Dialogue 65 — Transcript

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Welcome,

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

[00:06] Bob Dobbs: 65th episode on figuring out what my book's about.

[00:11] Bob Dobbs: It's titled,

[00:15] Bob Dobbs: What You

[00:15] Bob Dobbs: Don't Know About Donald Trump and the Tech Body.

[00:19] Bob Dobbs: Something like that.

[00:20] Bob Dobbs: I haven't looked at the title in a long time.

[00:22] Bob Dobbs: I've been lost in the rabbit hole of talking to

[00:25] Bob Dobbs: Cameron to figure out what the heck did I mean.

[00:28] Bob Dobbs: So,

[00:29] Bob Dobbs: maybe the title's not even accurate.

[00:33] Bob Dobbs: So we did on page of my book,

[00:35] Bob Dobbs: if you have a copy of it,

[00:38] Bob Dobbs: we did

[00:39] Bob Dobbs: 130 and then into 131,

[00:42] Bob Dobbs: a very important quote from page 200 from Cliché to Archetype,

[00:46] Bob Dobbs: 1970.

[00:48] Bob Dobbs: And then there's a commentary that I did to some friend of mine just to have a translation of the more technical talk in the essay part.

[01:00] Bob Dobbs: So we never got there,

[01:02] Bob Dobbs: Cameron and I,

[01:04] Bob Dobbs: to what I said.

[01:06] Bob Dobbs: But

[01:08] Bob Dobbs: Cameron would like to say something about that quote that I found from 1970 in Rolling Stone magazine about pre-tribal awareness,

[01:18] Bob Dobbs: some kind of private citadel or just citadel of consciousness,

[01:23] Bob Dobbs: the individual.

[01:24] Bob Dobbs: So what were you going to say,

[01:26] Bob Dobbs: Cameron,

[01:26] Bob Dobbs: about that?

[01:27] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[01:28] Cameron McEwen: So it ties in with...

[01:30] Cameron McEwen: some of the quotations that you've introduced over the past about 10 pages.

[01:38] Cameron McEwen: But if we just go to page 130 immediately before where we're going to begin,

[01:45] Cameron McEwen: you talk about the citadel of individual consciousness.

[01:51] Cameron McEwen: Before that,

[01:51] Cameron McEwen: you talk about the separateness of man to be uh

[01:58] Cameron McEwen: experienced in the locomotive whistling on the prairies.

[02:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[02:05] Cameron McEwen: In my view,

[02:05] Cameron McEwen: this ties into the pre-tribal awareness that we were talking about a couple of conversations ago.

[02:16] Cameron McEwen: And

[02:17] Cameron McEwen: I think it is actually

[02:20] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's most important topic.

[02:23] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[02:23] Cameron McEwen: And what I mean by that is that

[02:27] Cameron McEwen: Um,

[02:28] Cameron McEwen: I think that what McLuhan was trying to do was set out what might be called the stem cell of human consciousness,

[02:41] Cameron McEwen: or the stem cell structure of human experience.

[02:47] Bob Dobbs: What do you mean by stem cell?

[02:48] Bob Dobbs: What's that?

[02:49] Bob Dobbs: What's the stem cell?

[02:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[02:50] Cameron McEwen: so a stem cell in biology is a cell that is polymorphous,

[02:55] Cameron McEwen: that can be...

[02:57] Cameron McEwen: Depending on circumstances,

[02:59] Cameron McEwen: it can be expressed as a bone or blood or nerves.

[03:06] Cameron McEwen: It's the fundamental building block of the human body.

[03:15] Bob Dobbs: So are you saying you found the chemical element,

[03:18] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[03:18] Bob Dobbs: on your level of metaphor for

[03:21] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan work?

[03:22] Bob Dobbs: You found the key chemical element?

[03:26] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[03:27] Cameron McEwen: what I try to talk about is the structure of the chemical element.

[03:32] Cameron McEwen: So I don't say there's one element.

[03:34] Cameron McEwen: I think it's like chemistry where there's 100 elements,

[03:38] Cameron McEwen: but all share a common structure.

[03:41] Bob Dobbs: But you are saying that the theme of McLuhan,

[03:44] Bob Dobbs: this obscure theme,

[03:45] Bob Dobbs: discovered by me.

[03:47] Bob Dobbs: Do I get credit for that?

[03:48] Bob Dobbs: I discovered it?

[03:48] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[03:49] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[03:51] Cameron McEwen: I think we're both talking about the same.

[03:53] Cameron McEwen: thing but sort of in different modes.

[03:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[03:56] Bob Dobbs: but you didn't have my quotes and I didn't have your quotes.

[04:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[04:01] Cameron McEwen: and at least in my case,

[04:03] Cameron McEwen: I find your quotes,

[04:05] Cameron McEwen: and not only your quotes,

[04:06] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[04:07] Cameron McEwen: you have an intuition that picks out the quotes and leads from one quote to another.

[04:14] Cameron McEwen: And

[04:15] Cameron McEwen: I find your intuition to be very motivating.

[04:22] Bob Dobbs: Good,

[04:23] Cameron McEwen: productive.

[04:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[04:24] Cameron McEwen: and so that's the way that we're kind of addressing your book,

[04:28] Cameron McEwen: right?

[04:28] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[04:29] Cameron McEwen: Both of us are looking at the book as an intuition where you yourself make no claim to have made something that you knew everything

[04:44] Cameron McEwen: about as you were doing it.

[04:47] Cameron McEwen: You are listening to yourself and finding stuff,

[04:51] Cameron McEwen: and that's great.

[04:52] Cameron McEwen: I think that's a super way both to create and then to revisit a creation.

[04:59] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[05:00] Bob Dobbs: good.

[05:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[05:01] Cameron McEwen: So you were saying...

[05:04] Bob Dobbs: So what has you said so far that you had said something at the very beginning,

[05:09] Bob Dobbs: and we should restate that.

[05:13] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[05:13] Bob Dobbs: you just went up to these 10 quotes and that.

[05:16] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[05:16] Bob Dobbs: the element point.

[05:17] Bob Dobbs: So the stem cell is the process of the chemical elements,

[05:26] Bob Dobbs: something like that?

[05:28] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[05:28] Cameron McEwen: no.

[05:29] Cameron McEwen: The stem cell is the structure.

[05:34] Cameron McEwen: that gets expressed.

[05:37] Cameron McEwen: If we're talking biologically,

[05:39] Cameron McEwen: then the stem cell has the capability of being actualized in a whole bunch of different configurations,

[05:52] Cameron McEwen: but the original structure is what allows all those different configurations.

[05:59] Cameron McEwen: And so what I'm saying is that

[06:01] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is

[06:02] Cameron McEwen: trying to investigate what the quote unquote stem cell structure is of all human experience.

[06:12] Cameron McEwen: And the difference between the way you look at it and the way I look at it,

[06:18] Cameron McEwen: just in general,

[06:20] Cameron McEwen: is that you tend to look at it in historical terms.

[06:23] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[06:24] Cameron McEwen: And I tend to look at it in a historical terms.

[06:27] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[06:28] Cameron McEwen: And but but both are correct in a sense.

[06:32] Cameron McEwen: Because it's not the case that the stem cell structure of experience expresses itself aside from time.

[06:44] Cameron McEwen: It only expresses itself in time.

[06:47] Cameron McEwen: But the structure itself does not have time.

[06:51] Cameron McEwen: The structure itself is always the same.

[06:54] Cameron McEwen: And so it's that kind of interesting thing here that actually goes back to...

[07:02] Cameron McEwen: Aristotle's attempt to explain Plato is that

[07:07] Cameron McEwen: Aristotle could see that most contemporaries of his that were either direct students of Plato or were outside of

[07:19] Cameron McEwen: Plato's academy but paid some attention to it,

[07:23] Cameron McEwen: everybody thought that the ideas were things that were sort of sitting up in the air and that Plato was trying to reduce

[07:31] Cameron McEwen: the complexity of the world to these abstract ideas.

[07:36] Cameron McEwen: And that idea of Plato is one that's very,

[07:41] Cameron McEwen: very common in the Western tradition.

[07:44] Cameron McEwen: And oftentimes people use the term platonic to mean abstract or to mean bloodless or something like that.

[07:53] Cameron McEwen: But Aristotle said,

[07:54] Cameron McEwen: no,

[07:54] Cameron McEwen: He said it belongs to the ideas to be dynamic.

[08:00] Cameron McEwen: What does dynamic mean?

[08:01] Cameron McEwen: What is dunamis in

[08:03] Cameron McEwen: Greek? It means that it's inherent to something to express itself,

[08:11] Cameron McEwen: right?

[08:11] Cameron McEwen: As McLuhan would say,

[08:13] Cameron McEwen: to be an extension.

[08:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[08:15] Cameron McEwen: So what

[08:17] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is trying to do is he's trying to,

[08:20] Cameron McEwen: at least in my view,

[08:21] Cameron McEwen: I'm not making any claims to have a God's eye view on McLuhan.

[08:26] Cameron McEwen: I have my view,

[08:27] Cameron McEwen: and maybe it's right,

[08:28] Cameron McEwen: maybe it's wrong.

[08:29] Cameron McEwen: But I think that in my interpretation,

[08:32] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was trying to define this stem cell structure of experience that is dynamic,

[08:39] Cameron McEwen: that is inherently an extension of the original structure into a whole bunch of different expressions of that structure.

[08:49] Bob Dobbs: Would that be his term,

[08:51] Bob Dobbs: the agent intellect he would write in the late

[08:53] Bob Dobbs: 40s, early 50s?

[08:54] Bob Dobbs: Is that the creative?

[08:55] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[08:57] Cameron McEwen: well,

[08:57] Cameron McEwen: the agent...

[08:58] Cameron McEwen: intellect has that structure for sure.

[09:05] Cameron McEwen: But when the agent intellect is in operation,

[09:11] Cameron McEwen: then it's a dynamic,

[09:14] Cameron McEwen: right?

[09:14] Cameron McEwen: So the original structure is not ever by itself expressed.

[09:24] Cameron McEwen: How can I put that?

[09:26] Cameron McEwen: Just like you don't find gold,

[09:28] Cameron McEwen: sitting around in the world you only find if you do find gold then it's you know 94 percent pure and six percent impure and most elements aren't found at all in

[09:43] Cameron McEwen: the world as elements they're always combined with other things in compounds and molecules and different kinds of mixtures so it's it's the same with consciousness there's never such a thing

[09:57] Cameron McEwen: as the original structure being extended as itself.

[10:04] Cameron McEwen: It's only extended in different concrete ways of being experienced.

[10:10] Cameron McEwen: And when in the electronic age humans figure out how to investigate this new field,

[10:20] Cameron McEwen: it's not that the field completely captures the reality any more than chemistry at any one moment completely captures everything that's going on in the world.

[10:33] Cameron McEwen: When science identifies a field,

[10:36] Cameron McEwen: it identifies a field for investigation.

[10:40] Cameron McEwen: And similarly,

[10:42] Cameron McEwen: with the stem cell of experience,

[10:46] Cameron McEwen: investigation of that,

[10:48] Cameron McEwen: once it starts,

[10:49] Cameron McEwen: can go on forever.

[10:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[10:51] Bob Dobbs: now,

[10:52] Bob Dobbs: you were saying that your approach and my approach are complementary,

[10:55] Bob Dobbs: which we spent,

[10:56] Bob Dobbs: and incommensurable,

[10:57] Bob Dobbs: we spent our last episode pointing out that.

[11:02] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[11:03] Bob Dobbs: Complication.

[11:04] Bob Dobbs: It's not just simple yin-yang or complementary.

[11:07] Bob Dobbs: There has to be,

[11:07] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if we call it separateness,

[11:10] Bob Dobbs: but an interval that is incommensurable.

[11:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[11:19] Cameron McEwen: but it's an incommensurability that is the very heart of fruitfulness.

[11:28] Cameron McEwen: It's the very heart of expression or extension.

[11:32] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[11:32] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[11:32] Bob Dobbs: Connect,

[11:33] Bob Dobbs: so what was your insight this week about what we were talking about,

[11:38] Bob Dobbs: in my quotes,

[11:39] Bob Dobbs: and the mystery you were telling me before?

[11:42] Bob Dobbs: So

[11:44] Cameron McEwen: I've spent many years talking about how difficult and obscure the idea of the subject is in McLuhan.

[11:56] Cameron McEwen: And because

[12:00] Cameron McEwen: I've written a lot about the fact.

[12:02] Cameron McEwen: that subjects are only identifiable in a certain world.

[12:09] Cameron McEwen: Identity is always tied up with a certain family and a certain language and a certain social matrix and a certain nationality,

[12:19] Cameron McEwen: et cetera.

[12:20] Cameron McEwen: But the genesis of that kind of subject is a kind of mysterious force.

[12:32] Cameron McEwen: that is prior to that.

[12:34] Bob Dobbs: And you knew that,

[12:35] Bob Dobbs: you've been referring to that through the years.

[12:38] Cameron McEwen: But what I didn't realize is that

[12:43] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan has actually addressed the question of that subjectivity,

[12:49] Cameron McEwen: or at least he attempted to address it.

[12:52] Cameron McEwen: And I find his attempt,

[12:55] Cameron McEwen: which

[12:55] Cameron McEwen: I'm seeing through your quotations,

[12:58] Cameron McEwen: I'm finding his attempt to be very fruitful.

[13:02] Cameron McEwen: So,

[13:03] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[13:04] Cameron McEwen: in one place he calls it the art formula.

[13:08] Cameron McEwen: And what does he mean by the art formula?

[13:09] Cameron McEwen: He means that if art is the retracing of the process of cognition,

[13:16] Cameron McEwen: which he says all the time,

[13:19] Cameron McEwen: what happens at the end of that retracing?

[13:22] Cameron McEwen: What do you find?

[13:23] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[13:23] Cameron McEwen: you find the art formula.

[13:25] Cameron McEwen: And the art formula is the...

[13:29] Cameron McEwen: sort of the megastructure or the stem cell structure of all possible experience.

[13:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[13:37] Bob Dobbs: and he talks about the formula is key to modern art in his essay in 53 on Lewis.

[13:44] Bob Dobbs: I think it's in that essay.

[13:46] Bob Dobbs: He talks about all artists and scientists have a formula.

[13:50] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[13:50] Bob Dobbs: is that something different from art formula?

[13:55] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[13:56] Cameron McEwen: The art formula is what is...

[13:59] Cameron McEwen: behind all of the different formulas of artists or scientists or ordinary cognition.

[14:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[14:06] Bob Dobbs: so you're saying that's the pre-tribal awareness.

[14:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[14:10] Cameron McEwen: so it's the archetypal formula that only gets expressed in clichés.

[14:19] Bob Dobbs: Interesting.

[14:20] Bob Dobbs: So is it just the art formula term or phrase?

[14:25] Bob Dobbs: No,

[14:25] Bob Dobbs: no,

[14:26] Bob Dobbs: no.

[14:26] Cameron McEwen: He talks about it all the time.

[14:28] Cameron McEwen: So,

[14:28] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[14:29] Cameron McEwen: on 131,

[14:30] Cameron McEwen: where we're going to begin,

[14:32] Cameron McEwen: the quote you have from Cliché to archetype,

[14:35] Cameron McEwen: he says,

[14:36] Cameron McEwen: a close liaison between private and corporate awareness.

[14:40] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[14:41] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[14:43] Cameron McEwen: whenever human beings are aware of anything,

[14:46] Cameron McEwen: they're aware of it in a corporate way.

[14:49] Cameron McEwen: Human beings cannot be aware of things that aren't pre-structured by language and by cultural environment and by technological environment,

[15:02] Cameron McEwen: etc.

[15:03] Cameron McEwen: So how does that relate to what he calls the close liaison between private and corporate awareness?

[15:10] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[15:10] Cameron McEwen: what he calls private awareness there is exactly pre-tribal awareness,

[15:15] Cameron McEwen: or it's the art formula.

[15:18] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[15:18] Bob Dobbs: where does he start saying art formula?

[15:20] Bob Dobbs: Did you notice that?

[15:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[15:22] Cameron McEwen: that was 1951,

[15:24] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[15:25] Cameron McEwen: in one of the Tennyson essays.

[15:27] Bob Dobbs: So is this something he's come up with after translating Innis?

[15:35] Cameron McEwen: Innis,

[15:35] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[15:36] Cameron McEwen: helped,

[15:36] Cameron McEwen: but probably Mallarmé may have been more important.

[15:40] Cameron McEwen: But

[15:41] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan knew about this.

[15:42] Cameron McEwen: Remember I was giving the...

[15:45] Cameron McEwen: giving you the quotation from his

[15:48] Cameron McEwen: Nashe thesis,

[15:51] Cameron McEwen: where he talks about intuitive perception of essentials.

[15:56] Cameron McEwen: So whenever people experience anything,

[16:04] Cameron McEwen: they experience it as an extension of some art formula.

[16:11] Cameron McEwen: And the art formula...

[16:16] Cameron McEwen: gives them the tools to experience the world.

[16:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[16:21] Bob Dobbs: and you don't mean painting and music formula.

[16:26] Bob Dobbs: You mean something else by the word art.

[16:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[16:29] Cameron McEwen: it's deeper.

[16:30] Cameron McEwen: This is the very basis of human experience.

[16:34] Cameron McEwen: So in the 1954

[16:38] Cameron McEwen: Christian humanism lecture that you just referred to,

[16:42] Cameron McEwen: Um,

[16:43] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan says,

[16:44] Cameron McEwen: look,

[16:44] Cameron McEwen: this is the great mystery that all human cognition is artistic.

[16:50] Cameron McEwen: And so earlier you referred to the fact of the agent intellect.

[16:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[16:59] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[17:00] Cameron McEwen: So all human experience has this gap to it between the originary capability and the particular expression.

[17:13] Cameron McEwen: In experience or in making something.

[17:16] Bob Dobbs: Say that sentence again.

[17:17] Bob Dobbs: All what?

[17:19] Cameron McEwen: All human experience is the result of a kind of leap,

[17:26] Cameron McEwen: kind of gap between the original capability,

[17:31] Cameron McEwen: which belongs to humans as humans,

[17:35] Cameron McEwen: and the particular matrix or particular actuality.

[17:43] Cameron McEwen: that that structure eventuates in.

[17:47] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[17:47] Bob Dobbs: So he only mentions the mysteries of the subject every now and then.

[17:54] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[17:55] Bob Dobbs: And you have to notice it.

[17:56] Bob Dobbs: And you say,

[17:56] Bob Dobbs: what the heck is that?

[17:58] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't talk about that too much.

[18:00] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[18:01] Bob Dobbs: So then...

[18:01] Cameron McEwen: Look at this.

[18:02] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[18:02] Cameron McEwen: in the quotation you have there,

[18:04] Cameron McEwen: he says,

[18:05] Cameron McEwen: this in turn implies a close liaison between private and corporate awareness.

[18:11] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[18:11] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[18:11] Cameron McEwen: So...

[18:13] Cameron McEwen: That private awareness there,

[18:15] Cameron McEwen: what the hell is that?

[18:16] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[18:16] Cameron McEwen: that's pre-tribal awareness.

[18:18] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[18:19] Cameron McEwen: So the interesting thing about private awareness or pre-tribal awareness or essential intuition,

[18:28] Cameron McEwen: all these things,

[18:29] Cameron McEwen: what's interesting about them is that they only appear in something corporate,

[18:36] Cameron McEwen: but they have their origin.

[18:40] Cameron McEwen: in something that's before the corporate,

[18:42] Cameron McEwen: that's pre-tribal.

[18:43] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[18:44] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[18:44] Bob Dobbs: so

[18:46] Bob Dobbs: I've got some obscure essay or thing he wrote where the artist leaves out what they're really thinking about or influenced by.

[18:56] Bob Dobbs: And so

[18:58] Bob Dobbs: I think he said Joyce left out,

[19:02] Bob Dobbs: who did the Pilgrim stuff,

[19:04] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[19:04] Bob Dobbs: around 1200?

[19:06] Bob Dobbs: Chaucer.

[19:06] Bob Dobbs: He left out Chaucer,

[19:07] Bob Dobbs: apparently.

[19:09] Bob Dobbs: So.

[19:10] Bob Dobbs: When I quoted the Wyndham Lewis article about

[19:13] Bob Dobbs: Einstein and scientists having a formula,

[19:16] Bob Dobbs: he's saying they're lost on one side.

[19:19] Bob Dobbs: They don't include the private awareness or the art formula.

[19:24] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[19:26] Cameron McEwen: He's saying that they are saying something that includes the art formula,

[19:33] Cameron McEwen: but they don't know that it does.

[19:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[19:35] Bob Dobbs: And so that's,

[19:36] Bob Dobbs: he therefore calls them out on it and says...

[19:39] Bob Dobbs: This is the pattern you guys repeat,

[19:41] Bob Dobbs: and

[19:42] Bob Dobbs: I'm into something else,

[19:43] Bob Dobbs: which is concluding the art formula.

[19:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[19:47] Bob Dobbs: so...

[19:48] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't say about the mystery of consciousness much after the Catholic humanism essay,

[19:54] Bob Dobbs: does he?

[19:56] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[19:56] Cameron McEwen: you see,

[19:57] Cameron McEwen: I think he talks about it all the time.

[19:58] Cameron McEwen: So in this 1970 from cliché to archetype passage,

[20:04] Cameron McEwen: he talks about this close liaison between private and corporate awareness.

[20:08] Bob Dobbs: But that stands out.

[20:09] Bob Dobbs: You never see him say that kind of thing anywhere else in the previous 10,

[20:13] Bob Dobbs: 15 years.

[20:15] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[20:15] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.

[20:17] Cameron McEwen: I think he does talk about it,

[20:18] Cameron McEwen: but the problem is that he was constantly talking about it in different ways.

[20:25] Cameron McEwen: And when you're reading McLuhan,

[20:28] Cameron McEwen: you read the sentence,

[20:31] Cameron McEwen: and then you have to kind of back up and reread it in a different way.

[20:36] Cameron McEwen: You have to continually do that.

