Dialogue 76 — Transcript

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Hello,

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: this is Bob and Cameron,

[00:05] Bob Dobbs: continuing our series on my book,

[00:08] Bob Dobbs: and we are entering episode number 76,

[00:14] Bob Dobbs: and we're on page 160 of this book slash pamphlet.

[00:20] Bob Dobbs: In talking to Cameron before we started recording,

[00:23] Bob Dobbs: he was starting to say something that I thought we should get on tape,

[00:25] Bob Dobbs: so go ahead,

[00:26] Bob Dobbs: Cameron.

[00:31] Bob Dobbs: The pale face point.

[00:33] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what part.

[00:35] Cameron McEwen: I'm sorry,

[00:36] Cameron McEwen: I hesitated there because what I'm trying to do is find a post that I'm writing that has some stuff from

[00:49] Cameron McEwen: Wyndham Lewis.

[00:51] Cameron McEwen: Lately,

[00:52] Cameron McEwen: on the blog,

[00:53] Cameron McEwen: I've been working on Lewis's

[00:57] Cameron McEwen: 1929 book,

[01:00] Cameron McEwen: Pale Face.

[01:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[01:00] Cameron McEwen: And it's,

[01:01] Cameron McEwen: It's quite amazing how much of that book feeds into the following decades.

[01:11] Cameron McEwen: When I say following decades,

[01:12] Cameron McEwen: I mean

[01:14] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan must have read it,

[01:16] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[01:16] Cameron McEwen: in the 30s.

[01:18] Cameron McEwen: And then the different kinds of information and problems suggested by Paleface.

[01:30] Cameron McEwen: feed into the decades of

[01:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's work from the

[01:38] Cameron McEwen: 1940s up until the end to the

[01:41] Cameron McEwen: 1980s. Yeah,

[01:44] Bob Dobbs: it's a good find because whenever I read Lewis,

[01:46] Bob Dobbs: I'm amazed at how many ideas are lifted almost word for word by McLuhan.

[01:53] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[01:54] Cameron McEwen: So,

[01:55] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[01:56] Cameron McEwen: So Lewis suggests problems.

[01:58] Cameron McEwen: He suggests.

[02:00] Cameron McEwen: areas that can be looked into and things like this.

[02:05] Cameron McEwen: And by setting a kind of starting point for McLuhan,

[02:11] Cameron McEwen: what he does is can illuminate where McLuhan has originality and where he doesn't.

[02:19] Cameron McEwen: And the originality of McLuhan is really very,

[02:22] Cameron McEwen: very limited.

[02:24] Cameron McEwen: On the other hand,

[02:26] Cameron McEwen: the field in which McLuhan is doing his work,

[02:30] Cameron McEwen: like the field in which Lewis did his work,

[02:33] Cameron McEwen: is one in which it's very,

[02:35] Cameron McEwen: very difficult to do original stuff.

[02:38] Cameron McEwen: And that's because the very greatest minds have worked in this field for thousands of years,

[02:45] Cameron McEwen: and to make any original suggestion at all is very,

[02:50] Cameron McEwen: very rare and very,

[02:51] Cameron McEwen: very difficult.

[02:53] Bob Dobbs: What was the last word?

[02:54] Bob Dobbs: Difficult?

[02:55] Cameron McEwen: Difficult,

[02:55] Cameron McEwen: yes,

[02:56] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[02:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[02:58] Cameron McEwen: So let me just read a couple things here from...

[03:06] Cameron McEwen: Paleface.

[03:08] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[03:09] Cameron McEwen: not from Paleface.

[03:10] Cameron McEwen: What I'm going to do is I'm going to read a couple passages from Lemuel in

[03:14] Cameron McEwen: Lilliput from 1944 when McLuhan was in St.

[03:19] Cameron McEwen: Louis.

[03:20] Cameron McEwen: He must have written this essay after he met Lewis in 1943.

[03:28] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[03:28] Bob Dobbs: it was after?

[03:28] Bob Dobbs: He'd been with talking to him for about a year.

[03:31] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[03:32] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[03:32] Cameron McEwen: So,

[03:33] Cameron McEwen: well,

[03:33] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[03:34] Cameron McEwen: I wouldn't go that far.

[03:38] Cameron McEwen: He had gone to Windsor and met

[03:43] Cameron McEwen: Lewis in 1943,

[03:46] Cameron McEwen: but he wouldn't go to Windsor himself until 1944.

[03:52] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[03:52] Bob Dobbs: but he brings Lewis down to St.

[03:53] Bob Dobbs: Louis.

[03:55] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[03:55] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[03:56] Cameron McEwen: But he's not in the same kind of contact with Lewis as he would be in 1944.

[04:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[04:05] Bob Dobbs: but then that Lewis starts,

[04:06] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[04:07] Bob Dobbs: backing off and becoming paranoid.

[04:09] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[04:10] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[04:11] Bob Dobbs: So the best time was in St.

[04:12] Bob Dobbs: Louis.

[04:14] Bob Dobbs: Even his buddy,

[04:15] Bob Dobbs: Felix

[04:16] Bob Dobbs: Giovinelli, how do you say his name?

[04:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[04:19] Cameron McEwen: Giovinelli.

[04:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[04:20] Bob Dobbs: he turns his apartment over to Lewis.

[04:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[04:22] Cameron McEwen: I know.

[04:25] Bob Dobbs: And they get him pending commissions,

[04:27] Bob Dobbs: and Lewis alienates everybody,

[04:28] Bob Dobbs: and it becomes a problem.

[04:31] Bob Dobbs: And you see in Jeffrey Meyer's book on Lewis,

[04:34] Bob Dobbs: he interviews McLuhan about this stuff.

[04:37] Bob Dobbs: And

[04:39] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is very tolerant of Lewis in what he says and how he presents his side of the story.

[04:45] Bob Dobbs: He accepts these peculiarities of Lewis and knows to keep working with him.

[04:49] Bob Dobbs: Like you say in one of your essays,

[04:51] Bob Dobbs: he does not go into pounds politics.

[04:53] Bob Dobbs: He does not get into the...

[04:55] Bob Dobbs: political stuff of Lewis.

[04:56] Bob Dobbs: He gets to the aesthetics or other levels of their knowledge,

[05:00] Bob Dobbs: and he stays with that,

[05:01] Bob Dobbs: and he kind of turns a blind eye to the...

[05:04] Bob Dobbs: Piccadillos of Lewis.

[05:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[05:08] Cameron McEwen: well,

[05:08] Cameron McEwen: his essay in,

[05:09] Cameron McEwen: I think it was 1969 in

[05:14] Cameron McEwen: Atlantic, my friend

[05:16] Cameron McEwen: Wyndham Lewis,

[05:17] Cameron McEwen: is excellent in bringing out their interplay in St.

[05:22] Cameron McEwen: Louis.

[05:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[05:24] Bob Dobbs: and the last line is,

[05:26] Bob Dobbs: we can now admire the carapace of his art forms.

[05:30] Cameron McEwen: Yep.

[05:31] Bob Dobbs: Important sentence there.

[05:34] Bob Dobbs: In terms of him lifting stuff from Lewis,

[05:37] Bob Dobbs: he lifted from Joyce and Eliot and Pound.

[05:41] Bob Dobbs: And what McLuhan is original about is that he does a synthesis,

[05:47] Bob Dobbs: takes the best of each one of those guys,

[05:49] Bob Dobbs: and maybe even Yeats,

[05:50] Bob Dobbs: and makes a synthesis without being a philosopher or creating a system.

[05:56] Bob Dobbs: And he actually solves what they're groping towards.

[05:59] Bob Dobbs: And this is what I keep telling the Lewis scholars in the Wyndham Lewis Society meeting I do once a week.

[06:04] Bob Dobbs: Once a month,

[06:04] Bob Dobbs: they got a look at what McLuhan did with Lewis.

[06:07] Bob Dobbs: He redid Lewis without all the political controversy,

[06:11] Bob Dobbs: other than the accidental fact that he did become famous and was identified with the counterculture and kids and

[06:18] Bob Dobbs: SDS and all that.

[06:20] Bob Dobbs: So he got in a little trouble there,

[06:21] Bob Dobbs: but if you're going to be like that tradition,

[06:24] Bob Dobbs: you're going to get in trouble no matter what.

[06:26] Bob Dobbs: But he was original in doing...

[06:32] Bob Dobbs: Completing Lewis,

[06:33] Bob Dobbs: he went further.

[06:34] Bob Dobbs: For example,

[06:34] Bob Dobbs: they were talking last meeting about the dehumanization that Lewis was talking about,

[06:39] Bob Dobbs: that machines,

[06:40] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[06:40] Bob Dobbs: mechanical technologies were doing.

[06:42] Bob Dobbs: And I point out to him,

[06:43] Bob Dobbs: well,

[06:43] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan went on to show that there was a superhumanization in the electric age,

[06:49] Bob Dobbs: which

[06:49] Bob Dobbs: Lewis might have intuited but never got to and never spelled out.

[06:54] Bob Dobbs: So that's what's really important here is what McLuhan did with these guys.

[06:58] Bob Dobbs: He had the advantage of perspective.

[07:00] Bob Dobbs: And what was coming and what happened,

[07:02] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[07:03] Bob Dobbs: with TV in the 50s,

[07:04] Bob Dobbs: he knew 1984 was 1934.

[07:09] Bob Dobbs: And I've just been reading a book that proves that

[07:13] Bob Dobbs: Big Brother locked it in in 1934.

[07:17] Bob Dobbs: And I won't go into the details,

[07:18] Bob Dobbs: but there's your confirmation of McLuhan's chosen date.

[07:22] Bob Dobbs: He does say somewhere else

[07:24] Bob Dobbs: Orwell was writing about 1900,

[07:27] Bob Dobbs: but then another time he says 1934.

[07:29] Bob Dobbs: So I'll go with the 34,

[07:31] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan was right about that year.

[07:33] Bob Dobbs: And the deep state started in 34.

[07:38] Bob Dobbs: And let's see,

[07:43] Bob Dobbs: why am I saying this?

[07:46] Cameron McEwen: You were talking about the superhumanization.

[07:50] Cameron McEwen: But I think that is in Lewis.

[07:52] Cameron McEwen: That's the magnetic city right there.

[07:56] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[07:56] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[07:56] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[07:57] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[07:58] Bob Dobbs: he is occasionally pointing out that everybody,

[08:01] Bob Dobbs: the artists and all the thinkers are missing something new that's happening.

[08:05] Bob Dobbs: That was what the point of the Hitler book was,

[08:08] Bob Dobbs: that there was something new here,

[08:10] Bob Dobbs: and it could be better than bourgeois democracy.

[08:13] Bob Dobbs: And so he gropes around dealing with that,

[08:15] Bob Dobbs: but the only one who has the guts to deal with it and look at it,

[08:19] Bob Dobbs: what was happening,

[08:20] Bob Dobbs: he was looking at the effects of the new media,

[08:23] Bob Dobbs: but he doesn't get to the easy.

[08:26] Bob Dobbs: perspective McLuhan has.

[08:30] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[08:30] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan had the advantage of all those guys.

[08:33] Bob Dobbs: He could see what he saw,

[08:35] Bob Dobbs: and nobody else could,

[08:36] Bob Dobbs: because they weren't reading those guys or seeing through them.

[08:39] Bob Dobbs: So he had a real easy time of it,

[08:42] Bob Dobbs: of popularizing the men of 1914 with a great original optimistic or apocalyptic or pessimistic,

[08:54] Bob Dobbs: all mixed up.

[08:55] Bob Dobbs: uh...

[08:56] Bob Dobbs: that was new so you see louis is jumping around quadruple i asked uh...

[09:01] Bob Dobbs: pollard registered did anybody of his generation louis time contradict himself and hop around as much as louis pieces now he did nobody i feel he was original there and that the way he wrote that people could figure out what his position was and cause uh...

[09:19] Bob Dobbs: a lot of worry about him but McLuhan refined that could do it i would say the code did it technically

[09:25] Bob Dobbs: When you're in this environment,

[09:26] Bob Dobbs: you talk that way.

[09:27] Bob Dobbs: When you're over in this environment,

[09:28] Bob Dobbs: you talk this way.

[09:29] Bob Dobbs: It's not about maintaining a continuous point of view.

[09:33] Bob Dobbs: And so he had the mistakes or the troubleshooting that Pound,

[09:39] Bob Dobbs: every one of them,

[09:40] Bob Dobbs: Pound,

[09:41] Bob Dobbs: Eliot,

[09:42] Bob Dobbs: Lewis,

[09:43] Bob Dobbs: and Joyce,

[09:44] Bob Dobbs: and Yeats,

[09:45] Bob Dobbs: they all got into kind of trouble and got isolated.

