:36] Cameron McEwen: It's just a different kind.

[1:28:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:28:38] Bob Dobbs: there's different kinds of bravery.

[1:28:41] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:28:42] Bob Dobbs: I like Gurdjieff's categories,

[1:28:44] Bob Dobbs: intellectual,

[1:28:44] Bob Dobbs: emotional.

[1:28:46] Bob Dobbs: There's five centers,

[1:28:47] Bob Dobbs: intellectual,

[1:28:48] Bob Dobbs: emotional,

[1:28:49] Bob Dobbs: instinctual,

[1:28:50] Bob Dobbs: sexual,

[1:28:51] Bob Dobbs: and movement,

[1:28:51] Bob Dobbs: I think it is.

[1:28:53] Bob Dobbs: So definitely there are people who are instinctual or,

[1:28:57] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:28:57] Bob Dobbs: physical,

[1:28:59] Bob Dobbs: maybe an instinctual and movement center,

[1:29:01] Bob Dobbs: and are not intellectual.

[1:29:03] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:29:04] Bob Dobbs: I understand there's a difference that way.

[1:29:07] Bob Dobbs: At least his categories are pointing to that.

[1:29:12] Bob Dobbs: I don't know why we don't have millions listening to us.

[1:29:18] Cameron McEwen: because we're boring i know this is what i don't get off topic or whatever yeah i think it's a very good reason to spend your time on something else so i think that uh uh we're

[1:29:33] Bob Dobbs: discussing important things and we do a good job at it so um i don't know why that wouldn't uh appeal to people there's lots of people who would appeal to it if they found out about it it would like it

[1:29:46] Bob Dobbs: But those that,

[1:29:50] Bob Dobbs: I'm surprised,

[1:29:51] Bob Dobbs: I'm interested in someone who wouldn't like it.

[1:29:53] Bob Dobbs: If I force them to listen to this,

[1:29:55] Bob Dobbs: and they listen and they didn't like it,

[1:29:57] Bob Dobbs: I'd be interested to find out why they didn't like it.

[1:30:00] Bob Dobbs: What is it that they think about?

[1:30:01] Bob Dobbs: What do they like to think about?

[1:30:02] Bob Dobbs: And then often you do get people say,

[1:30:04] Bob Dobbs: I don't like thinking about that kind of stuff.

[1:30:07] Bob Dobbs: They accept that they're,

[1:30:10] Bob Dobbs: I don't want to say cowardice,

[1:30:12] Bob Dobbs: but they accept they don't.

[1:30:14] Bob Dobbs: think they're missing anything by not thinking that way.

[1:30:19] Bob Dobbs: Just like I don't think I'm missing anything by

[1:30:22] Cameron McEwen: not rock climbing you know yeah i think there's lots of people who think that uh talking like this doesn't get anywhere just a waste of time yeah like what do they think is getting anywheres that's

[1:30:37] Bob Dobbs: where that's where you get but that's their i mean the take on life is like that okay so there's the bias of communication the bias of being the bias of people they're different

[1:30:52] Bob Dobbs: How does

[1:30:53] Bob Dobbs: Innis help people understand their differences?

[1:30:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:30:56] Bob Dobbs: definitely in the 20th century,

[1:30:57] Bob Dobbs: you're encountering more cultures than you did before,

[1:30:59] Bob Dobbs: so any talk of cultural differences is useful,

[1:31:03] Bob Dobbs: and then McLuhan built on that.

[1:31:05] Bob Dobbs: So definitely

[1:31:10] Bob Dobbs: Innis is a good self-help book for the lifestyle you would have in the

[1:31:17] Bob Dobbs: 1950s or 60s.

[1:31:21] Cameron McEwen: Remember that Innis is very hard to read.

[1:31:26] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was able to read

[1:31:28] Cameron McEwen: Innis because he was able to read Pound.

[1:31:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan could read the cantos,

[1:31:39] Cameron McEwen: and most people couldn't.

[1:31:40] Cameron McEwen: Or McLuhan could read

[1:31:42] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake,

[1:31:42] Cameron McEwen: and most people couldn't.

[1:31:44] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:31:45] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was experienced in the rock.

[1:31:49] Cameron McEwen: climbing,

[1:31:50] Cameron McEwen: you could say,

[1:31:51] Cameron McEwen: of difficult prose.

[1:31:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:31:53] Bob Dobbs: boring,

[1:31:53] Bob Dobbs: extremely boring prose.

[1:31:56] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:31:58] Cameron McEwen: and it's very difficult to follow because,

[1:32:02] Cameron McEwen: as McLuhan says,

[1:32:03] Cameron McEwen: Innis did not think linearly.

[1:32:06] Cameron McEwen: He jumps around a lot.

[1:32:08] Cameron McEwen: He was cinematic.

[1:32:10] Cameron McEwen: It's very hard to follow him.

[1:32:11] Bob Dobbs: He was cinematic.

[1:32:13] Bob Dobbs: That's McLuhan metaphor for him.

[1:32:15] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:32:15] Cameron McEwen: yes.

[1:32:16] Bob Dobbs: Innis was cinematic.

[1:32:19] Cameron McEwen: So in the late

[1:32:22] Cameron McEwen: 40s, when

[1:32:24] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was reading a lot of Vico,

[1:32:29] Cameron McEwen: he was reading a lot of Mallarmé,

[1:32:32] Cameron McEwen: he was rethinking his earlier work in terms of these guys.

[1:32:37] Cameron McEwen: And at the same time that he was doing that,

[1:32:40] Cameron McEwen: he was reading the

[1:32:44] Cameron McEwen: Russian filmmakers like Eisenstein.

[1:32:47] Cameron McEwen: And...

[1:32:49] Cameron McEwen: trying to see how people's writings could be understood in terms of frames.

[1:33:00] Cameron McEwen: So your point about seeing Innis cinematically is right on.

[1:33:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:33:08] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:33:08] Bob Dobbs: so looking at these three quotes...

[1:33:13] Cameron McEwen: You didn't get to the third one.

[1:33:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:33:15] Bob Dobbs: the third one,

[1:33:16] Bob Dobbs: page 190.

[1:33:18] Bob Dobbs: the great last page of War and Peace in the Global Village.

[1:33:22] Bob Dobbs: One of the great moments in McLuhanism is that page.

[1:33:27] Bob Dobbs: You take a section of it.

[1:33:28] Bob Dobbs: It is a cultural habitat in which we have long been accustomed to think that people were contained that has now become the mammal itself,

[1:33:37] Bob Dobbs: now contained in a new macrocosm or connubium of a superterrestrial kind.

[1:33:43] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:33:44] Bob Dobbs: how is that connected to...

[1:33:46] Bob Dobbs: um,

[1:33:49] Bob Dobbs: The awareness way back,

[1:33:51] Bob Dobbs: the private awareness,

[1:33:52] Bob Dobbs: how do you,

[1:33:54] Bob Dobbs: why do you bring that one in?

[1:33:57] Cameron McEwen: Because what I see going on with the fall of man,

[1:34:01] Cameron McEwen: historical man,

[1:34:03] Cameron McEwen: and then the flip into a new macrocosm is the idea of becoming aware of what it means to be fallen,

[1:34:15] Cameron McEwen: what it means to be historical.

[1:34:18] Cameron McEwen: So it's not a linear transition that can be thought of as taking place in a certain era.

[1:34:33] Cameron McEwen: It's rather a galaxy of thought that can be investigated.

[1:34:44] Cameron McEwen: So in the late 50s,

[1:34:46] Cameron McEwen: I think through one of his students,

[1:34:49] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan changed the title of his book that he was writing from the Gutenberg era to the Gutenberg Galaxy.

[1:34:58] Cameron McEwen: And I think what he was trying to do was say that he was not talking about a chronological sequence,

[1:35:06] Cameron McEwen: a sequence of years.