[20:39] Cameron McEwen: And when you do that,

[20:42] Cameron McEwen: you come to see that here's a guy trying to communicate something.

[20:46] Cameron McEwen: But he doesn't know how to do it.

[20:48] Cameron McEwen: All he knows is when he says stuff,

[20:51] Cameron McEwen: people's eyes glaze over.

[20:55] Cameron McEwen: They have no idea what he's talking about.

[20:57] Cameron McEwen: And this includes his closest associates.

[21:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[21:02] Bob Dobbs: And he keeps it simple.

[21:04] Bob Dobbs: He's not trying to bullshit baffle people.

[21:07] Bob Dobbs: He is trying to get something that they can match to.

[21:10] Bob Dobbs: And nobody has a clue what the issue is.

[21:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[21:16] Cameron McEwen: But notice you used the word match.

[21:18] Cameron McEwen: Of course,

[21:19] Cameron McEwen: for him to communicate,

[21:20] Cameron McEwen: they would have to understand that matching is the wrong goal.

[21:24] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[21:24] Bob Dobbs: But he is asking them.

[21:26] Bob Dobbs: They glaze over because half the human wants to match,

[21:30] Bob Dobbs: and he's failing to do it.

[21:31] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[21:31] Cameron McEwen: They are trying to match,

[21:33] Cameron McEwen: and their eyes glaze over because they can't.

[21:36] Bob Dobbs: But it doesn't mean he's not including matching.

[21:40] Cameron McEwen: No,

[21:41] Cameron McEwen: that's absolutely right.

[21:42] Cameron McEwen: Matching,

[21:44] Cameron McEwen: there can't be.

[21:44] Cameron McEwen: be inclusivity that excludes something like matching.

[21:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[21:49] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[21:50] Cameron McEwen: That wouldn't work.

[21:51] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[21:52] Bob Dobbs: So are you writing something on this?

[21:56] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[21:57] Cameron McEwen: all the time.

[21:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[21:58] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to have a whole bunch of posts on pre-tribal awareness.

[22:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[22:04] Bob Dobbs: that's good.

[22:04] Bob Dobbs: So you're finding stuff.

[22:06] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[22:08] Bob Dobbs: the sample sentence liaison between private and corporate awareness

[22:14] Bob Dobbs: It's those things,

[22:16] Bob Dobbs: after I was familiar with his basic corporate theme,

[22:19] Bob Dobbs: it was those things I would look for.

[22:21] Bob Dobbs: And I said,

[22:22] Bob Dobbs: he's doing something else.

[22:23] Bob Dobbs: There's something else in here.

[22:25] Bob Dobbs: And that's what I would look for.

[22:27] Bob Dobbs: But I don't,

[22:29] Bob Dobbs: the language of the

[22:30] Bob Dobbs: Catholic humanism in 54,

[22:32] Bob Dobbs: and

[22:34] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure about the cliche 1970 quote,

[22:37] Bob Dobbs: doesn't seem to be around.

[22:38] Bob Dobbs: So I'm interested in what other ways he brings it up.

[22:42] Bob Dobbs: that I haven't mentioned so far in my essay here.

[22:48] Bob Dobbs: Where do you find it said differently?

[22:50] Bob Dobbs: Because I can't think of any words.

[22:57] Cameron McEwen: Many of your quotations,

[22:58] Cameron McEwen: like on 130,

[23:00] Cameron McEwen: you talk about the citadel of individual consciousness.

[23:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[23:04] Bob Dobbs: but that popped up after years.

[23:07] Bob Dobbs: To me,

[23:08] Bob Dobbs: that's a strange thing.

[23:10] Bob Dobbs: that pops up and there was nothing in understanding media about it,

[23:13] Bob Dobbs: or

[23:14] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg Galaxy.

[23:17] Bob Dobbs: What about this sentence in Gutenberg Galaxy?

[23:18] Bob Dobbs: Imagination is that faculty that is not embedded in any sense or extensions of the senses.

[23:27] Bob Dobbs: What a strange definition of imagination.

[23:30] Bob Dobbs: But that might be getting...

[23:31] Cameron McEwen: Can you read that again?

[23:33] Cameron McEwen: I didn't...

[23:34] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[23:35] Bob Dobbs: imagination is,

[23:36] Bob Dobbs: I think he says,

[23:36] Bob Dobbs: that faculty or that action.

[23:39] Bob Dobbs: which is not embedded in any sense or extension of the senses.

[23:46] Bob Dobbs: Most people think imagination is,

[23:48] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[23:48] Bob Dobbs: you're really perceptive about sensory data,

[23:51] Bob Dobbs: and you come up with an interesting mixture,

[23:53] Bob Dobbs: and you're a poet or something.

[23:55] Bob Dobbs: So you're looking at your senses.

[23:56] Bob Dobbs: He's saying imagination is not embedded in the senses.

[23:59] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[24:00] Bob Dobbs: That kind of talks,

[24:02] Bob Dobbs: that's a pre-social sensory cliche,

[24:07] Bob Dobbs: corporate awareness.

[24:08] Bob Dobbs: that he's saying.

[24:09] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[24:09] Bob Dobbs: Imagination not embedded.

[24:10] Bob Dobbs: So that might be a clue,

[24:12] Bob Dobbs: that sentence.

[24:12] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[24:12] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[24:13] Cameron McEwen: So if you look at the,

[24:16] Cameron McEwen: from Cliché to Archetype quotation that you have,

[24:20] Cameron McEwen: prior to the liaison between private and corporate awareness,

[24:24] Cameron McEwen: he says that it's somewhat along the lines that relate

[24:28] Cameron McEwen: Coleridge's primary and secondary imagination.

[24:31] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[24:32] Cameron McEwen: So,

[24:33] Cameron McEwen: and what you were just saying,

[24:35] Cameron McEwen: Um,

[24:36] Cameron McEwen: you have two different senses of imagination.

[24:39] Cameron McEwen: You have imagination as kind of juggling experience in some way,

[24:45] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[24:45] Cameron McEwen: coming up with a new way of saying something,

[24:48] Cameron McEwen: a new way of painting something.

[24:51] Cameron McEwen: That's secondary imagination.

[24:53] Cameron McEwen: Primary imagination is the ability of humans to do secondary imagination.

[25:01] Cameron McEwen: It's the stem cell faculty that humans have that allows them to learn language when they're infants,

[25:10] Cameron McEwen: to grow into a certain society,

[25:14] Cameron McEwen: but to maintain an identity through this generalized experience,

[25:21] Cameron McEwen: generalized language.

[25:23] Bob Dobbs: When you say maintain an identity,

[25:25] Bob Dobbs: is that similar to detachment?

[25:29] Bob Dobbs: Separateness or something?

[25:31] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[25:31] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[25:32] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[25:33] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[25:34] Bob Dobbs: So,

[25:34] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[25:35] Bob Dobbs: he would say that sentence,

[25:37] Bob Dobbs: quoting Coleridge,

[25:37] Bob Dobbs: and it never seemed to be developed anywhere else.

[25:39] Bob Dobbs: It would stand out.

[25:40] Bob Dobbs: Like,

[25:41] Bob Dobbs: well,

[25:41] Bob Dobbs: let's hear some more about that,

[25:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[25:42] Bob Dobbs: but then there wouldn't be.

[25:44] Bob Dobbs: So there were these key sentences all the way through his work,

[25:47] Bob Dobbs: which you wouldn't be able to really figure out what's the relevance of it in his media talk.

[25:54] Cameron McEwen: But

[25:55] Bob Dobbs: I guess I do get to it.

[25:56] Cameron McEwen: And your book is a lot about that.

[25:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[25:59] Bob Dobbs: I did get to it in this thing that I did.

[26:03] Bob Dobbs: I don't think I did any of it on my Quadrophrenia essay on McLuhan done in 98.

[26:08] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[26:10] Bob Dobbs: That doesn't...

[26:11] Bob Dobbs: I do have the...

[26:12] Bob Dobbs: I think I refer to the mystery of why your individual consciousness flips the world through the retina.

[26:21] Bob Dobbs: And he says that was a mystery that no one had ever figured out.

[26:24] Bob Dobbs: So that was a sentence that stood out.

[26:27] Bob Dobbs: That meant something to me,

[26:28] Bob Dobbs: so I think I mentioned that,

[26:29] Bob Dobbs: but that was all.

[26:30] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely,

[26:31] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[26:32] Cameron McEwen: So the flipping of the world by the retina can be compared to the dynamic of the faculty of

[26:48] Cameron McEwen: primary imagination,

[26:49] Cameron McEwen: which flips the possibilities.

[26:56] Cameron McEwen: into all of the different ways of experiencing the world.

[27:01] Cameron McEwen: And according to McLuhan,

[27:04] Cameron McEwen: nowadays we at last have the possibility of formulating that field.

[27:11] Cameron McEwen: And of course,

[27:11] Cameron McEwen: the field has to be formulated by going back to the original faculty,

[27:16] Cameron McEwen: which is not a singular thing.

[27:18] Cameron McEwen: It's a multiple thing like

[27:21] Cameron McEwen: Mendeleev's table in chemistry.

[27:23] Cameron McEwen: And that...

[27:25] Bob Dobbs: And what I call tactility?

[27:27] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[27:28] Cameron McEwen: tactility is the dynamism.

[27:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[27:31] Bob Dobbs: right.

[27:32] Cameron McEwen: It's what's always in between the faculty and the extension of the faculty.

[27:40] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[27:40] Bob Dobbs: So let's go to my quote because I begin with Coleridge and Wordsworth.

[27:45] Bob Dobbs: I have the primary imagination somewhere in my mind.

[27:49] Bob Dobbs: I'm thinking of that part of his

[27:52] Bob Dobbs: Interior landscape book when I start off.

[27:54] Bob Dobbs: I say,

[27:55] Bob Dobbs: referring to the Cliché to Archetype quote,

[27:58] Bob Dobbs: that's tactility once again.

[28:00] Bob Dobbs: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth had a letter exchange and debate,

[28:05] Bob Dobbs: but Coleridge was the first to detect the medium as the message on a very small scale.

[28:10] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[28:10] Bob Dobbs: that would be the imagination.

[28:13] Bob Dobbs: It's individual consciousness is probably what I meant by very small scale.

[28:16] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I mean?

[28:18] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[28:20] Cameron McEwen: and the reason that

[28:21] Cameron McEwen: Coleridge...

[28:23] Cameron McEwen: can be said to be talking about the medium as the message,

[28:26] Cameron McEwen: is that the primary imagination is inherently dynamic.

[28:31] Cameron McEwen: So it's like a medium that expresses itself and therefore is the message.

[28:40] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[28:41] Bob Dobbs: Now look at this,

[28:41] Bob Dobbs: what I get into in light of what we're saying.

[28:44] Bob Dobbs: Remember,

[28:45] Bob Dobbs: media are the archetypes of the unconscious and they form the consciousness,

[28:48] Bob Dobbs: the formative process.

[28:50] Bob Dobbs: That's like art formula.

[28:53] Bob Dobbs: In the same way,

[28:54] Bob Dobbs: and I quote him,

[28:55] Bob Dobbs: in the same way there would seem to be an echo of the massaging of consciousness in the entire content of the unconscious,

[29:02] Bob Dobbs: defined as a technological environment.

[29:04] Bob Dobbs: That's about media massaging us in a complex way,

[29:07] Bob Dobbs: perhaps trying to play down this process.

[29:10] Bob Dobbs: And then I quote him,

[29:12] Bob Dobbs: saying,

[29:12] Bob Dobbs: this in turn implies a close liaison between private and corporate awareness,

[29:16] Bob Dobbs: though which exerts the most effect on the other may depend entirely on the degree of awareness achieved.

[29:22] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[29:22] Bob Dobbs: as I'm saying this to the person that's listening,

[29:25] Bob Dobbs: I know they don't have a damn clue.

[29:27] Bob Dobbs: Their eyes are glazing over to what I'm talking about.

[29:30] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[29:31] Bob Dobbs: I can't see them,

[29:32] Bob Dobbs: but I know they are.

[29:34] Bob Dobbs: So they take their energy.

[29:36] Bob Dobbs: They can't really get what I'm saying and talk back to it.

[29:39] Bob Dobbs: So they type it up for me.

[29:41] Bob Dobbs: That's how they discharge their energy.

[29:42] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[29:43] Cameron McEwen: Yep.

[29:44] Bob Dobbs: So he says,

[29:45] Bob Dobbs: I say,

[29:45] Bob Dobbs: you have these two features in consciousness impinging on each other.

[29:48] Bob Dobbs: and somehow the degree of awareness gets the upper hand in shaping the private and the corporate.

[29:53] Bob Dobbs: The more aware you are of the implications of what you're doing,

[29:55] Bob Dobbs: you might have an advantage.

[29:58] Bob Dobbs: I like this quotation,

[29:59] Bob Dobbs: the one on page

[30:00] Bob Dobbs: 170 above.

[30:01] Bob Dobbs: I like this quotation because it references the tactile interplay.

[30:05] Bob Dobbs: One aspect is massaging one side,

[30:07] Bob Dobbs: and the other side is being massaged by the previous side.

[30:10] Bob Dobbs: And the degree of awareness is a factor.

[30:13] Bob Dobbs: That's,

[30:13] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[30:13] Bob Dobbs: there it is,

[30:14] Bob Dobbs: the agent intellect.

[30:15] Bob Dobbs: That's where I get the audience of the intellect above.

[30:20] Bob Dobbs: That's from his quote,

[30:21] Bob Dobbs: right?

[30:22] Bob Dobbs: Or where do I get that from?

[30:23] Bob Dobbs: I go,

[30:23] Bob Dobbs: that's where I get the audience of the intellect.

[30:28] Cameron McEwen: That must be in a previous quote.

[30:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[30:30] Bob Dobbs: it's in a previous quote.

[30:33] Bob Dobbs: That's where

[30:35] Bob Dobbs: I get the audience of the intellect above.

[30:37] Bob Dobbs: What is the audience of somebody exercising for himself?

[30:41] Bob Dobbs: We're getting into this with the world situation today.

[30:43] Bob Dobbs: People aren't going to be able to socialize.

[30:46] Bob Dobbs: They're not going to get anything out of sport in the Zoom culture.

[30:49] Bob Dobbs: They'll wander off.

[30:51] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[30:51] Bob Dobbs: they do say that millennials and younger aren't into sports,

[30:55] Bob Dobbs: into watching sports.

[30:57] Bob Dobbs: Did you hear about that?

[30:57] Bob Dobbs: They're not interested in football and that.

[31:00] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[31:01] Bob Dobbs: The industry can't get them.

[31:02] Cameron McEwen: And I can see that.

[31:04] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[31:05] Cameron McEwen: I don't know teenagers or anything,

[31:07] Cameron McEwen: but,

[31:08] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[31:09] Cameron McEwen: I'm 78 and some of my friends are 50,

[31:12] Cameron McEwen: let's say.

[31:13] Cameron McEwen: And

[31:14] Cameron McEwen: I notice that they're not interested in sports in the same way that my generation was and is.

[31:22] Bob Dobbs: They're not watching Monday night football religiously.

[31:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[31:27] Cameron McEwen: well,

[31:27] Cameron McEwen: usually they don't even have access to ESPN,

[31:31] Cameron McEwen: which is the channel for Monday Night Football.

[31:35] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[31:35] Bob Dobbs: do you watch?

[31:36] Bob Dobbs: Did you get into that habit?

[31:38] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[31:38] Cameron McEwen: I don't have ESPN either,

[31:40] Cameron McEwen: but

[31:43] Cameron McEwen: I grew up cheering for the Rough Riders,

[31:45] Cameron McEwen: and these days I don't pay too much attention to the CFL,

[31:52] Cameron McEwen: and the NFL I don't pay too much attention to until the...

[31:56] Cameron McEwen: playoffs are on and then I watch the playoffs.

[31:59] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[31:59] Bob Dobbs: So how does it come up in conversation or awareness from the 50-year-olds that they're not interested?

[32:05] Bob Dobbs: Because you're not going to bring it up.

[32:07] Bob Dobbs: You're not talking about it.

[32:10] Cameron McEwen: It comes up when

[32:12] Cameron McEwen: I say to them,

[32:15] Cameron McEwen: they say,

[32:15] Cameron McEwen: well,

[32:16] Cameron McEwen: why don't we go out for a hike at such and such a time?

[32:20] Cameron McEwen: And I say,

[32:21] Cameron McEwen: no,

[32:21] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to watch the NFL playoffs.

[32:24] Cameron McEwen: And sometimes they'll say something like,

[32:28] Cameron McEwen: oh,

[32:28] Cameron McEwen: what's that?

[32:33] Cameron McEwen: Something that tells me they're completely disengaged from that reality.

[32:37] Bob Dobbs: So you only get an opportunity to notice that once a year when the playoffs come up.

[32:44] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[32:44] Cameron McEwen: sort of,

[32:45] Cameron McEwen: but the same thing happens in regards to politics.

[32:51] Cameron McEwen: It's amazing to me how little attention they pay to world events and political events in the country.

[32:59] Bob Dobbs: This might be my point.

[33:05] Bob Dobbs: They're moving into some kind of pre-tribal awareness or something.

[33:10] Cameron McEwen: Or pre-tribal unawareness.

[33:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[33:13] Bob Dobbs: they're getting stuck in pre-tribal awareness.

[33:17] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[33:18] Bob Dobbs: they're forgetting the other side.

[33:19] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[33:19] Bob Dobbs: so I say they'll wander off.

[33:21] Bob Dobbs: People are going to start wandering off days depending on the degree of awareness achieved.

[33:26] Bob Dobbs: The reason this is about the audience of the intellect and voluntary AP or Anthropomorphic Physical or voluntary ESP is the fragmenting,

[33:36] Bob Dobbs: the isolating,

[33:37] Bob Dobbs: the walling off of the hive mind merged in the cloned ESP.

[33:41] Bob Dobbs: So that is what I just said to you.

[33:43] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[33:44] Bob Dobbs: there's this isolating thing.

[33:46] Bob Dobbs: They're going too much into the pre-tribal awareness.

[33:49] Bob Dobbs: It's almost they can't get a tribal awareness because there's too much going on.

[33:54] Bob Dobbs: So they can't get some kind of consensus and match it with people around them.

[34:01] Bob Dobbs: They are inarticulate about it and they're lost,

[34:05] Bob Dobbs: you could say,

[34:05] Bob Dobbs: in their,

[34:06] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[34:06] Bob Dobbs: narcissism.

[34:07] Bob Dobbs: Though I wouldn't call it narcissism.

[34:09] Bob Dobbs: It is an imbalance over to the private awareness.

[34:15] Cameron McEwen: Are you saying that they are swamped by a new technological environment,

[34:24] Cameron McEwen: and this technological environment isolates them,

[34:27] Cameron McEwen: but strangely the isolation is collective?

[34:32] Bob Dobbs: Everybody is in that situation,

[34:34] Bob Dobbs: yes.

[34:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[34:35] Cameron McEwen: exactly.

[34:36] Cameron McEwen: So they're swamped by something that feels like a barrier between them and the swamp.

[34:43] Cameron McEwen: But actually,

[34:44] Cameron McEwen: that barrier is this one.

[34:46] Bob Dobbs: And becoming aware of that situation today would wipe out a lot of the perception that there's antisocial violence going on all the time.

[34:55] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[34:57] Bob Dobbs: This could be the key thing to put out there is what people are missing.

[35:03] Bob Dobbs: that they have collectivized a separateness.

[35:06] Bob Dobbs: It's an incredible paradox.

[35:09] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[35:09] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[35:09] Cameron McEwen: and it's not just social violence.

[35:15] Cameron McEwen: It's international violence.

[35:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[35:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[35:18] Bob Dobbs: The whole violence.

[35:18] Cameron McEwen: That's why

[35:19] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan kept on talking about his work was a strategy for survival.

[35:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[35:27] Bob Dobbs: And he said in Playboy in 68,

[35:29] Bob Dobbs: mind your meaty men or you'll catch a cold environment.

[35:33] Bob Dobbs: Cold.

[35:33] Bob Dobbs: Violent.

[35:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[35:36] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[35:36] Bob Dobbs: so I'm sort of trying to address that.

[35:39] Bob Dobbs: It's the fragmenting,

[35:39] Bob Dobbs: the isolating.

[35:41] Bob Dobbs: So the old cliche that McLuhan,

[35:44] Bob Dobbs: I call it the Madison Avenue version of McLuhan,

[35:46] Bob Dobbs: that most people,

[35:47] Bob Dobbs: if they know something,

[35:48] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[35:49] Bob Dobbs: he's the guy who talks about us retrieving tribal awareness and oral culture.

[35:52] Bob Dobbs: That's so far removed from what we're talking about.

[35:56] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[35:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[35:57] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[35:57] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[35:58] Cameron McEwen: because what he called the...

[36:03] Cameron McEwen: acoustic environment of tribal people is one expression of the art formula.

[36:15] Cameron McEwen: But so is the Gutenberg Galaxy.

[36:17] Cameron McEwen: So if you want to understand the art formula,

[36:20] Cameron McEwen: which is what McLuhan was trying to think about,

[36:22] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand both of those as expressions of the art formula.

[36:30] Bob Dobbs: Yep,

[36:30] Bob Dobbs: exactly.

[36:31] Bob Dobbs: So...

[36:34] Bob Dobbs: That's probably what guided me in this book is the stressing that people,

[36:45] Bob Dobbs: when you're applying McLuhan,

[36:46] Bob Dobbs: you're missing this private awareness,

[36:49] Bob Dobbs: individual autonomy.

[36:50] Bob Dobbs: That's the rampant environment now.

[36:54] Bob Dobbs: And so you have to know,

[36:56] Bob Dobbs: first of all,

[36:57] Bob Dobbs: if you don't think McLuhan,

[36:58] Bob Dobbs: you don't know what we're talking about.

[36:59] Bob Dobbs: You don't know he talked about it.

[37:02] Bob Dobbs: The non-tribal,

[37:03] Bob Dobbs: the pre-tribal.