[09:50] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was able to be an isolationist artist.

[09:55] Bob Dobbs: But remain in the middle and be there in mainstream society,

[10:01] Bob Dobbs: stirring up the pot,

[10:03] Bob Dobbs: right?

[10:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[10:06] Cameron McEwen: I would agree with everything you said there,

[10:09] Cameron McEwen: except

[10:10] Cameron McEwen: I believe that McLuhan himself got involved in the same sort of problems that those five did and was unable to extricate himself.

[10:22] Bob Dobbs: But he had a better,

[10:23] Bob Dobbs: it was an easier time to be that way because there's so much information overload and you could get,

[10:28] Bob Dobbs: he wouldn't be so stigmatized.

[10:30] Bob Dobbs: Or if he was,

[10:31] Bob Dobbs: everybody else was getting stigmatized.

[10:33] Bob Dobbs: There was a lot of distractions.

[10:34] Bob Dobbs: It wasn't as small a world as it was for the

[10:37] Bob Dobbs: 1914 guys.

[10:39] Bob Dobbs: You see what I'm saying?

[10:40] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[10:41] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[10:42] Cameron McEwen: I think there's some truth to that.

[10:43] Cameron McEwen: I think it has to do with the phrase new media.

[10:50] Cameron McEwen: New opportunities.

[10:52] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[10:52] Cameron McEwen: So

[10:53] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan comes a generation or two after all of those people.

[11:00] Cameron McEwen: He's two generations after Yeats and one generation after the 1880 guys.

[11:09] Cameron McEwen: So he sort of comes alive in the era of new media.

[11:19] Bob Dobbs: Decentralized media.

[11:20] Bob Dobbs: Because look,

[11:21] Bob Dobbs: he is in 69,

[11:23] Bob Dobbs: the governor general,

[11:24] Bob Dobbs: Vannier I think his name was,

[11:26] Bob Dobbs: was trying to do something in parliament.

[11:29] Bob Dobbs: to punish McLuhan while McLuhan was in

[11:32] Bob Dobbs: Playboy and everywhere else,

[11:34] Bob Dobbs: all over the place.

[11:36] Bob Dobbs: It was more decentralized.

[11:37] Bob Dobbs: Wyndham Lewis couldn't get anything like it.

[11:39] Bob Dobbs: He wouldn't be featured in a major magazine back then because Bloomsbury stopped it,

[11:45] Bob Dobbs: the Bloomsbury group.

[11:47] Bob Dobbs: So you couldn't stop people like McLuhan and Noam Chomsky and these people.

[11:50] Bob Dobbs: They got their own audiences going.

[11:52] Bob Dobbs: And they even write about that,

[11:53] Bob Dobbs: and they became what they held,

[11:55] Bob Dobbs: that there's new audiences made possible by the new media.

[11:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[11:59] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[11:59] Cameron McEwen: but he got stopped in the opposite way,

[12:03] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[12:04] Cameron McEwen: He got,

[12:05] Cameron McEwen: instead of getting stopped by being banned,

[12:08] Cameron McEwen: he got stopped by being broadcast.

[12:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[12:11] Bob Dobbs: the Mazinabu treatment that was done on him.

[12:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[12:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[12:15] Cameron McEwen: good point.

[12:15] Cameron McEwen: So the thing that is one of the few original ideas that McLuhan had was to Uh...

[12:26] Cameron McEwen: to point out to the men of 1914 that it wasn't good enough to have accurate ideas.

[12:38] Cameron McEwen: You had to know the elementary forms behind the good ideas and behind the bad ideas.

[12:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[12:47] Cameron McEwen: And so what McLuhan did was say,

[12:50] Cameron McEwen: okay,

[12:51] Cameron McEwen: when we're going to look at...

[12:53] Cameron McEwen: everything,

[12:54] Cameron McEwen: literally everything that any human being does.

[12:57] Cameron McEwen: And by the way,

[12:57] Cameron McEwen: this relates to where we're going in your pamphlet because I think this is central to the idea of the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[13:09] Cameron McEwen: What we have to do,

[13:10] Cameron McEwen: says McLuhan,

[13:11] Cameron McEwen: in looking at anything is look at the media that's involved.

[13:15] Cameron McEwen: What's the media?

[13:16] Cameron McEwen: The media is the relation of the ear and the eye.

[13:21] Cameron McEwen: What McLuhan says to all these guys is back up from your immediate ideas and instead look at the structure or the structural forms that are being presupposed in what you're doing.

[13:40] Cameron McEwen: Now,

[13:40] Cameron McEwen: that idea is directly from Lewis,

[13:43] Cameron McEwen: but Lewis doesn't look at what he calls the philosophies that are involved in.

[13:56] Cameron McEwen: the expression that is human experience.

[13:59] Cameron McEwen: Lewis says there's always a philosophy there,

[14:02] Cameron McEwen: and that's what we have to look at.

[14:04] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan says,

[14:05] Cameron McEwen: yes,

[14:05] Cameron McEwen: there's a philosophy there,

[14:06] Cameron McEwen: but we have to look at the ratio.

[14:09] Cameron McEwen: We can't look at the philosophy as some sort of statement or as something that could be touched or literally identified.

[14:19] Cameron McEwen: No.

[14:20] Cameron McEwen: There is a ratio there that we have to look at,

[14:24] Cameron McEwen: and that ratio can be called the middle or it can be called the medium.

[14:29] Cameron McEwen: And that is the great insight that McLuhan has,

[14:32] Cameron McEwen: that if we want to talk about the field of human expression,

[14:38] Cameron McEwen: we have to be able to identify its elementary form.

[14:41] Cameron McEwen: And what is its elementary form?

[14:43] Cameron McEwen: It's the medium.

[14:45] Cameron McEwen: And he says,

[14:47] Cameron McEwen: go ahead.

[14:47] Bob Dobbs: I would add that...

[14:49] Bob Dobbs: Because he comes at the time of television,

[14:52] Bob Dobbs: which completes the technological evolution in a lot of ways,

[14:56] Bob Dobbs: he sees where it's going to.

[14:58] Bob Dobbs: And then you go back and you read Lewis and Joyce,

[15:00] Bob Dobbs: these guys,

[15:01] Bob Dobbs: and they're groping for the form,

[15:03] Bob Dobbs: but they can't see it as clear as McLuhan gets.

[15:06] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan is a later time where the form,

[15:08] Bob Dobbs: the history of it,

[15:10] Bob Dobbs: culminates with television,

[15:11] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[15:12] Bob Dobbs: the 10th Thunder.

[15:13] Bob Dobbs: And he can see it real clearly more than they could because he came later.

[15:21] Bob Dobbs: The advantage of his later evolution period in technology for him to have that clarity,

[15:28] Bob Dobbs: they weren't so confident with where the form was going.

[15:30] Bob Dobbs: They didn't know.

[15:32] Bob Dobbs: They didn't experience it.

[15:34] Bob Dobbs: He had the advantage of experiencing where the form ended before it became satellite.

[15:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[15:41] Cameron McEwen: See,

[15:41] Cameron McEwen: for me,

[15:41] Cameron McEwen: that's too diachronic,

[15:43] Bob Dobbs: too chronological.

[15:46] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[15:46] Bob Dobbs: there is chronology,

[15:47] Bob Dobbs: for God's sake.

[15:48] Bob Dobbs: Save the I.

[15:53] Cameron McEwen: It's not that McLuhan could see better or express himself better than Eliot,

[16:01] Cameron McEwen: Joyce,

[16:01] Cameron McEwen: Yeats,

[16:02] Cameron McEwen: Pound,

[16:02] Cameron McEwen: and Lewis.

[16:03] Cameron McEwen: Not at all.

[16:04] Cameron McEwen: It wasn't that he was smarter than these people.

[16:08] Cameron McEwen: No,

[16:08] Bob Dobbs: I don't mean that.

[16:09] Bob Dobbs: He's just luckier.

[16:11] Bob Dobbs: He had the advantage of the later news.

[16:15] Bob Dobbs: The news started to pop out all over the place,

[16:17] Bob Dobbs: the way youth were living.

[16:19] Bob Dobbs: The way the colonies were,

[16:21] Bob Dobbs: it was all not the issues that Lewis is wrestling with in the

[16:26] Bob Dobbs: 30s. Brand new.

[16:29] Bob Dobbs: Can't deny,

[16:30] Bob Dobbs: it was a lot of new stuff.

[16:31] Bob Dobbs: Then the computers coming in,

[16:32] Bob Dobbs: the satellite,

[16:33] Bob Dobbs: it really gave McLuhan the satellite vision almost.

[16:36] Bob Dobbs: So chronological or not,

[16:39] Bob Dobbs: it's a later phase,

[16:40] Bob Dobbs: and he had the advantage of it.

[16:43] Bob Dobbs: They didn't.

[16:46] Cameron McEwen: imagine somebody talking about chemistry and they're saying,

[16:52] Cameron McEwen: well,

[16:52] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[16:53] Cameron McEwen: Lavoisier or Priestley or somebody like this,

[16:56] Cameron McEwen: they had the advantage of coming later than the alchemists who were doing some pretty good stuff in the

[17:07] Cameron McEwen: 1700s.

[17:08] Cameron McEwen: And that would be correct.

[17:10] Cameron McEwen: But what is seen by the chemists

[17:16] Cameron McEwen: is what always took place.

[17:18] Cameron McEwen: Wait,

[17:19] Cameron McEwen: wait,

[17:20] Cameron McEwen: wait.

[17:20] Bob Dobbs: You say it's always what?

[17:21] Cameron McEwen: What they see?

[17:23] Cameron McEwen: What they see is what always was the case.

[17:26] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[17:27] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[17:28] Cameron McEwen: So you have to differentiate between the time of the insight and the time of what is seen.

[17:36] Cameron McEwen: So the time of what is seen,

[17:41] Cameron McEwen: that can be later in one sense,

[17:45] Cameron McEwen: But...

[17:47] Cameron McEwen: If you look at what Plato and Aristotle,

[17:50] Cameron McEwen: as an example,

[17:51] Cameron McEwen: could already see 2,500 years ago,

[17:54] Cameron McEwen: it's not that

[17:56] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan had somehow better insight into human reality than they had.

[18:02] Cameron McEwen: He just had a slightly different turn of the kaleidoscope that showed a way that maybe could communicate what Plato and Aristotle already saw.

[18:14] Cameron McEwen: Maybe this new turn of the kaleidoscope that

[18:18] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan made was going to be able to pass that over into everybody's vision that was impossible for 2,500 years.

[18:29] Bob Dobbs: What was impossible for 2,500 years?

[18:32] Cameron McEwen: The communication of what Plato and Aristotle could see.

[18:36] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan was able to communicate it better than...

[18:39] Bob Dobbs: No,

[18:39] Cameron McEwen: well,

[18:40] Cameron McEwen: he...

[18:42] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan didn't achieve communication.

[18:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[18:45] Bob Dobbs: but not that great.

[18:47] Bob Dobbs: He did achieve communication.

[18:49] Bob Dobbs: Why did everybody open their arms to him?

[18:51] Bob Dobbs: Because he was saying something that was perfect for its time.

[18:55] Bob Dobbs: Look,

[18:56] Bob Dobbs: when television started happening in the

[18:58] Bob Dobbs: 50s, culture was a whole different experience than before.

[19:02] Bob Dobbs: You had these crazy people like Elvis and Miles Davis,

[19:05] Bob Dobbs: and all that stuff is going on.

[19:07] Bob Dobbs: That's way different from the 30s.

[19:08] Bob Dobbs: people

[19:09] Bob Dobbs: We had to respond to a new effect,

[19:12] Bob Dobbs: a bunch of effects that was going on,

[19:13] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan had the advantage of that.

[19:15] Bob Dobbs: He comes later.

[19:17] Bob Dobbs: He experiences something Joyce and them don't experience.

[19:20] Bob Dobbs: So that creates a new clarity,

[19:23] Bob Dobbs: a new completion,

[19:25] Bob Dobbs: that makes him think he's getting somewhere.

[19:28] Bob Dobbs: And he writes comprehensive texts,

[19:30] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[19:30] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg,

[19:31] Bob Dobbs: Galaxy,

[19:31] Bob Dobbs: and Understand Media,

[19:32] Bob Dobbs: that a pillion.

[19:33] Bob Dobbs: And he says something that still...

[19:37] Bob Dobbs: It's very important,

[19:38] Bob Dobbs: maybe the best stuff to come out of the 20th century.

[19:42] Bob Dobbs: Because he had the advantage of it.