[1:35:08] Cameron McEwen: He was talking about a Gestalt of perception.

[1:35:13] Cameron McEwen: So the reason I took up your hint.

[1:35:18] Cameron McEwen: about page

[1:35:19] Cameron McEwen: 190 in the Global Village,

[1:35:21] Cameron McEwen: because I think what he's talking about here is that the fall of man and historical man are...

[1:35:30] Cameron McEwen: pluralities.

[1:35:32] Cameron McEwen: Historical man is always in some or other culture,

[1:35:37] Cameron McEwen: some or other bias.

[1:35:41] Cameron McEwen: And as you've brought out with your quotation of where McLuhan says the bias of modernity is to understand biases.

[1:35:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:35:53] Cameron McEwen: A new macrocosm or connubium of a superterrestrial kind it

[1:35:59] Cameron McEwen: is not only that human beings can come to enough understanding of bias to investigate it,

[1:36:09] Cameron McEwen: but when you investigate bias,

[1:36:12] Cameron McEwen: you begin to understand how things were possible in the past that could become possible in the future because they were possible in the past.

[1:36:27] Cameron McEwen: So,

[1:36:27] Cameron McEwen: um...

[1:36:29] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's Catholicism,

[1:36:30] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[1:36:32] Cameron McEwen: when he understands,

[1:36:34] Cameron McEwen: when he comes to understand the bias or the biases,

[1:36:41] Cameron McEwen: actually,

[1:36:42] Cameron McEwen: that were present in traditional

[1:36:45] Cameron McEwen: Catholicism and finds them to be interesting biases and revelatory biases,

[1:36:52] Cameron McEwen: then what he does is he opens up his own future to...

[1:36:58] Cameron McEwen: having those biases himself,

[1:37:03] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:37:03] Cameron McEwen: So the connubium of a super terrestrial kind,

[1:37:07] Cameron McEwen: behind that phrase is the Christian idea of the Trinity.

[1:37:15] Cameron McEwen: And how is it possible to come to the

[1:37:22] Cameron McEwen: Christian idea of the Trinity in an interesting way?

[1:37:27] Cameron McEwen: in modern times.

[1:37:29] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:37:31] Cameron McEwen: the way to that is to understand,

[1:37:35] Cameron McEwen: not understand in some sort of revelatory,

[1:37:40] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:37:41] Cameron McEwen: moment of enlightenment or something like this,

[1:37:44] Cameron McEwen: but investigating biases in a way that,

[1:37:50] Cameron McEwen: in a similar way to the way that we investigate

[1:37:54] Cameron McEwen: you know hormones or investigate DNA or investigate organic compounds or something like this.

[1:38:04] Cameron McEwen: We know how to do those sorts of investigation without thinking that we know everything about them.

[1:38:11] Cameron McEwen: All we do is we understand enough about them to do the investigation and when we do the investigation we understand more and that generates more investigations.

[1:38:22] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:38:22] Cameron McEwen: for McLuhan,

[1:38:23] Cameron McEwen: that's the same thing that happens with biases.

[1:38:25] Cameron McEwen: But when we understand more about biases,

[1:38:29] Cameron McEwen: then we can go into the past and we can understand how certain biases were very attractive.

[1:38:38] Cameron McEwen: And therefore,

[1:38:38] Cameron McEwen: we can begin to think about,

[1:38:41] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:38:43] Cameron McEwen: how could that attractiveness be activated in the future?

[1:38:47] Cameron McEwen: So when McLuhan...

[1:38:51] Cameron McEwen: thinks about Vico.

[1:38:54] Cameron McEwen: One of the things that he found so attractive in Vico was that he says Vico tried to overcome the difference between the ancients and the moderns.

[1:39:09] Cameron McEwen: And that's what McLuhan was trying to do.

[1:39:11] Cameron McEwen: He was trying to understand biases as a contemporary

[1:39:21] Cameron McEwen: range of possibilities that were just as possible now as they were then.

[1:39:28] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:39:29] Bob Dobbs: so when you go back to the

[1:39:35] Bob Dobbs: Vico quote,

[1:39:36] Bob Dobbs: I thought it was interesting that

[1:39:38] Bob Dobbs: Vico was,

[1:39:39] Bob Dobbs: I thought,

[1:39:40] Bob Dobbs: trying to define humans before the tribal comforts.

[1:39:49] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:39:50] Bob Dobbs: that he included that,

[1:39:51] Bob Dobbs: and you found a good quote where he's indicating an awareness of that.

[1:39:55] Bob Dobbs: So if you think of the isolated human as a caveman,

[1:40:04] Bob Dobbs: and then he says suburbia is the new cave world,

[1:40:08] Bob Dobbs: and I was saying that the digital world creates an isolation where we get back to the caveman sensibility.

[1:40:20] Bob Dobbs: He was seeing that already in the mass man,

[1:40:25] Bob Dobbs: which was not just tribal.

[1:40:27] Bob Dobbs: More and more autonomy was happening,

[1:40:28] Bob Dobbs: and therefore isolation was beginning

[1:40:32] Bob Dobbs: 80 years ago.

[1:40:34] Bob Dobbs: So the Paleolithic tends to be this ancient man that is isolated,

[1:40:44] Bob Dobbs: not in the tribal.

[1:40:48] Cameron McEwen: To me,

[1:40:48] Cameron McEwen: that's all too linear.

[1:40:50] Cameron McEwen: I think we have to understand this as simultaneous.

[1:40:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:40:55] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:40:55] Bob Dobbs: I get the simultaneous,

[1:40:57] Bob Dobbs: so I'm asking you to explore the linear.

[1:40:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:41:00] Cameron McEwen: but there is no such thing as a human being that is before the tribal.

[1:41:08] Cameron McEwen: Every human being is born of other human beings,

[1:41:12] Cameron McEwen: and if they're a human being,

[1:41:14] Cameron McEwen: they're born into a certain language,

[1:41:16] Cameron McEwen: certain culture,

[1:41:17] Cameron McEwen: etc.

[1:41:18] Cameron McEwen: So there is no such thing as a linear human being that is...

[1:41:23] Cameron McEwen: before those things.

[1:41:26] Cameron McEwen: It's the simultaneous or vertical human being who is metaphysical in the sense that they have some kind of spark that enables them to

[1:41:40] Cameron McEwen: change into this cultural man.

[1:41:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:41:46] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:41:47] Bob Dobbs: I thought Marshall McLuhan was saying by that original quote back in 1970 that there was something before tribal.

[1:41:53] Bob Dobbs: And that's what I thought we were exploring.

[1:41:56] Bob Dobbs: But you've decided,

[1:41:58] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:41:58] Bob Dobbs: that didn't happen.

[1:42:01] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:42:01] Cameron McEwen: You have to ask yourself,

[1:42:03] Cameron McEwen: what does the word before mean there?

[1:42:06] Cameron McEwen: What kind of time is that?

[1:42:08] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan was always thinking in terms of multiple times.

[1:42:13] Cameron McEwen: And that's one of the biggest things that people find difficulty with in trying to understand McLuhan.

[1:42:20] Cameron McEwen: If you don't understand that time is...

[1:42:23] Cameron McEwen: itself is plural.

[1:42:25] Cameron McEwen: It's almost impossible to understand the guy.

[1:42:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:42:28] Bob Dobbs: and do you mean time is plural,

[1:42:29] Bob Dobbs: that the metaphysical conditions of humans are different?

[1:42:36] Bob Dobbs: The cultures they're in are different?

[1:42:39] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:42:40] Cameron McEwen: I mean partly that,

[1:42:41] Cameron McEwen: but just think about water being H2O.

[1:42:49] Cameron McEwen: The time of the law.