[37:04] Bob Dobbs: So then

[37:07] Bob Dobbs: I attempted to point this out.

[37:09] Bob Dobbs: And,

[37:09] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[37:11] Bob Dobbs: someone reported to me that,

[37:15] Bob Dobbs: I assume they were a professor,

[37:16] Bob Dobbs: they were talking to an academic,

[37:17] Bob Dobbs: and they said,

[37:18] Bob Dobbs: what the hell is he doing,

[37:20] Bob Dobbs: putting McLuhan and Trump in the same sentence?

[37:22] Bob Dobbs: You don't put that scoundrel in where the special McLuhan is.

[37:27] Bob Dobbs: That was so ignorant,

[37:28] Bob Dobbs: you know what I mean?

[37:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[37:29] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[37:29] Bob Dobbs: But that is what...

[37:31] Bob Dobbs: I was trying to wake people up to that knee-jerk response.

[37:39] Bob Dobbs: That's what I'm doing here.

[37:40] Bob Dobbs: So yeah,

[37:41] Bob Dobbs: I'm sort of thinking that this pre-tribal awareness,

[37:44] Bob Dobbs: well,

[37:44] Bob Dobbs: I have the quote,

[37:45] Bob Dobbs: but I'm seeing that this is where I'm going to the,

[37:48] Bob Dobbs: I'm moving towards the tech body is creating this isolation slash hive mind.

[37:57] Bob Dobbs: On my tribal,

[37:59] Bob Dobbs: my Tiny Note chair.

[38:00] Bob Dobbs: I have the quadrant,

[38:02] Bob Dobbs: the Kroker quadrant is about the chip body and the Android meme.

[38:05] Bob Dobbs: And it's symbolized by the number

[38:07] Bob Dobbs: 14. Now that's not,

[38:09] Bob Dobbs: it's not numerical values.

[38:11] Bob Dobbs: I have the one represents the merging of everybody in the Global Membrane.

[38:17] Bob Dobbs: And the four is analog media,

[38:22] Bob Dobbs: cultural positions,

[38:24] Bob Dobbs: states of perception.

[38:26] Bob Dobbs: That's flying around it in states of schizophrenia,

[38:29] Bob Dobbs: paranoia.

[38:31] Bob Dobbs: panic hysteria and ecstasy so one and four is what you are what we are we're a one-four situation you see the autonomy the one which is not that would be the tribal or what people think is travel some kind of merger the hive mind but the four is fragments of trying to retrieve private awareness and

[38:55] Bob Dobbs: it comes up as an extreme aberration

[38:58] Bob Dobbs: You follow?

[38:59] Bob Dobbs: Which then makes people even more,

[39:01] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[39:01] Bob Dobbs: separate.

[39:02] Bob Dobbs: Sure.

[39:03] Cameron McEwen: Go ahead.

[39:06] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[39:08] Cameron McEwen: first,

[39:09] Cameron McEwen: I like the imagery you're using there,

[39:11] Cameron McEwen: because there's an imagery of a world with satellites flying around it,

[39:16] Cameron McEwen: but applied to the individual,

[39:18] Cameron McEwen: right?

[39:19] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[39:19] Cameron McEwen: And for McLuhan,

[39:21] Cameron McEwen: what is the Gutenberg Galaxy?

[39:23] Cameron McEwen: The Gutenberg Galaxy is the attempt...

[39:27] Cameron McEwen: to get a handle on this complex situation,

[39:32] Cameron McEwen: either by consolidating everything into the subject or by consolidating it into one of the objects that are flying around.

[39:42] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[39:43] Bob Dobbs: And the Kroker quadrant is called satellite squared.

[39:46] Bob Dobbs: So exactly,

[39:47] Bob Dobbs: we're becoming satellited individually.

[39:50] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[39:51] Cameron McEwen: So it's,

[39:53] Cameron McEwen: and you can see what happens here is McLuhan comes along to this situation with the isolation of the subject from the satellites.

[40:05] Cameron McEwen: And notice that the subject only knows itself in one of the satellites,

[40:10] Cameron McEwen: right?

[40:10] Cameron McEwen: So it's got this crazy situation where there's multiple satellites,

[40:14] Cameron McEwen: and it's trying to say,

[40:15] Cameron McEwen: well,

[40:16] Cameron McEwen: I'm that one.

[40:16] Cameron McEwen: No,

[40:16] Cameron McEwen: I'm that one.

[40:19] Cameron McEwen: It's ridiculous.

[40:20] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan comes along and says,

[40:22] Cameron McEwen: wait a minute,

[40:23] Cameron McEwen: the medium is the message.

[40:25] Cameron McEwen: That is to say the link or the dynamic between the subject and these satellites.

[40:32] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[40:33] Cameron McEwen: You have to,

[40:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is saying you have to take a somersault away from that whole model of trying to consolidate into a new kind of fragmentation.

[40:46] Cameron McEwen: That's a good phrase,

[40:46] Bob Dobbs: a new kind of fragmentation.

[40:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[40:48] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[40:49] Cameron McEwen: That's right,

[40:50] Cameron McEwen: where the most important thing is the middle,

[40:52] Cameron McEwen: is the tactility.

[40:54] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[40:54] Bob Dobbs: that you're a 1-4.

[40:56] Bob Dobbs: Recognize you're a 1-4.

[40:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[40:58] Cameron McEwen: but you're really a 1-4.

[41:00] Cameron McEwen: You're not a 1-4 in the sense of either trying to bring the 4 into the 1 or the 1 into the 4.

[41:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[41:08] Bob Dobbs: And the...

[41:10] Bob Dobbs: So let's see,

[41:11] Bob Dobbs: as we go through the remainder of the book,

[41:15] Bob Dobbs: do I bring this satelliting thing in?

[41:17] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if I do.

[41:20] Cameron McEwen: But before you leave that paragraph,

[41:23] Cameron McEwen: I'm interested in,

[41:24] Cameron McEwen: like you bring in voluntary AP,

[41:27] Cameron McEwen: voluntary ESP,

[41:29] Cameron McEwen: cloned ESP.

[41:32] Cameron McEwen: I'm interested in understanding how you view those sort of technical terms.

[41:40] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[41:40] Bob Dobbs: so I begin with McLuhan's title in Explorations number 8,

[41:46] Bob Dobbs: Electronics as ESP.

[41:50] Bob Dobbs: Remember that?

[41:51] Cameron McEwen: That part?

[41:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[41:51] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[41:53] Bob Dobbs: But then I updated it to,

[41:55] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[41:56] Bob Dobbs: 50 years later,

[41:57] Bob Dobbs: that people talk about cloned societies and cloning hardware and bodies,

[42:04] Bob Dobbs: but what about the cloning of the subtle discarnate state,

[42:09] Bob Dobbs: whatever that is?

[42:10] Bob Dobbs: And I'm thinking,

[42:11] Bob Dobbs: well,

[42:11] Bob Dobbs: it's electrics,

[42:12] Bob Dobbs: so it includes ESP.

[42:13] Bob Dobbs: So,

[42:14] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[42:14] Bob Dobbs: the collective hive mind is a cloning of ESP by technology,

[42:18] Bob Dobbs: and it's doing its ESP within itself.

[42:22] Bob Dobbs: That's the phase where media extend media and not our faculties.

[42:27] Bob Dobbs: But the last faculty we have may be ESP,

[42:31] Bob Dobbs: a kind of originary consciousness,

[42:34] Bob Dobbs: but that's been externalized.

[42:36] Bob Dobbs: So the most intimate...

[42:37] Bob Dobbs: pre-tribal awareness is probably what I'm getting at with cloned ESP is what's the extended.

[42:44] Bob Dobbs: But then you balance it off with retrieving your individual subject mystery,

[42:53] Bob Dobbs: and that's called Anthropomorphic Physical or AP.

[42:58] Bob Dobbs: But it can only be voluntary.

[42:59] Bob Dobbs: It's only tenuous to even have it or to become aware of where it is while it's merged with the you

[43:06] Bob Dobbs: The hive mind,

[43:07] Bob Dobbs: the cloned ESP.

[43:08] Bob Dobbs: So there's an interplay between voluntary

[43:11] Bob Dobbs: AP or voluntary ESP and cloned ESP.

[43:14] Bob Dobbs: So cloned ESP is what,

[43:16] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[43:16] Bob Dobbs: Noam Chomsky calls the manufacturing of consensus.

[43:20] Bob Dobbs: But it's not intellectual Gutenberg consensus.

[43:23] Bob Dobbs: It is this total hive mind where everybody is a huge cyborg and going along with the ripple that they pick up every day in their processing and looking for where it's at,

[43:35] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[43:36] Bob Dobbs: Everybody has the need to know what is going on.

[43:39] Bob Dobbs: So that's the cloned ESP,

[43:42] Bob Dobbs: but the technology highlights your separateness from that more and more.

[43:49] Bob Dobbs: So the crisis today is we're going way into barely voluntary ESP and ignoring and sticking your finger up against cloned ESP.

[44:02] Bob Dobbs: Then I would say,

[44:03] Bob Dobbs: go ahead.

[44:05] Cameron McEwen: out

[44:05] Cameron McEwen: Would it be fair to say that the mystery of cloned ESP is that it gets its power,

[44:18] Cameron McEwen: it gets its dynamic from voluntary ESP,

[44:23] Cameron McEwen: but only when voluntary ESP is forgotten?

[44:27] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[44:28] Cameron McEwen: That it's what could be called blind expression or blind extension?

[44:34] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[44:35] Cameron McEwen: Is that fair to say?

[44:36] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[44:36] Bob Dobbs: And the thing about cloned ESP is,

[44:41] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[44:43] Bob Dobbs: new agers or...

[44:45] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg mystics,

[44:47] Bob Dobbs: they think,

[44:48] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[44:48] Bob Dobbs: if we could only get beyond language and have sort of a less Descartesian body-mind split and we communicate through ESP.

[44:57] Bob Dobbs: So a lot of the

[44:59] Bob Dobbs: Esalen Institute retreats of the 60s were trying to get people back into their bodies or their other senses,

[45:07] Bob Dobbs: not just the literate,

[45:08] Bob Dobbs: and think that they're merging with that.

[45:10] Bob Dobbs: But they did not recognize the incredible merger on the discarnate level.

[45:15] Bob Dobbs: way beyond normal ESP.

[45:17] Bob Dobbs: That's why Marshall McLuhan said ESP was obsolete,

[45:20] Bob Dobbs: the 19th century idea of ESP,

[45:22] Bob Dobbs: which is like a tremendous matching going on.

[45:26] Bob Dobbs: So there's a tremendous making happening going on,

[45:30] Bob Dobbs: but there is an interesting merger where everybody has what he called collective consciousness.

[45:37] Bob Dobbs: So when he talks about collective consciousness,

[45:38] Bob Dobbs: I think in Cliché to Archetype,

[45:40] Bob Dobbs: he's talking about there's no more unconscious because there's a...

[45:45] Bob Dobbs: a transient awareness that everybody's sharing,

[45:48] Bob Dobbs: which is the headlines and the word that makes the market,

[45:52] Bob Dobbs: and the world is all these different cultural personalities are incredibly merged on the chip body level.

[46:00] Bob Dobbs: So that merger,

[46:01] Bob Dobbs: as I say,

[46:02] Bob Dobbs: the hive mind merged in the cloned ESP,

[46:04] Bob Dobbs: that's not voluntary AP or voluntary ESP.

[46:08] Bob Dobbs: Voluntary

[46:09] Bob Dobbs: ESP is more and more not being involved in the merger of cloned ESP.

[46:15] Bob Dobbs: Or at least your technologies allow you to disconnect.

[46:18] Bob Dobbs: So you see it in the millennials.

[46:21] Bob Dobbs: They stay in their bedroom for two years.

[46:23] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[46:24] Bob Dobbs: They refuse to engage.

[46:26] Bob Dobbs: They're hiding from the cloned ESP,

[46:28] Bob Dobbs: which is natural because they want to create an identity for themselves or bring back the subject.

[46:34] Bob Dobbs: And it can't be a literary subject,

[46:36] Bob Dobbs: so what the hell is it?

[46:38] Bob Dobbs: So I called it an attempt to bring back the human or the anthropomorphic,

[46:42] Bob Dobbs: which may not be...

[46:44] Bob Dobbs: what you can do.

[46:45] Bob Dobbs: It's not going to look like the history of humans.

[46:48] Bob Dobbs: So,

[46:48] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[46:48] Bob Dobbs: they study post-human stuff in college.

[46:52] Bob Dobbs: I think the Anthropomorphic Physical is a better way.

[46:55] Bob Dobbs: It's not post-human,

[46:56] Bob Dobbs: but the imagery of Gutenberg human is not valid anymore.

[47:01] Bob Dobbs: But people still want to think that they're not machines and they're human.

[47:06] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[47:07] Bob Dobbs: That's what it is.

[47:09] Bob Dobbs: So you have a reaching,

[47:10] Bob Dobbs: a more and more isolation.

[47:13] Bob Dobbs: an attempt to establish the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[47:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[47:18] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[47:20] Bob Dobbs: let's just leave that,

[47:21] Bob Dobbs: because I go,

[47:21] Bob Dobbs: I presented different sentences that talk about the isolated individual.

[47:25] Bob Dobbs: It's like McLuhan,

[47:26] Bob Dobbs: you hear him in recordings in class.

[47:27] Bob Dobbs: He'll talk like I'm doing,

[47:29] Bob Dobbs: and he starts to get real good at what he's saying,

[47:31] Bob Dobbs: and then he drops it,

[47:32] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[47:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[47:33] Bob Dobbs: He knows not to get too involved in the explanation of it.

[47:39] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[47:39] Cameron McEwen: good point.

[47:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah?

[47:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[47:42] Cameron McEwen: It's like

[47:43] Cameron McEwen: Menippean satire.

[47:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[47:45] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[47:46] Bob Dobbs: I presented different sentences that talk about the isolated individual.

[47:50] Bob Dobbs: I guess I mean above,

[47:51] Bob Dobbs: the quotes.

[47:53] Bob Dobbs: The first one,

[47:54] Bob Dobbs: and I quote Prospect Canadian Art,

[47:55] Bob Dobbs: 1962,

[47:57] Bob Dobbs: the multiplicity of media.

[47:59] Bob Dobbs: There's so much media that the humans can't be conditioned anymore for the first time in history.

[48:04] Bob Dobbs: That's another way of saying more and more voluntary sharing.

[48:09] Bob Dobbs: Be tending your conditioned.

[48:12] Bob Dobbs: Like say,

[48:12] Bob Dobbs: wait,

[48:12] Bob Dobbs: what's up?

[48:13] Bob Dobbs: Or what up?

[48:14] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[48:16] Bob Dobbs: you're saying a few words in English.

[48:20] Bob Dobbs: And that's all you have to say to remind people that,

[48:23] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[48:23] Bob Dobbs: I'm involved with the cloned ESP.

[48:25] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[48:26] Bob Dobbs: I'm part of the collective consciousness.

[48:29] Bob Dobbs: It's a very tiny doing more with less.

[48:32] Bob Dobbs: So people,

[48:34] Bob Dobbs: because they're not being conditioned anymore,

[48:36] Bob Dobbs: that means they're getting pre-tribal.

[48:38] Bob Dobbs: They're not being conditioned.

[48:40] Bob Dobbs: that they are being put in that case by the new medium.

[48:45] Bob Dobbs: So there is a conditioning going on,

[48:46] Bob Dobbs: but very subtle.

[48:48] Bob Dobbs: The person was the victim,

[48:50] Bob Dobbs: the servomechanism of his technology since the beginning of time.

[48:53] Bob Dobbs: But now the sheer multiplicity of them,

[48:56] Bob Dobbs: she,

[48:56] Bob Dobbs: he's beginning to awaken.

[48:58] Bob Dobbs: She,

[48:58] Bob Dobbs: he doesn't get stuck in any one of them.

[49:00] Bob Dobbs: She,

[49:01] Bob Dobbs: he goes from one to the next.

[49:02] Bob Dobbs: There's what you were saying,

[49:04] Bob Dobbs: running around to figure out what identity they are.

[49:07] Bob Dobbs: She goes from one to the next.

[49:09] Bob Dobbs: because she can't live with them all merged.

[49:12] Bob Dobbs: That's a fragmenting,

[49:13] Bob Dobbs: separating,

[49:14] Bob Dobbs: individualizing effect.

[49:16] Bob Dobbs: But it is not the literate individual effect.

[49:20] Bob Dobbs: It's the pre-tribal awareness individual effect.

[49:25] Bob Dobbs: You get that?

[49:26] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[49:28] Cameron McEwen: I would prefer there to say it's the tactile awareness.

[49:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[49:32] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[49:33] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[49:33] Cameron McEwen: Because human beings can't be pure.

[49:38] Cameron McEwen: pre-tribal.

[49:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[49:40] Cameron McEwen: there it is.

[49:41] Cameron McEwen: They always need to use words.

[49:43] Cameron McEwen: They always need to be a certain body in a certain place.

[49:48] Cameron McEwen: So it's a trend.

[49:50] Bob Dobbs: Voluntary ESP is a trending that the new medium encourages,

[49:54] Bob Dobbs: but you don't completely get there.

[49:56] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[49:56] Cameron McEwen: for sure.

[49:58] Cameron McEwen: In fact,

[49:58] Cameron McEwen: you get completely lost in the pathway that might lead you where you want to go,

[50:05] Cameron McEwen: but you can't follow the pathway.

[50:07] Cameron McEwen: The pathway is there,

[50:09] Cameron McEwen: and people have a vague sense of it more and more,

[50:13] Cameron McEwen: but so far they've been unable to take it.

[50:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[50:17] Bob Dobbs: this fragmenting has a huge service to it.

[50:22] Bob Dobbs: So they can't mobilize anybody for this or that corporate enterprise.

[50:28] Bob Dobbs: They have a real problem.

[50:29] Bob Dobbs: And so that's why they say it's the death of the legacy media,

[50:33] Bob Dobbs: the death of the cloned ESP or the merger of it.

[50:37] Bob Dobbs: in terms of analog media,

[50:39] Bob Dobbs: old-fashioned terms.

[50:41] Bob Dobbs: That ain't working.

[50:44] Cameron McEwen: So same with nationalism,

[50:47] Cameron McEwen: right?

[50:47] Cameron McEwen: Borders aren't working.

[50:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[50:49] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[50:51] Cameron McEwen: and people,

[50:53] Cameron McEwen: most people are completely disconnected from,

[50:57] Cameron McEwen: say,

[50:57] Cameron McEwen: the reality of war.

[51:00] Cameron McEwen: Nobody wants to know that those are real people over there who are really dying.

[51:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[51:07] Cameron McEwen: And over there isn't just Ukraine,

[51:09] Cameron McEwen: it's all of Africa and lots of

[51:12] Cameron McEwen: Asia and lots of Latin America.

[51:15] Cameron McEwen: And people just do not want to know.

[51:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[51:19] Bob Dobbs: so the boundaries of gender,

[51:21] Bob Dobbs: class and race are confused.

[51:25] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[51:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[51:26] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[51:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[51:28] Cameron McEwen: And a lot of this has been done intentionally.

[51:32] Cameron McEwen: The attack...

[51:36] Cameron McEwen: on the traditional structures of Western civilization,

[51:42] Cameron McEwen: that hasn't happened through some sort of cloud of new consciousness or something.

[51:54] Cameron McEwen: People have found advantage in that.

[51:56] Cameron McEwen: They have found a way to get wealthy or a way to get powerful or a way to control.

[52:05] Cameron McEwen: So what's going on has many different levels to it.

[52:10] Cameron McEwen: It has levels of individual consciousness,

[52:13] Cameron McEwen: but it also has levels of corporate power.

[52:18] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.

[52:19] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[52:19] Bob Dobbs: so let's see if I get to that.

[52:22] Bob Dobbs: Then the second one,

[52:23] Bob Dobbs: the quote from

[52:26] Bob Dobbs: Rolling Stone,

[52:28] Bob Dobbs: where he just blatantly says we're witnessing retrieval of pre-tribal awareness.

[52:34] Bob Dobbs: I say it cites the ancient individual by himself.

[52:37] Bob Dobbs: We are becoming like that.

[52:40] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[52:40] Bob Dobbs: what's interesting is that everybody is so stuck on the McLuhan meme that he's talking about the merger and the tribalism.

[52:49] Bob Dobbs: A person like that is aware of that part of McLuhan.

[52:51] Bob Dobbs: They say,

[52:52] Bob Dobbs: what the hell is Bob talking about?

[52:53] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan never said any of this stuff.

[52:55] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I mean?

[52:56] Bob Dobbs: He never emphasized the non-tribal.

[52:59] Bob Dobbs: So that's what's really neat reading this.

[53:01] Bob Dobbs: This is quite a new experience.

[53:04] Cameron McEwen: expression of McLuhan based on that's like his appreciation of the book his appreciation of Western civilization You know all this nonsense talk about him being utopian

[53:19] Cameron McEwen: Wanting to sort of become a TV

[53:23] Cameron McEwen: Ridiculous yeah,

[53:25] Bob Dobbs: he has that phrase outstanding media the genius of our mono fracture by menu fracture.

[53:30] Cameron McEwen: Yep

[53:32] Bob Dobbs: No one ever quotes that one.

[53:36] Bob Dobbs: We are becoming like that.

[53:37] Bob Dobbs: We became isolated individuals,

[53:39] Bob Dobbs: but,

[53:39] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[53:39] Bob Dobbs: very primitive.

[53:41] Bob Dobbs: Just look at the porn.

[53:42] Bob Dobbs: Very primitive.

[53:42] Bob Dobbs: We're caveman people.

[53:44] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan has that theme in the 50s in one of his articles.

[53:48] Bob Dobbs: In War and Peace in the Global Village,

[53:49] Bob Dobbs: he quotes Finnegans Wake.

[53:50] Bob Dobbs: Quote,

[53:51] Bob Dobbs: it brought the dear prehistoric scenes all back again,

[53:53] Bob Dobbs: as fresh as of yore.