[19:45] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[19:45] Bob Dobbs: it then gets obsolesced by the digital,

[19:48] Bob Dobbs: but then you might apply your formula that there are principles that are universal and you can apply the same approach to digital media as McLuhan did to analog completion,

[20:03] Bob Dobbs: analog media as it was completing.

[20:06] Bob Dobbs: So we're both right.

[20:08] Bob Dobbs: And,

[20:08] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[20:09] Bob Dobbs: I agree with the Simonson 80.

[20:11] Cameron McEwen: I'm not trying to criticize your ideas.

[20:15] Cameron McEwen: I think that you have amazing insight into a lot of this stuff.

[20:24] Cameron McEwen: All we're doing is exchanging.

[20:26] Cameron McEwen: We have different views of what McLuhan was up to and why it was important and where it may have gone wrong.

[20:40] Cameron McEwen: we have slightly different views on this sort of stuff,

[20:42] Cameron McEwen: but what we're trying to do is sort of spark off our different views to come up with new stuff.

[20:49] Cameron McEwen: And

[20:50] Cameron McEwen: I personally think that we're doing a fairly good job at that.

[20:54] Bob Dobbs: And those who are listening agree with you.

[21:00] Bob Dobbs: It's very good.

[21:01] Bob Dobbs: What'd you say?

[21:01] Bob Dobbs: Two of them?

[21:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[21:03] Cameron McEwen: All two of the listeners.

[21:04] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[21:04] Bob Dobbs: one of them is Carolyn.

[21:05] Bob Dobbs: She's listening.

[21:06] Bob Dobbs: Got her going.

[21:07] Bob Dobbs: And she.

[21:08] Bob Dobbs: She didn't watch,

[21:09] Bob Dobbs: she didn't engage it that much before,

[21:11] Bob Dobbs: but she finds these really useful.

[21:13] Bob Dobbs: But the thing is,

[21:14] Bob Dobbs: we are very close.

[21:16] Bob Dobbs: And also,

[21:18] Bob Dobbs: if there is a difference,

[21:19] Bob Dobbs: it's personality or something,

[21:21] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[21:22] Bob Dobbs: which is just part of being an individual.

[21:25] Bob Dobbs: But

[21:26] Bob Dobbs: I don't see us disagreeing.

[21:28] Bob Dobbs: I understand your view way more than I did 10,

[21:31] Bob Dobbs: 15 years ago.

[21:32] Bob Dobbs: You understand me way more.

[21:34] Bob Dobbs: And we can use them.

[21:37] Bob Dobbs: We don't have a problem with each other's method.

[21:40] Cameron McEwen: Right,

[21:41] Cameron McEwen: right.

[21:43] Cameron McEwen: So let me just read a couple of these passages from

[21:47] Cameron McEwen: Lemuel and Lilliput.

[21:50] Bob Dobbs: Which is McLuhan's tribute to Lewis.

[21:52] Bob Dobbs: He said he's going to dedicate the next 20 years of his life spreading the word on Lewis.

[21:57] Bob Dobbs: He's a Lewisite at that point.

[21:59] Bob Dobbs: And it's interesting,

[22:00] Bob Dobbs: you were describing in whatever I was reading today about truth and how you...

[22:06] Bob Dobbs: avoid being a fanatic.

[22:07] Bob Dobbs: Was that in the G.K.

[22:08] Bob Dobbs: Chesterton article,

[22:10] Bob Dobbs: autobiography?

[22:11] Cameron McEwen: Could be.

[22:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[22:13] Bob Dobbs: so you were pointing out his maturity about how to deal with truth.

[22:20] Bob Dobbs: That's,

[22:20] Bob Dobbs: I don't know why I brought that up.

[22:22] Bob Dobbs: Is it because of what we're,

[22:24] Bob Dobbs: about us,

[22:24] Bob Dobbs: the difference or not?

[22:25] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[22:26] Bob Dobbs: but,

[22:27] Bob Dobbs: oh yeah,

[22:27] Bob Dobbs: so,

[22:28] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[22:28] Bob Dobbs: he has dedicated himself to Lewis,

[22:30] Bob Dobbs: the truth of Lewis,

[22:32] Bob Dobbs: but it's not a fanatic truth.

[22:34] Bob Dobbs: And he's going to be taking in stuff from Giedion and other people.

[22:38] Bob Dobbs: But this is a major article of his appreciation of Lewis.

[22:42] Bob Dobbs: And he does it really fast after meeting him,

[22:45] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[22:47] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[22:48] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[22:50] Cameron McEwen: I think he had already read some of Lewis when he was at Cambridge in 1934 to 1936.

[22:58] Cameron McEwen: But then when he meets Lewis,

[23:02] Cameron McEwen: then...

[23:02] Cameron McEwen: he has to read a whole bunch of him and then generates this essay.

[23:10] Bob Dobbs: And they probably have interesting conversations that we don't have any record of.

[23:14] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[23:15] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[23:15] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[23:17] Cameron McEwen: But at the same time,

[23:20] Cameron McEwen: I don't think he becomes a pure

[23:22] Cameron McEwen: Lewisite because he was very,

[23:26] Cameron McEwen: very taken with Giedion.

[23:28] Cameron McEwen: And so...

[23:30] Cameron McEwen: He had to try and read both of these guys at the same time.

[23:37] Cameron McEwen: He had met both of them.

[23:39] Cameron McEwen: I believe he met

[23:41] Cameron McEwen: Giedion in May of 43,

[23:43] Cameron McEwen: and he met

[23:47] Cameron McEwen: Lewis in

[23:48] Cameron McEwen: July of 43.

[23:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[23:50] Cameron McEwen: So he met them bang,

[23:52] Cameron McEwen: bang,

[23:53] Cameron McEwen: and he read,

[23:54] Cameron McEwen: started to read big books of both of them,

[23:57] Cameron McEwen: and he was...

[23:58] Cameron McEwen: completely taken with both of them as ways of going beyond his thesis.

[24:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[24:05] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[24:06] Cameron McEwen: So his thesis,

[24:09] Cameron McEwen: which was a history of sort of the threefold of history,

[24:16] Cameron McEwen: how the threefold of history rolls out to create history,

[24:22] Cameron McEwen: that had been a continuation of what he had studied in Winnipeg.

[24:29] Cameron McEwen: Because his professor there had adumbrated what he called comparative philosophy,

[24:39] Cameron McEwen: which was the threefold that always was behind philosophy.

[24:46] Cameron McEwen: So when

[24:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan talks about this in a slightly different language in his PhD thesis,

[24:55] Cameron McEwen: he's left with the question,

[24:56] Cameron McEwen: well,

[24:57] Cameron McEwen: where do we go from here?

[24:59] Cameron McEwen: What needs to be done to bring out the importance of this?

[25:02] Cameron McEwen: And what Lewis says to him is,

[25:05] Cameron McEwen: well,

[25:05] Cameron McEwen: in everything that human beings do,

[25:08] Cameron McEwen: there's always a philosophy.

[25:11] Cameron McEwen: So the question that McLuhan then has,

[25:13] Cameron McEwen: well,

[25:14] Cameron McEwen: how do we...

[25:15] Cameron McEwen: recognize the philosophy?

[25:16] Cameron McEwen: How do we recognize the type?

[25:19] Cameron McEwen: And he'll be still thinking about this

[25:22] Cameron McEwen: 40 years later.

[25:25] Cameron McEwen: It gives him something to think about his whole life.

[25:28] Cameron McEwen: And what Giedion says to him is,

[25:32] Cameron McEwen: given the plurality of first principles,

[25:35] Cameron McEwen: how do they create music instead of noise?

[25:40] Cameron McEwen: And that itself is a question that

[25:42] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan will be asking for the next

[25:44] Cameron McEwen: 40 years.

[25:46] Cameron McEwen: So those two people that he meets in 43,

[25:50] Cameron McEwen: only months after he finished his thesis and submitted it,

[25:55] Cameron McEwen: give him what he needs to do with his life.

[25:58] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[25:58] Bob Dobbs: What is the year that they say he got his PhD?

[26:03] Bob Dobbs: 42 or 43?

[26:05] Cameron McEwen: 43.

[26:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[26:06] Bob Dobbs: He sent it over in late 42 or something?

[26:10] Cameron McEwen: No.

[26:11] Cameron McEwen: He submits the thesis in March of 43,

[26:14] Cameron McEwen: and he's given the Ph.D.

[26:17] Cameron McEwen: in December of 43.

[26:18] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[26:18] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[26:19] Cameron McEwen: So the same year.

[26:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[26:21] Bob Dobbs: and he's met Lewis,

[26:23] Bob Dobbs: and he's met Giedion,

[26:24] Bob Dobbs: and so,

[26:25] Bob Dobbs: and he's going to write this article you're going to read from within a few months after getting his Ph.D.?

[26:31] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[26:32] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[26:32] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[26:32] Cameron McEwen: So his Ph.D.

[26:35] Cameron McEwen: leaves him with a bunch of problems.

[26:37] Cameron McEwen: Like,

[26:38] Cameron McEwen: for example...

[26:40] Cameron McEwen: We're dealing with the history of the trivium here,

[26:42] Cameron McEwen: which in a certain way is very,

[26:44] Cameron McEwen: very,

[26:45] Cameron McEwen: very abstract.

[26:48] Cameron McEwen: It's like some sort of essence that can be distilled out of history or something.

[26:55] Cameron McEwen: So then the question is,

[26:56] Cameron McEwen: well,

[26:56] Cameron McEwen: how do these abstractions relate to practical life?

[27:01] Cameron McEwen: And one of the things that McLuhan starts to do at almost the same time is he's looking at comic books,

[27:09] Cameron McEwen: He's looking at advertising.

[27:11] Cameron McEwen: He's looking at popular radio programs.

[27:15] Cameron McEwen: Television is just starting.

[27:17] Cameron McEwen: So he's trying to look at practical,

[27:22] Cameron McEwen: concrete things and ask,

[27:25] Cameron McEwen: well,

[27:25] Cameron McEwen: how does that relate to these abstractions?

[27:28] Cameron McEwen: That's a very difficult problem,

[27:30] Cameron McEwen: but it's one that's very fertile for him,

[27:33] Cameron McEwen: and he's still at work on those problems 40 years later.

[27:37] Bob Dobbs: And that's probably the...

[27:38] Bob Dobbs: poetic enterprise.

[27:40] Bob Dobbs: That's where he's a poet.

[27:41] Bob Dobbs: The poet doesn't remain stuck in the abstract philosophy department.

[27:45] Bob Dobbs: He looks around at what's happening in society.

[27:49] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[27:49] Cameron McEwen: So that's one of the ways that McLuhan tries to sort of justify him being in English rather than philosophy.

[28:02] Cameron McEwen: He says,

[28:03] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[28:03] Cameron McEwen: philosophy,

[28:04] Cameron McEwen: that's too abstract.

[28:05] Cameron McEwen: It's too airy-fairy.

[28:07] Cameron McEwen: Whereas Thank you.

[28:09] Cameron McEwen: as you say,

[28:10] Cameron McEwen: with poetics,

[28:11] Cameron McEwen: with

[28:13] Cameron McEwen: English, you're getting down into concrete expression.

[28:16] Cameron McEwen: And he likes that whole idea.

[28:19] Cameron McEwen: And in fact,

[28:20] Cameron McEwen: in his master's thesis,

[28:25] Cameron McEwen: so this is from 1934,

[28:27] Cameron McEwen: his master's thesis on Meredith,

[28:31] Cameron McEwen: he quotes Coleridge to the effect that everybody is either a Platonist or a

[28:37] Cameron McEwen: Aristotelian,

[28:39] Cameron McEwen: and then

[28:41] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan says,

[28:42] Cameron McEwen: but people are not

[28:46] Cameron McEwen: Platonists and Aristotelians only in philosophy.

[28:49] Cameron McEwen: This also can be seen in literature.

[28:55] Cameron McEwen: So he's got this problem from Winnipeg that he's still working on in Cambridge and then in St.

[29:04] Cameron McEwen: Louis,

[29:05] Cameron McEwen: and that is sort of this

[29:07] Cameron McEwen: springboard for everything he's going to do for the next 40 years.

[29:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[29:12] Bob Dobbs: so he's breaking down the separation of the disciplines.

[29:17] Bob Dobbs: It's beginning to be interdisciplinary,

[29:19] Bob Dobbs: what he's thinking.

[29:21] Bob Dobbs: Sure,

[29:21] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[29:23] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[29:24] Cameron McEwen: In fact,

[29:25] Cameron McEwen: that relates to one of the things I'm going to read here very closely.