[1:42:52] Cameron McEwen: that says that two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen make water,

[1:43:01] Cameron McEwen: the time of that formula is a different time from the time of water that falls out of the sky in rain or that's sitting in a lake or something.

[1:43:14] Cameron McEwen: So the time of the formula H2O is always the case.

[1:43:22] Cameron McEwen: And the water that's falling out of the sky that comes out of the tap when we turn it,

[1:43:28] Cameron McEwen: that is taking place in time,

[1:43:30] Cameron McEwen: but it's a different time.

[1:43:32] Cameron McEwen: But those two times are related.

[1:43:36] Cameron McEwen: The H2O that's falling out of the sky is

[1:43:39] Cameron McEwen: H2O. It's the H2O of the formula,

[1:43:42] Cameron McEwen: but it's not the formula,

[1:43:44] Cameron McEwen: it's the real stuff.

[1:43:46] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan's always talking about is the relationship between you

[1:43:52] Cameron McEwen: the perception and what's going on in the world.

[1:43:56] Cameron McEwen: So there is a matter of different times there where the medium is the message.

[1:44:04] Cameron McEwen: That is to say the link between the different times is the key to that understanding.

[1:44:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:44:11] Bob Dobbs: so by your phrase time,

[1:44:13] Bob Dobbs: the word times there,

[1:44:14] Bob Dobbs: you mean medium.

[1:44:17] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:44:17] Cameron McEwen: I'm saying that between...

[1:44:23] Cameron McEwen: between simultaneous time and linear time,

[1:44:27] Cameron McEwen: there is a medium.

[1:44:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:44:30] Cameron McEwen: you don't say there's each a medium.

[1:44:32] Bob Dobbs: There's a medium between them.

[1:44:34] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:44:35] Cameron McEwen: And it's what links them.

[1:44:38] Bob Dobbs: What is that medium?

[1:44:39] Bob Dobbs: What is the medium that links?

[1:44:40] Cameron McEwen: Actually,

[1:44:40] Cameron McEwen: that's McLuhan question.

[1:44:43] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is trying to talk about that,

[1:44:46] Cameron McEwen: exactly what you just brought up.

[1:44:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:44:48] Cameron McEwen: And it occurred to him in the

[1:44:51] Cameron McEwen: 1950s.

[1:44:51] Cameron McEwen: that maybe he could use the mass media to show something about that.

[1:44:57] Cameron McEwen: Because the mass media,

[1:44:58] Cameron McEwen: you have a guy writing something,

[1:45:00] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[1:45:02] Cameron McEwen: for a newspaper,

[1:45:03] Cameron McEwen: and then you have the newspaper,

[1:45:06] Cameron McEwen: and you have somebody reading it,

[1:45:09] Cameron McEwen: and there's an action of a medium here.

[1:45:14] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan wants to say,

[1:45:16] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:45:16] Cameron McEwen: look,

[1:45:16] Cameron McEwen: this is analogous,

[1:45:18] Cameron McEwen: this whole process.

[1:45:21] Cameron McEwen: goes on in mass media it's analogous to the working of media in our perception

[1:45:28] Cameron McEwen: So maybe by talking about media and by participating in media,

[1:45:32] Cameron McEwen: I can communicate about them.

[1:45:35] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:45:35] Cameron McEwen: so far it hasn't worked,

[1:45:37] Cameron McEwen: but it's an interesting idea.

[1:45:39] Cameron McEwen: And for McLuhan himself,

[1:45:41] Cameron McEwen: it was a very energizing idea.

[1:45:47] Cameron McEwen: At the start of the

[1:45:49] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, he was sort of an English professor and he was writing

[1:45:53] Cameron McEwen: English essays.

[1:45:54] Cameron McEwen: And they were very interesting things,

[1:45:56] Cameron McEwen: but nobody...

[1:45:58] Cameron McEwen: was paying any attention to him.

[1:45:59] Cameron McEwen: Nobody was paying any attention to his essays.

[1:46:02] Cameron McEwen: And it wasn't a very satisfying life.

[1:46:05] Cameron McEwen: He wasn't doing what he felt like he had to be doing.

[1:46:09] Cameron McEwen: But he didn't know what he was going to what he was supposed to do.

[1:46:12] Cameron McEwen: And he didn't know how to do it.

[1:46:14] Cameron McEwen: But in the

[1:46:15] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, when he became engaged with media,

[1:46:18] Cameron McEwen: all of a sudden,

[1:46:18] Cameron McEwen: the light bulb goes off.

[1:46:19] Cameron McEwen: He says,

[1:46:20] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:46:20] Cameron McEwen: there's the there's the thing that I can use,

[1:46:23] Cameron McEwen: that I can use

[1:46:25] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:46:26] Cameron McEwen: get into and do my thing.

[1:46:29] Cameron McEwen: And that's really more or less where we started our conversation today.

[1:46:33] Cameron McEwen: You brought up how he would see something in the natural environment and see more to it that he could engage with.

[1:46:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:46:45] Bob Dobbs: so you may have come up with a new definition of medium,

[1:46:48] Bob Dobbs: this space in between.

[1:46:51] Cameron McEwen: We don't.

[1:46:52] Cameron McEwen: That's not new to you,

[1:46:53] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[1:46:54] Cameron McEwen: You call that tactility.

[1:46:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:46:57] Bob Dobbs: I was going to say this.

[1:46:58] Bob Dobbs: It might be what you mean by tactility.

[1:47:03] Bob Dobbs: If the society starts reading books,

[1:47:07] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if brain technology can see where the bias that print brings in,

[1:47:15] Bob Dobbs: can that be measured in the brain of individuals in that society?

[1:47:18] Bob Dobbs: You go back to...

[1:47:20] Bob Dobbs: 1650 and you see what 150 years of book reading did to people in their brains.

[1:47:27] Bob Dobbs: I think there is a change,

[1:47:29] Bob Dobbs: but it's in a nebulous area.

[1:47:31] Bob Dobbs: And so I understand that nebulous area is your definition of media in between knowns,

[1:47:40] Bob Dobbs: in between knowns.

[1:47:42] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan talks about that all the time.

[1:47:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:47:45] Bob Dobbs: in between space,

[1:47:46] Bob Dobbs: like where is this medium effect?

[1:47:51] Bob Dobbs: Maybe then people say,

[1:47:52] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:47:52] Bob Dobbs: when did it reach?

[1:47:53] Cameron McEwen: And that medium,

[1:47:55] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[1:47:56] Cameron McEwen: this relates exactly to the adyton.

[1:48:00] Cameron McEwen: The adyton of the temple is the space that you can't go into.

[1:48:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:48:05] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:48:05] Cameron McEwen: the medium,

[1:48:07] Cameron McEwen: you can never go into that space because as soon as you go into that space,

[1:48:15] Cameron McEwen: you make it into an object,

[1:48:17] Cameron McEwen: you make it into a pole.

[1:48:19] Cameron McEwen: that itself is illuminated only by its medium.

[1:48:24] Cameron McEwen: So the medium is inherently dark.

[1:48:28] Cameron McEwen: You can never get to the bottom of media because the isolation and the investigation of a medium always presupposes another medium.

[1:48:40] Cameron McEwen: So when McLuhan talks about how the environment can never be seen,

[1:48:46] Cameron McEwen: ultimately that's what he's talking about.

[1:48:49] Cameron McEwen: The ultimate environment that makes it possible for humans to have an environment can never be seen,

[1:48:56] Cameron McEwen: can never be perceived.

[1:48:58] Cameron McEwen: It's always already there.

[1:48:59] Cameron McEwen: It's always already in action.

[1:49:03] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:49:03] Bob Dobbs: so there's a traditional idea that if you live by your senses,

[1:49:12] Bob Dobbs: you're living in distortion.

[1:49:15] Bob Dobbs: Your senses always will distort your situation.