[53:56] Bob Dobbs: And that can be all kinds of violent scenes.

[53:58] Bob Dobbs: Remember in Explorations 8,

[54:00] Bob Dobbs: he just has in the middle of his...

[54:02] Bob Dobbs: presentation of all those items.

[54:04] Bob Dobbs: He quotes how in the ancient,

[54:08] Bob Dobbs: something written about people going next door and just carving up the tribe across the valley or something.

[54:14] Bob Dobbs: It's a very violent scenario he lays out.

[54:17] Bob Dobbs: Do you recall that?

[54:20] Cameron McEwen: No,

[54:20] Cameron McEwen: but he does talk about that in many,

[54:23] Cameron McEwen: many places.

[54:24] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[54:25] Cameron McEwen: About how the Global Village isn't a utopia.

[54:28] Bob Dobbs: No,

[54:28] Bob Dobbs: but he cites the way people were,

[54:30] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[54:30] Bob Dobbs: 3,000 years ago.

[54:32] Bob Dobbs: incredible attack and pillage.

[54:35] Bob Dobbs: I'll have to see,

[54:37] Bob Dobbs: find a quote and read it to you if you're not familiar with it.

[54:42] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[54:42] Bob Dobbs: here he is,

[54:43] Bob Dobbs: if people are interpreting him in the 50s,

[54:45] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[54:46] Bob Dobbs: he thinks some kind of global utopian thing is coming.

[54:49] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[54:49] Bob Dobbs: why is he putting this violent scenario in there?

[54:54] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[54:54] Bob Dobbs: that's what he saw actually coming,

[54:58] Bob Dobbs: more violence.

[54:59] Bob Dobbs: So it brought the dear prehistoric scenes all back again,

[55:02] Bob Dobbs: as fresh as of yore.

[55:03] Bob Dobbs: And that can be all kinds of violent scenes,

[55:05] Bob Dobbs: cavemen hijacking women and raping them.

[55:08] Bob Dobbs: That was very primitive,

[55:09] Bob Dobbs: very isolating,

[55:10] Bob Dobbs: and perhaps not much social order before social order was installed.

[55:14] Bob Dobbs: That's another example of the isolated getting kicked out of the cloned ESP environment and only engaging ESP when convenient for the person.

[55:22] Bob Dobbs: That's voluntary ESP.

[55:24] Bob Dobbs: That's when you're pretending to be a citizen in the corporate social events,

[55:30] Bob Dobbs: the schmoozing events.

[55:32] Bob Dobbs: One has the loneliness that suggests that it's the separateness of man.

[55:36] Bob Dobbs: The human dimensions are lost during the mechanical era or industrial society of non-human ends,

[55:43] Bob Dobbs: and that's a quote,

[55:44] Bob Dobbs: non-human ends,

[55:44] Bob Dobbs: and then while the unconscious and commercially unutilized powers struggle dimly to restore balance in order by homeopathic means.

[55:52] Bob Dobbs: Homeopathic means,

[55:53] Bob Dobbs: quoting,

[55:54] Bob Dobbs: might be the word making the market.

[55:56] Bob Dobbs: That's another isolated,

[55:57] Bob Dobbs: fragmented situation,

[55:58] Bob Dobbs: and also doing more with less.

[56:01] Bob Dobbs: And then the third quote,

[56:04] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan and I always quote

[56:07] Bob Dobbs: George Thompson rather than Harley Parker referencing Counterblast and that should be 1969 not 1968 because Thompson did all the work he told me down in New York making Counterblast Harley wasn't doing it he was partying in New York no

[56:24] Cameron McEwen: well um but I mean doing all the work I mean Thompson uh just took a whole bunch of fragments

[56:33] Cameron McEwen: that McLuhan had been throwing out since the early

[56:37] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, right?

[56:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[56:38] Cameron McEwen: And then put them together in Counterblast.

[56:41] Bob Dobbs: And did the graphic design.

[56:45] Cameron McEwen: That's what Harley did,

[56:46] Cameron McEwen: the graphics.

[56:46] Bob Dobbs: No,

[56:47] Bob Dobbs: he did it.

[56:47] Bob Dobbs: George did it.

[56:50] Cameron McEwen: Really?

[56:50] Cameron McEwen: I didn't know he had that ability.

[56:51] Cameron McEwen: I thought George had put the text together.

[56:55] Bob Dobbs: No,

[56:56] Bob Dobbs: no.

[56:56] Bob Dobbs: George was an art student,

[56:58] Bob Dobbs: and he was a student of Harley's at school at the art college in Toronto.

[57:03] Bob Dobbs: And then he was an employee at the Royal Ontario Museum with Harley,

[57:09] Bob Dobbs: working under Harley.

[57:11] Bob Dobbs: And that's how he met McLuhan,

[57:13] Bob Dobbs: through Harley meeting McLuhan.

[57:14] Bob Dobbs: Uh-huh,

[57:14] Cameron McEwen: uh-huh.

[57:16] Bob Dobbs: So George has a whole story,

[57:17] Bob Dobbs: which he told me a couple times about,

[57:21] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[57:22] Bob Dobbs: he wasn't recognized.

[57:23] Bob Dobbs: He wasn't complaining.

[57:24] Bob Dobbs: He just said,

[57:25] Bob Dobbs: well,

[57:25] Bob Dobbs: I did all that in New York,

[57:28] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[57:28] Bob Dobbs: And he could,

[57:29] Bob Dobbs: if you know that he was trained.

[57:30] Bob Dobbs: He was a pretty good painter,

[57:31] Bob Dobbs: too.

[57:32] Bob Dobbs: He survived in his later retired years by selling his painting.

[57:38] Bob Dobbs: So people don't know that about George,

[57:39] Bob Dobbs: right?

[57:40] Cameron McEwen: No.

[57:41] Cameron McEwen: When I met George in Nova Scotia,

[57:44] Cameron McEwen: he was very sort of reticent.

[57:47] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[57:50] Cameron McEwen: I'd be sitting there with him and Sanderson,

[57:53] Cameron McEwen: and Sanderson would be talking,

[57:56] Cameron McEwen: and you could see that George wanted to say something,

[57:59] Cameron McEwen: but he would never interrupt.

[58:00] Cameron McEwen: He would never interject himself.

[58:03] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[58:04] Cameron McEwen: And I felt bad.

[58:06] Cameron McEwen: I thought,

[58:08] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[58:09] Cameron McEwen: George,

[58:09] Cameron McEwen: maybe he has something interesting to say,

[58:11] Cameron McEwen: but

[58:13] Cameron McEwen: I didn't find a way to involve him.

[58:15] Cameron McEwen: He didn't seem to want to be involved.

[58:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[58:18] Bob Dobbs: George,

[58:19] Bob Dobbs: I know exactly what you're talking about.

[58:21] Bob Dobbs: But since I had time to be around him at the office when no one was around,

[58:25] Bob Dobbs: we would talk.

[58:26] Bob Dobbs: And he was very personable and tell me stuff.

[58:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[58:29] Bob Dobbs: basically,

[58:31] Bob Dobbs: he had your attitude.

[58:33] Bob Dobbs: There ain't anybody here,

[58:34] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[58:34] Bob Dobbs: that understands Marshall.

[58:36] Bob Dobbs: And he felt that he did.

[58:38] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[58:39] Bob Dobbs: And he did because he saw so much and heard so much.

[58:42] Bob Dobbs: And he was an artist and he could take it in.

[58:44] Bob Dobbs: So

[58:45] Bob Dobbs: I would say part of the irritation that you saw in him,

[58:49] Bob Dobbs: it's not a frustration to speak,

[58:51] Bob Dobbs: he was irritated at you and George,

[58:54] Bob Dobbs: that you guys weren't fucking knew what you're talking about.

[58:58] Cameron McEwen: Which is also possible.

[59:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[59:00] Bob Dobbs: he was very critical of everybody.

[59:02] Bob Dobbs: And

[59:02] Bob Dobbs: I found out from him,

[59:03] Bob Dobbs: he was very critical of me.

[59:04] Bob Dobbs: He thought I was really screwed up.

[59:07] Bob Dobbs: So George was a bit of an eccentric.

[59:10] Bob Dobbs: He saw a lot,

[59:11] Bob Dobbs: probably didn't have the intellectual literate levels of being able to articulate it,

[59:16] Bob Dobbs: but he knew that nobody was getting near it with the words they were using.

[59:21] Bob Dobbs: But he didn't know the words to...

[59:24] Bob Dobbs: to express his more refined understanding of McLuhan.

[59:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[59:29] Bob Dobbs: definitely.

[59:29] Bob Dobbs: Nelson and I used to talk about that.

[59:31] Bob Dobbs: The difference between Marg Stewart and George is very interesting because Marg,

[59:37] Bob Dobbs: she understood Marshall well,

[59:39] Bob Dobbs: and

[59:40] Bob Dobbs: iON says that

[59:41] Bob Dobbs: Marg should be given the credit because she wrote all the stuff.

[59:43] Bob Dobbs: She typed it up and had to put the grammar in.

[59:48] Bob Dobbs: So

[59:48] Bob Dobbs: I fortunately had...

[59:51] Bob Dobbs: Friendships with both.

[59:52] Bob Dobbs: In the long run,

[59:53] Bob Dobbs: more with Marg,

[59:55] Bob Dobbs: but you can see how much inside knowledge I got from those two people.

[1:00:01] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:00:03] Cameron McEwen: Yep.

[1:00:03] Bob Dobbs: Just by exchanging with them.

[1:00:05] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:00:06] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:00:06] Bob Dobbs: George once said to me,

[1:00:08] Bob Dobbs: Marshall's not a Catholic.

[1:00:09] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if I brought it up,

[1:00:13] Bob Dobbs: but he's the first guy to say,

[1:00:14] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[1:00:15] Bob Dobbs: You line up Marshall with a thousand Catholics,

[1:00:17] Bob Dobbs: he's not like any of them.

[1:00:19] Bob Dobbs: He's not a Roman Catholic.

[1:00:21] Bob Dobbs: So that,

[1:00:21] Bob Dobbs: he was the only guy to say that.

[1:00:23] Bob Dobbs: Now try to say that around Eric or Corinne or something,

[1:00:25] Bob Dobbs: or any of the other Catholics around him,

[1:00:28] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:00:28] Bob Dobbs: They're not going to tolerate that.

[1:00:30] Bob Dobbs: But it was a very sophisticated statement.

[1:00:33] Bob Dobbs: As a matter of fact,

[1:00:34] Bob Dobbs: you could say maybe Marshall was a deeper Catholic than anybody,

[1:00:37] Bob Dobbs: but it was not in any recognizable

[1:00:41] Bob Dobbs: Catholic references.

[1:00:43] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:00:44] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[1:00:45] Cameron McEwen: But that range is sort of included in the very word Catholic.

[1:00:51] Cameron McEwen: Catholic.

[1:00:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:00:52] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[1:00:52] Cameron McEwen: Catholic means universal,

[1:00:54] Cameron McEwen: and

[1:00:56] Cameron McEwen: Marshall was sort of at the extreme end of...

[1:00:59] Bob Dobbs: It was incorporating new aspects of the universal that were happening,

[1:01:03] Bob Dobbs: being created.

[1:01:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:01:06] Bob Dobbs: so then the third quote,

[1:01:08] Bob Dobbs: no matter page 135 of Counterblast,

[1:01:11] Bob Dobbs: no matter how many walls have fallen,

[1:01:13] Bob Dobbs: the citadel of individual consciousness has not fallen,

[1:01:16] Bob Dobbs: nor is it likely to fall,

[1:01:17] Bob Dobbs: for it is not accessible to the mass media.

[1:01:21] Bob Dobbs: That's like a metaphysical statement,

[1:01:23] Bob Dobbs: but the global theater of the 60s was not conditioning people,

[1:01:27] Bob Dobbs: so that was kind of being retrieved.

[1:01:29] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I mean?

[1:01:31] Bob Dobbs: The part that was not accessible to mass media,

[1:01:34] Bob Dobbs: which we're calling the pre-tribal thing.

[1:01:38] Cameron McEwen: That's because no matter what extreme of control is exercised,

[1:01:48] Cameron McEwen: it has to draw its power.

[1:01:50] Cameron McEwen: from the pre-tribal awareness.

[1:01:54] Cameron McEwen: So that means that,

[1:01:56] Cameron McEwen: as we said,

[1:01:58] Cameron McEwen: there was a quote maybe 10 pages ago where it reminded me of the idea that even the,

[1:02:14] Cameron McEwen: I'm drawing a blank on the technical word,

[1:02:18] Cameron McEwen: but let's say.

[1:02:19] Cameron McEwen: Even the oppositional can express resonance.

[1:02:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:02:26] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:02:27] Cameron McEwen: We came across that.

[1:02:28] Cameron McEwen: So the reason that the citadel of individual consciousness is not accessible to the control of mass media is that although individual consciousness powers mass media,

[1:02:47] Cameron McEwen: the...

[1:02:50] Cameron McEwen: it remains there in its absence or in its being forgotten.

[1:02:58] Bob Dobbs: I think I get that.

[1:03:00] Bob Dobbs: And look at my next sentence.

[1:03:02] Bob Dobbs: The basic structure of humans may be private.

[1:03:04] Bob Dobbs: That's your stem cell.

[1:03:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:03:07] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[1:03:08] Bob Dobbs: I was trying to,

[1:03:10] Bob Dobbs: like,

[1:03:10] Bob Dobbs: you could just see people,

[1:03:11] Bob Dobbs: they think private is Bloomberg.

[1:03:13] Bob Dobbs: They say,

[1:03:13] Bob Dobbs: what the hell is Bob talking about here?

[1:03:15] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:03:15] Bob Dobbs: He's got it all wrong.

[1:03:18] Bob Dobbs: but the way we're talking about it makes sense.

[1:03:20] Bob Dobbs: The basic structure of humans may be private,

[1:03:23] Bob Dobbs: but then you start creating society,

[1:03:24] Bob Dobbs: and they're not so private,

[1:03:25] Bob Dobbs: not so independent.

[1:03:27] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says,

[1:03:28] Bob Dobbs: in the end,

[1:03:29] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:03:29] Bob Dobbs: in the end,

[1:03:30] Bob Dobbs: media don't affect the essence of a person.

[1:03:32] Bob Dobbs: That's another idea of isolation and detachment from the merged condition of social communion,

[1:03:37] Bob Dobbs: or the cloned ESP in modern terms.

[1:03:41] Bob Dobbs: Just a second,

[1:03:42] Bob Dobbs: I flipped the thing here.

[1:03:44] Cameron McEwen: So notice how the ice...

[1:03:47] Cameron McEwen: terms here,

[1:03:48] Cameron McEwen: isolation and detachment,

[1:03:50] Cameron McEwen: those could be in quotation marks.

[1:03:52] Cameron McEwen: Because isolation and detachment,

[1:03:56] Cameron McEwen: that is to say extension,

[1:03:58] Cameron McEwen: that is to say media,

[1:04:01] Cameron McEwen: those come in a whole bunch of different flavors.

[1:04:05] Cameron McEwen: And so the merged condition of social communion,

[1:04:10] Cameron McEwen: that's just one expression of isolation and detachment.

[1:04:14] Cameron McEwen: There's many others.

[1:04:16] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:04:18] Bob Dobbs: and maybe that's why he puts software and other terms in quotes on the book sleep or Take Today.

[1:04:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:04:27] Cameron McEwen: you've often talked about how the use of quotations in Take Today is very important to pay attention to.

[1:04:35] Bob Dobbs: And you're getting with that.

[1:04:36] Bob Dobbs: You're correct to say I have to put fragmented in quotes because I don't mean literate fragmentation.

[1:04:41] Bob Dobbs: So it has to be,

[1:04:44] Bob Dobbs: which is how most people...

[1:04:46] Bob Dobbs: would take it.

[1:04:47] Cameron McEwen: The problem with...

[1:04:49] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is that if you went around putting quotation marks around every word that was sort of multivalent,

[1:04:57] Cameron McEwen: you'd have to have every single word with quotation marks around it.

[1:05:03] Cameron McEwen: So that reminds me that at the start of,

[1:05:07] Cameron McEwen: I think it's the start of his novel,

[1:05:09] Cameron McEwen: What?

[1:05:10] Cameron McEwen: But it could be,

[1:05:13] Cameron McEwen: it's possible that it's from one of his other sort of middle period novels.

[1:05:20] Cameron McEwen: Samuel Beckett has a footnote.

[1:05:23] Cameron McEwen: He says that he's not going to note for every single sentence in the novel that the person who is talking is talking only to himself.

[1:05:36] Cameron McEwen: He says this is not necessary to say in every single case because it's always the case.

[1:05:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:05:44] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[1:05:45] Bob Dobbs: So he covered it with that statement.

[1:05:47] Bob Dobbs: which is at the beginning of the book?

[1:05:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:05:51] Cameron McEwen: I think it's one of the few footnotes in the whole book of Watt.

[1:05:58] Cameron McEwen: I'd recommend

[1:05:59] Cameron McEwen: Samuel Beckett's middle period novels like Murphy and Watt as some of the funniest things that have ever been written by a human being.

[1:06:08] Bob Dobbs: I'll have to look at that.

[1:06:09] Bob Dobbs: That's Watt,

[1:06:10] Bob Dobbs: W-A-T-T.

[1:06:12] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:06:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:06:13] Bob Dobbs: So...

[1:06:14] Bob Dobbs: One is simulating the ESP which surrounds everybody and penetrates.

[1:06:20] Bob Dobbs: I have,

[1:06:20] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:06:21] Bob Dobbs: merged slash interpenetrated.

[1:06:23] Bob Dobbs: That's the popular mythology of ESP.

[1:06:26] Bob Dobbs: Everybody intimately inside each other.

[1:06:28] Bob Dobbs: It's a merge of humans via the global theater.

[1:06:30] Bob Dobbs: Now that's the Global Membrane.

[1:06:32] Bob Dobbs: That's the one of 14,

[1:06:34] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:06:34] Bob Dobbs: That condition.

[1:06:36] Bob Dobbs: The resonant node.

[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: Then capitalism,

[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: the afterimage of the printing press.

[1:06:40] Bob Dobbs: couldn't continue to function while everybody's sharing the same disembodied space and not having to own anything.

[1:06:46] Bob Dobbs: Now look at the World Economic Forum.

[1:06:49] Bob Dobbs: They're saying,

[1:06:49] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:06:49] Bob Dobbs: you'll be happy but you'll own nothing.

[1:06:53] Bob Dobbs: They're just catching up to the Global Membrane effect of 70 years ago.

[1:06:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:06:59] Cameron McEwen: they're minding it.

[1:07:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:07:01] Bob Dobbs: and they're not getting near,

[1:07:03] Bob Dobbs: they don't know that there's a whole counter sensibility to that due to the,

[1:07:07] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:07:08] Bob Dobbs: atomization.

[1:07:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:07:11] Cameron McEwen: they're trying to,

[1:07:12] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:07:13] Cameron McEwen: it's a 1-4 image that you had.

[1:07:17] Cameron McEwen: They're taking one of the fours that are whirling around and trying to say,

[1:07:24] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:07:25] Cameron McEwen: we can reinstate the

[1:07:28] Cameron McEwen: Gutenberg Galaxy by inflating this particular fragment of the four.

[1:07:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:07:37] Bob Dobbs: because they can't deal with the one.

[1:07:39] Bob Dobbs: Nobody can deal with the one.

[1:07:41] Bob Dobbs: It's ineffable.

[1:07:42] Bob Dobbs: It's hard to talk about.

[1:07:45] Bob Dobbs: Hard to say.

[1:07:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:07:47] Bob Dobbs: so they think they're dealing with that,

[1:07:49] Bob Dobbs: but they're not.

[1:07:50] Bob Dobbs: The meme of literate individuality.

[1:07:53] Cameron McEwen: By the way,

[1:07:53] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan says that the reason that people find such difficulty in this,

[1:08:00] Cameron McEwen: in talking about the one,

[1:08:02] Cameron McEwen: is that if you identify this collective structure,

[1:08:07] Cameron McEwen: Um,

[1:08:08] Cameron McEwen: that we all both operate in and operate through,

[1:08:16] Cameron McEwen: if we identify that,

[1:08:17] Cameron McEwen: then we have to subordinate our sense of self to that investigation,

[1:08:25] Cameron McEwen: to that probing.

[1:08:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:08:27] Cameron McEwen: And he says people are afraid to do that.

[1:08:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:08:32] Cameron McEwen: It seems like a loss of their freedom.

[1:08:35] Cameron McEwen: A loss of their individuality.

[1:08:37] Bob Dobbs: Their literate individuality.

[1:08:39] Bob Dobbs: Their literate individuality is what they think they're losing.

[1:08:43] Cameron McEwen: What they fear they're losing.

[1:08:44] Cameron McEwen: They don't really understand why they're afraid.

[1:08:49] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:08:50] Cameron McEwen: They just know they're afraid.

[1:08:51] Bob Dobbs: I address that in the next sentence.

[1:08:52] Bob Dobbs: The meme of literate individuality started to allow pay TV and Walkmans and all this specialized electronic delight.

[1:09:02] Bob Dobbs: And then the computer digital technology continued to throw people back into isolated,

[1:09:05] Bob Dobbs: walled-off spaces,

[1:09:06] Bob Dobbs: which would exaggerate personal consumerism.

[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: Accompanying this retrieval of a virtual visual space,

[1:09:12] Bob Dobbs: the patina of the archetypal silent print condition,

[1:09:16] Bob Dobbs: the Android meme digitized and atomized every digital user.

[1:09:20] Bob Dobbs: That's a popular word,

[1:09:21] Bob Dobbs: atomized.

[1:09:23] Bob Dobbs: At least I put that in quotation marks.

[1:09:26] Bob Dobbs: That's the end of the quote.

[1:09:27] Cameron McEwen: Notice how that's what we were just talking about,

[1:09:30] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:09:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:09:31] Cameron McEwen: The goal of finding yourself in one of the particles of the four is atomization.