[29:30] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[29:32] Cameron McEwen: Shall I fire away?

[29:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[29:34] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[29:34] Cameron McEwen: so...

[29:36] Cameron McEwen: It's a quotation from McLuhan's essay,

[29:40] Cameron McEwen: but it has a quotation from

[29:42] Cameron McEwen: Lewis in the middle of it.

[29:44] Cameron McEwen: So he says,

[29:45] Cameron McEwen: it is therefore politically and humanly speaking.

[29:48] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[29:49] Bob Dobbs: who says this,

[29:50] Bob Dobbs: Lewis or McLuhan?

[29:51] Cameron McEwen: This is McLuhan.

[29:52] Cameron McEwen: I'll tell you when Lewis is being quoted.

[29:55] Cameron McEwen: Okay?

[29:56] Cameron McEwen: So,

[29:56] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to emphasize certain words in this paragraph.

[30:02] Cameron McEwen: It is therefore,

[30:03] Cameron McEwen: politically and humanly speaking,

[30:05] Cameron McEwen: a matter,

[30:07] Cameron McEwen: the word matter being very important here in my view,

[30:10] Cameron McEwen: a matter of the utmost concern for us to know from what sources and by what means the rulers of the modern world determine

[30:20] Cameron McEwen: what they will do next.

[30:23] Cameron McEwen: How do they determine the ends for which,

[30:26] Cameron McEwen: as means,

[30:27] Cameron McEwen: they employ the vast machines of government,

[30:30] Cameron McEwen: education,

[30:31] Cameron McEwen: and amusement?

[30:34] Cameron McEwen: Lewis gives,

[30:36] Cameron McEwen: and gives is italicized in McLuhan's essay,

[30:40] Cameron McEwen: Lewis gives the answer that,

[30:43] Cameron McEwen: and here's the quotation from Lewis,

[30:45] Cameron McEwen: that art and science are the very material out of which

[30:49] Cameron McEwen: the law is made.

[30:51] Cameron McEwen: They are the suggestion out of which are cut the beliefs by which men are governed.

[31:01] Cameron McEwen: That's the end of the quotation from Lewis.

[31:04] Cameron McEwen: Here's McLuhan again.

[31:05] Cameron McEwen: That is to say,

[31:07] Cameron McEwen: the rulers of the modern world are not detached or critical.

[31:12] Cameron McEwen: They do not reflect.

[31:14] Cameron McEwen: They do not consider ends.

[31:17] Cameron McEwen: They are wholly immersed.

[31:18] Cameron McEwen: in the matter which they utilize without understanding its character.

[31:26] Cameron McEwen: So what is McLuhan saying here that he takes from

[31:31] Cameron McEwen: Lewis?

[31:32] Cameron McEwen: Lewis says that there's nothing that is done that doesn't reflect some philosophy.

[31:39] Cameron McEwen: That's the word that Lewis uses.

[31:41] Cameron McEwen: And the way to be critical about anything,

[31:44] Cameron McEwen: according to Lewis,

[31:45] Cameron McEwen: is to understand that

[31:48] Cameron McEwen: philosophy that is embodied in what people say or do or express.

[31:56] Cameron McEwen: Of course,

[31:57] Cameron McEwen: because people are different,

[31:58] Cameron McEwen: those philosophies are different.

[32:02] Cameron McEwen: But what Lewis does not say,

[32:04] Cameron McEwen: as far as I know,

[32:06] Cameron McEwen: he does not say that the field of philosophies is itself a new matter of a New Science.

[32:18] Cameron McEwen: But what McLuhan is saying here in 1944 is that there is a whole new matter that we need to look at that is the subject of a New Science or a new field that

[32:35] Cameron McEwen: we need to begin to investigate inside of.

[32:42] Cameron McEwen: And the only way to investigate a field from the inside Thank you.

[32:47] Cameron McEwen: is to identify its elements and the laws of those elements.

[32:54] Cameron McEwen: And

[32:55] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan does not yet know how to identify those elements.

[32:59] Cameron McEwen: That will come in the next decade with media.

[33:03] Cameron McEwen: And because he doesn't know how to identify the elements yet,

[33:05] Cameron McEwen: he doesn't know how to identify their laws.

[33:09] Cameron McEwen: But already in 1944,

[33:11] Cameron McEwen: he knows that what Lewis is suggesting is a new kind of matter.

[33:17] Cameron McEwen: that has a new kind of law.

[33:20] Cameron McEwen: And that's very,

[33:21] Cameron McEwen: very interesting stuff.

[33:22] Cameron McEwen: And I believe it relates closely to your ideas about the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[33:29] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[33:29] Bob Dobbs: so you're saying

[33:32] Bob Dobbs: Lewis saw there was a new matter,

[33:34] Bob Dobbs: but what did McLuhan see clearer?

[33:39] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[33:39] Cameron McEwen: what McLuhan sees is that this new matter can't be left as...

[33:48] Cameron McEwen: what Lewis calls a philosophy.

[33:50] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[33:54] Cameron McEwen: The word philosophy is too ambiguous.

[33:59] Cameron McEwen: It's too slippery.

[34:02] Cameron McEwen: So that when people try to understand what's going on with Lewis,

[34:07] Cameron McEwen: they're not going to get it because his identification of what is at stake

[34:15] Cameron McEwen: in thinking is not precise enough.

[34:19] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan will see that that is something that needs to be made precise,

[34:26] Cameron McEwen: but he doesn't know how to do that.

[34:29] Cameron McEwen: But he does know that it's a new field,

[34:31] Cameron McEwen: a new matter.

[34:34] Bob Dobbs: So Lewis sees a new matter and doesn't know even if he should articulate it or something.

[34:46] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[34:47] Cameron McEwen: Lewis writes this huge,

[34:50] Cameron McEwen: huge book or manuscript,

[34:53] Cameron McEwen: I guess I should say,

[34:54] Cameron McEwen: in the

[34:56] Cameron McEwen: 1920s, out of which come all of his published books.

[35:00] Cameron McEwen: And there's probably tons that are still remaining to be published out of that huge thing.

[35:07] Cameron McEwen: So

[35:08] Cameron McEwen: Lewis is driven in the same way that McLuhan is driven.

[35:11] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is writing night and day stuff.

[35:16] Cameron McEwen: In the

[35:17] Cameron McEwen: 1940s and

[35:18] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, he's writing night and day.

[35:21] Cameron McEwen: He's absolutely driven,

[35:23] Cameron McEwen: but it breaks his brain.

[35:26] Cameron McEwen: So,

[35:27] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[35:27] Cameron McEwen: you have McLuhan pre-1960 and McLuhan after or post-1960.

[35:35] Cameron McEwen: And the pre-1960 is McLuhan being driven just like Lewis was being driven,

[35:42] Cameron McEwen: and they're being driven in a similar direction.

[35:45] Cameron McEwen: But

[35:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan... Okay,

[35:50] Bob Dobbs: so they both see there's a new thing happening,

[35:53] Bob Dobbs: and might even say human nature is changing,

[35:57] Bob Dobbs: and Lewis does not,

[35:59] Bob Dobbs: seeing the change,

[36:01] Bob Dobbs: do what,

[36:02] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan does do.

[36:03] Bob Dobbs: But you say he's too vague.

[36:05] Bob Dobbs: It's like he doesn't have the advantage of TV,

[36:07] Bob Dobbs: Lewis doesn't.

[36:08] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't see the completion.

[36:09] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan sees the TV,

[36:10] Bob Dobbs: sees the completion,

[36:12] Bob Dobbs: and therefore he can be more precise.

[36:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[36:17] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[36:18] Cameron McEwen: that's said in chronological terms,

[36:20] Cameron McEwen: with which I don't agree.

[36:22] Cameron McEwen: But

[36:24] Cameron McEwen: I can say okay to that.

[36:26] Cameron McEwen: But

[36:28] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, in directing his attention to people like Lewis and Giedion,

[36:35] Cameron McEwen: is not directing some sort of new mind at this.

[36:42] Bob Dobbs: He's not a new mind.

[36:46] Cameron McEwen: M-I-N-D.

[36:47] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[36:47] Bob Dobbs: a new mind.

[36:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's mind is not any different,

[36:53] Cameron McEwen: except that it's slightly worse than many people that went ahead of him.

[36:58] Cameron McEwen: So he is not inventing something.

[37:03] Cameron McEwen: He's not doing some sort of analysis that's better.

[37:08] Cameron McEwen: He's simply shifting.

[37:10] Cameron McEwen: It's like a kaleidoscope.

[37:12] Cameron McEwen: He's simply shifting what's already there in a slightly different way.

[37:19] Cameron McEwen: That's all that's happening with McLuhan.

[37:21] Cameron McEwen: But when we say all that's happening,

[37:24] Cameron McEwen: that's a huge contribution.

[37:29] Cameron McEwen: It's not possible in this kind of realm to make any kind of difference at all.

[37:36] Cameron McEwen: It's a huge,

[37:37] Cameron McEwen: huge matter.

[37:39] Cameron McEwen: but

[37:40] Cameron McEwen: But it's not something that is happening that's new at all.

[37:47] Cameron McEwen: It's the oldest of the old.

[37:50] Bob Dobbs: So that he gets attention because he finds a new way to draw people to the long-range questions or the old questions,

[38:00] Bob Dobbs: especially how the men of 1914 figured out how to talk about it or came up with a new way.

[38:09] Cameron McEwen: You say he got attention.

[38:12] Cameron McEwen: The attention that McLuhan got was not the attention that he wanted.

[38:17] Cameron McEwen: He wanted to communicate.

[38:19] Cameron McEwen: He wasn't able to communicate.

[38:21] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[38:21] Bob Dobbs: no,

[38:22] Bob Dobbs: he got attention.

[38:23] Bob Dobbs: He started to communicate,

[38:24] Bob Dobbs: but then the outcome of that was a lot of confusion.

[38:28] Bob Dobbs: But look at the way the world grabbed onto him.

[38:31] Bob Dobbs: Are you going to say it's just a conspiracy by Howard Gossage and Tom Wolfe?

[38:36] Bob Dobbs: Have someone in the mid-60s and all this other turbulence in the youth culture that needs someone to explain it.

[38:41] Bob Dobbs: Is it just that sort of practical level?

[38:44] Bob Dobbs: But isn't there,

[38:45] Bob Dobbs: everybody is intrigued by what he's saying because it strikes them as new.

[38:50] Bob Dobbs: They didn't know the background.

[38:51] Bob Dobbs: They didn't know what the men of 1914 had done with it.

[38:54] Bob Dobbs: But there was something new.

[38:56] Bob Dobbs: So he either was making what they did finally get noticed or he was very good at communicating better than they were.

[39:06] Cameron McEwen: 1914.

[39:07] Cameron McEwen: I don't think either one of those happened.

[39:09] Cameron McEwen: I think that people needed content,

[39:16] Cameron McEwen: right?

[39:17] Cameron McEwen: You need content for the new media.

[39:21] Bob Dobbs: They needed a public intellectual for it.

[39:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[39:25] Cameron McEwen: but,

[39:25] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[39:26] Cameron McEwen: that's using that in very vague terms.

[39:29] Cameron McEwen: So

[39:30] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan got taken up by people that wanted to use McLuhan.

[39:35] Cameron McEwen: And he thought maybe he could use them.

[39:38] Cameron McEwen: And they were both wrong.

[39:39] Cameron McEwen: They were both wrong.

[39:41] Bob Dobbs: But I think McLuhan understood why he was wrong.

[39:44] Bob Dobbs: They were all wrong.

[39:45] Bob Dobbs: He understood what they were up against more than anybody else.

[39:49] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[39:49] Cameron McEwen: that may be,

[39:50] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[39:50] Cameron McEwen: but there was no communication happening there at all,

[39:54] Cameron McEwen: and ultimately he failed.

[39:58] Cameron McEwen: And the kind of attention that he wanted to get is what we are trying to give him now,

[40:05] Cameron McEwen: not what happened then.

[40:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[40:08] Bob Dobbs: and it's a little late.

[40:11] Bob Dobbs: We're coming in a little late.

[40:13] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.

[40:14] Cameron McEwen: So

[40:15] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan said all the time that his work...

[40:19] Cameron McEwen: was dedicated to the possibility of survival.

[40:23] Cameron McEwen: So that very much is in question today.

[40:29] Cameron McEwen: So are we able to communicate what he was trying to communicate?

[40:35] Cameron McEwen: Are we able to say anything that has to do with the question of survival?

[40:41] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[40:41] Cameron McEwen: who the hell knows?

[40:43] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[40:43] Bob Dobbs: I know.

[40:45] Cameron McEwen: I know.