[1:49:19] Bob Dobbs: And so the

[1:49:20] Bob Dobbs: Platonist says,

[1:49:21] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:49:22] Bob Dobbs: there's another level that I don't know what they say about whether you get to it or not,

[1:49:28] Bob Dobbs: or you can think it,

[1:49:30] Bob Dobbs: but he called it the archetypal,

[1:49:33] Bob Dobbs: where there's a clarity or something,

[1:49:38] Bob Dobbs: some difference.

[1:49:40] Bob Dobbs: Are you being Aristotelian by saying no,

[1:49:43] Bob Dobbs: there's no way out of the living in the sensory?

[1:49:50] Bob Dobbs: You're going to have a bias.

[1:49:52] Bob Dobbs: You're going to have to accept your limitations.

[1:49:58] Bob Dobbs: Do you know that debate between Plato and Aristotle?

[1:50:02] Bob Dobbs: Am I quoting it properly to you?

[1:50:04] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:50:05] Cameron McEwen: look,

[1:50:05] Cameron McEwen: I remember we said earlier that it's a mark of not thinking when people use names as categories and stuff,

[1:50:13] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:50:13] Cameron McEwen: So I don't like to get into that.

[1:50:17] Cameron McEwen: Plato was a very,

[1:50:18] Cameron McEwen: very...

[1:50:19] Cameron McEwen: brilliant guy and Aristotle was his most brilliant pupil and people tend to take them as somehow opposed as Coleridge did for example but

[1:50:38] Cameron McEwen: Aristotle may be read as a pupil who is trying to...

[1:50:43] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:50:46] Bob Dobbs: are you there?

[1:50:51] Bob Dobbs: What happened there?

[1:51:37] Bob Dobbs: Hey there.

[1:52:32] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:52:33] Bob Dobbs: you there?

[1:52:34] Cameron McEwen: I'm here.

[1:52:36] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:52:36] Bob Dobbs: so let's see if it's in the other phones.

[1:52:40] Bob Dobbs: Can you speak?

[1:52:42] Cameron McEwen: Hello,

[1:52:42] Cameron McEwen: hello.

[1:52:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:52:43] Bob Dobbs: it's coming through that one.

[1:52:46] Bob Dobbs: Just a second.

[1:52:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:52:55] Bob Dobbs: say it again.

[1:52:57] Cameron McEwen: Hello,

[1:52:57] Cameron McEwen: hello.

[1:52:59] Bob Dobbs: Do it again.

[1:53:00] Cameron McEwen: Hello,

[1:53:01] Cameron McEwen: hello.

[1:53:02] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:53:03] Bob Dobbs: it seems to be all hooked up,

[1:53:06] Bob Dobbs: so we can assume we're recording.

[1:53:16] Bob Dobbs: If we're not,

[1:53:17] Bob Dobbs: then from what we say here on in,

[1:53:20] Bob Dobbs: it's not going to be recorded.

[1:53:22] Cameron McEwen: Great loss to the world.

[1:53:25] Bob Dobbs: We have been going for an hour and 45 minutes,

[1:53:31] Bob Dobbs: maybe.

[1:53:31] Bob Dobbs: What do you see?

[1:53:32] Bob Dobbs: Do you have a way of knowing how long we've been going?

[1:53:36] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:53:37] Cameron McEwen: I noticed that when the call got dropped,

[1:53:40] Cameron McEwen: it was just a little bit less than two hours.

[1:53:43] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:53:44] Bob Dobbs: But,

[1:53:44] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[1:53:44] Cameron McEwen: we talked for a little while before we started recording.

[1:53:49] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:53:49] Bob Dobbs: but not too long.

[1:53:52] Cameron McEwen: So I would say one hour and 50 minutes,

[1:53:54] Cameron McEwen: something like that.

[1:53:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:53:55] Bob Dobbs: which is a good length.

[1:53:56] Bob Dobbs: That's about what we're doing.

[1:53:59] Bob Dobbs: It's okay.

[1:54:00] Cameron McEwen: We didn't even get to the first word or the first sentence of your book yet.

[1:54:05] Bob Dobbs: I know.

[1:54:06] Bob Dobbs: So let's carry on as if it's still recording.

[1:54:09] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:54:10] Bob Dobbs: Because,

[1:54:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:54:11] Bob Dobbs: if you could hear me,

[1:54:13] Bob Dobbs: you didn't get disconnected.

[1:54:14] Bob Dobbs: It was still going on.

[1:54:16] Bob Dobbs: I just went into another space and had to get back in.

[1:54:19] Bob Dobbs: And so it should still be recording.

[1:54:22] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[1:54:22] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:54:23] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:54:24] Bob Dobbs: I want to go.

[1:54:25] Cameron McEwen: You're talking about Plato and Aristotle.

[1:54:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:54:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:54:30] Bob Dobbs: I was thinking that what you said for five minutes before that,

[1:54:34] Bob Dobbs: before I responded,

[1:54:35] Bob Dobbs: that would be very hard for people to understand.

[1:54:38] Bob Dobbs: So this space in between,

[1:54:42] Bob Dobbs: which the way I was translating it is that we don't know where this effect of media is.

[1:54:53] Bob Dobbs: As Theall would say,

[1:54:54] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall,

[1:54:55] Bob Dobbs: it's not that...

[1:54:57] Bob Dobbs: What's his name?

[1:54:58] Bob Dobbs: Tom Wolfe made a mistake thinking McLuhan was talking neurology and about brain things.

[1:55:04] Bob Dobbs: And I've met a couple people who say the newer technologies that can analyze the brain help to illuminate McLuhan.

[1:55:11] Cameron McEwen: But

[1:55:12] Bob Dobbs: I suspect that's not accurate.

[1:55:15] Bob Dobbs: There is this nebulous area where communication happens and actually a different form of communication does change things.

[1:55:23] Bob Dobbs: But that might be hard to measure.

[1:55:27] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[1:55:28] Bob Dobbs: With technology.

[1:55:29] Cameron McEwen: Measure in the sense that you're using it belongs to what he called old science.

[1:55:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:55:38] Cameron McEwen: It belongs to old nature.

[1:55:42] Cameron McEwen: The distinctive thing about McLuhan is that he was saying that a new science is possible.

[1:55:50] Cameron McEwen: And the old science was science that tried to understand.

[1:55:55] Cameron McEwen: everything as much as possible aside from bias.

[1:56:01] Cameron McEwen: And that worked very well because when you get away from bias by using instruments or by using experiments or being more careful in your observations,

[1:56:13] Cameron McEwen: when you do all those things,

[1:56:15] Cameron McEwen: then you can illuminate nature.

[1:56:18] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan said is,

[1:56:19] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:56:20] Cameron McEwen: wait a minute,

[1:56:21] Cameron McEwen: there is a...

[1:56:23] Cameron McEwen: especially in modern times with satellites,

[1:56:27] Cameron McEwen: we've entered a new nature.

[1:56:29] Cameron McEwen: And the new nature is manufactured by humans.

[1:56:34] Cameron McEwen: So the planet doesn't exist as old nature anymore.

[1:56:39] Cameron McEwen: It exists as something we...

[1:56:40] Cameron McEwen: see from a satellite that we've made.

[1:56:43] Cameron McEwen: So this new nature is something that is a human manufacturer and therefore it's always subject to bias.

[1:56:52] Cameron McEwen: So the new science doesn't understand nature aside from bias,

[1:56:57] Cameron McEwen: it understands nature as bias.

[1:57:01] Cameron McEwen: And what McLuhan was saying is,

[1:57:03] Cameron McEwen: look,

[1:57:05] Cameron McEwen: it's possible to understand human bias

[1:57:09] Cameron McEwen: by attending the media,

[1:57:13] Cameron McEwen: because all bias is shaped by some or other variety of medium.