[1:09:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:09:43] Bob Dobbs: And it's looked on as a value now,

[1:09:46] Bob Dobbs: and people are celebrating their schizophrenia,

[1:09:50] Bob Dobbs: paranoia and everything.

[1:09:51] Bob Dobbs: It's not,

[1:09:52] Bob Dobbs: what is it?

[1:09:53] Bob Dobbs: It's retrieved and it looks different.

[1:09:54] Bob Dobbs: So you think you actually are not schizoid or paranoid.

[1:10:01] Bob Dobbs: So what's interesting is if you had not heard me point out that 1970 quote,

[1:10:11] Bob Dobbs: and then got into this.

[1:10:12] Bob Dobbs: pre-tribal awareness,

[1:10:13] Bob Dobbs: which you now have discovered,

[1:10:15] Bob Dobbs: you might not know what I'm talking about here unless you could get it and it was,

[1:10:20] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:10:20] Bob Dobbs: that's the part I missed.

[1:10:21] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:10:22] Bob Dobbs: That I hadn't been writing about?

[1:10:25] Cameron McEwen: I think that's right.

[1:10:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:10:29] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying you wouldn't understand what I'm talking about here,

[1:10:31] Bob Dobbs: but that sounds a little too strong.

[1:10:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:10:34] Cameron McEwen: so I not only enjoy our conversations,

[1:10:38] Cameron McEwen: I learn from them.

[1:10:40] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:10:40] Bob Dobbs: that's great.

[1:10:40] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:10:41] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:10:41] Bob Dobbs: because you haven't read anybody doing this pre-tribal awareness aspect of McLuhan.

[1:10:47] Bob Dobbs: No one's ever done it.

[1:10:49] Bob Dobbs: And you had read so much McLuhan,

[1:10:52] Bob Dobbs: you knew that was in there somewhere.

[1:10:54] Bob Dobbs: But no one had pointed out the quotes to you.

[1:10:57] Bob Dobbs: So I'm thinking that you might have understood it,

[1:10:59] Bob Dobbs: but I don't know.

[1:11:00] Bob Dobbs: You might not have.

[1:11:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:11:04] Cameron McEwen: it's possible.

[1:11:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:11:06] Cameron McEwen: But this aspect of...

[1:11:08] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is not just brand new.

[1:11:12] Cameron McEwen: German idealism,

[1:11:14] Cameron McEwen: so Fichte,

[1:11:15] Cameron McEwen: Schelling,

[1:11:15] Cameron McEwen: Hegel,

[1:11:17] Cameron McEwen: were very much into these ideas.

[1:11:20] Cameron McEwen: They were very much trying to figure out what is the unity that fragments itself in a dynamic movement and how are we to understand that.

[1:11:34] Cameron McEwen: These were very important topics

[1:11:38] Cameron McEwen: for them in the sort of 1800 to 1840 time period.

[1:11:46] Bob Dobbs: But were they still within the problem of literacy,

[1:11:49] Bob Dobbs: of the Gutenberg effect?

[1:11:52] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:11:53] Cameron McEwen: to a greater or lesser extent,

[1:11:56] Cameron McEwen: yes and no.

[1:11:57] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:11:57] Cameron McEwen: first off,

[1:12:00] Cameron McEwen: they didn't think in common.

[1:12:04] Cameron McEwen: They were all different individuals.

[1:12:07] Cameron McEwen: And there were many other people that were their friends or their opponents or whatever.

[1:12:11] Cameron McEwen: It was a very complicated situation.

[1:12:15] Bob Dobbs: Were they all Kantians?

[1:12:19] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:12:20] Cameron McEwen: everybody after Kant had certain problems that they had to figure out.

[1:12:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:12:28] Cameron McEwen: But they all tried to go beyond him in different ways.

[1:12:34] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:12:35] Cameron McEwen: Fichte...

[1:12:36] Cameron McEwen: knew Kant and attempted to say that

[1:12:42] Cameron McEwen: Kant's work inherently expressed this notion that he had of sort of the coalescence of consciousness.

[1:12:54] Cameron McEwen: Schelling is too complicated to talk about here because he had a very long career and kept changing his standpoint over that career.

[1:13:05] Cameron McEwen: But then Hegel had the sort of the difficult problem of trying to show that the literary factor in Kant and Fichte was

[1:13:23] Cameron McEwen: only one aspect of human experience,

[1:13:31] Cameron McEwen: and that human experience was inherently...

[1:13:35] Cameron McEwen: plural broke itself into what he called different absolutes.

[1:13:41] Cameron McEwen: So the absolute of Fichte is singular,

[1:13:44] Cameron McEwen: but the absolutes of

[1:13:46] Cameron McEwen: Hegel are plural.

[1:13:47] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:13:47] Cameron McEwen: it's a very,

[1:13:48] Cameron McEwen: very fundamental difference between them.

[1:13:51] Cameron McEwen: And the absolute plurality of Hegel includes tactility,

[1:14:01] Cameron McEwen: because you couldn't have a plurality of absolutes.

[1:14:05] Cameron McEwen: without tactility between them,

[1:14:07] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:14:07] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:14:08] Cameron McEwen: So when you say,

[1:14:10] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:14:11] Cameron McEwen: what was the question of the literal for all these guys,

[1:14:15] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:14:15] Cameron McEwen: number one,

[1:14:16] Cameron McEwen: it was different,

[1:14:17] Cameron McEwen: and then number two,

[1:14:20] Cameron McEwen: Hegel is one of the sort of great world figures of thought,

[1:14:25] Cameron McEwen: at least in my estimation,

[1:14:27] Cameron McEwen: and needs to be reread as much as McLuhan does or more.

[1:14:32] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:14:32] Bob Dobbs: what about Marshall McLuhan second Copernican revolution,

[1:14:34] Bob Dobbs: which is Kant discovering inner or acoustic space?

[1:14:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:14:41] Cameron McEwen: they would all agree with that.

[1:14:43] Cameron McEwen: The German idealists are theoreticians of this post-Copernican world.

[1:14:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:14:52] Bob Dobbs: and Gutenberg Galaxy world.

[1:14:55] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:14:57] Cameron McEwen: but it's one thing to say that you're going to think Gutenberg Galaxy,

[1:15:02] Cameron McEwen: and it's another thing to do it,

[1:15:04] Cameron McEwen: right,

[1:15:05] Cameron McEwen: which is what we see in post-humanism and stuff.

[1:15:09] Cameron McEwen: It's to have a certain aspiration is very different from the actuality.

[1:15:21] Cameron McEwen: So for

[1:15:23] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, it's not enough to say that we're going into a new post-book,

[1:15:32] Cameron McEwen: Gutenberg Galaxy environment.

[1:15:34] Cameron McEwen: For McLuhan,

[1:15:35] Cameron McEwen: the important thing is to get down to...

[1:15:38] Cameron McEwen: the art slash science of this new environment.

[1:15:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:15:43] Bob Dobbs: and probably

[1:15:46] Bob Dobbs: Nietzsche completes those guys.

[1:15:49] Bob Dobbs: In a certain way,

[1:15:50] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:15:51] Bob Dobbs: He has the advantage of a telegraph for 20,

[1:15:54] Bob Dobbs: 30 years.

[1:15:55] Bob Dobbs: So he's getting the electric effect,

[1:15:58] Bob Dobbs: which the idealists didn't have in the first half of the

[1:16:03] Bob Dobbs: 1800s. So

[1:16:03] Bob Dobbs: Nietzsche may have completed.

[1:16:06] Bob Dobbs: that romantic enterprise or German romanticism,

[1:16:09] Bob Dobbs: German idealism,

[1:16:11] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:16:12] Bob Dobbs: because he saw it was happening electrically,

[1:16:16] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:16:16] Bob Dobbs: he may not saw it clearly,

[1:16:18] Bob Dobbs: but he was responding to the later condition.

[1:16:22] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:16:22] Cameron McEwen: I think that's true,

[1:16:23] Cameron McEwen: but I think it's very important to introduce the proviso that it's not the case that technologies were only shaping.

[1:16:36] Cameron McEwen: thought,

[1:16:36] Cameron McEwen: it was also the case that thought was shaping technologies.

[1:16:42] Cameron McEwen: So what the German idealists were thinking in the wake of Kant,

[1:16:49] Cameron McEwen: that kind of thinking was also expressed in people like Michael Faraday that were experimenting with electricity and figuring

[1:17:04] Cameron McEwen: out its laws.

[1:17:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:17:06] Cameron McEwen: so it's a two-way.

[1:17:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:17:09] Bob Dobbs: two-way.

[1:17:10] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:17:10] Bob Dobbs: I was thinking that the German idealists,

[1:17:13] Bob Dobbs: they were trying to reach beyond Kant,

[1:17:17] Bob Dobbs: and Joyce Pound,

[1:17:19] Bob Dobbs: Lewis,

[1:17:20] Bob Dobbs: and Eliot were trying to reach beyond Nietzsche,

[1:17:22] Bob Dobbs: or were seeing there was something that had to be added to whatever Nietzsche thought he got to.

[1:17:27] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:17:29] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:17:29] Cameron McEwen: I think that's true.

[1:17:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:17:31] Bob Dobbs: So Joyce and them,

[1:17:32] Bob Dobbs: they're dealing with what McLuhan called the...

[1:17:35] Bob Dobbs: Second symbolic movement,

[1:17:37] Bob Dobbs: which were called the Symbolists.

[1:17:39] Bob Dobbs: And the German Idealists were dealing with the first symbolic movement,

[1:17:43] Bob Dobbs: Symbolist movement,

[1:17:44] Bob Dobbs: which was known as the Romantics.

[1:17:47] Bob Dobbs: So there's a split there,

[1:17:50] Bob Dobbs: or a rupture,

[1:17:52] Bob Dobbs: tactile interface,

[1:17:53] Bob Dobbs: caused by the telegraph and the beginning of electric technologies,

[1:17:57] Bob Dobbs: like the telephone.

[1:17:59] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:18:00] Bob Dobbs: that's the marker between...

[1:18:06] Bob Dobbs: All that philosophizing,

[1:18:08] Bob Dobbs: which not many people seem to be attracted to today in German idealism.

[1:18:15] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:18:15] Bob Dobbs: It's too bookish or something.

[1:18:18] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:18:19] Cameron McEwen: they can say it's too bookish,

[1:18:20] Cameron McEwen: but in reality,

[1:18:22] Cameron McEwen: it's too challenging.

[1:18:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:18:25] Cameron McEwen: It's,

[1:18:25] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:18:27] Cameron McEwen: to really get into a thinker like Hegel is very,

[1:18:32] Cameron McEwen: very difficult.

[1:18:35] Cameron McEwen: very challenging to one's sense of identity and sense of order.

[1:18:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:18:41] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:18:42] Bob Dobbs: so then,

[1:18:43] Bob Dobbs: so we got through the long quote,

[1:18:45] Bob Dobbs: or my oral casual talk,

[1:18:50] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.

[1:18:51] Bob Dobbs: Now we're on to page 134,

[1:18:53] Bob Dobbs: and so I say,

[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: this would lead to the rise of the Anthropomorphic Physical,

[1:18:56] Bob Dobbs: an outcome based on the following reasoning.

[1:19:00] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan saw that the notion of the medium as the message or massage was

[1:19:03] Bob Dobbs: soon ought to be applicable to the law of the situation.

[1:19:07] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:19:07] Bob Dobbs: I just want to go see,

[1:19:09] Bob Dobbs: and then I,

[1:19:09] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:19:09] Bob Dobbs: I see,

[1:19:10] Bob Dobbs: I'm getting into the Android meme.

[1:19:11] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:19:12] Bob Dobbs: So then I casually say,

[1:19:14] Bob Dobbs: a business consultant in the 20s,

[1:19:16] Bob Dobbs: Mary Parker Follett,

[1:19:17] Bob Dobbs: came up with a sort of a medium as a message figure ground situation,

[1:19:21] Bob Dobbs: which she called the law of the situation.

[1:19:23] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan used the phrase once or twice.

[1:19:25] Bob Dobbs: The law of the situation is an answer evoked by the question,

[1:19:29] Bob Dobbs: what's the context?

[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: Many people see the medium as mere context.

[1:19:33] Bob Dobbs: What's the context of the event?

[1:19:35] Bob Dobbs: But that's freezing it as a concept.

[1:19:37] Bob Dobbs: They're not getting the sensory shaping,

[1:19:38] Bob Dobbs: the numbing process.

[1:19:41] Bob Dobbs: Do you agree with that?

[1:19:45] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:19:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:19:47] Bob Dobbs: So then the android meme,

[1:19:50] Bob Dobbs: now that's machines extending themselves.

[1:19:52] Bob Dobbs: We're not extending human organs anymore.

[1:19:57] Bob Dobbs: Though you might say you're not completely not extending human organs.

[1:20:02] Bob Dobbs: There's still a bit of something in there.

[1:20:04] Bob Dobbs: But it's tending to be a complicated extension that regular humans have no clue about.

[1:20:12] Bob Dobbs: They can't visualize it.

[1:20:13] Bob Dobbs: They can't understand the digital medium.

[1:20:17] Bob Dobbs: So the Android meme or AM induced humans to think the AM's content is subject to human massage.

[1:20:24] Bob Dobbs: Humans are actually not manipulated or brainwashed by the AM.

[1:20:29] Bob Dobbs: They do appear to everybody else.

[1:20:31] Bob Dobbs: Each one of us appears one of the following ways to have symptoms of paranoia,

[1:20:34] Bob Dobbs: schizophrenia,

[1:20:35] Bob Dobbs: hysteria,

[1:20:36] Bob Dobbs: panic,

[1:20:36] Bob Dobbs: or ecstasy in the newly isolated,

[1:20:39] Bob Dobbs: disconnected condition of surplus flesh.

[1:20:43] Bob Dobbs: That's a Kroker phrase,

[1:20:45] Bob Dobbs: surplus flesh.

[1:20:46] Bob Dobbs: This is why everybody today keeps frantically monitoring their black mirrors,

[1:20:51] Bob Dobbs: the cell phones and that,

[1:20:52] Bob Dobbs: and texting to see if there are any others out there.

[1:20:56] Bob Dobbs: Nano communities might be resulting.

[1:20:59] Bob Dobbs: So is this making sense here?

[1:21:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:21:03] Cameron McEwen: it makes sense to me.

[1:21:04] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:21:05] Cameron McEwen: The one thing I would say is the second sentence,

[1:21:09] Cameron McEwen: humans are actually not manipulated.

[1:21:12] Cameron McEwen: Do you mean humans think they are actually not manipulated?

[1:21:18] Bob Dobbs: That's true.

[1:21:19] Bob Dobbs: And they are not manipulated in the sense that they're not conditioned.

[1:21:23] Bob Dobbs: That quote from McLuhan in the mid-60s,

[1:21:25] Bob Dobbs: that people aren't conditioned anymore.

[1:21:28] Bob Dobbs: So it's a post-tribal or a pre-tribal.

[1:21:33] Bob Dobbs: So now,

[1:21:35] Bob Dobbs: the Android meme is conditioning that non-conditioning.

[1:21:40] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:21:41] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:21:42] Cameron McEwen: That's exactly what I was thinking.

[1:21:45] Cameron McEwen: Hoping I was saying.

[1:21:46] Cameron McEwen: We're getting to.

[1:21:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:21:47] Bob Dobbs: Hoping I said that.

[1:21:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:21:48] Bob Dobbs: saying that.

[1:21:49] Bob Dobbs: So just to review,

[1:21:50] Bob Dobbs: the Android meme induced humans to think the AM's content is subject to human massage.

[1:21:55] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:21:55] Bob Dobbs: that's where everybody gets this hoity-toity thing.

[1:21:59] Bob Dobbs: It's remarkable how so many people accuse everybody else of being brainwashed.

[1:22:06] Bob Dobbs: You follow that?

[1:22:07] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:22:07] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[1:22:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:22:09] Bob Dobbs: Because.

[1:22:11] Bob Dobbs: They don't know that they've been floating off a satellite.

[1:22:14] Bob Dobbs: And yes,

[1:22:15] Bob Dobbs: everybody else is being manipulated,

[1:22:16] Bob Dobbs: but there's a medium that's making you think that or perceive the brainwashing of everybody.

[1:22:22] Bob Dobbs: You get average people all over the cases.

[1:22:26] Bob Dobbs: If social issues come up,

[1:22:27] Bob Dobbs: they say,

[1:22:27] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:22:27] Bob Dobbs: everybody's brainwashed.

[1:22:31] Bob Dobbs: They never said that 100 years ago in the popular level.

[1:22:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:22:37] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:22:39] Cameron McEwen: In my view,

[1:22:39] Cameron McEwen: you can see this.

[1:22:40] Cameron McEwen: in the shoes that people wear.

[1:22:45] Cameron McEwen: People talk about everybody being brainwashed or people believing stuff in the media that isn't true or something like that,

[1:22:52] Cameron McEwen: but those people will be wearing some kind of Nike or some kind of sandal or something that is fashion,

[1:23:04] Cameron McEwen: that says,

[1:23:06] Cameron McEwen: I'm a person who has been led along this path,

[1:23:10] Bob Dobbs: path to buy these shoes to express myself in this way and there they are talking about other people being brainwashed yeah so you're saying their clothing indicates the consumer brainwashing yeah absolutely well

[1:23:25] Bob Dobbs: i can't get out of it what'd you say you cannot get out of it right and but then people are increasingly the 20 30 years ago became more eccentric

[1:23:38] Bob Dobbs: and fragmented in their clothing styles.

[1:23:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:23:42] Bob Dobbs: There was no uniformity.

[1:23:44] Cameron McEwen: That was fashion,

[1:23:45] Cameron McEwen: too.

[1:23:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:23:46] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:23:47] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:23:47] Bob Dobbs: so you had the four was your shirts and pants and clothes and T-shirts,

[1:23:52] Bob Dobbs: and the one was your shoes.

[1:23:54] Cameron McEwen: So you were a one-four.

[1:23:58] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[1:24:00] Bob Dobbs: You engaged in voluntary shoes or voluntary ESP.

[1:24:03] Bob Dobbs: I'll pretend I'm part of the cloned ESP merger.

[1:24:08] Bob Dobbs: But in my clothing and the eccentricity of how I dress myself,

[1:24:14] Bob Dobbs: that's the schizophrenia paranoia spiraling off satellite.

[1:24:18] Bob Dobbs: So that's an amazing new icon or image.

[1:24:22] Bob Dobbs: The one for us,

[1:24:22] Bob Dobbs: what we all look like.

[1:24:24] Cameron McEwen: And you can see the pain that's involved here in that people realize that their whole notion of themselves is being retracted.

[1:24:37] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:24:38] Cameron McEwen: almost into nothing.

[1:24:39] Cameron McEwen: But the only way they know how to be a self sort of is a precipitate of the

[1:24:46] Cameron McEwen: Gutenberg Galaxy.

[1:24:48] Cameron McEwen: Right,

[1:24:48] Cameron McEwen: we don't,

[1:24:50] Cameron McEwen: we haven't come to a new way of being us.

[1:24:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:24:55] Cameron McEwen: And so being in the middle between the old way that doesn't work and the new way that we haven't found,

[1:25:03] Cameron McEwen: that's a very painful,

[1:25:05] Cameron McEwen: difficult,

[1:25:06] Cameron McEwen: confusing situation.

[1:25:08] Bob Dobbs: And did you use the word refracted?

[1:25:13] Cameron McEwen: Retracted.

[1:25:14] Bob Dobbs: Oh.

[1:25:14] Cameron McEwen: Retracted.

[1:25:16] Cameron McEwen: Pulling back into.

[1:25:18] Bob Dobbs: retracted yeah okay to retract right to go back right so that's another one of your reword yeah yeah we'll have a product someday with that retracted yeah

[1:25:33] Bob Dobbs: retract so that's very interesting what we just said there and so so the the

[1:25:47] Bob Dobbs: frantic texting and checking your tactile medium,

[1:25:52] Bob Dobbs: your cell phone,

[1:25:54] Bob Dobbs: smartphone,

[1:25:55] Bob Dobbs: there's a hyper urgency because you almost know everything's changing every three or four hours.

[1:26:02] Bob Dobbs: So you check in to see what the new sensibility is that you're going to deny,

[1:26:07] Bob Dobbs: but you have to know what everybody's being brainwashed by and keep up with that.

[1:26:11] Bob Dobbs: So you actually are brainwashed with...

[1:26:15] Bob Dobbs: You must stay in touch with what people are being brainwashed by.

[1:26:19] Bob Dobbs: And so that's how you assert your atomized identity,

[1:26:24] Bob Dobbs: is by checking the ESP.

[1:26:26] Bob Dobbs: And you know what part of the ESP,

[1:26:29] Bob Dobbs: cloned ESP,

[1:26:29] Bob Dobbs: you can signal that you're part of the hive mind.

[1:26:34] Bob Dobbs: And so that's voluntary ESP.

[1:26:37] Bob Dobbs: So voluntary ESP is what people are not doing very much.

[1:26:43] Bob Dobbs: They're only...

[1:26:43] Bob Dobbs: doing it when they're forced to communicate and show some kind of sociality.

[1:26:49] Bob Dobbs: That's voluntary ESP.

[1:26:51] Bob Dobbs: And so you're pretending you look like a human or you're anthropomorphic,

[1:26:55] Bob Dobbs: whereas people are actually way beyond any human semblance of any previous cultures.

[1:27:01] Bob Dobbs: So we can't,

[1:27:02] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:27:03] Bob Dobbs: like certain kind of artists will paint people as monsters,

[1:27:07] Bob Dobbs: and that's what they are.

[1:27:08] Bob Dobbs: They're not human anymore.

[1:27:10] Bob Dobbs: They're not anthropomorphic.

[1:27:11] Bob Dobbs: So you pretend.

[1:27:13] Bob Dobbs: Maybe that's why people don't like the transgendered stuff.

[1:27:17] Bob Dobbs: That's taking the fact that we're not human anymore too far.