[40:46] Bob Dobbs: And this is not relevant to our discussion,

[40:48] Bob Dobbs: but I know what I'm doing and why I haven't been able to talk to you for a fucking month.

[40:54] Bob Dobbs: I am doing stuff that's incredible.

[40:56] Bob Dobbs: And you're going to see that we are doing what McLuhan and Al hope to do.

[41:03] Bob Dobbs: We're going to do it,

[41:04] Bob Dobbs: which is incredible.

[41:05] Bob Dobbs: What a claim.

[41:06] Bob Dobbs: Somebody,

[41:07] Bob Dobbs: finally,

[41:07] Bob Dobbs: a human being,

[41:08] Bob Dobbs: gets something fucking done.

[41:10] Bob Dobbs: That's what I'm saying we're going to do.

[41:12] Bob Dobbs: That's a big surprise coming.

[41:15] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[41:16] Bob Dobbs: But that's not relevant.

[41:17] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[41:18] Bob Dobbs: that's my personal confidence.

[41:20] Bob Dobbs: Back to the issue of McLuhan's failure,

[41:24] Bob Dobbs: or what did he succeed at?

[41:25] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[41:26] Bob Dobbs: he gave me a grounding for me to do a successful something.

[41:31] Bob Dobbs: So

[41:31] Bob Dobbs: I give him credit for that.

[41:33] Bob Dobbs: He helped.

[41:33] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[41:34] Cameron McEwen: But,

[41:35] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[41:35] Cameron McEwen: I'm not saying that he was ultimately a failure.

[41:39] Cameron McEwen: I'm saying that the way...

[41:42] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[41:43] Cameron McEwen: you were talking about his...

[41:43] Bob Dobbs: Within his time,

[41:44] Bob Dobbs: he was a failure.

[41:46] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[41:47] Cameron McEwen: you said he got attention.

[41:50] Cameron McEwen: And I'm saying that attention that he got represented a failure because he was not able,

[41:59] Cameron McEwen: through that attention,

[42:01] Cameron McEwen: to communicate what he wanted to communicate.

[42:05] Cameron McEwen: And

[42:06] Cameron McEwen: I think he was well aware that that didn't work.

[42:09] Cameron McEwen: But on the other hand,

[42:10] Cameron McEwen: he didn't know what else to do.

[42:12] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[42:13] Bob Dobbs: it worked a bit because they're still talking about him today,

[42:17] Bob Dobbs: more than anybody else of that period.

[42:21] Cameron McEwen: But Bob,

[42:21] Cameron McEwen: I don't see why.

[42:23] Cameron McEwen: Why do you think that talking about somebody is has any use?

[42:28] Cameron McEwen: Because I'll tell you why.

[42:30] Bob Dobbs: Because people hear about him.

[42:32] Bob Dobbs: They go on the Internet and they read a couple of essays and it makes them see something they never heard of or thought of before.

[42:38] Bob Dobbs: And those little incremental changes on individuals who think this thought probably has a synchronistic,

[42:46] Bob Dobbs: synergistic effect.

[42:48] Bob Dobbs: So humans are learning,

[42:50] Bob Dobbs: even though it's not registered in the

[42:53] Bob Dobbs: Android meme or the tech body.

[42:55] Bob Dobbs: But they are out there learning.

[42:57] Bob Dobbs: And they are learning from McLuhan,

[42:59] Bob Dobbs: whatever they take from it.

[43:00] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[43:00] Bob Dobbs: the user is the content.

[43:02] Bob Dobbs: But they are finding out about him,

[43:05] Bob Dobbs: and it's going into their...

[43:07] Bob Dobbs: many people's minds that never would have known about it otherwise.

[43:13] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[43:13] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[43:14] Cameron McEwen: of course I agree with that,

[43:16] Cameron McEwen: but then I ask,

[43:17] Cameron McEwen: well,

[43:17] Cameron McEwen: what's the effect of that?

[43:19] Cameron McEwen: And I say that that's the sort of thing that has always gone on in human civilization and it has eventuated in the great danger that we're now living in.

[43:35] Cameron McEwen: So to me,

[43:36] Cameron McEwen: just because people happen to learn something is not something that's automatically good or contributing to the light or something like that.

[43:50] Cameron McEwen: It's something that may or may not be a disaster.

[43:53] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[43:54] Bob Dobbs: We don't know.

[43:55] Bob Dobbs: And if we survive it,

[43:58] Bob Dobbs: then maybe we'll find out that McLuhan had an influence on all kinds of people in key positions of decision making.

[44:07] Bob Dobbs: Would you say there is a cynicism about media,

[44:10] Bob Dobbs: its content,

[44:12] Bob Dobbs: that's never happened before in the last hundred years?

[44:16] Bob Dobbs: Today,

[44:17] Bob Dobbs: a wide range is discussed with being told stuff,

[44:23] Bob Dobbs: which,

[44:24] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[44:25] Bob Dobbs: everybody was told stuff for hundreds of years,

[44:27] Bob Dobbs: and they ate it up,

[44:28] Bob Dobbs: but now you watch humans wrestling with the fact that...

[44:33] Bob Dobbs: forced to have these talking heads tell them shit,

[44:36] Bob Dobbs: and they know it,

[44:37] Bob Dobbs: and they're trying to figure out how to do something beyond that.

[44:43] Bob Dobbs: Absolutely.

[44:44] Bob Dobbs: And we don't know how that's turning out.

[44:47] Cameron McEwen: You could say that that is the central...

[44:53] Cameron McEwen: question at stake in the war in Ukraine and the war in Palestine,

[44:58] Cameron McEwen: right?

[44:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[44:59] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[45:01] Cameron McEwen: The big question is whether or not the human civilization can be manipulated through media to maintain the way things are,

[45:15] Cameron McEwen: or if people have developed enough cynicism about Thank you.

[45:21] Cameron McEwen: what they're being told that they're going to introduce a new era of history.

[45:28] Cameron McEwen: We don't know the answer to that.

[45:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[45:31] Bob Dobbs: and we also don't know how many people have to survive to be considered a success.

[45:39] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[45:39] Bob Dobbs: they could have a big war,

[45:41] Bob Dobbs: a lot of people die,

[45:42] Bob Dobbs: but the people that survive it are smarter,

[45:46] Bob Dobbs: not necessarily for it,

[45:47] Bob Dobbs: but they're smarter because of this media cynicism.

[45:50] Bob Dobbs: They won't let that happen be built up again,

[45:54] Bob Dobbs: and a new social structure will be implemented.

[45:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[45:59] Cameron McEwen: See,

[46:01] Cameron McEwen: I think that it's more like chemistry,

[46:06] Cameron McEwen: right?

[46:06] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[46:07] Cameron McEwen: we can say that,

[46:09] Cameron McEwen: okay,

[46:10] Cameron McEwen: chemistry and physics and biology,

[46:12] Cameron McEwen: all these sciences really take off in the

[46:15] Cameron McEwen: 19th century.

[46:17] Cameron McEwen: Now,

[46:17] Cameron McEwen: on the one hand,

[46:18] Cameron McEwen: the world gets...

[46:19] Cameron McEwen: completely changed through that process.

[46:22] Cameron McEwen: On the other hand,

[46:24] Cameron McEwen: what those sciences are talking about is what always happened even before there was a nerd,

[46:30] Cameron McEwen: right?

[46:31] Cameron McEwen: So if human beings do manage to survive present history,

[46:39] Cameron McEwen: is human being going to be that different from what it always was?

[46:43] Cameron McEwen: No,

[46:44] Cameron McEwen: it's going to be exactly what it always was.

[46:47] Cameron McEwen: But can the world be fundamentally different at the same time?

[46:50] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[46:51] Cameron McEwen: So that's sort of where we're at.

[46:55] Cameron McEwen: This interplay between synchrony and diachrony is what human beings live.

[47:02] Cameron McEwen: And now we've reached a kind of extreme split in those things.

[47:12] Cameron McEwen: Synchrony has almost disappeared.

[47:17] Cameron McEwen: So either we're going to be let off the end of the pirate's plank by diachrony,

[47:24] Cameron McEwen: or we're going to find out how we can stop along the plank somewhere with a new synchrony.

[47:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[47:30] Bob Dobbs: so that might be the difference between us is

[47:35] Bob Dobbs: I don't think they,

[47:36] Bob Dobbs: whatever you call these things that never change,

[47:40] Bob Dobbs: that may change.

[47:42] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[47:42] Bob Dobbs: you don't think that.

[47:45] Bob Dobbs: I might think that it will.

[47:46] Bob Dobbs: And I'll help implement that.

[47:49] Bob Dobbs: So there's the difference.

[47:53] Bob Dobbs: But I'm not a fanatic about it.

[47:57] Bob Dobbs: If I'm going to pull it off,

[47:58] Bob Dobbs: it's going to be done in a real lazy way.

[48:04] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[48:04] Bob Dobbs: behind the scenes or something.

[48:07] Bob Dobbs: That's what I'm counting on.

[48:10] Bob Dobbs: And so are you,

[48:11] Bob Dobbs: because you're not trying to go to the White House to tell them what to do.

[48:14] Bob Dobbs: You're just putting out your blog.

[48:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[48:17] Bob Dobbs: Low profile.

[48:19] Bob Dobbs: So we're similar in that way,

[48:21] Bob Dobbs: though.

[48:23] Bob Dobbs: Though I do have a little more public thing than you,

[48:25] Bob Dobbs: but there may be a lot of people reading your blog.

[48:28] Bob Dobbs: We don't know.

[48:29] Bob Dobbs: And that might be equal to the number of people listening to me on the radio,

[48:34] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[48:35] Bob Dobbs: So anyways,

[48:37] Bob Dobbs: we're an interesting pair in this twiddle-dee,

[48:39] Bob Dobbs: twiddle-dum situation.

[48:42] Bob Dobbs: I won't say who's dumb.

[48:44] Bob Dobbs: Twiddle-dee,

[48:44] Bob Dobbs: twiddle-dum.

[48:47] Bob Dobbs: Twitter,

[48:48] Bob Dobbs: Twitter,

[48:48] Bob Dobbs: Twitter dub.

[48:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[48:51] Cameron McEwen: So let me just go back to this

[48:54] Cameron McEwen: Lewis quotation.

[48:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[48:56] Cameron McEwen: As a matter of fact,

[48:57] Cameron McEwen: I have to find out where this quotation is from because

[49:00] Cameron McEwen: I didn't make a note of it.

[49:02] Cameron McEwen: But

[49:03] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan cites Lewis as saying,

[49:06] Cameron McEwen: art and science are the very material out of which the law is made.

[49:10] Cameron McEwen: They are the suggestion out of which.

[49:14] Cameron McEwen: are cut the beliefs by which men are governed.

[49:17] Cameron McEwen: So when

[49:19] Cameron McEwen: Lewis says art and science are the very material,

[49:24] Cameron McEwen: he's not using art and science in their normal senses.

[49:29] Cameron McEwen: He's using art and science more or less in the same way as he uses philosophy to mean something deeper than some picture.

[49:41] Cameron McEwen: or some scientific law.

[49:42] Bob Dobbs: He's almost talking media.

[49:44] Bob Dobbs: Almost.

[49:45] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[49:46] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[49:48] Cameron McEwen: So he's indicating a new field for somebody to investigate.

[49:54] Cameron McEwen: And that person who's going to investigate it is McLuhan.

[49:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[49:57] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[49:58] Cameron McEwen: The art are the very material.

[50:00] Cameron McEwen: So he's not talking about material in the physical sense.

[50:04] Cameron McEwen: He's not talking about chemical materials.

[50:07] Cameron McEwen: He's he's talking about what might almost be called.

[50:13] Cameron McEwen: psychological materials,

[50:16] Cameron McEwen: except that psychological materials aren't only psychological.

[50:20] Cameron McEwen: They are new stuff.

[50:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[50:25] Bob Dobbs: it might be formal causalities being retrieved.

[50:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[50:28] Cameron McEwen: you could say that,

[50:29] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[50:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[50:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[50:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[50:32] Bob Dobbs: I think that,

[50:32] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[50:33] Bob Dobbs: this is a good sentence to point out,

[50:35] Bob Dobbs: and how Lewis is pointing out beyond anybody else of his time,

[50:39] Bob Dobbs: and someone almost original.

[50:41] Bob Dobbs: has to see the value of that,

[50:42] Bob Dobbs: and that's what McLuhan did.