[1:57:19] Bob Dobbs: So there's a way to get out of the darkness temporarily?

[1:57:24] Cameron McEwen: Get out of the what?

[1:57:25] Bob Dobbs: The darkness.

[1:57:27] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:57:27] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:57:27] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:57:27] Cameron McEwen: no.

[1:57:29] Cameron McEwen: Even wanting to get out of the darkness is a Gnostic ideal.

[1:57:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is always interested in the medium.

[1:57:38] Cameron McEwen: So if you talk about darkness,

[1:57:40] Cameron McEwen: you have to say,

[1:57:42] Cameron McEwen: darkness in what relation to the light?

[1:57:46] Cameron McEwen: And that the relation is just another way of naming the medium between the two.

[1:57:53] Cameron McEwen: So darkness can never be used without some relationship to light.

[1:58:00] Cameron McEwen: And the interesting question is,

[1:58:02] Cameron McEwen: what is that relation?

[1:58:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:58:04] Bob Dobbs: and you were talking about for a second,

[1:58:07] Bob Dobbs: you used the word darkness.

[1:58:08] Bob Dobbs: 10 minutes ago in describing the area of the medium.

[1:58:13] Cameron McEwen: So I meant it that way.

[1:58:16] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:58:16] Cameron McEwen: so the darkness that can never be penetrated of a medium because every time we go to investigate a medium,

[1:58:27] Cameron McEwen: we have to use some other media to do it,

[1:58:31] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:58:31] Cameron McEwen: Because there is no such thing as a message without a medium,

[1:58:35] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:58:37] Cameron McEwen: The medium is the message,

[1:58:40] Cameron McEwen: meaning it's the medium that structures the message.

[1:58:47] Cameron McEwen: So every message is structured by a medium.

[1:58:50] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:58:50] Cameron McEwen: what happens when we look at some medium?

[1:58:54] Cameron McEwen: Then we can only do that through some other medium,

[1:59:02] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:59:03] Cameron McEwen: So it would appear that...

[1:59:06] Cameron McEwen: you would get some sort of infinite regress.

[1:59:08] Cameron McEwen: Every time you look at a medium,

[1:59:10] Cameron McEwen: you need another medium.

[1:59:12] Cameron McEwen: And to look at that new medium,

[1:59:14] Cameron McEwen: then you need another one,

[1:59:15] Cameron McEwen: on and

[1:59:17] Cameron McEwen: And that's why Innis said that the study of bias leads to solipsism.

[1:59:23] Cameron McEwen: You never get out of bias.

[1:59:28] Cameron McEwen: And what McLuhan said was,

[1:59:29] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:59:31] Cameron McEwen: getting out of bias isn't our problem.

[1:59:34] Cameron McEwen: What it means to be...

[1:59:35] Cameron McEwen: a human being in a fallen state is that even though we're in a fallen state,

[1:59:43] Cameron McEwen: even though we're necessarily biased,

[1:59:46] Cameron McEwen: we can also know truth.

[1:59:49] Cameron McEwen: So if we just look at the physical sciences,

[1:59:53] Cameron McEwen: it's not that we get away from bias in the physical sciences.

[1:59:58] Cameron McEwen: No,

[2:00:00] Cameron McEwen: we're always biased in some way that we can further investigate.

[2:00:04] Cameron McEwen: But the amazing fact is that we can know the truth about the physical world.

[2:00:11] Cameron McEwen: And that understanding is only one that we've had since around 1800,

[2:00:16] Cameron McEwen: and it has revolutionized the world.

[2:00:19] Cameron McEwen: So then McLuhan says,

[2:00:20] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:00:20] Cameron McEwen: what would happen if we investigated bias in the same way?

[2:00:26] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:00:26] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[2:00:28] Bob Dobbs: So what's the medium in between us?

[2:00:33] Cameron McEwen: How do you mean between us,

[2:00:34] Cameron McEwen: you and me?

[2:00:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:00:37] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:00:38] Cameron McEwen: we're having a conversation about our understandings of McLuhan and how that relates to our understanding of everything else.

[2:00:50] Cameron McEwen: And that medium between us is not something that is absolutely clear,

[2:01:00] Cameron McEwen: that we know everything about.

[2:01:02] Cameron McEwen: We're invested.

[2:01:03] Cameron McEwen: investigating it.

[2:01:04] Cameron McEwen: And what's...

[2:01:05] Bob Dobbs: The medium is not the telephone?

[2:01:12] Cameron McEwen: No,

[2:01:12] Cameron McEwen: the telephone is an illustration of a medium.

[2:01:18] Cameron McEwen: So the medium that we're talking through is the telephone,

[2:01:28] Cameron McEwen: it's the satellites.

[2:01:32] Cameron McEwen: that are carrying the message.

[2:01:34] Cameron McEwen: There's a whole bunch of literal media that are involved in our conversation.

[2:01:40] Cameron McEwen: But the deepest medium of our conversation is our attempt to come to an understanding of our readings of McLuhan and

[2:01:55] Cameron McEwen: of our understanding of each other.

[2:01:58] Bob Dobbs: But that's the content.

[2:02:01] Bob Dobbs: The fact that we're on the phone...

[2:02:04] Cameron McEwen: If you make that a...

[2:02:05] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:02:06] Cameron McEwen: okay,

[2:02:06] Cameron McEwen: go ahead.

[2:02:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:02:07] Bob Dobbs: if the fact we're on a phone and in satellites,

[2:02:11] Bob Dobbs: how is that altering our understanding of McLuhan or bringing in a bias towards the content,

[2:02:18] Bob Dobbs: which is quoting McLuhan,

[2:02:20] Bob Dobbs: referring to what we think he means?

[2:02:23] Cameron McEwen: But isn't that obvious?

[2:02:25] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:02:26] Cameron McEwen: I don't know everything about McLuhan.

[2:02:28] Cameron McEwen: You don't know everything about McLuhan.

[2:02:30] Cameron McEwen: But we learned things about McLuhan talking to each other.

[2:02:35] Bob Dobbs: What if we were writing letters to each other?

[2:02:37] Cameron McEwen: Sure,

[2:02:39] Cameron McEwen: sure.

[2:02:39] Cameron McEwen: So in one sense,

[2:02:45] Cameron McEwen: what we're doing by talking on the phone and live is different from doing letters.

[2:02:52] Cameron McEwen: But there were advantages to doing letters.

[2:02:55] Cameron McEwen: When people communicated by letter,

[2:02:58] Cameron McEwen: Then they had a chance to think a lot about what they were doing,

[2:03:06] Cameron McEwen: and they reacted in much slower time,

[2:03:11] Cameron McEwen: which could be advantageous,

[2:03:13] Cameron McEwen: right?

[2:03:14] Cameron McEwen: But there's also advantages to what we're doing when the reaction is instantaneous between us.

[2:03:20] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan was saying is that,

[2:03:24] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:03:24] Cameron McEwen: if you think about...

[2:03:27] Cameron McEwen: the medium of letter writing,

[2:03:29] Cameron McEwen: you think about the medium of talking on the phone,

[2:03:33] Cameron McEwen: that gives you some sense of how media work in perception.

[2:03:39] Cameron McEwen: And sure,

[2:03:40] Cameron McEwen: there's always a bias there,

[2:03:42] Cameron McEwen: but it's also possible to investigate that bias.

[2:03:46] Cameron McEwen: And so that was his big message.

[2:03:50] Cameron McEwen: Let's learn how to investigate what...

[2:03:54] Cameron McEwen: human beings are doing when they perceive.

[2:03:57] Cameron McEwen: And he saw that as what he called a strategy for survival.

[2:04:04] Bob Dobbs: So why does humor come into it?