[1:27:22] Bob Dobbs: It's in your face too much.

[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: You're pointing it out too much that that's what people are being.

[1:27:27] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:27:27] Cameron McEwen: you say that people don't like it,

[1:27:29] Cameron McEwen: but it's probably more popular than it's ever been.

[1:27:33] Bob Dobbs: On the younger levels.

[1:27:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:27:37] Bob Dobbs: Why did the university administrations all capitulate to it?

[1:27:42] Cameron McEwen: Good question.

[1:27:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:27:43] Bob Dobbs: so yeah,

[1:27:44] Bob Dobbs: I see.

[1:27:46] Bob Dobbs: But there's a lot of anger about it.

[1:27:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:27:51] Cameron McEwen: for sure.

[1:27:53] Cameron McEwen: We were talking earlier about how anger and violence arise,

[1:28:00] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:28:02] Cameron McEwen: are inevitable in the situation where identity is breaking down,

[1:28:10] Cameron McEwen: where people...

[1:28:12] Cameron McEwen: don't know where it's at.

[1:28:16] Cameron McEwen: Violence and anger are like air.

[1:28:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:28:20] Bob Dobbs: he has a line in Take Today.

[1:28:22] Bob Dobbs: Social achieving,

[1:28:24] Bob Dobbs: creating social identity is a necessarily violent process.

[1:28:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:28:30] Bob Dobbs: And so maybe you have to be,

[1:28:38] Bob Dobbs: part of your voluntary ESP or looking human is being...

[1:28:42] Bob Dobbs: Violence.

[1:28:43] Bob Dobbs: So that's why you would have more swearing in normal conversation,

[1:28:48] Bob Dobbs: more humor and gesticulation of violent gestures.

[1:28:54] Bob Dobbs: Maybe that's what rap is.

[1:28:55] Bob Dobbs: Rap is the appropriate expression of violence in communication that's more and more accepted,

[1:29:04] Bob Dobbs: because everybody knows it's a pretty desperate situation,

[1:29:08] Bob Dobbs: the dilemma that you were spelling out two minutes ago.

[1:29:12] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:29:13] Cameron McEwen: look at movies.

[1:29:14] Cameron McEwen: As McLuhan said,

[1:29:17] Cameron McEwen: the movies are about some sort of monstrous situation.

[1:29:22] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:29:24] Cameron McEwen: Beginning with The Exorcist,

[1:29:25] Bob Dobbs: that was the breakthrough movie he would talk about in 1973.

[1:29:34] Cameron McEwen: Nowadays,

[1:29:34] Cameron McEwen: it's just incredible.

[1:29:36] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:29:37] Cameron McEwen: every movie is some kind of horrible situation.

[1:29:44] Cameron McEwen: has all kinds of violent repercussions.

[1:29:49] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:29:49] Bob Dobbs: they say movies aren't doing well.

[1:29:52] Bob Dobbs: So who's watching these things?

[1:29:55] Cameron McEwen: Who knows?

[1:29:56] Bob Dobbs: Who knows?

[1:29:59] Cameron McEwen: I don't know anybody that does.

[1:30:01] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:30:02] Bob Dobbs: that's where the mission,

[1:30:03] Bob Dobbs: as Baudrillard said,

[1:30:04] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:30:04] Bob Dobbs: people tape all the time.

[1:30:06] Bob Dobbs: We're in the 80s taping with their video recorders,

[1:30:09] Bob Dobbs: but not watching it.

[1:30:10] Bob Dobbs: So he said the TV,

[1:30:11] Bob Dobbs: the video recorder was watching TV for them.

[1:30:14] Bob Dobbs: So there's a lot of the technologies are processing stuff,

[1:30:19] Bob Dobbs: not humans.

[1:30:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:30:21] Cameron McEwen: that's...

[1:30:22] Cameron McEwen: interesting observation.

[1:30:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:30:25] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:30:25] Bob Dobbs: so this is why everybody today...

[1:30:30] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:30:30] Bob Dobbs: I jumped ahead just a second.

[1:30:32] Bob Dobbs: Where are we?

[1:30:34] Cameron McEwen: We're at the bottom of 134,

[1:30:36] Bob Dobbs: I think,

[1:30:38] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:30:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:30:43] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:30:44] Bob Dobbs: this is why everybody today keeps frantically monitoring their black mirrors and texting to see...

[1:30:49] Bob Dobbs: And texting to see if there are any others,

[1:30:52] Bob Dobbs: nano communities out there.

[1:30:54] Bob Dobbs: They just need to see a few people out there.

[1:30:56] Bob Dobbs: So we have many tiny communities or bubbles.

[1:31:01] Bob Dobbs: Some people use that term to criticize it,

[1:31:04] Bob Dobbs: but I call it nano communities out there.

[1:31:09] Bob Dobbs: Not really out there.

[1:31:11] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:31:11] Bob Dobbs: I knew to put that in quotes.

[1:31:15] Bob Dobbs: So I said,

[1:31:15] Bob Dobbs: I'm trying to take McLuhan's vision through the barriers and into the Android meme zone.

[1:31:20] Bob Dobbs: But I have to go along with the fact that nobody is being massaged.

[1:31:23] Bob Dobbs: The Android meme is doing it to itself.

[1:31:27] Bob Dobbs: Quote,

[1:31:27] Bob Dobbs: humans are actually not manipulated or brainwashed.

[1:31:31] Bob Dobbs: Now look,

[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: I...

[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: there's...

[1:31:33] Bob Dobbs: That's...

[1:31:33] Bob Dobbs: What...

[1:31:34] Bob Dobbs: I'm quoting myself there.

[1:31:38] Bob Dobbs: Humans are actually not manipulated or brainwashed.

[1:31:41] Bob Dobbs: Everybody's staring out from their isolated platform and noticing the emotions in other people.

[1:31:46] Bob Dobbs: And all they can see is other people in a diminished state.

[1:31:50] Bob Dobbs: So there's a,

[1:31:50] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:31:51] Bob Dobbs: a close-in understanding of media that the domestic home,

[1:31:56] Bob Dobbs: when TV came into the house in the

[1:31:58] Bob Dobbs: 50s, it started to make the activities of the family menacing.

[1:32:04] Bob Dobbs: That would be the new discarnate effect of television made the chemical body rituals of the home threatening.

[1:32:14] Bob Dobbs: You know that point?

[1:32:17] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:32:17] Cameron McEwen: I hadn't really thought about that,

[1:32:18] Cameron McEwen: but to me it's interesting in the sense that the medium is the message.

[1:32:25] Cameron McEwen: So in order to have a family on TV,

[1:32:30] Cameron McEwen: a camera has to watch them and has to watch them continually.

[1:32:34] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:32:35] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:32:36] Cameron McEwen: Because the camera is not still shots like film.

[1:32:41] Cameron McEwen: It's a pickup,

[1:32:42] Cameron McEwen: like a microphone.

[1:32:44] Cameron McEwen: So...

[1:32:46] Cameron McEwen: The technology then gets inside people's heads where instead of going about their business naturally and just sort of doing what feels right,

[1:33:02] Cameron McEwen: they begin to go about their business as if they're being watched like a TV camera.

[1:33:10] Cameron McEwen: And when your activities are being watched...

[1:33:16] Cameron McEwen: Number one,

[1:33:16] Cameron McEwen: it changes your activities.

[1:33:18] Cameron McEwen: And number two,

[1:33:19] Cameron McEwen: it makes you a little bit violent because you feel like your environment is being violent to you.

[1:33:28] Cameron McEwen: And the only way to counteract it is to be violent against it.

[1:33:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:33:32] Bob Dobbs: you're irritated.

[1:33:33] Bob Dobbs: You're constantly annoyed.

[1:33:36] Bob Dobbs: So remember that TV show in 73,

[1:33:42] Bob Dobbs: 74,

[1:33:44] Bob Dobbs: The Family?

[1:33:45] Bob Dobbs: that was taped.

[1:33:47] Bob Dobbs: That was the first time.

[1:33:48] Bob Dobbs: They were in California.

[1:33:49] Cameron McEwen: Oh yeah,

[1:33:49] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:33:50] Cameron McEwen: the Loud family.

[1:33:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:33:52] Bob Dobbs: Lance Loud.

[1:33:55] Bob Dobbs: The violence that happened to them.

[1:33:57] Bob Dobbs: Remember,

[1:33:57] Bob Dobbs: it all broke up.

[1:33:58] Bob Dobbs: The family really fell apart.

[1:34:01] Cameron McEwen: I didn't watch it.

[1:34:03] Cameron McEwen: I didn't watch much of it either.

[1:34:05] Cameron McEwen: But

[1:34:06] Bob Dobbs: I was interested in the phenomenon and I kept up on what happened to

[1:34:10] Bob Dobbs: Lance Loud and those people or I noticed if I saw there was something about him,

[1:34:14] Bob Dobbs: I'd read it.

[1:34:16] Bob Dobbs: But they,

[1:34:18] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:34:19] Bob Dobbs: oh wow,

[1:34:19] Bob Dobbs: we're going to be stars,

[1:34:20] Bob Dobbs: we're going to be televised,

[1:34:21] Bob Dobbs: they're interested in us.

[1:34:23] Bob Dobbs: So they get a temporary identity from that,

[1:34:25] Bob Dobbs: but that identity didn't hold up to the larger impact of them being on camera all the time,

[1:34:30] Bob Dobbs: and it started to become annoyed.

[1:34:33] Bob Dobbs: Then they became annoyed with each other.

[1:34:37] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:34:38] Bob Dobbs: I used to think that television coming into the peaceful scene of domesticity in the

[1:34:46] Bob Dobbs: 50s, which they like to say is a reaction to the violence of the

[1:34:50] Bob Dobbs: 40s and the war,

[1:34:50] Bob Dobbs: so everybody just fell back into being polite zombies or suburban kind of people.

[1:34:56] Bob Dobbs: By the

[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: 60s, that's all breaking up,

[1:34:58] Bob Dobbs: so that the beginning of a lot of divorce in the 60s was due to television in the home,

[1:35:04] Bob Dobbs: that people were more irritated by each other.

[1:35:07] Bob Dobbs: Couples.

[1:35:08] Bob Dobbs: The nuclear family was more irritated.

[1:35:10] Bob Dobbs: And that also explains why the kids all left home at 15 and ran to San Francisco or someplace,

[1:35:16] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[1:35:17] Bob Dobbs: That was an effect,

[1:35:18] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan probably saw that.

[1:35:20] Bob Dobbs: Don't know if he actually spelled it out.

[1:35:22] Bob Dobbs: He did say that it makes the home menacing.

[1:35:28] Bob Dobbs: So having that irritating you,

[1:35:32] Bob Dobbs: what a change that is for human society.

[1:35:36] Bob Dobbs: say,

[1:35:36] Bob Dobbs: from

[1:35:37] Bob Dobbs: 1800 to 1960.

[1:35:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:35:40] Cameron McEwen: it's huge.

[1:35:41] Bob Dobbs: Huge.

[1:35:42] Bob Dobbs: A monster has come into the house,

[1:35:45] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[1:35:49] Cameron McEwen: And it was the blob from outer space.

[1:35:52] Bob Dobbs: That's right,

[1:35:53] Bob Dobbs: all the monster movies.

[1:35:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:35:55] Cameron McEwen: that consumed everybody,

[1:35:57] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:35:57] Cameron McEwen: Everybody,

[1:35:59] Cameron McEwen: they had the impression from over 2,000 years of history that they were...

[1:36:05] Cameron McEwen: individuals walking around in the house relating to other individuals and maybe that was becoming more irritated than it used to be but in fact the whole scene was wrong they weren't isolated individuals anymore they

[1:36:21] Bob Dobbs: were individuals within a membrane within the blob that had consumed them right what was that invasion of the body snatchers that's right yeah so uh

[1:36:34] Bob Dobbs: And so McLuhan,

[1:36:35] Bob Dobbs: when The Exorcist came out,

[1:36:36] Bob Dobbs: he said,

[1:36:37] Bob Dobbs: it's about everybody being possessed by the modern media environment.

[1:36:42] Bob Dobbs: Literally possessed.

[1:36:43] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:36:44] Bob Dobbs: I remember talking this way on CKLN in the

[1:36:47] Bob Dobbs: 80s. So a lot of the people who knew about me were students at Ryerson.

[1:36:53] Bob Dobbs: And they would have radio shows.

[1:36:54] Bob Dobbs: So I met a lot of them.

[1:36:56] Bob Dobbs: And I remember one guy saying to me after listening to me for a year or two,

[1:36:58] Bob Dobbs: and he sort of got it.

[1:36:59] Bob Dobbs: And he said,

[1:37:01] Bob Dobbs: it's astounding that everybody left this.

[1:37:04] Bob Dobbs: TV coming to their home and they thought it was entertainment.

[1:37:10] Bob Dobbs: His realization was so blatant and clear.

[1:37:13] Bob Dobbs: He was really amazed that society allowed this to happen.

[1:37:17] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:37:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:37:18] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:37:19] Cameron McEwen: more than allowed.

[1:37:21] Cameron McEwen: They,

[1:37:23] Cameron McEwen: or we,

[1:37:23] Cameron McEwen: I should say,

[1:37:25] Cameron McEwen: because our family,

[1:37:27] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[1:37:27] Cameron McEwen: was as much caught up with this as any other.

[1:37:29] Cameron McEwen: We structure our lives around it.

[1:37:33] Cameron McEwen: So I remember when I was,

[1:37:36] Cameron McEwen: I think I was in grade one,

[1:37:39] Cameron McEwen: I can remember what a big deal the Lone Ranger was.

[1:37:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:37:45] Cameron McEwen: We had to,

[1:37:47] Cameron McEwen: people had TV tables that they,

[1:37:50] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:37:51] Cameron McEwen: little folding tables that they could take with them to the living room in front of the TV and have their dinner there.

[1:37:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:37:58] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:38:00] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:38:00] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:38:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:38:01] Cameron McEwen: And so...

[1:38:03] Cameron McEwen: They began to structure their lives around this thing that was attacking them as if it was giving them a gift.

[1:38:12] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:38:12] Bob Dobbs: it was.

[1:38:12] Cameron McEwen: It's an amazing thing.

[1:38:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:38:14] Bob Dobbs: the discarnate state did stimulate a kind of a drug ecstasy,

[1:38:19] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[1:38:20] Bob Dobbs: You were constantly stimulated.

[1:38:21] Bob Dobbs: You never had something be sort of interesting constantly.

[1:38:25] Bob Dobbs: People couldn't do that to each other,

[1:38:27] Bob Dobbs: be that interesting.

[1:38:30] Bob Dobbs: So that's...

[1:38:31] Bob Dobbs: There was a huge new pleasure happening with the TV experience.

[1:38:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:38:39] Cameron McEwen: and like drug ecstasy,

[1:38:42] Cameron McEwen: at the same time it was giving them ecstasy,

[1:38:44] Cameron McEwen: it was killing them.

[1:38:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:38:46] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[1:38:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:38:47] Bob Dobbs: iON says there's a new

[1:38:50] Bob Dobbs: COVID virus something.

[1:38:52] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:38:52] Bob Dobbs: a new pill that's going to be stronger than fentanyl.

[1:38:55] Bob Dobbs: He calls it Trank,

[1:38:57] Bob Dobbs: or it is called Trank,

[1:38:59] Bob Dobbs: and it'll give people the...

[1:39:01] Bob Dobbs: biggest incredible intense high they've ever had and yet at the same time it's going to eat their insides out yeah and he said that's what all technology does right it's cannibalistic so i think i said what did uh i

[1:39:17] Bob Dobbs: said what did how was fentanyl different from that and i can't remember what he said uh oh yeah they they yeah they don't have the insides they just drop dead

[1:39:29] Bob Dobbs: It shocks the heart or something,

[1:39:31] Bob Dobbs: so the body collapses,

[1:39:33] Bob Dobbs: and they're often seen in a pose of shock.

[1:39:38] Bob Dobbs: Their face and body language is in shock.

[1:39:41] Bob Dobbs: Suddenly,

[1:39:42] Bob Dobbs: the fentanyl nails them.

[1:39:44] Bob Dobbs: It's instant,

[1:39:45] Bob Dobbs: like an instant heart attack.

[1:39:47] Bob Dobbs: That's different from getting your insides eaten out.

[1:39:50] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:39:51] Bob Dobbs: anyways,

[1:39:52] Bob Dobbs: that's a side thing that

[1:39:55] Bob Dobbs: I found out.

[1:39:57] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:39:59] Bob Dobbs: and they all can see,

[1:40:01] Bob Dobbs: and all they can see is other people in a diminished state.

[1:40:05] Bob Dobbs: You see...

[1:40:06] Bob Dobbs: You can just see it in the pop culture.

[1:40:07] Bob Dobbs: You remember people saying,

[1:40:08] Bob Dobbs: I'm freaking out.

[1:40:09] Bob Dobbs: I can't take it.

[1:40:10] Bob Dobbs: My family is nuts.

[1:40:11] Bob Dobbs: All these things that,

[1:40:12] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:40:13] Bob Dobbs: people would say in bars and things,

[1:40:15] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:40:16] Bob Dobbs: Everybody was trying to acknowledge the monster,

[1:40:20] Bob Dobbs: but they couldn't see that's what it was.

[1:40:23] Bob Dobbs: Or if they did,

[1:40:26] Bob Dobbs: they took it too literal.

[1:40:28] Bob Dobbs: They would never understand that,

[1:40:29] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:40:30] Bob Dobbs: we'll turn it on,

[1:40:30] Bob Dobbs: and for six months turn it off and modulate it.

[1:40:33] Bob Dobbs: We don't have to condemn TV as the ultimate monster.

[1:40:37] Bob Dobbs: It doesn't have to be that way.

[1:40:39] Bob Dobbs: If we modulated it sensibly in the community.

[1:40:43] Cameron McEwen: This reminds me,

[1:40:44] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[1:40:44] Cameron McEwen: of a story.

[1:40:46] Cameron McEwen: I may have told it to you earlier because I love the story,

[1:40:50] Cameron McEwen: and so I probably tell it too much.

[1:40:52] Cameron McEwen: But in the

[1:40:54] Cameron McEwen: 1980s in L.A.,

[1:40:57] Cameron McEwen: I was at an open house for...

[1:41:03] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:41:04] Cameron McEwen: that the real estate people were putting on.

[1:41:06] Cameron McEwen: And there were people sort of going around to the different rooms,

[1:41:10] Cameron McEwen: as people do for an open house.

[1:41:12] Cameron McEwen: And all of a sudden,

[1:41:14] Cameron McEwen: a woman started just shrieking.

[1:41:18] Cameron McEwen: And she was saying,

[1:41:19] Cameron McEwen: oh,

[1:41:19] Cameron McEwen: my God,

[1:41:20] Cameron McEwen: oh,

[1:41:20] Cameron McEwen: my God,

[1:41:20] Cameron McEwen: I'm freaking out.

[1:41:21] Cameron McEwen: I'm freaking out.

[1:41:22] Cameron McEwen: I don't have my Valium.

[1:41:24] Cameron McEwen: And almost everybody else in the house said,

[1:41:28] Cameron McEwen: oh,

[1:41:28] Cameron McEwen: here,

[1:41:28] Cameron McEwen: take one of mine.

[1:41:30] Cameron McEwen: I was.

[1:41:31] Cameron McEwen: I was the only one that didn't have a Valium in my pocket.

[1:41:36] Bob Dobbs: I haven't heard that story before.

[1:41:38] Bob Dobbs: That's a new one from you.

[1:41:41] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:41:41] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:41:42] Bob Dobbs: everybody was prepared for that.

[1:41:43] Bob Dobbs: So everybody was on Valium.

[1:41:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:41:46] Bob Dobbs: since I never took any medication or drugs ever,

[1:41:50] Bob Dobbs: I am totally naive about how much people are on drugs,

[1:41:53] Bob Dobbs: other than what I hear from Carolyn.

[1:41:55] Bob Dobbs: There are people,

[1:41:56] Bob Dobbs: like,

[1:41:56] Bob Dobbs: tending to be older people.

[1:41:58] Bob Dobbs: They're on 25 different pills.

[1:42:01] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:42:02] Bob Dobbs: That's crazy.

[1:42:03] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:42:04] Bob Dobbs: for me,

[1:42:05] Bob Dobbs: I never got trapped in that.

[1:42:07] Bob Dobbs: But,

[1:42:10] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:42:10] Bob Dobbs: you have no problems.

[1:42:11] Bob Dobbs: You run out of pills.

[1:42:12] Bob Dobbs: Everybody else in your golf club or wherever you are socially has the pills for you.

[1:42:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:42:20] Bob Dobbs: So now back to the technical talk.

[1:42:24] Bob Dobbs: The Android meme encourages humans to think they are the agency of doing.

[1:42:29] Bob Dobbs: But the sidelining.

[1:42:30] Bob Dobbs: or benching of humans continues.

[1:42:34] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty good,

[1:42:35] Bob Dobbs: eh?

[1:42:35] Bob Dobbs: Even in hockey,

[1:42:35] Bob Dobbs: you get benched.

[1:42:37] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:42:38] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:42:38] Bob Dobbs: so the machines are taking over so many things.

[1:42:40] Bob Dobbs: So on the cliche level,

[1:42:42] Bob Dobbs: that's the increasing robots in people's lives.

[1:42:46] Bob Dobbs: But they're being benched on all sensory levels,

[1:42:49] Bob Dobbs: not just the kinetic,

[1:42:50] Bob Dobbs: say.

[1:42:51] Bob Dobbs: So the Android meme encourages humans to think they are the agency of doing,

[1:42:54] Bob Dobbs: but the sidelining of humans continues.

[1:42:57] Bob Dobbs: Even some Silicon Valley billionaires are advocating some kind of media ecology.

[1:43:02] Bob Dobbs: And Tim Berners-Lee,

[1:43:03] Bob Dobbs: one of the fathers of the Internet,

[1:43:05] Bob Dobbs: is too.