[50:45] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[50:46] Cameron McEwen: and what I think with this new edition of Lewis's work being brought out by Oxford University Press,

[50:54] Cameron McEwen: this is an indication of how communication can take place not at all in somebody's lifetime,

[51:03] Cameron McEwen: but

[51:04] Cameron McEwen: 75 years later,

[51:06] Cameron McEwen: all of a sudden,

[51:07] Cameron McEwen: after that lifetime,

[51:08] Cameron McEwen: after the person is dead,

[51:10] Cameron McEwen: Communication can start.

[51:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[51:13] Cameron McEwen: And I very much hope that that's what's going to go on with Lewis.

[51:17] Cameron McEwen: But just look at the second sentence there.

[51:22] Cameron McEwen: The first sentence has to do with art and science being the material.

[51:26] Cameron McEwen: And then he says,

[51:27] Cameron McEwen: they are the suggestion.

[51:30] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[51:31] Bob Dobbs: wait,

[51:31] Bob Dobbs: no.

[51:31] Bob Dobbs: What's he say?

[51:32] Bob Dobbs: They are the suggestion?

[51:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[51:36] Cameron McEwen: And it would be very easy to understand the word suggestion here as a kind of throwaway.

[51:43] Cameron McEwen: You don't even notice that it's there.

[51:45] Cameron McEwen: They are the suggestion.

[51:47] Cameron McEwen: Out of them are cut the beliefs by which men are governed.

[51:52] Cameron McEwen: But the word suggestion here goes back to

[51:56] Cameron McEwen: Plato and Aristotle.

[51:59] Cameron McEwen: Plato has his ideas.

[52:01] Cameron McEwen: People think,

[52:01] Cameron McEwen: oh,

[52:01] Cameron McEwen: those are very,

[52:02] Cameron McEwen: very abstract.

[52:04] Cameron McEwen: This isn't interesting.

[52:06] Cameron McEwen: Aristotle,

[52:06] Cameron McEwen: Plato's great pupil,

[52:08] Cameron McEwen: comes and says,

[52:09] Cameron McEwen: no,

[52:09] Cameron McEwen: no,

[52:10] Cameron McEwen: that's not the way

[52:12] Cameron McEwen: Plato was using ideas.

[52:14] Cameron McEwen: Ideas have suggestion built into them.

[52:19] Cameron McEwen: Aristotle used the word dynamism.

[52:22] Cameron McEwen: The ideas naturally express themselves.

[52:28] Cameron McEwen: So you can say ideas suggest themselves.

[52:31] Cameron McEwen: Ideas don't remain abstract.

[52:34] Cameron McEwen: they

[52:35] Cameron McEwen: get expressed concretely.

[52:39] Cameron McEwen: And what we need,

[52:40] Cameron McEwen: if we want to understand any concrete expression,

[52:45] Cameron McEwen: we have to replay that concrete expression back to its origin,

[52:53] Cameron McEwen: back to its original suggestion.

[52:56] Bob Dobbs: So read that sentence again now and later what you've said.

[53:00] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[53:02] Cameron McEwen: Lewis gives the answer that quotation.

[53:07] Cameron McEwen: gives the answer that,

[53:08] Cameron McEwen: quote,

[53:09] Cameron McEwen: art and science are the very material out of which,

[53:14] Cameron McEwen: look at the word out of which,

[53:16] Cameron McEwen: the law is made.

[53:18] Cameron McEwen: They are the suggestion,

[53:21] Cameron McEwen: semicolon.

[53:22] Cameron McEwen: Out of them are cut the beliefs by which men are governed.

[53:26] Cameron McEwen: Now this all goes back to

[53:29] Cameron McEwen: Plato and Aristotle.

[53:31] Cameron McEwen: And

[53:32] Cameron McEwen: Plato and Aristotle themselves went back.

[53:35] Cameron McEwen: But what's being said here is that art and science are the very material.

[53:39] Cameron McEwen: That is to say,

[53:41] Cameron McEwen: the material of the New Science or the new field that needs to be analyzed and through analysis be given birth,

[53:55] Cameron McEwen: the new material is something like art and science.

[53:59] Cameron McEwen: That is to say,

[54:00] Cameron McEwen: it's not the physical stuff of the world that chemistry looks at.

[54:05] Cameron McEwen: It's like an art or like a science,

[54:10] Cameron McEwen: and that is the matter that we have to look at.

[54:14] Cameron McEwen: But that matter,

[54:16] Cameron McEwen: or those ideas you could say,

[54:18] Cameron McEwen: are something that goes out of itself.

[54:22] Cameron McEwen: It is a suggestion,

[54:24] Cameron McEwen: that is to say,

[54:24] Cameron McEwen: it doesn't remain abstract,

[54:27] Cameron McEwen: it gets expressed.

[54:32] Cameron McEwen: It is made concrete.

[54:35] Cameron McEwen: So that's already in Lewis,

[54:38] Cameron McEwen: and

[54:38] Cameron McEwen: Lewis understands that from time immemorial.

[54:43] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[54:44] Bob Dobbs: so then the second sentence says,

[54:47] Cameron McEwen: They are the suggestion,

[54:51] Cameron McEwen: right?

[54:52] Cameron McEwen: They are the original idea that has externality built into it.

[55:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[55:00] Bob Dobbs: but read the whole second sentence after the art and science sentence.

[55:04] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[55:05] Cameron McEwen: so the sentence is they,

[55:07] Cameron McEwen: that is to say the art and science that are the material.

[55:10] Cameron McEwen: They are the suggestion,

[55:12] Cameron McEwen: semicolon.

[55:14] Cameron McEwen: Out of them are cut the beliefs by which...

[55:17] Cameron McEwen: man are governed.

[55:19] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[55:20] Bob Dobbs: what's the sentence after that then?

[55:23] Cameron McEwen: After that comes McLuhan.

[55:26] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[55:27] Cameron McEwen: that's it.

[55:28] Cameron McEwen: That's it.

[55:30] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[55:32] Bob Dobbs: so there's your determinism,

[55:36] Bob Dobbs: technological determinism.

[55:37] Bob Dobbs: He's really talking about art and science as there's a medium underlying them.

[55:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[55:43] Cameron McEwen: but I don't know how you mean that.

[55:45] Cameron McEwen: To me,

[55:45] Cameron McEwen: that's not determinism at all,

[55:48] Cameron McEwen: because the men are different,

[55:52] Cameron McEwen: women are different.

[55:55] Bob Dobbs: He uses the word determined.

[55:58] Cameron McEwen: Where?

[55:59] Bob Dobbs: At the very end,

[56:01] Bob Dobbs: at what you read at the very end.

[56:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[56:04] Cameron McEwen: but,

[56:05] Cameron McEwen: okay,

[56:05] Cameron McEwen: he says here,

[56:07] Cameron McEwen: they are the suggestion,

[56:08] Cameron McEwen: semicolon.

[56:09] Cameron McEwen: Out of them are cut the beliefs by which men are governed.

[56:13] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[56:14] Cameron McEwen: So governed,

[56:15] Bob Dobbs: not determined,

[56:16] Bob Dobbs: governed.

[56:16] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[56:17] Cameron McEwen: But what does governed mean?

[56:19] Cameron McEwen: Governed means he's,

[56:21] Cameron McEwen: first of all,

[56:22] Cameron McEwen: he's thinking about the rulers of the world,

[56:26] Cameron McEwen: governing people through laws,

[56:28] Cameron McEwen: through entertainment,

[56:30] Cameron McEwen: through newspapers and all that sort of stuff.

[56:33] Cameron McEwen: But the word are governed also suggests that people are passive.

[56:43] Cameron McEwen: in relation to these possible arts and sciences.

[56:47] Cameron McEwen: That the arts and the sciences are more primitive than people are.

[56:53] Cameron McEwen: So people are governed by them.

[56:57] Cameron McEwen: So you could say that they are determined by them.

[57:02] Cameron McEwen: But the thing is,

[57:03] Cameron McEwen: they're not singular.

[57:05] Cameron McEwen: There's arts and there's sciences and there's philosophies and the whole panoply of...

[57:13] Cameron McEwen: human history is generated by the play of these forces,

[57:20] Cameron McEwen: just like the physical world is generated by the play of chemical elements.

[57:26] Cameron McEwen: So it's not that men are governed in a determined way,

[57:30] Cameron McEwen: so as if they were puppets or something like this,

[57:33] Cameron McEwen: that these arts and sciences can control.

[57:41] Cameron McEwen: Instead,

[57:42] Cameron McEwen: They're governed by something that is plural in the soul or unconsciousness of human beings,

[57:55] Cameron McEwen: and in that plurality is human freedom.

[57:59] Cameron McEwen: So humans are being governed,

[58:02] Cameron McEwen: but in a way that isn't determinism in the normal sense of determinism.

[58:09] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[58:09] Bob Dobbs: so now,

[58:10] Bob Dobbs: do you know where this is from?

[58:11] Bob Dobbs: When did he say this?

[58:14] Cameron McEwen: Lewis?

[58:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[58:15] Cameron McEwen: No,

[58:16] Cameron McEwen: but I'm going to look it up right this minute.

[58:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[58:20] Cameron McEwen: It's something that

[58:23] Cameron McEwen: I've been...

[58:26] Bob Dobbs: Trying to do.

[58:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[58:29] Cameron McEwen: well,

[58:30] Cameron McEwen: in the course of writing this post,

[58:34] Cameron McEwen: I bring out all sorts of other...

[58:37] Cameron McEwen: statements about matter and material in the

[58:42] Cameron McEwen: Lewis essay from 1944,

[58:45] Cameron McEwen: and I try to show that

[58:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is already very clear that there's a new kind of matter here,

[58:54] Cameron McEwen: that human beings need to understand what this matter is if they're going to release themselves from its capture,

[59:04] Cameron McEwen: and that...

[59:07] Cameron McEwen: When he comes in 1946 to talk about the maelstrom and how it's possible to release from the maelstrom,

[59:17] Cameron McEwen: he's thinking about the maelstrom in terms of this new matter.

[59:23] Bob Dobbs: So where are you looking for it?

[59:25] Bob Dobbs: Where do you think it is?

[59:27] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[59:27] Cameron McEwen: I don't know,

[59:27] Cameron McEwen: but I'll just look it up in

[59:30] Cameron McEwen: Google Books and see what that says.

[59:35] Cameron McEwen: But I have to find,

[59:41] Cameron McEwen: I have to...

[59:46] Cameron McEwen: I've got so many different windows open here on my computer that

[59:52] Cameron McEwen: I have to find one that I can void.

[59:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[59:57] Bob Dobbs: we can wait.

[59:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[59:59] Cameron McEwen: well,

[59:59] Cameron McEwen: we're coming up here.

[1:00:06] Cameron McEwen: It's from The Art of Being Ruled,

[1:00:08] Cameron McEwen: page 111.

[1:00:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:00:10] Bob Dobbs: that's what I kept thinking,

[1:00:12] Bob Dobbs: The Art of Being Ruled.

[1:00:13] Bob Dobbs: That's what he was saying in that sentence.

[1:00:15] Bob Dobbs: by which we were governed.

[1:00:17] Bob Dobbs: Page 111.

[1:00:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:00:20] Bob Dobbs: good.

[1:00:21] Bob Dobbs: So that is all his thinking.

[1:00:24] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:00:25] Bob Dobbs: a man of the world,

[1:00:26] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:00:27] Bob Dobbs: 1,500 pages he was writing,

[1:00:29] Bob Dobbs: 23,

[1:00:30] Bob Dobbs: 24,

[1:00:30] Bob Dobbs: 25,

[1:00:31] Bob Dobbs: and then,

[1:00:32] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:00:32] Bob Dobbs: five or six,

[1:00:33] Bob Dobbs: seven books come out of that from 26 to 30.

[1:00:38] Cameron McEwen: You asked me,

[1:00:39] Cameron McEwen: what does Lewis say after that?

[1:00:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:00:43] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:00:43] Cameron McEwen: so...

[1:00:46] Cameron McEwen: He says here,

[1:00:49] Cameron McEwen: like the mammal growing wings,

[1:00:52] Cameron McEwen: he exists thenceforth in another and freer element.

[1:00:57] Cameron McEwen: Can you believe that?

[1:00:59] Cameron McEwen: Here is Lewis saying in The Art of Being Ruled in 1926,

[1:01:04] Cameron McEwen: he's defining what it is that McLuhan has to think.

[1:01:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:01:09] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:01:10] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan never succeeds in doing that.

[1:01:13] Cameron McEwen: but he comes...

[1:01:14] Cameron McEwen: he comes close.

[1:01:16] Cameron McEwen: So in another and freer element.

[1:01:18] Cameron McEwen: But this free region is not conterminous with the arts and sciences.