[2:04:08] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if why is the right question,

[2:04:10] Bob Dobbs: but how does the humor part of McLuhan's communication style?

[2:04:16] Cameron McEwen: Because,

[2:04:19] Cameron McEwen: as we've often said,

[2:04:21] Cameron McEwen: what needs to be understood

[2:04:24] Cameron McEwen: in these questions isn't something new.

[2:04:27] Cameron McEwen: It was known by the Egyptians.

[2:04:29] Cameron McEwen: It was known by Plato.

[2:04:30] Cameron McEwen: It was known by Aristotle.

[2:04:32] Cameron McEwen: So what's needed is the communication of these things that people have always known.

[2:04:40] Cameron McEwen: And so then

[2:04:41] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan has the problem of,

[2:04:43] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:04:44] Cameron McEwen: how am I going to communicate this stuff.

[2:04:47] Cameron McEwen: Talking about media is one way.

[2:04:52] Cameron McEwen: Trying to

[2:04:54] Cameron McEwen: use Menippean satire is another way.

[2:04:57] Cameron McEwen: And so his comedy is part of a Menippean satire strategy of seeing if that would work to communicate.

[2:05:10] Bob Dobbs: It didn't work,

[2:05:10] Bob Dobbs: though,

[2:05:10] Bob Dobbs: did it?

[2:05:12] Cameron McEwen: Pardon me?

[2:05:13] Bob Dobbs: It didn't work.

[2:05:14] Cameron McEwen: No,

[2:05:15] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[2:05:15] Cameron McEwen: That's exactly right.

[2:05:16] Cameron McEwen: So

[2:05:18] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan dropped the baton.

[2:05:20] Cameron McEwen: You could have him...

[2:05:21] Bob Dobbs: He dropped the guitar.

[2:05:23] Cameron McEwen: Exactly,

[2:05:24] Cameron McEwen: drop the guitar.

[2:05:25] Cameron McEwen: And we understand him as doing that.

[2:05:28] Cameron McEwen: So what we're doing is we're picking up the baton,

[2:05:30] Cameron McEwen: we're picking up the guitar.

[2:05:32] Cameron McEwen: Maybe we'll have to drop them in turn.

[2:05:36] Cameron McEwen: But what we're trying to do is we're trying to say,

[2:05:38] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:05:38] Cameron McEwen: if he didn't succeed in communication,

[2:05:41] Cameron McEwen: how come?

[2:05:43] Cameron McEwen: And can we get around that in some way?

[2:05:46] Bob Dobbs: Do you have any ideas on that or is that too particular to express?

[2:05:50] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:05:50] Cameron McEwen: that's what...

[2:05:51] Cameron McEwen: that's what we're talking about isn't it we're recording um two people two people communicating with each other trying to figure out how to communicate these larger issues yeah um and

[2:06:08] Cameron McEwen: how would we know how we're doing well ultimately we never do right so you make you don't make an issue out of that.

[2:06:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:06:20] Cameron McEwen: but,

[2:06:21] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[2:06:22] Cameron McEwen: just think of everybody that was much more famous than McLuhan in the

[2:06:29] Cameron McEwen: 1960s and 70s.

[2:06:31] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[2:06:31] Cameron McEwen: Leonard Bernstein or something like that.

[2:06:34] Cameron McEwen: And now,

[2:06:35] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[2:06:35] Cameron McEwen: they're forgotten.

[2:06:37] Cameron McEwen: There's no way to sort of guarantee fame or guarantee immortality or something.

[2:06:47] Bob Dobbs: Or success.

[2:06:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:06:50] Cameron McEwen: You do your thing and go into that dark night.

[2:06:57] Cameron McEwen: That's all there is to it.

[2:06:59] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:07:00] Bob Dobbs: you don't seem to concentrate on what you would say if you were given a podium to billions of people.

[2:07:08] Cameron McEwen: You've asked that question in the past.

[2:07:11] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:07:12] Cameron McEwen: that's what I'm attempting to do is,

[2:07:16] Cameron McEwen: I feel like when I get up in the morning,

[2:07:20] Cameron McEwen: And sometimes that's not in the morning.

[2:07:23] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:07:23] Cameron McEwen: I get up,

[2:07:25] Cameron McEwen: as you do,

[2:07:26] Cameron McEwen: at

[2:07:27] Cameron McEwen: 11 p.m.

[2:07:29] Cameron McEwen: or 1 a.m.

[2:07:30] Cameron McEwen: or something like that.

[2:07:33] Cameron McEwen: I feel like I go into a studio of an artist where I have a whole bunch of canvases.

[2:07:41] Cameron McEwen: Some of them I've started to paint on.

[2:07:43] Cameron McEwen: Some of them I haven't.

[2:07:45] Cameron McEwen: And

[2:07:46] Cameron McEwen: I paint.

[2:07:48] Cameron McEwen: and um

[2:07:50] Cameron McEwen: I am doing this because I feel like it's what I'm called to do.

[2:07:56] Cameron McEwen: And

[2:07:57] Cameron McEwen: I hope that I can,

[2:08:00] Cameron McEwen: I hope that it has some good effect in some way at some time.

[2:08:05] Cameron McEwen: But you do,

[2:08:08] Bob Dobbs: see you do.

[2:08:09] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if I agree with that.

[2:08:10] Bob Dobbs: We're in a terrible time or a time of risk or annihilation.

[2:08:16] Bob Dobbs: You,

[2:08:16] Bob Dobbs: you.

[2:08:17] Bob Dobbs: seem to believe that this is bad people,

[2:08:21] Bob Dobbs: but I don't know what you would demand of them.

[2:08:27] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:08:27] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:08:28] Cameron McEwen: if we keep on,

[2:08:30] Cameron McEwen: what I would demand of them is some dedication to thought and investigation of what the hell we're up to,

[2:08:40] Cameron McEwen: because it's not anything good.

[2:08:45] Bob Dobbs: Maybe you're missing the good that's happening now.

[2:08:50] Cameron McEwen: It could be.

[2:08:51] Cameron McEwen: And remember that I'm working as hard as I can on trying to reverse the situation or trying to ameliorate the situation.

[2:09:07] Cameron McEwen: So it's not that I don't think that things can be good.

[2:09:13] Cameron McEwen: It's just...

[2:09:15] Cameron McEwen: to me an objective assessment of where we are clearly reveals that we live in very dangerous times well

[2:09:29] Bob Dobbs: what if the it doesn't matter if you die it doesn't you go somewhere it's not it's not an issue uh you just shifted to another thing so all this apparently

[2:09:42] Bob Dobbs: Screaming about death is happening,

[2:09:44] Bob Dobbs: more than anything it seems.

[2:09:47] Bob Dobbs: Death is what people think is more and more is happening.

[2:09:51] Bob Dobbs: What if death was not an issue?

[2:09:52] Bob Dobbs: Then we would not,

[2:09:54] Bob Dobbs: that may not be the problem.

[2:09:57] Bob Dobbs: What would be the problem if that wasn't it?

[2:10:00] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:10:01] Cameron McEwen: the problem for a

[2:10:07] Cameron McEwen: Christian like McLuhan,

[2:10:10] Cameron McEwen: the idea that...

[2:10:11] Cameron McEwen: death is not the end or it's not a big deal or something like this doesn't make sense because if we're all going to meet our maker and more or less have to account for ourselves,

[2:10:27] Cameron McEwen: account for the gift of life that we've been given,

[2:10:33] Cameron McEwen: that's not a very assuring thought because none of us

[2:10:39] Cameron McEwen: has done a very good job of that.

[2:10:44] Cameron McEwen: So the idea that death is nothing and that everything is going to be sort of Shangri-La after death.

[2:10:52] Bob Dobbs: I'm not saying it'll be Shangri-La,

[2:10:55] Bob Dobbs: but

[2:10:55] Bob Dobbs: I'm trying to figure out what it is you're concerned about.