[1:43:06] Bob Dobbs: So then I say,

[1:43:07] Bob Dobbs: Tim Berners-Lee and his team invented the HTTP protocols while employed at CERN in Geneva.

[1:43:13] Bob Dobbs: He made the Internet available to the planet of the dead.

[1:43:16] Bob Dobbs: I'm quoting McLuhan with that.

[1:43:19] Bob Dobbs: It was already dead in the

[1:43:20] Bob Dobbs: 70s or early 80s.

[1:43:22] Bob Dobbs: The Android meme is encouraging people to think they're doing it because it's disappearing itself.

[1:43:27] Bob Dobbs: The Android meme is disappearing.

[1:43:29] Bob Dobbs: But it's surreptitiously on the sidelines,

[1:43:31] Bob Dobbs: possessing people invisibly.

[1:43:33] Bob Dobbs: That's why some of the Silicon Valley digerati are worried.

[1:43:36] Bob Dobbs: They're saying with disbelief,

[1:43:38] Bob Dobbs: damn,

[1:43:38] Bob Dobbs: this thing is taking people over.

[1:43:40] Bob Dobbs: We can't stop it.

[1:43:41] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:43:42] Bob Dobbs: that's an update of seeing people being psychologically inadequate in the 50s and 60s.

[1:43:46] Bob Dobbs: Now you see the whole humanity is being consumed if you're a digerati,

[1:43:52] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:43:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:43:53] Cameron McEwen: And you have a quotation somewhere about

[1:43:56] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan saying it's not a limited catastrophe.

[1:44:02] Cameron McEwen: It's a catastrophe of the whole system.

[1:44:06] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:44:08] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:44:10] Bob Dobbs: I look around and see that people can make money if they take the view that we're wiping ourselves out.

[1:44:18] Bob Dobbs: So in Silicon Valley,

[1:44:19] Bob Dobbs: there was a guy named...

[1:44:20] Bob Dobbs: Bill Joy and another one,

[1:44:22] Bob Dobbs: they wrote books,

[1:44:24] Bob Dobbs: extreme media ecology,

[1:44:26] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:44:26] Bob Dobbs: let's all turn this shit off,

[1:44:28] Bob Dobbs: we're all in big trouble.

[1:44:30] Bob Dobbs: Then there was the others who didn't take that view,

[1:44:34] Bob Dobbs: and I don't know if they were...

[1:44:36] Bob Dobbs: upset,

[1:44:37] Bob Dobbs: but they weren't expressing this grievance.

[1:44:39] Bob Dobbs: But as you said an hour ago,

[1:44:43] Bob Dobbs: the people expressing grievance,

[1:44:45] Bob Dobbs: they got an audience,

[1:44:45] Bob Dobbs: they made money out of it.

[1:44:48] Bob Dobbs: And that's making money out of an old version of McLuhan,

[1:44:51] Bob Dobbs: like,

[1:44:51] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:44:52] Bob Dobbs: four arguments for the elimination of television.

[1:44:54] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan hated that book.

[1:44:58] Bob Dobbs: And you know the guy who wrote that work for the ad man that

[1:45:06] Bob Dobbs: made McLuhan famous.

[1:45:07] Bob Dobbs: What's that guy's name?

[1:45:08] Bob Dobbs: Gossage.

[1:45:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:45:09] Bob Dobbs: Gossage.

[1:45:11] Bob Dobbs: Whatever that,

[1:45:12] Bob Dobbs: Jerry Mander or something,

[1:45:13] Bob Dobbs: he,

[1:45:14] Bob Dobbs: Jerry Mander,

[1:45:15] Bob Dobbs: he worked for Gossage.

[1:45:16] Bob Dobbs: And so he had a lot of McLuhan in his youth as a young employee of Gossage.

[1:45:22] Bob Dobbs: So then he freaked out eventually and decided television was killing everybody.

[1:45:27] Bob Dobbs: So he wrote that book,

[1:45:29] Bob Dobbs: The Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.

[1:45:31] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:45:32] Bob Dobbs: it's not eliminating.

[1:45:34] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was

[1:45:35] Bob Dobbs: tactile with it.

[1:45:36] Bob Dobbs: Turn it on and turn it off.

[1:45:38] Bob Dobbs: And somehow have a collective consensus about how much to do that.

[1:45:42] Bob Dobbs: But you would never get rid of it completely.

[1:45:46] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:45:48] Bob Dobbs: because there were services of the thing.

[1:45:52] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:45:54] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:45:55] Bob Dobbs: I see that these guys who are doing knee-jerk media ecology are bad McLuhan.

[1:46:04] Bob Dobbs: They did not.

[1:46:05] Bob Dobbs: get to the level that we're talking about here.

[1:46:09] Bob Dobbs: And so I'm making fun of it here.

[1:46:16] Bob Dobbs: I'm not saying panic.

[1:46:17] Bob Dobbs: I'm not being a panic person myself about it.

[1:46:21] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:46:22] Bob Dobbs: Kroker says humans are now surplus flesh.

[1:46:26] Bob Dobbs: What's this?

[1:46:27] Bob Dobbs: I have it continue.

[1:46:28] Bob Dobbs: So in Tim Berners-Lee,

[1:46:31] Bob Dobbs: one of the fathers of the Internet is too.

[1:46:32] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:46:33] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[1:46:33] Bob Dobbs: Humans are now surplus flesh.

[1:46:35] Bob Dobbs: Their thinking has nothing to connect with,

[1:46:37] Bob Dobbs: no reference.

[1:46:39] Bob Dobbs: And I say,

[1:46:40] Bob Dobbs: that's what Derrick de Kerckhove said on the 12-hour McLuhan-esque marathon,

[1:46:43] Bob Dobbs: exploring the post-pandemic world.

[1:46:46] Bob Dobbs: That was the first

[1:46:48] Bob Dobbs: Zoom they came up with in the spring of 2020.

[1:46:54] Bob Dobbs: A whole bunch of McLuhanites got started a Zoom thing.

[1:46:58] Bob Dobbs: And they all came on and were chicken littles,

[1:47:01] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:47:01] Bob Dobbs: saying,

[1:47:01] Bob Dobbs: boy,

[1:47:01] Bob Dobbs: this is terrible.

[1:47:03] Bob Dobbs: And so that's what I'm saying.

[1:47:05] Bob Dobbs: He was part of the 12-hour McLuhan-esque marathon exploring the post-pandemic world,

[1:47:11] Bob Dobbs: more ancient,

[1:47:12] Bob Dobbs: separated individuals.

[1:47:16] Bob Dobbs: So they were very critical of the new digital and the Zoom while they were forced to use it in the lockdown phase,

[1:47:25] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:47:25] Bob Dobbs: early part of 2020.

[1:47:28] Bob Dobbs: So I'm commenting on that.

[1:47:29] Bob Dobbs: I watched them be bad McLuhanites from my position,

[1:47:33] Bob Dobbs: all of them.

[1:47:37] Bob Dobbs: So then we have a quote here,

[1:47:39] Bob Dobbs: Marshall and Eric McLuhan,

[1:47:40] Bob Dobbs: The New Science,

[1:47:42] Bob Dobbs: the penultimate sentence of the last page,

[1:47:44] Bob Dobbs: page 239.

[1:47:46] Bob Dobbs: As the information that constitutes the environment is perpetually in flux,

[1:47:50] Bob Dobbs: so the need is not for fixed concepts,

[1:47:53] Bob Dobbs: but rather for the ancient skill of reading that book,

[1:47:55] Bob Dobbs: for navigating through an ever uncharted and unchartable milieu.

[1:48:00] Bob Dobbs: If I spell,

[1:48:01] Bob Dobbs: I think milieu,

[1:48:01] Bob Dobbs: is that spelled correctly?

[1:48:03] Bob Dobbs: No.

[1:48:03] Bob Dobbs: I'm missing another I,

[1:48:04] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[1:48:06] Bob Dobbs: I don't think milieu is spelt right there.

[1:48:09] Bob Dobbs: So anyways,

[1:48:11] Bob Dobbs: you see the uncharted and unchartable.

[1:48:14] Bob Dobbs: That's McLuhan in the 70s saying he's not sure what the medium is the message or what the medium is anymore.

[1:48:20] Bob Dobbs: So they're beginning to realize that communication is not going to match the

[1:48:27] Bob Dobbs: Android meme condition.

[1:48:31] Bob Dobbs: So do you have any objection to that quote?

[1:48:34] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:48:34] Cameron McEwen: I'd just point out that uncharted and unchartable both have many meanings.

[1:48:43] Cameron McEwen: So if it turns out that the human experience is subject to collective probing and collective investigation,

[1:48:59] Cameron McEwen: that can give rise to...

[1:49:02] Cameron McEwen: a new kind of identity,

[1:49:04] Cameron McEwen: but it's an identity that arises in flux.

[1:49:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:49:09] Cameron McEwen: So it's,

[1:49:10] Cameron McEwen: in order to talk about all of this sort of stuff,

[1:49:13] Cameron McEwen: you always have to locate where

[1:49:16] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is coming from.

[1:49:18] Cameron McEwen: And one of the difficulties with laws of media is that you have

[1:49:24] Cameron McEwen: Marshall at one level and Eric at another.

[1:49:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:49:27] Cameron McEwen: And you always have to wonder.

[1:49:29] Cameron McEwen: Where's Marshall coming from?

[1:49:31] Cameron McEwen: Where's Eric coming from?

[1:49:33] Cameron McEwen: Did Eric understand where Marshall was coming from?

[1:49:36] Cameron McEwen: It's a very complex book to read.

[1:49:39] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:49:39] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:49:42] Bob Dobbs: So that's an up-to-date statement on the surface level.

[1:49:52] Bob Dobbs: The Android meme had taken,

[1:49:54] Bob Dobbs: so I'm saying that what Eric,

[1:49:57] Bob Dobbs: if he wrote this,

[1:49:58] Bob Dobbs: uncharted and unchartable,

[1:49:59] Bob Dobbs: that's him perceiving the new environment or its effect.

[1:50:04] Bob Dobbs: May not be see the Android meme,

[1:50:06] Bob Dobbs: but that is the point.

[1:50:08] Bob Dobbs: There's no more use of human cognition.

[1:50:12] Bob Dobbs: human reading,

[1:50:14] Bob Dobbs: writing,

[1:50:15] Bob Dobbs: and arithmetic in trying to communicate something to preserve oneself,

[1:50:21] Bob Dobbs: survive,

[1:50:21] Bob Dobbs: up against the Android meme.

[1:50:23] Bob Dobbs: So you need a new strategy,

[1:50:26] Bob Dobbs: and it's very difficult.

[1:50:27] Bob Dobbs: I find Finnegans Wake is a good map of the uncharted and unchartable milieu to refer and bounce off of.

[1:50:38] Cameron McEwen: That reminds me,

[1:50:39] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[1:50:39] Cameron McEwen: that

[1:50:41] Cameron McEwen: In one of the Joyce essays in the early

[1:50:46] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, he says something like,

[1:50:49] Cameron McEwen: Joyce wrote Finnegans Wake from the position of pre-tribal awareness.

[1:51:00] Cameron McEwen: He doesn't use pre-tribal awareness at that point,

[1:51:02] Cameron McEwen: but from the position of the art formula or something.

[1:51:07] Cameron McEwen: So you have to imagine a writer.

[1:51:11] Cameron McEwen: goes to use a word,

[1:51:14] Cameron McEwen: but of course that word is always something,

[1:51:18] Cameron McEwen: it's always a cliche,

[1:51:20] Cameron McEwen: it's always something that already exists in a certain context,

[1:51:26] Cameron McEwen: that exists in a certain language,

[1:51:29] Cameron McEwen: that exists in a certain use of that language by a certain group,

[1:51:34] Cameron McEwen: that exists in a certain dialect.

[1:51:38] Cameron McEwen: So if you...

[1:51:40] Cameron McEwen: retract from that word to go back to the art formula that generated it,

[1:51:53] Cameron McEwen: you realize that from the art formula,

[1:51:56] Cameron McEwen: all kinds of other words could have been generated.

[1:52:00] Cameron McEwen: And so according to McLuhan,

[1:52:04] Cameron McEwen: if you want to understand Finnegans Wake,

[1:52:07] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand how...

[1:52:09] Cameron McEwen: Joyce is continually operating from the position of the art formula or the pre-tribal awareness,

[1:52:18] Cameron McEwen: and the scattering of words and sounds and senses are all reflections of that original power.

[1:52:31] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:52:32] Bob Dobbs: I think so.

[1:52:33] Cameron McEwen: I'll try to find that quote for you because I think you'd be interested in it.

[1:52:39] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:52:40] Bob Dobbs: that'd be good.

[1:52:40] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:52:44] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:52:44] Bob Dobbs: there's...

[1:52:46] Bob Dobbs: I find that quote useful,

[1:52:48] Bob Dobbs: at least,

[1:52:48] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:52:50] Bob Dobbs: more recent stuff from the McLuhan.

[1:52:52] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:52:52] Bob Dobbs: I'm trying to show how the

[1:52:55] Bob Dobbs: Android meme is pretty hard to cognize.

[1:53:00] Bob Dobbs: That's why,

[1:53:01] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:53:03] Bob Dobbs: when I went on the radio,

[1:53:04] Bob Dobbs: I would talk technically.

[1:53:06] Bob Dobbs: I wasn't giving my opinions or anything.

[1:53:07] Bob Dobbs: I just would...

[1:53:09] Bob Dobbs: I had a limited vocabulary based on McLuhan and Finnegans Wake,

[1:53:13] Bob Dobbs: and most people didn't know any about Finnegans Wake.

[1:53:15] Bob Dobbs: But I was always referring to my formula.

[1:53:18] Bob Dobbs: So I had a public formula,

[1:53:20] Bob Dobbs: and I discussed issues that way.

[1:53:23] Bob Dobbs: If you're looking for exciting new nuances or semantics,

[1:53:27] Bob Dobbs: I'd be a very boring commentator.

[1:53:30] Bob Dobbs: But often people found it odd how I was doing it,

[1:53:34] Bob Dobbs: so that attracted them.

[1:53:35] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:53:36] Bob Dobbs: So I couldn't lose.

[1:53:38] Bob Dobbs: So the,

[1:53:42] Bob Dobbs: wouldn't have a huge audience,

[1:53:44] Bob Dobbs: but the,

[1:53:46] Bob Dobbs: I was trying to communicate the everything's disappeared syndrome.

[1:53:51] Bob Dobbs: And so

[1:53:54] Bob Dobbs: I used to criticize my co-hosts,

[1:53:57] Bob Dobbs: hey,

[1:53:58] Bob Dobbs: we should not,

[1:53:59] Bob Dobbs: maybe not have a show for a couple of weeks,

[1:54:01] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:54:01] Bob Dobbs: if we're hypnotizing people too much,

[1:54:04] Bob Dobbs: they're starting to actually pay attention to what we're saying.

[1:54:06] Bob Dobbs: So it's sort of always undermining.

[1:54:09] Bob Dobbs: matching or getting an audience to understand me.

[1:54:11] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I mean?

[1:54:13] Bob Dobbs: So that was my way of trying to show I didn't have the term and or meme yet,

[1:54:19] Bob Dobbs: but that's what I was intuiting.

[1:54:22] Bob Dobbs: So then

[1:54:24] Bob Dobbs: I have this quote from Barry Nevitt.

[1:54:27] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[1:54:27] Bob Dobbs: Marshall McLuhan foresees that consciousness will prove to be an effect of speeding up cliche archetype processes in the brain.

[1:54:35] Bob Dobbs: So he said consciousness is somewhere else.

[1:54:37] Bob Dobbs: Consciousness.

[1:54:39] Bob Dobbs: is the,

[1:54:39] Bob Dobbs: uh...

[1:54:41] Bob Dobbs: Cliché to archetype process,

[1:54:43] Bob Dobbs: that's consciousness.

[1:54:45] Bob Dobbs: And then he says,

[1:54:45] Bob Dobbs: but that consciousness will have proved to be an effect of speeding up cliche archetype process in the brain.

[1:54:51] Bob Dobbs: Maybe that's the quote I'm thinking of.

[1:54:54] Bob Dobbs: So he's saying consciousness comes from the speeding up the cliche archetype process.

[1:54:58] Bob Dobbs: But it seems to be a later stage of consciousness.

[1:55:01] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure.

[1:55:02] Bob Dobbs: So what do I say here?

[1:55:04] Bob Dobbs: I'm reposting McLuhan's idea that the speed up of the cliche archetype process is creating consciousness.

[1:55:09] Bob Dobbs: I'm sprinkling...

[1:55:12] Bob Dobbs: some other key statements throughout,

[1:55:14] Bob Dobbs: repeating them to help project the idea of voluntary ESP.

[1:55:18] Bob Dobbs: So pretending that you can cognize the situation,

[1:55:24] Bob Dobbs: which would explain why more and more people use less terms to communicate.

[1:55:30] Bob Dobbs: They didn't make paragraphs and sentences.

[1:55:33] Bob Dobbs: They just say what up or uh,

[1:55:35] Bob Dobbs: phatic stuff.

[1:55:37] Bob Dobbs: Um,

[1:55:40] Bob Dobbs: Whatever.

[1:55:41] Bob Dobbs: That was a big one.

[1:55:45] Bob Dobbs: Whatever.

[1:55:46] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:55:48] Bob Dobbs: That's admitting on the popular culture level that the reality is unchartable.

[1:55:55] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[1:55:56] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:55:57] Bob Dobbs: So the whatever,

[1:55:59] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan wasn't around for that.

[1:56:00] Bob Dobbs: He analyzed where it's at.

[1:56:02] Bob Dobbs: That was his phrase.

[1:56:04] Bob Dobbs: But

[1:56:05] Bob Dobbs: I was able to talk about the whatever phase.

[1:56:10] Cameron McEwen: But look at there's certain consonants between

[1:56:14] Cameron McEwen: Eric writing at the end of Laws of Media,

[1:56:17] Cameron McEwen: this uncharted and unchartable milieu,

[1:56:22] Cameron McEwen: that sort of goes together with whatever.

[1:56:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:56:25] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:56:26] Cameron McEwen: But McLuhan was saying the opposite of that.

[1:56:28] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was saying,

[1:56:30] Cameron McEwen: wait a minute,

[1:56:31] Cameron McEwen: if you go with all of these conceptual charts,

[1:56:40] Cameron McEwen: all of which are false,

[1:56:43] Cameron McEwen: but if you take them in plenary fashion,

[1:56:46] Cameron McEwen: then you can get to a new kind of structure,

[1:56:51] Cameron McEwen: a new kind of investigation.

[1:56:53] Bob Dobbs: You get to where it's at.

[1:56:55] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:56:56] Bob Dobbs: Absolutely.

[1:56:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:56:59] Bob Dobbs: That would be the pinnacle service of the

[1:57:04] Bob Dobbs: 50s and 60s early global theater phenomenon.

[1:57:06] Bob Dobbs: It had the service of...

[1:57:08] Bob Dobbs: You could get some interesting overview and think you had comprehensive awareness,

[1:57:18] Bob Dobbs: and probably that was the appeal of LSD.

[1:57:20] Bob Dobbs: It simulated that,

[1:57:22] Bob Dobbs: made people think that they were getting some independent and scanning view and knowing what's going on.

[1:57:32] Bob Dobbs: You don't get that in the later phase when it's unchartable.

[1:57:35] Bob Dobbs: It's the whatever.

[1:57:38] Bob Dobbs: That's a later phase of the planet of the dead.

[1:57:42] Bob Dobbs: So the renaissance or the feeling that things were understandable and on a new level and everybody should line up and implement the understandable new collective consciousness,

[1:57:54] Bob Dobbs: that was an ecstasy of the millennial ecstasy of the

[1:57:58] Bob Dobbs: 60s that falls apart in the

[1:58:00] Bob Dobbs: 70s so people start to become planet of the dead in the

[1:58:03] Bob Dobbs: 70s because the android meme...

[1:58:06] Bob Dobbs: more and more the machine was taking,

[1:58:08] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:58:08] Bob Dobbs: the machine is taking over.

[1:58:10] Bob Dobbs: And people didn't see that in the 60s.

[1:58:15] Bob Dobbs: There was sort of an objection.

[1:58:17] Bob Dobbs: They usually were literate people.

[1:58:20] Cameron McEwen: Notice how you're using the chronological framework here.

[1:58:26] Cameron McEwen: So you're talking about earlier and later and when this became that and this sort of stuff.

[1:58:32] Cameron McEwen: So one of the things that

[1:58:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is recommending is,

[1:58:36] Cameron McEwen: If we get away from that notion of time and realize that all of these things are possibilities,

[1:58:44] Cameron McEwen: then we begin to do what he calls pattern recognition.

[1:58:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:58:50] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:58:51] Bob Dobbs: I agree with that,

[1:58:52] Bob Dobbs: but I had to use words.

[1:58:55] Cameron McEwen: I found the passage about Joyce,

[1:58:58] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[1:58:58] Cameron McEwen: that I was thinking of.

[1:59:00] Cameron McEwen: He says that...

[1:59:02] Bob Dobbs: Wait,

[1:59:02] Bob Dobbs: is this interior landscape?

[1:59:03] Cameron McEwen: This is...

[1:59:07] Cameron McEwen: in Aesthetic Moment in Landscape,

[1:59:09] Cameron McEwen: yep,

[1:59:09] Cameron McEwen: 1951.

[1:59:12] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:59:13] Cameron McEwen: He says that by an act of retracing the stages of apprehension,

[1:59:22] Cameron McEwen: Joyce arrived at the...

[1:59:31] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:59:31] Cameron McEwen: I'm sorry.

[1:59:34] Cameron McEwen: I've got...

[1:59:35] Cameron McEwen: footnotes in here that are interrupting the

[1:59:39] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's passage.

[1:59:40] Cameron McEwen: So I'll start again.

[1:59:45] Cameron McEwen: This peculiar fusion of the cognitive and the creative.

[1:59:51] Cameron McEwen: Right now,

[1:59:52] Cameron McEwen: I'll stop there for a second.