[1:01:25] Cameron McEwen: Wait,

[1:01:25] Cameron McEwen: wait,

[1:01:25] Bob Dobbs: that's what you're saying.

[1:01:27] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:01:28] Cameron McEwen: wait a sec,

[1:01:28] Cameron McEwen: wait a sec,

[1:01:29] Cameron McEwen: wait a sec.

[1:01:31] Bob Dobbs: So he's talking about the mammal makes a new extension,

[1:01:34] Bob Dobbs: wings.

[1:01:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:01:35] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[1:01:37] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:01:38] Cameron McEwen: And according to my reading of both Lewis and McLuhan,

[1:01:43] Cameron McEwen: it's

[1:01:43] Cameron McEwen: It's not that the mammal grows new wings.

[1:01:48] Cameron McEwen: The kind of mammal that he wants to talk about always had the wings,

[1:01:53] Cameron McEwen: but they weren't thematized.

[1:01:57] Cameron McEwen: It's like chemistry was always what was going on with the whole universe,

[1:02:03] Cameron McEwen: but it wasn't thematized.

[1:02:05] Cameron McEwen: So chemistry was new,

[1:02:06] Cameron McEwen: but what chemistry was talking about was the oldest of the old.

[1:02:10] Cameron McEwen: And I believe the same thing is going on with Lewis and McLuhan.

[1:02:14] Cameron McEwen: So he says,

[1:02:14] Cameron McEwen: let me read this passage.

[1:02:16] Cameron McEwen: Like a mammal growing wings,

[1:02:18] Cameron McEwen: he exists thenceforth in another and freer element.

[1:02:23] Cameron McEwen: What stands forth?

[1:02:24] Bob Dobbs: I didn't get the noun.

[1:02:29] Cameron McEwen: What's that?

[1:02:30] Bob Dobbs: What stands forth?

[1:02:31] Bob Dobbs: What was the word?

[1:02:37] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure what you're saying.

[1:02:38] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:02:39] Cameron McEwen: do it again.

[1:02:39] Bob Dobbs: The mammal and the wings.

[1:02:40] Bob Dobbs: Start there.

[1:02:42] Cameron McEwen: Like a mammal growing wings,

[1:02:45] Cameron McEwen: he exists.

[1:02:46] Bob Dobbs: He exists.

[1:02:48] Bob Dobbs: What's that?

[1:02:50] Cameron McEwen: Exists.

[1:02:52] Bob Dobbs: Not existence.

[1:02:54] Bob Dobbs: They exist?

[1:02:54] Bob Dobbs: T-H-E-Y?

[1:02:56] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:02:57] Cameron McEwen: he.

[1:02:59] Cameron McEwen: Like a mammal growing wings,

[1:03:03] Cameron McEwen: he exists.

[1:03:05] Cameron McEwen: Hence,

[1:03:06] Cameron McEwen: uh,

[1:03:06] Cameron McEwen: fence.

[1:03:07] Cameron McEwen: forth in another and freer element.

[1:03:10] Bob Dobbs: It's

[1:03:11] Bob Dobbs: H-E, he exists.

[1:03:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:03:18] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:03:18] Bob Dobbs: Don't worry about it.

[1:03:19] Bob Dobbs: It's the phone.

[1:03:20] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:03:21] Bob Dobbs: I just don't get what the syllable is.

[1:03:23] Bob Dobbs: He exists.

[1:03:24] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:03:25] Cameron McEwen: But you would,

[1:03:26] Cameron McEwen: maybe you're the person that should be reading this.

[1:03:30] Cameron McEwen: Why don't you,

[1:03:30] Cameron McEwen: why don't I,

[1:03:31] Cameron McEwen: I'll send you the phrase in an email.

[1:03:37] Cameron McEwen: And you plug that into advanced search in

[1:03:40] Cameron McEwen: Google Books,

[1:03:41] Cameron McEwen: and it will bring up page 111 of The Art of Being Ruled.

[1:03:46] Bob Dobbs: We do that right now?

[1:03:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:03:49] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:03:53] Cameron McEwen: You're a better reader than I am.

[1:03:56] Cameron McEwen: You are a person that's used to being on the radio and having to enunciate for...

[1:04:07] Cameron McEwen: people to understand what the hell they're talking about,

[1:04:13] Cameron McEwen: what you're talking about.

[1:04:17] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:04:18] Bob Dobbs: I'm waiting for the email.

[1:04:20] Cameron McEwen: And I'm waiting for my...

[1:04:32] Cameron McEwen: I'm sending it to

[1:04:33] Cameron McEwen: Purple.

[1:04:41] Cameron McEwen: And what I should do here is I should look at

[1:04:46] Cameron McEwen: I'll also send do you know how to go to advanced book search?

[1:04:51] Bob Dobbs: To what?

[1:04:52] Cameron McEwen: To advanced book search.

[1:04:54] Cameron McEwen: Do I really am I really such a bad enunciator?

[1:04:59] Cameron McEwen: I can't believe it.

[1:05:00] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:05:00] Bob Dobbs: you're a bit low,

[1:05:02] Bob Dobbs: and my phone is not digital.

[1:05:05] Bob Dobbs: It's not perfect.

[1:05:06] Cameron McEwen: Uh-huh.

[1:05:08] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:05:12] Bob Dobbs: Don't worry about it.

[1:05:13] Bob Dobbs: We'll get over it.

[1:05:16] Cameron McEwen: But you know what I did?

[1:05:18] Cameron McEwen: I think I...

[1:05:21] Cameron McEwen: I can't believe it.

[1:05:22] Cameron McEwen: I screwed up the...

[1:05:27] Cameron McEwen: the letter that I was sending you.

[1:05:33] Cameron McEwen: I screwed up.

[1:05:34] Cameron McEwen: I have to open up the...

[1:05:36] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:05:36] Bob Dobbs: let's just read it.

[1:05:37] Bob Dobbs: I can make it out.

[1:05:39] Bob Dobbs: He exists.

[1:05:41] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:05:41] Bob Dobbs: let's carry on.

[1:05:45] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:05:46] Bob Dobbs: it was good that you got me to look at my email.

[1:05:48] Bob Dobbs: I had an email I had to fucking answer.

[1:05:50] Bob Dobbs: I didn't see it there.

[1:05:51] Bob Dobbs: So while I was waiting,

[1:05:52] Bob Dobbs: I,

[1:05:53] Bob Dobbs: oh shit,

[1:05:53] Bob Dobbs: I got to answer this.

[1:05:54] Bob Dobbs: So thanks for drawing my attention to the email.

[1:05:59] Bob Dobbs: That was the real reason.

[1:06:00] Bob Dobbs: So go back.

[1:06:01] Bob Dobbs: He exists,

[1:06:03] Bob Dobbs: the mammal,

[1:06:04] Bob Dobbs: growing wings.

[1:06:08] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:06:08] Cameron McEwen: So,

[1:06:08] Cameron McEwen: um.

[1:06:13] Bob Dobbs: He exists.

[1:06:14] Bob Dobbs: Stop looking for it.

[1:06:15] Bob Dobbs: Forget it.

[1:06:28] Cameron McEwen: What I'm going to do is

[1:06:30] Cameron McEwen: I've been going back to the start of the paragraph.

[1:06:37] Cameron McEwen: So what I'm going to do is read the whole paragraph.

[1:06:43] Cameron McEwen: And you could let me know when

[1:06:46] Cameron McEwen: I'm not being clear.

[1:06:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:06:48] Cameron McEwen: Because I think this is a very,

[1:06:50] Cameron McEwen: very important paragraph.

[1:06:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:06:53] Cameron McEwen: So this is from Lewis,

[1:06:55] Cameron McEwen: Art of Being Ruled,

[1:06:56] Cameron McEwen: page triple one.

[1:06:59] Cameron McEwen: In a very small percentage of cases,

[1:07:02] Cameron McEwen: better brains and good social opportunities enable a person to extricate himself from this ideologic.

[1:07:13] Cameron McEwen: machine.

[1:07:15] Cameron McEwen: So you could say that what Lewis and McLuhan are both concerned about is extrication from the ideologic machine and especially how that relates to survival.

[1:07:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:07:32] Cameron McEwen: So extricate himself from this ideologic machine like a mammal growing wings.

[1:07:40] Cameron McEwen: He exists.

[1:07:42] Cameron McEwen: thenceforth in another and freer element.

[1:07:51] Cameron McEwen: There's your decentralization.

[1:07:52] Bob Dobbs: What's that?

[1:07:52] Bob Dobbs: There's your decentralization,

[1:07:54] Bob Dobbs: the freer element.

[1:07:57] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that I would call it decentralization.

[1:07:59] Cameron McEwen: Why do you call it that?

[1:08:01] Bob Dobbs: Because the bonds of community are diminishing,

[1:08:06] Bob Dobbs: and though people are more alone or even lonely,

[1:08:09] Bob Dobbs: they are given access.

[1:08:11] Bob Dobbs: in their tribe to do things that no one else knows they're doing.

[1:08:16] Bob Dobbs: Everybody was always under surveillance by the community.

[1:08:19] Bob Dobbs: Now they're flying,

[1:08:21] Bob Dobbs: fly by the nets,

[1:08:22] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:08:23] Bob Dobbs: that Joyce phrase that McLuhan emphasized.

[1:08:25] Bob Dobbs: You fly by the nets.

[1:08:29] Bob Dobbs: You pass them.

[1:08:30] Bob Dobbs: You're freer.

[1:08:30] Bob Dobbs: The wings give you a freer mobility.

[1:08:36] Bob Dobbs: And,

[1:08:36] Bob Dobbs: of course,

[1:08:36] Bob Dobbs: all kinds of mafias and secret stuff can spring up.

[1:08:40] Bob Dobbs: But all kinds of new formations of people,

[1:08:42] Bob Dobbs: the way they live their lives,

[1:08:44] Bob Dobbs: they're not as controlled by the church or whatever,

[1:08:46] Bob Dobbs: different things.

[1:08:48] Bob Dobbs: That's the new,

[1:08:49] Bob Dobbs: I'm calling that decentralization from Big

[1:08:53] Cameron McEwen: Brother.

[1:08:55] Cameron McEwen: I really don't recognize the word,

[1:08:56] Cameron McEwen: but the thought is one that I just completely disagree with.

[1:09:03] Cameron McEwen: It's one that is central to whatever differences we have.

[1:09:07] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:09:08] Bob Dobbs: but he did say that,

[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: he's saying it's freer.

[1:09:12] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:09:12] Cameron McEwen: but he's talking about a small percentage of cases,

[1:09:16] Cameron McEwen: and you're talking about some sort of historical development.

[1:09:20] Cameron McEwen: It couldn't be any more different.

[1:09:23] Bob Dobbs: Does he say,

[1:09:24] Bob Dobbs: he says only a few people are getting the wings?

[1:09:28] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:09:28] Cameron McEwen: he says in a very small percentage of cases,

[1:09:32] Cameron McEwen: better brains and good social opportunities enable a person to extricate himself from the ideologic machine.

[1:09:41] Cameron McEwen: So what you were talking about with decontextualization or something.

[1:09:46] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:09:46] Cameron McEwen: decentralization.

[1:09:47] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:09:47] Bob Dobbs: decentralization.

[1:09:51] Cameron McEwen: What you are calling decentralization.

[1:09:53] Cameron McEwen: I think is what Lewis and McLuhan call the ideologic machine.

[1:09:59] Cameron McEwen: It's what traps people,

[1:10:00] Cameron McEwen: not what sets them free.

[1:10:02] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:10:03] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:10:03] Bob Dobbs: it's a medium.

[1:10:04] Bob Dobbs: And decentralization means that smarter people can begin to move into areas that aren't covered,

[1:10:13] Bob Dobbs: aren't within the centralized perspective or panopticon.

[1:10:17] Bob Dobbs: So that is what the men of 1914 in their art,

[1:10:21] Bob Dobbs: they are doing that.

[1:10:22] Bob Dobbs: They're moving into a freer zone.

[1:10:25] Bob Dobbs: They're the beginning people of the new culture.

[1:10:27] Bob Dobbs: And Lewis even says that about himself in Blast.

[1:10:30] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:10:30] Bob Dobbs: we are the something of the new civilization.

[1:10:34] Bob Dobbs: He has that sentence.

[1:10:35] Bob Dobbs: So he,

[1:10:36] Bob Dobbs: it starts off with a minority.

[1:10:39] Bob Dobbs: But look,

[1:10:40] Bob Dobbs: it's gone.

[1:10:40] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan caught the crest of that minority getting bigger,

[1:10:44] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:10:44] Bob Dobbs: 30 years later.

[1:10:46] Bob Dobbs: And then I'm here where it's even huge.