[2:11:00] Bob Dobbs: Do you operate within the idea?

[2:11:02] Cameron McEwen: We've been handed a gift.

[2:11:04] Cameron McEwen: of living in a world of many different creatures,

[2:11:09] Cameron McEwen: of animals and plants.

[2:11:13] Cameron McEwen: And we,

[2:11:15] Cameron McEwen: as

[2:11:15] Cameron McEwen: Heidegger said,

[2:11:17] Cameron McEwen: human beings are the shepherds of being.

[2:11:20] Cameron McEwen: And when he said that human beings are the shepherds of being,

[2:11:25] Cameron McEwen: he didn't mean that being is like sheep and human beings are shepherding being in that sense.

[2:11:33] Cameron McEwen: He was saying that...

[2:11:34] Cameron McEwen: Human beings are the shepherds of being in the sense that being is the landlord,

[2:11:40] Cameron McEwen: being is the master,

[2:11:42] Cameron McEwen: and we're the shepherds who are employed by that landlord.

[2:11:49] Cameron McEwen: And it's our job to look after the animals that we're supposed to be shepherding.

[2:11:57] Cameron McEwen: So human beings have a responsibility to all of the little beings in the world.

[2:12:03] Cameron McEwen: that do not have the power of nuclear weapons like we do.

[2:12:11] Cameron McEwen: They are subject to our sensibility.

[2:12:17] Cameron McEwen: The whole world of all of the fish in the ocean and all of the plants and animals all over the place are unhappily subject to us.

[2:12:29] Cameron McEwen: And the great danger is not that...

[2:12:33] Cameron McEwen: We kill ourselves off because we're of no consequence except that these other beings and plants could be killed off by us,

[2:12:48] Cameron McEwen: and that would be a terrible thing.

[2:12:51] Cameron McEwen: So the terrible thing has nothing to do with us dying.

[2:12:55] Cameron McEwen: It has to do with our calling to care for other things that we're not paying attention to right now.

[2:13:03] Bob Dobbs: So you're talking about first nature ecology?

[2:13:08] Bob Dobbs: We're not paying enough attention to animals?

[2:13:14] Bob Dobbs: That's a major issue for you?

[2:13:18] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[2:13:18] Cameron McEwen: Our responsibility to all of the other beings,

[2:13:22] Cameron McEwen: sure,

[2:13:22] Cameron McEwen: that's a big issue.

[2:13:23] Cameron McEwen: Of course.

[2:13:26] Bob Dobbs: What's the bias of that idea that you have?

[2:13:35] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:13:36] Cameron McEwen: remember that bias is inevitable and is not necessarily bad.

[2:13:46] Cameron McEwen: So there's all kinds of biases people can have.

[2:13:50] Cameron McEwen: And one of them is a bias that regards our situation in the world as a gift and as a responsibility.

[2:14:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:14:02] Cameron McEwen: And I...

[2:14:03] Cameron McEwen: I think that's a fine bias to have.

[2:14:11] Bob Dobbs: But you have meaning.

[2:14:14] Bob Dobbs: You think you're addressing it.

[2:14:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[2:14:18] Bob Dobbs: You think you're doing your part in addressing it.

[2:14:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:14:21] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to do that.

[2:14:24] Cameron McEwen: There's always a big difference between what a person thinks they're doing and what they're actually doing.

[2:14:31] Cameron McEwen: what a person hopes they're doing and what they're actually doing.

[2:14:34] Cameron McEwen: So

[2:14:35] Cameron McEwen: I don't make any claims about what I'm actually accomplishing or anything like that.

[2:14:40] Cameron McEwen: I have no idea about that.

[2:14:42] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:14:42] Bob Dobbs: So how responsible do you feel about making your neighbor understand what we're talking about,

[2:14:50] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[2:14:51] Bob Dobbs: per se?

[2:14:52] Cameron McEwen: I don't feel any responsibility about that whatsoever.

[2:14:58] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:15:00] Bob Dobbs: How would you impart your concern,

[2:15:04] Bob Dobbs: the bias you're accepting about we're not paying attention,

[2:15:07] Bob Dobbs: you're criticizing us for not paying attention to nature or something?

[2:15:14] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:15:15] Cameron McEwen: not paying attention to our responsibility.

[2:15:21] Cameron McEwen: There's a difference.

[2:15:22] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:15:22] Bob Dobbs: give me a couple of examples of people not paying attention.

[2:15:26] Bob Dobbs: What are they doing?

[2:15:30] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:15:31] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:15:31] Cameron McEwen: for one thing,

[2:15:33] Cameron McEwen: we're currently involved in this war in Ukraine.

[2:15:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:15:37] Cameron McEwen: And that could lead,

[2:15:40] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:15:40] Cameron McEwen: first,

[2:15:40] Cameron McEwen: an awful lot is being destroyed in the process.

[2:15:45] Cameron McEwen: Human lives are being destroyed.

[2:15:49] Cameron McEwen: Human hopes are being destroyed.

[2:15:51] Cameron McEwen: Whole areas of Ukraine are being destroyed.

[2:15:54] Cameron McEwen: But ultimately,

[2:15:55] Cameron McEwen: it could lead to nuclear war.

[2:15:57] Cameron McEwen: So that's...

[2:16:01] Cameron McEwen: Human beings seemingly always have become involved in strife that was...

[2:16:15] Cameron McEwen: destructive of other people and of their own better possibilities.

[2:16:28] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:16:29] Bob Dobbs: You seem to see that's an issue.

[2:16:31] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what you're living.

[2:16:34] Bob Dobbs: How you live your life helps get out of that disaster.

[2:16:42] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:16:43] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's idea,

[2:16:44] Cameron McEwen: and I think this was a good idea,

[2:16:47] Cameron McEwen: was that the world can be changed as much through the investigation of biases as it has been changed through the investigation of physical nature.

[2:17:03] Cameron McEwen: So the world has completely changed since 1800.

[2:17:07] Cameron McEwen: In 1800,

[2:17:08] Cameron McEwen: no railways,

[2:17:09] Cameron McEwen: no airplanes,

[2:17:11] Cameron McEwen: no cars.

[2:17:13] Cameron McEwen: no understanding of the human body,

[2:17:17] Cameron McEwen: no understanding of anything,

[2:17:19] Cameron McEwen: basically,

[2:17:21] Cameron McEwen: except that they had a very good understanding of sort of the raw nature of human being,

[2:17:28] Cameron McEwen: probably a better understanding than we do today.

[2:17:32] Cameron McEwen: But at any rate,

[2:17:33] Cameron McEwen: the world has completely changed since 1800.

[2:17:36] Cameron McEwen: And

[2:17:38] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's idea is that the world could change.

[2:17:41] Cameron McEwen: change as much again,

[2:17:44] Cameron McEwen: but perhaps in a better way if we understood the working of bias.

[2:17:49] Cameron McEwen: So

[2:17:50] Cameron McEwen: I think that was a good idea,

[2:17:52] Cameron McEwen: and I attempt to sort of amplify.

[2:18:00] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:18:00] Bob Dobbs: we did it again.

[2:18:03] Bob Dobbs: If you can hear me,

[2:18:04] Bob Dobbs: Cameron,

[2:18:04] Bob Dobbs: email me,

[2:18:06] Bob Dobbs: and I'll see that you are hearing me.

[2:18:11] Bob Dobbs: Can you do that?

[2:18:11] Bob Dobbs: Let me just look at my email,

[2:18:14] Bob Dobbs: see if

[2:18:15] Bob Dobbs: I hear from you,

[2:18:17] Bob Dobbs: because I can't hear you.

[2:18:23] Bob Dobbs: Waiting for you to email me.