[1:59:54] Cameron McEwen: Remember before we were talking about private and collective awareness?

[1:59:59] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[2:00:00] Cameron McEwen: So here he's talking about the cognitive and the creative.

[2:00:03] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:00:03] Cameron McEwen: The creative is the...

[2:00:05] Cameron McEwen: private and the cognitive is the collective.

[2:00:09] Cameron McEwen: So it's reversed a little bit.

[2:00:11] Cameron McEwen: But anyway,

[2:00:12] Cameron McEwen: this peculiar fusion of the cognitive and the creative,

[2:00:16] Cameron McEwen: and by that

[2:00:18] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan means all possible cognition whatever,

[2:00:22] Cameron McEwen: all possible experience arises from that fusion.

[2:00:28] Cameron McEwen: Fusion of the cognitive and the creative.

[2:00:30] Cameron McEwen: Or the private and the collective.

[2:00:33] Cameron McEwen: So this peculiar your

[2:00:34] Cameron McEwen: fusion of the cognitive and the creative by an act of retracing the stages of apprehension,

[2:00:41] Cameron McEwen: let's say going back from any example of experience to its genesis.

[2:00:49] Cameron McEwen: So you take the path of tactility from the experience back to its stem cell of possibility.

[2:00:59] Cameron McEwen: So this peculiar fusion of the cognitive and creative by enacting

[2:01:03] Cameron McEwen: of retracing the stages of apprehension was arrived at by Joyce as a result of the prior discovery and notice the prior discovery has two meanings one is he had he

[2:01:18] Cameron McEwen: came to this conclusion because he had discovered something earlier but prior discovery can also mean the the discovery that is

[2:01:31] Cameron McEwen: The peculiar fusion of the cognitive and the creative,

[2:01:35] Cameron McEwen: which always happens before we have an experience,

[2:01:39] Cameron McEwen: but it's a before that exists in another time.

[2:01:42] Cameron McEwen: So the prior is an a priori.

[2:01:46] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[2:01:47] Cameron McEwen: so we say the stages of apprehension arrived at by Joyce as a result of the prior discovery for the technique of fission,

[2:01:58] Cameron McEwen: not fusion,

[2:01:59] Cameron McEwen: fission of the moment of aesthetic awareness.

[2:02:02] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[2:02:03] Cameron McEwen: So what he's saying here is that

[2:02:06] Cameron McEwen: Joyce realized how to envision the...

[2:02:16] Cameron McEwen: splitting up of the stem cell at the moment of aesthetic awareness that is to say at the moment that experience is created yes and so his art is an an

[2:02:31] Bob Dobbs: art of the of possibility okay so that sentence i don't remember it at all but that's the kind of sentence that i was talking about like he's

[2:02:44] Bob Dobbs: using terms that he didn't normally use together cognitive creative and i said oh this is a new sentence this looks like a whole new field he's opening up here uh and it would just stand there and then he'd go back to his regular formula of talking and you're

[2:02:59] Cameron McEwen: not sure where that came from but you just read you know what i mean yeah but that's your right absolutely yeah and that's what you know it's like McLuhan saying that all language is stuttering yeah um

[2:03:11] Cameron McEwen: The attempt at communication is always a kind of stutter because you're hoping that the other person or the audience is going to pick up what you're trying to get at.

[2:03:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:03:25] Cameron McEwen: But you can't just do 100%

[2:03:32] Cameron McEwen: get this,

[2:03:33] Cameron McEwen: get this,

[2:03:33] Cameron McEwen: get this,

[2:03:34] Cameron McEwen: get this,

[2:03:35] Cameron McEwen: because they didn't even get the first one.

[2:03:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:03:39] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[2:03:39] Cameron McEwen: So you have to.

[2:03:40] Cameron McEwen: to retract from saying something like the peculiar fusion of the cognitive and the creative because unless they understood that,

[2:03:52] Cameron McEwen: they're not going to understand anything that comes after.

[2:03:56] Cameron McEwen: And of course they didn't understand that.

[2:03:58] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:03:58] Bob Dobbs: So in a way,

[2:04:01] Bob Dobbs: those kind of sentences where McLuhan would leave his jargon and if you knew his work,

[2:04:07] Bob Dobbs: you knew the jargon,

[2:04:08] Bob Dobbs: and then there'd be odd

[2:04:09] Bob Dobbs: sentence where he'd sort of become philosophical or bring in too many words or notions that we didn't know he was talking about,

[2:04:18] Bob Dobbs: but he would stick that in there.

[2:04:20] Bob Dobbs: So that's his acknowledgement.

[2:04:23] Cameron McEwen: But he gave up on that,

[2:04:24] Cameron McEwen: right?

[2:04:26] Cameron McEwen: This is from

[2:04:27] Cameron McEwen: 1951 and for at least let's say 15 years before 1951 so

[2:04:37] Cameron McEwen: 1936,

[2:04:39] Cameron McEwen: when he leaves Cambridge,

[2:04:43] Cameron McEwen: he was turning out a torrent of words.

[2:04:48] Cameron McEwen: There's the thesis and different essays that were published in the 1940s,

[2:04:54] Cameron McEwen: huge number of essays around 1950,

[2:04:57] Cameron McEwen: lots of stuff from 1953,

[2:05:02] Cameron McEwen: 54,

[2:05:02] Cameron McEwen: 55,

[2:05:03] Cameron McEwen: but all of that stuff is the top of an iceberg.

[2:05:06] Cameron McEwen: And below it is just a huge amount of work that has never been published and hasn't been studied by many people.

[2:05:15] Cameron McEwen: But

[2:05:16] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was turning all this out.

[2:05:18] Cameron McEwen: But then he realized,

[2:05:19] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:05:20] Cameron McEwen: it's not working.

[2:05:26] Cameron McEwen: I'm reprocessing all this stuff myself,

[2:05:31] Cameron McEwen: and

[2:05:31] Cameron McEwen: I'm getting some new ideas,

[2:05:34] Cameron McEwen: some breakthroughs,

[2:05:34] Cameron McEwen: as he would say.

[2:05:37] Cameron McEwen: But,

[2:05:38] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[2:05:38] Cameron McEwen: where is it?

[2:05:39] Cameron McEwen: Where am I going with all this?

[2:05:41] Cameron McEwen: And so we had in the middle

[2:05:44] Cameron McEwen: 50s, he had to sort of clutch and say,

[2:05:47] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:05:48] Cameron McEwen: now I'm going to go back to thinking about education and how it works.

[2:05:54] Cameron McEwen: And for

[2:05:56] Cameron McEwen: 10 years from 55 to 65,

[2:05:59] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[2:06:00] Cameron McEwen: he's mostly thinking about education.

[2:06:06] Cameron McEwen: how are people going to learn?

[2:06:09] Cameron McEwen: And how did learning break down?

[2:06:11] Cameron McEwen: And what is the new learning and stuff?

[2:06:14] Cameron McEwen: But then after 65,

[2:06:16] Cameron McEwen: he says,

[2:06:17] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[2:06:17] Cameron McEwen: I've become famous.

[2:06:18] Cameron McEwen: I've got to take advantage of this.

[2:06:21] Cameron McEwen: I've got to turn out marketable stuff.

[2:06:25] Cameron McEwen: So he begins working with coworkers that can take all of this huge amount of...

[2:06:33] Cameron McEwen: writing that he's done and turned it into works.

[2:06:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:06:39] Bob Dobbs: he gave up and fell back into Menippean satire because nobody was going to implement whatever he thought could be done,

[2:06:45] Bob Dobbs: some kind of collective action or program.

[2:06:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:06:50] Bob Dobbs: He couldn't get to that point.

[2:06:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:06:52] Cameron McEwen: but he's not actually giving up.

[2:06:55] Cameron McEwen: He's just changing his mode of approach,

[2:07:01] Cameron McEwen: right?

[2:07:02] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:07:02] Cameron McEwen: his Menippean satire is an attempt to communicate.

[2:07:07] Cameron McEwen: It's just a different kind of attempt.

[2:07:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:07:12] Bob Dobbs: and it shocked all his old friends.

[2:07:15] Bob Dobbs: They didn't understand this change in his style.

[2:07:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:07:20] Cameron McEwen: According to some of them,

[2:07:22] Cameron McEwen: it was because his brain had gone.

[2:07:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:07:25] Bob Dobbs: And Ted Carpenter couldn't take it.

[2:07:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:07:29] Cameron McEwen: Lots of people couldn't take it.

[2:07:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:07:32] Bob Dobbs: It seems that Barry Nevitt could take it,

[2:07:35] Bob Dobbs: or he didn't care.

[2:07:37] Bob Dobbs: He was on his own selfish trip anyways.

[2:07:39] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[2:07:41] Bob Dobbs: he was,

[2:07:41] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how much he used McLuhan,

[2:07:43] Bob Dobbs: but he knew that that's where the action was,

[2:07:46] Bob Dobbs: so he was the most.

[2:07:48] Bob Dobbs: devoted attendee of the seminars starting in the mid-60s.

[2:07:57] Bob Dobbs: He went to more than I did.

[2:08:00] Bob Dobbs: So it was appropriate I became his archivist because I was the new Barry Nevitt in terms of attending the seminars for so many years.

[2:08:07] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[2:08:07] Cameron McEwen: But you were thinking through

[2:08:09] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's stuff in a different mode.

[2:08:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:08:12] Cameron McEwen: Barry is the guy that he tries to sort of just

[2:08:17] Cameron McEwen: still the essence of McLuhan,

[2:08:19] Cameron McEwen: you could say.

[2:08:21] Cameron McEwen: What are the things that we would have to understand if we're going to understand McLuhan?

[2:08:25] Cameron McEwen: And you're more a guy,

[2:08:27] Cameron McEwen: at least in my view,

[2:08:28] Cameron McEwen: who's thinking through

[2:08:32] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan to stuff that is actually new.

[2:08:37] Cameron McEwen: It's actually,

[2:08:39] Cameron McEwen: you can't say it's beyond McLuhan because it's in McLuhan,

[2:08:43] Cameron McEwen: but it's not said

[2:08:46] Cameron McEwen: the way you're saying it in McLuhan.

[2:08:48] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:08:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:08:50] Bob Dobbs: Barry was trying to make it practical.

[2:08:51] Bob Dobbs: He's the engineer.

[2:08:52] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[2:08:53] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[2:08:53] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[2:08:53] Bob Dobbs: let's make this understandable.

[2:08:55] Bob Dobbs: He was applying it,

[2:08:57] Bob Dobbs: and he missed the mystery part that we're talking about.

[2:09:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:09:01] Bob Dobbs: So,

[2:09:04] Bob Dobbs: what,

[2:09:04] Bob Dobbs: we have to wrap up here soon.

[2:09:06] Bob Dobbs: When is it?

[2:09:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:09:08] Bob Dobbs: So,

[2:09:09] Bob Dobbs: where did I...

[2:09:13] Bob Dobbs: Sorry,

[2:09:13] Cameron McEwen: I may have broken the thread there a bit.

[2:09:15] Cameron McEwen: by going to the Joyce quote.

[2:09:16] Cameron McEwen: I apologize.

[2:09:17] Bob Dobbs: No,

[2:09:17] Bob Dobbs: no,

[2:09:18] Bob Dobbs: that's good.

[2:09:18] Bob Dobbs: No,

[2:09:19] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to go back and look at that.

[2:09:23] Bob Dobbs: So we move into this 135.

[2:09:30] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying,

[2:09:31] Bob Dobbs: I'm reposting McLuhan's idea that the speed up of the cliche archetype process is creating consciousness.

[2:09:36] Bob Dobbs: I'm sprinkling some other key statements throughout,

[2:09:39] Bob Dobbs: repeating them to help project the idea of voluntary ESP.

[2:09:43] Bob Dobbs: And then I say,

[2:09:44] Bob Dobbs: Voluntary ESP is the condition of Web 2.0.

[2:09:48] Bob Dobbs: So I guess that would be the best place to stop because I've been doing

[2:09:53] Bob Dobbs: Web 1.0.

[2:09:55] Bob Dobbs: So what is going to be the difference in

[2:09:58] Bob Dobbs: 2.0? You know what I mean?

[2:10:01] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:10:02] Bob Dobbs: So.

[2:10:02] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:10:03] Cameron McEwen: I know what the question is.

[2:10:05] Cameron McEwen: I don't know what the answer is.

[2:10:07] Cameron McEwen: I'll be interested to hear.

[2:10:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:10:10] Bob Dobbs: So let's see what you were saying.

[2:10:14] Bob Dobbs: The Joycean thing.

[2:10:18] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what we were saying before you found the quote?

[2:10:22] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember?

[2:10:23] Bob Dobbs: I was reading this stuff,

[2:10:25] Bob Dobbs: but

[2:10:27] Bob Dobbs: I feel like...

[2:10:28] Cameron McEwen: What reminded me of it,

[2:10:33] Cameron McEwen: I think what reminded me of it is you were talking about the benching of humans.

[2:10:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:10:40] Cameron McEwen: And

[2:10:41] Cameron McEwen: I had been,

[2:10:41] Cameron McEwen: as you were going...

[2:10:43] Cameron McEwen: through that theme,

[2:10:46] Cameron McEwen: which has to do with brainwashing and all the black mirrors and stuff that we talked about for a few pages there,

[2:10:54] Cameron McEwen: I was always thinking that the benching and the brainwashing,

[2:11:00] Cameron McEwen: these are expressions that arise from the art formula.

[2:11:10] Cameron McEwen: things that have to be accounted for.

[2:11:13] Cameron McEwen: for along with everything else.

[2:11:16] Cameron McEwen: So

[2:11:17] Cameron McEwen: I see what

[2:11:18] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan tried to do was not merge all of these things into sort of one answer.

[2:11:28] Cameron McEwen: He tried to take Joyce's move of getting back to the art formula and trying to show the multiplicity of effects.

[2:11:41] Cameron McEwen: It's like

[2:11:42] Cameron McEwen: if you wanted to talk about carbon,

[2:11:44] Cameron McEwen: one way of doing it is you could say,

[2:11:46] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:11:47] Cameron McEwen: here's a diamond,

[2:11:48] Cameron McEwen: here's some graphite,

[2:11:51] Cameron McEwen: here's some proteins in the human body,

[2:11:54] Cameron McEwen: and carbon is essential to all of these things.

[2:11:58] Cameron McEwen: So if you want to understand carbon,

[2:12:00] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand how it can express itself in all these different ways.

[2:12:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:12:06] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[2:12:07] Cameron McEwen: And so you could say,

[2:12:09] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:12:09] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake or any sentence in Finnegans Wake is an expression that is pointing at a prior genesis.

[2:12:22] Cameron McEwen: And the prior genesis is sort of a mystery.

[2:12:25] Cameron McEwen: So you're plural.

[2:12:28] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[2:12:29] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[2:12:30] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:12:31] Cameron McEwen: you see,

[2:12:33] Cameron McEwen: if the genesis itself weren't plural,

[2:12:37] Cameron McEwen: how could there be plural expressions?

[2:12:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:12:41] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:12:41] Cameron McEwen: genuinely plural expressions,

[2:12:45] Cameron McEwen: right?

[2:12:46] Cameron McEwen: The whole question comes,

[2:12:47] Cameron McEwen: like we were saying before,

[2:12:48] Cameron McEwen: about how there's different ways of being disconnected.

[2:12:55] Cameron McEwen: Disconnected can be discombobulating.

[2:12:58] Cameron McEwen: It can give a rise to schizophrenia or to panic or whatever,

[2:13:04] Cameron McEwen: but it can also be ecstatic.

[2:13:06] Cameron McEwen: So how are we to understand these things as modes of tactility?

[2:13:13] Bob Dobbs: So if there was an originary plural,

[2:13:16] Bob Dobbs: we have retrieved that once you get into the multimedia.

[2:13:19] Cameron McEwen: We have,

[2:13:19] Cameron McEwen: in a certain sense,

[2:13:20] Cameron McEwen: we've retrieved it,

[2:13:22] Cameron McEwen: but not consciously yet.

[2:13:24] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[2:13:24] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[2:13:25] Cameron McEwen: So the wake.

[2:13:27] Cameron McEwen: The whole question is,

[2:13:28] Cameron McEwen: can we wake to what we already know in a certain way?

[2:13:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:13:33] Bob Dobbs: and you don't apply it as Barry tried to.

[2:13:39] Bob Dobbs: You create an applicable managerial formula.

[2:13:43] Bob Dobbs: That's for the collective.

[2:13:45] Bob Dobbs: That's missing.

[2:13:46] Bob Dobbs: That is an antidote to the extreme private level that's being retrieved.

[2:13:53] Bob Dobbs: But nobody knows the private.

[2:13:56] Bob Dobbs: plural of the digital phase is the majority.

[2:14:06] Bob Dobbs: So my talking about fragmentation and all that is how you talk about McLuhan today.

[2:14:12] Bob Dobbs: That part of him.

[2:14:13] Bob Dobbs: And we are doing it through the idea of the pre-tribal.

[2:14:21] Bob Dobbs: So there it is.

[2:14:24] Bob Dobbs: I revitalized McLuhan.

[2:14:29] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:14:29] Cameron McEwen: maybe.

[2:14:29] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[2:14:29] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[2:14:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:14:30] Bob Dobbs: maybe.

[2:14:32] Cameron McEwen: If McLuhan is going to be communicated,

[2:14:36] Cameron McEwen: the idea of pre-tribal awareness,

[2:14:39] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[2:14:40] Cameron McEwen: is essential to that.

[2:14:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:14:43] Bob Dobbs: and you began today with that,

[2:14:46] Bob Dobbs: that discovery.

[2:14:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:14:49] Cameron McEwen: but it was a discovery that,

[2:14:53] Cameron McEwen: for me,

[2:14:54] Cameron McEwen: it was always a question.

[2:14:56] Cameron McEwen: And what your different quotation suggested is that it's actually more than a question.

[2:15:07] Cameron McEwen: It's a pattern.

[2:15:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:15:11] Cameron McEwen: a pattern which is somewhat of an answer without obviating the question.

[2:15:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:15:18] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[2:15:18] Cameron McEwen: And that's what negative capability is,

[2:15:22] Cameron McEwen: which is where we started from.

[2:15:26] Cameron McEwen: The passage on Keats.

[2:15:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:15:31] Bob Dobbs: I don't...

[2:15:34] Bob Dobbs: When a man is capable of being in uncertainties,

[2:15:37] Bob Dobbs: mysteries,

[2:15:37] Bob Dobbs: doubts,

[2:15:38] Bob Dobbs: without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,

[2:15:42] Bob Dobbs: that's what we've come to.

[2:15:44] Bob Dobbs: Negative capability.

[2:15:49] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:15:49] Bob Dobbs: congratulations.

[2:15:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:15:55] Bob Dobbs: that's very interesting how we,

[2:15:58] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[2:16:01] Bob Dobbs: I thought for a second there's something you,

[2:16:05] Bob Dobbs: when you originally saw that I was doing macro weather and you were doing chemical elements,

[2:16:11] Bob Dobbs: you thought,

[2:16:12] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[2:16:12] Bob Dobbs: they're complementary.

[2:16:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:16:14] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[2:16:15] Bob Dobbs: We now can switch,

[2:16:16] Bob Dobbs: I can be you and you can be me.

[2:16:18] Bob Dobbs: You can do the macro now.

[2:16:19] Bob Dobbs: Why not?

[2:16:19] Cameron McEwen: I could try,

[2:16:20] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:16:20] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that

[2:16:22] Cameron McEwen: I could.

[2:16:23] Cameron McEwen: It's like doing figure skating or something.

[2:16:27] Cameron McEwen: You're pretty good at certain figures.

[2:16:29] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure I would be able to do that.

[2:16:31] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:16:32] Bob Dobbs: well,

[2:16:33] Bob Dobbs: it's interesting where we've come to.

[2:16:36] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[2:16:36] Bob Dobbs: I certainly didn't foresee this,

[2:16:40] Bob Dobbs: but

[2:16:41] Bob Dobbs: I was trying to communicate something,

[2:16:43] Bob Dobbs: and somebody picked up on it.

[2:16:45] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:16:45] Bob Dobbs: that's pretty good.

[2:16:47] Bob Dobbs: If I reach just one person,

[2:16:49] Bob Dobbs: I have been successful.

[2:16:51] Bob Dobbs: You know that cliche?

[2:16:53] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[2:16:54] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[2:16:54] Bob Dobbs: If I just reach one person.

[2:16:57] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:16:57] Bob Dobbs: we'll see what happens with this.

[2:17:01] Cameron McEwen: I hope our,

[2:17:02] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[2:17:03] Cameron McEwen: we're conducting a dialogue that is pleasurable.

[2:17:07] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:17:08] Cameron McEwen: we do a lot of laughing and a lot of sort of joking around and stuff.

[2:17:13] Cameron McEwen: But we're also both seeing new stuff in McLuhan that we find kind of exciting.

[2:17:20] Cameron McEwen: And so the thing that I think we're trying to communicate more than anything else,

[2:17:26] Cameron McEwen: It's just that dialogue.

[2:17:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:17:28] Cameron McEwen: It doesn't have to be about McLuhan,

[2:17:30] Cameron McEwen: doesn't have to be about Joyce,

[2:17:31] Cameron McEwen: doesn't have to be about anything.

[2:17:33] Cameron McEwen: Just the exchange as an example of negative capability and what it's capable of.

[2:17:43] Bob Dobbs: Excellent point.

[2:17:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:17:45] Bob Dobbs: that's what we're doing.

[2:17:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:17:47] Bob Dobbs: let's see if we can do it again in a couple of weeks.

[2:17:52] Cameron McEwen: I look forward.

[2:17:53] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:17:54] Bob Dobbs: great talking to you,

[2:17:55] Bob Dobbs: Cameron.

[2:17:55] Cameron McEwen: You too,

[2:17:56] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[2:17:56] Cameron McEwen: Thank you.

[2:17:57] Cameron McEwen: Bye-bye.

[2:17:57] Bob Dobbs: Bye.