[2:21:35] Bob Dobbs: there yes sir let's see if we're coming through um say something again hello hello yeah we see so the last two three minutes may not have got recorded so i will i will state if it wasn't recorded i'll state uh criticize your value you're emphasizing mccloughan in your life and studying him i

[2:21:58] Bob Dobbs: assume you're not studying much other approaches or thinkers uh

[2:22:05] Bob Dobbs: I already asked you that,

[2:22:06] Bob Dobbs: and I didn't know if it was being recorded,

[2:22:07] Bob Dobbs: so I'm doing it again.

[2:22:08] Bob Dobbs: But you had said,

[2:22:10] Bob Dobbs: and I don't know if it was recorded,

[2:22:11] Bob Dobbs: you said,

[2:22:12] Bob Dobbs: you can think of all kinds of criticisms on McLuhan.

[2:22:15] Bob Dobbs: That's where you're at when I stop.

[2:22:17] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:22:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:22:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:22:19] Cameron McEwen: So,

[2:22:20] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[2:22:20] Cameron McEwen: when McLuhan criticized Innis because Innis didn't know much about art,

[2:22:27] Cameron McEwen: I would say that

[2:22:30] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan thought that by not...

[2:22:35] Bob Dobbs: uh taking up philosophy uh that um he had um made a good choice and um for him maybe he did oh wait i didn't get that McLuhan thinks uh Innis made a good choice not taking up philosophy right

[2:22:54] Cameron McEwen: he wrote that to ong i think in 53 or 54 okay he felt he felt blessed that he hadn't uh taken up philosophy because lodge

[2:23:05] Cameron McEwen: told

[2:23:06] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan that some of the essays that he did for Lodge back at the University of Manitoba were publishable.

[2:23:16] Cameron McEwen: And

[2:23:17] Cameron McEwen: Lodge tried to get McLuhan to be a philosopher like he was.

[2:23:21] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan was attracted more to literature,

[2:23:29] Cameron McEwen: his mother's life,

[2:23:30] Cameron McEwen: you could say,

[2:23:31] Cameron McEwen: than to

[2:23:32] Cameron McEwen: Lodge's life.

[2:23:36] Bob Dobbs: So that's why he perceived Innis was similar to him,

[2:23:41] Bob Dobbs: didn't get stuck in philosophy.

[2:23:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:23:44] Cameron McEwen: that could be.

[2:23:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:23:45] Cameron McEwen: that could be.

[2:23:47] Cameron McEwen: But

[2:23:48] Cameron McEwen: I think that the time has come for some of the things that McLuhan was talking about to be better defined.

[2:23:57] Cameron McEwen: So,

[2:23:57] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[2:23:58] Cameron McEwen: today,

[2:23:59] Cameron McEwen: one of the things that seemed to surprise you was...

[2:24:03] Cameron McEwen: when I brought up a new definition of the medium is the message.

[2:24:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:24:08] Cameron McEwen: And that's especially the medium is the message is something that is very complex and may,

[2:24:20] Cameron McEwen: if it's defined well,

[2:24:23] Cameron McEwen: maybe that lends itself to communication in a way that the medium is the message didn't lend itself to communication.

[2:24:32] Cameron McEwen: for McLuhan himself.

[2:24:37] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:24:37] Bob Dobbs: we like to quote McLuhan.

[2:24:45] Bob Dobbs: Can you correct McLuhan,

[2:24:46] Bob Dobbs: go past him,

[2:24:47] Bob Dobbs: or refine it better by not talking about what he said?

[2:24:53] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[2:24:53] Cameron McEwen: could be.

[2:24:56] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[2:24:56] Cameron McEwen: Talking about him,

[2:24:57] Cameron McEwen: not talking about him,

[2:24:58] Cameron McEwen: those are both possible ways of...

[2:25:05] Cameron McEwen: getting on with our conversation.

[2:25:06] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[2:25:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:25:10] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:25:11] Bob Dobbs: I guess I'll have to see what kind of thoughts I get from what we're thinking,

[2:25:16] Bob Dobbs: what we've talked about today.

[2:25:17] Bob Dobbs: And it's okay that we didn't do any of my book.

[2:25:22] Bob Dobbs: I think it's interesting where we did get what we are talking about.

[2:25:26] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[2:25:27] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[2:25:28] Bob Dobbs: And I brought it up before.

[2:25:30] Bob Dobbs: I'm questioning what you're doing with what you're doing,

[2:25:38] Bob Dobbs: what your medium is.

[2:25:40] Bob Dobbs: So let's leave it at that.

[2:25:42] Bob Dobbs: I don't know where that questioning is.

[2:25:44] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:25:45] Cameron McEwen: let me just say that

[2:25:47] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to do something similar in relation to you.

[2:25:51] Cameron McEwen: So sometimes you say things,

[2:25:54] Cameron McEwen: and I say,

[2:25:55] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[2:25:55] Cameron McEwen: don't go too fast.

[2:25:57] Cameron McEwen: Don't go beyond.

[2:25:59] Cameron McEwen: where you were,

[2:25:59] Cameron McEwen: because that was very interesting.

[2:26:02] Bob Dobbs: And

[2:26:03] Cameron McEwen: I know in my reading of McLuhan,

[2:26:08] Cameron McEwen: and in my attempts to explicate

[2:26:11] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, some of the things that you've pointed out,

[2:26:16] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[2:26:16] Cameron McEwen: page 190 of War and Peace in the Global Village,

[2:26:23] Cameron McEwen: I had never paid much attention to that.

[2:26:25] Cameron McEwen: And I agree with you that it is something that is thought worthy.

[2:26:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:26:31] Cameron McEwen: And so

[2:26:32] Cameron McEwen: I find our conversation very helpful in the sense of directing my attention to things that I didn't before.

[2:26:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:26:43] Cameron McEwen: And

[2:26:44] Cameron McEwen: I hope that that can also be the case with you.

[2:26:47] Cameron McEwen: And sort of we're playing ping pong in that sense.

[2:26:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:26:52] Bob Dobbs: I think it is,

[2:26:53] Bob Dobbs: though I'm not sure.

[2:26:56] Bob Dobbs: I criticized you 20 years ago.

[2:26:58] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[2:27:00] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[2:27:01] Bob Dobbs: we could go back and find the old post.

[2:27:03] Bob Dobbs: And I'm not sure if I still have those criticisms.

[2:27:09] Bob Dobbs: I feel maybe I understand your point more.

[2:27:12] Bob Dobbs: Whatever

[2:27:13] Bob Dobbs: I thought you were saying was not what you were saying,

[2:27:15] Bob Dobbs: and I understand it more.

[2:27:17] Bob Dobbs: So if that's true,

[2:27:19] Bob Dobbs: then

[2:27:20] Bob Dobbs: I've learned something from you.

[2:27:21] Bob Dobbs: But I'm not sure if I have,

[2:27:22] Bob Dobbs: so I'm still checking it out.

[2:27:25] Bob Dobbs: No problem.

[2:27:28] Bob Dobbs: I'm glad that we are getting something out of this.

[2:27:32] Bob Dobbs: There's no denying it's very useful to talk to you about this stuff,

[2:27:36] Bob Dobbs: for me.

[2:27:37] Cameron McEwen: Good.

[2:27:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:27:39] Cameron McEwen: Same here.

[2:27:40] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[2:27:40] Bob Dobbs: So we'll end with that temporary moment of peace and see where it happens the next couple of weeks.

[2:27:50] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[2:27:51] Cameron McEwen: Look forward.

[2:27:52] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[2:27:52] Bob Dobbs: Thanks a lot,

[2:27:52] Bob Dobbs: Cameron.

[2:27:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:27:53] Bob Dobbs: Talk to you soon.

[2:27:55] Cameron McEwen: Bye-bye.

[2:27:55] Bob Dobbs: Bye.