[1:10:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:10:50] Cameron McEwen: you see,

[1:10:50] Cameron McEwen: I think it's smaller.

[1:10:54] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:10:55] Bob Dobbs: it doesn't matter.

[1:10:56] Cameron McEwen: Let me read the paragraph,

[1:10:57] Cameron McEwen: but we'll disagree to disagree on that.

[1:10:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:10:59] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:11:00] Bob Dobbs: it's not that important.

[1:11:01] Bob Dobbs: You know something's afoot.

[1:11:03] Bob Dobbs: I know something's afoot,

[1:11:04] Bob Dobbs: and maybe what we're measuring is not the same or the consequences.

[1:11:10] Bob Dobbs: But something's afoot,

[1:11:12] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:11:13] Bob Dobbs: Lewis then picked up on it.

[1:11:14] Bob Dobbs: Then McLuhan picked up on it and made a better expression of it.

[1:11:20] Bob Dobbs: And then we're here.

[1:11:22] Bob Dobbs: Our turn.

[1:11:24] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:11:25] Cameron McEwen: So the person he's talking about is the very small percentage of cases who frees himself from the ideologic machine.

[1:11:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:11:34] Bob Dobbs: which is the medium,

[1:11:35] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:11:36] Bob Dobbs: The ideologic machine is the medium.

[1:11:40] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:11:41] Cameron McEwen: it's the ignorance of the medium.

[1:11:43] Cameron McEwen: There's nothing about the medium that is ideologic.

[1:11:49] Cameron McEwen: It's the particular use.

[1:11:51] Cameron McEwen: of the medium.

[1:11:53] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:11:54] Cameron McEwen: So he's talking about the person who's able to free himself or herself from the ideologic machine.

[1:12:02] Cameron McEwen: Like a mammal growing wings,

[1:12:04] Cameron McEwen: he exists thenceforth in another and freer element.

[1:12:09] Cameron McEwen: But this free region is not conterminous with the arts and sciences.

[1:12:14] Bob Dobbs: Ah,

[1:12:15] Bob Dobbs: not determinous or coterminous,

[1:12:17] Bob Dobbs: what did you say there?

[1:12:18] Cameron McEwen: Conterminous is the word he uses.

[1:12:21] Bob Dobbs: It's not contrived.

[1:12:22] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[1:12:23] Cameron McEwen: Lewis uses a lot of words that aren't really words.

[1:12:26] Cameron McEwen: You know that.

[1:12:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:12:28] Bob Dobbs: So what's he say there?

[1:12:29] Bob Dobbs: Read that last bit.

[1:12:30] Cameron McEwen: But this free region is not conterminous with the arts and sciences.

[1:12:37] Cameron McEwen: And don't comment on that until we get down a little bit later.

[1:12:41] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:12:43] Cameron McEwen: And free,

[1:12:44] Cameron McEwen: semicolon,

[1:12:45] Cameron McEwen: and free spirits do not,

[1:12:47] Cameron McEwen: as is popularly supposed,

[1:12:50] Cameron McEwen: inhabit the bodies of men of science or artists.

[1:12:55] Cameron McEwen: For art and science are the very material out of which the law is made.

[1:13:02] Cameron McEwen: They are the suggestion.

[1:13:04] Cameron McEwen: Out of them are cut the beliefs by which men are governed,

[1:13:08] Cameron McEwen: and the teacher is usually as much a dupe as the learner.

[1:13:15] Cameron McEwen: End of paragraph.

[1:13:17] Bob Dobbs: That's a good one.

[1:13:18] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:13:19] Cameron McEwen: So when he says the art and science are the very material,

[1:13:23] Cameron McEwen: he's saying that they are what needs to be analyzed.

[1:13:28] Cameron McEwen: They are not what does the analysis.

[1:13:32] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:13:33] Bob Dobbs: and he's correct.

[1:13:35] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:13:35] Bob Dobbs: absolutely.

[1:13:36] Bob Dobbs: The smarter brains of a new social opportunity are not the cliche free spirits.

[1:13:42] Bob Dobbs: They're the abstracted ones.

[1:13:43] Bob Dobbs: The visual space dupes are the free spirits.

[1:13:47] Bob Dobbs: There's a new kind of...

[1:13:49] Bob Dobbs: of freedom,

[1:13:50] Bob Dobbs: which includes being ruled,

[1:13:52] Bob Dobbs: the art of being ruled.

[1:13:54] Bob Dobbs: The free spirits,

[1:13:54] Bob Dobbs: they're not going to fucking think they're ruled.

[1:13:57] Bob Dobbs: They're going to do everything to express their independence.

[1:13:59] Bob Dobbs: He's always,

[1:14:00] Bob Dobbs: I just finished,

[1:14:01] Bob Dobbs: Apes of God.

[1:14:01] Bob Dobbs: He's satirizing all these people who think they're free spirits.

[1:14:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:14:06] Cameron McEwen: and free spirits is a reference to

[1:14:10] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche.

[1:14:11] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche often used phrases like that.

[1:14:15] Bob Dobbs: What did he mean by them?

[1:14:18] Bob Dobbs: What were his free spirits?

[1:14:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:14:20] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:14:21] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche would second what you're saying,

[1:14:27] Cameron McEwen: and so would

[1:14:28] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, of course.

[1:14:30] Cameron McEwen: But the term like three spirits always has at least two very different meanings.

[1:14:41] Cameron McEwen: Lewis is talking here about a mammal growing wings.

[1:14:48] Cameron McEwen: and that

[1:14:49] Cameron McEwen: possibility is the possibility of somebody being a free spirit.

[1:14:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:14:56] Cameron McEwen: But usually what we mean by free spirit is somebody who's not a free spirit at all.

[1:15:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:15:03] Cameron McEwen: So what you're doing is you're bringing out the inherent complexity of a term like this,

[1:15:12] Cameron McEwen: and that complexity is what makes communication so difficult.

[1:15:18] Cameron McEwen: And the...

[1:15:20] Cameron McEwen: It's the difficulty of communication that calls forth the need for precision.

[1:15:26] Cameron McEwen: How are we going to make this matter,

[1:15:30] Cameron McEwen: this material that Lewis is talking about,

[1:15:33] Cameron McEwen: precise enough that we can begin doing collective investigation of it?

[1:15:40] Cameron McEwen: And through that collective investigation,

[1:15:44] Cameron McEwen: can we perhaps make the world a different place?

[1:15:49] Cameron McEwen: in which survival is no longer,

[1:15:52] Cameron McEwen: before the threat to survival is no longer over us.

[1:16:00] Bob Dobbs: I had something to say there.

[1:16:03] Bob Dobbs: Oh yeah,

[1:16:03] Bob Dobbs: you may be making too much out of the difficulty of communication.

[1:16:11] Cameron McEwen: Of course it's possible.

[1:16:14] Bob Dobbs: There may be a lot of communication happening.

[1:16:18] Bob Dobbs: And maybe people don't know what to do with such colossal meaning being made obvious.

[1:16:24] Bob Dobbs: Too much meaning,

[1:16:25] Bob Dobbs: too much understanding.

[1:16:30] Bob Dobbs: So bouncing off,

[1:16:32] Bob Dobbs: you're always commenting on the difficulty of communication.

[1:16:35] Bob Dobbs: So I think we need to bounce off saying,

[1:16:37] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:16:37] Bob Dobbs: that might be a mind game you got yourself into,

[1:16:42] Bob Dobbs: a conundrum.

[1:16:43] Bob Dobbs: It may not be about whether it's communicable or not.

[1:16:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:16:49] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:16:49] Cameron McEwen: remember that a very smart guy by the name of Bob Dobbs has often made much of the idea that any communication at all is a miracle.

[1:17:00] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:17:01] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:17:03] Bob Dobbs: That's going to be on my fake grave.

[1:17:06] Bob Dobbs: Because I ain't dying.

[1:17:11] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:17:12] Bob Dobbs: yes.

[1:17:13] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:17:13] Bob Dobbs: what is it?

[1:17:14] Bob Dobbs: It's the miracle.

[1:17:17] Bob Dobbs: Communication is a miracle,

[1:17:18] Bob Dobbs: but not impossible.

[1:17:19] Bob Dobbs: Then Barry Nevitt adds a word.

[1:17:21] Bob Dobbs: He says communication of the new is a miracle,

[1:17:26] Bob Dobbs: but not impossible.

[1:17:27] Bob Dobbs: I think that's what Barry adds.

[1:17:29] Bob Dobbs: I think the original doesn't have new in it.

[1:17:32] Cameron McEwen: That's probably the sort of thing that got Marshall very frustrated.

[1:17:37] Cameron McEwen: You probably know the interview with Corinne where she gets asked something like,

[1:17:45] Cameron McEwen: what was Marshall's favorite book?

[1:17:47] Cameron McEwen: And she says,

[1:17:48] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:17:48] Cameron McEwen: I don't know what his favorite book is,

[1:17:50] Cameron McEwen: but I know the book he liked the least.

[1:17:53] Cameron McEwen: And that was Take Today.

[1:17:55] Cameron McEwen: And she says something like he and

[1:18:02] Cameron McEwen: Barry turned out something there that

[1:18:06] Cameron McEwen: Marshall was very unhappy with.

[1:18:10] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:18:10] Bob Dobbs: that would be in 72,

[1:18:11] Bob Dobbs: 73.

[1:18:12] Bob Dobbs: As Marchand or somebody says,

[1:18:14] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what they're citing,

[1:18:15] Bob Dobbs: but they say later he had a newer appreciation of it.

[1:18:19] Bob Dobbs: That was the last commentary on the book about McLuhan that someone says.

[1:18:25] Bob Dobbs: Maybe you missed that night,

[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: that Monday night,

[1:18:28] Bob Dobbs: whatever that was said.

[1:18:29] Bob Dobbs: Mrs.

[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan may have missed that.

[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: he had a problem in 72,

[1:18:36] Bob Dobbs: and Marg Stewart always joked about when they went on David Frost,

[1:18:40] Bob Dobbs: the two of them,

[1:18:41] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:18:41] Bob Dobbs: And Barry was like a talking maniac,

[1:18:44] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[1:18:45] Bob Dobbs: He'd never been on before.

[1:18:47] Bob Dobbs: He couldn't shut up.

[1:18:48] Bob Dobbs: And so he made a fool of himself in a way.

[1:18:50] Bob Dobbs: And probably Corinne saw that,

[1:18:52] Bob Dobbs: and Marshall had to agree with Corinne.

[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: She had the Swami there.

[1:18:55] Bob Dobbs: They had to do their yoga.

[1:18:57] Bob Dobbs: And,

[1:18:57] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:18:58] Bob Dobbs: difficult times for McLuhan there.

[1:19:00] Bob Dobbs: He's half healthy.

[1:19:01] Bob Dobbs: And it wasn't until 77,

[1:19:04] Bob Dobbs: 78 he appreciated Take Today.

[1:19:06] Bob Dobbs: Because other people started to read it and appreciate it.

[1:19:10] Bob Dobbs: Among McLuhanites that read his stuff that I know of really value that book.

[1:19:22] Cameron McEwen: Do you value it?

[1:19:22] Cameron McEwen: Do you like it?

[1:19:25] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:19:25] Cameron McEwen: I think it's a bit of a hodgepodge.

[1:19:27] Cameron McEwen: I think there's things in Take Today that are very misleading.

[1:19:32] Cameron McEwen: But on the other hand,

[1:19:35] Cameron McEwen: it's a little bit like a blind person tapping around with their cane.

[1:19:44] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was trying to communicate something.

[1:19:48] Cameron McEwen: and using

[1:19:49] Cameron McEwen: Barry to help in that process.

[1:19:53] Cameron McEwen: And whenever he used a co-writer like that,

[1:19:57] Cameron McEwen: there were always advantages and disadvantages.

[1:20:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:20:01] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:20:04] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, I think he may have felt that they were close to some really important stuff and they didn't get there.

[1:20:12] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:20:13] Bob Dobbs: I've been finding some quotes lately in posting from Take Today,

[1:20:16] Bob Dobbs: and I've got the book sitting over there.

[1:20:17] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to go back and try to find some more quotes.

[1:20:20] Bob Dobbs: Other people are putting out more traditional McLuhan quotes,

[1:20:23] Bob Dobbs: and the new ones people are responding to because they never noticed them.

[1:20:27] Bob Dobbs: They didn't read Take Today.

[1:20:29] Bob Dobbs: And it's a new slant on things,

[1:20:33] Bob Dobbs: clarifying what was the message.

[1:20:35] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:20:35] Bob Dobbs: it's aspects that didn't get said in the earlier book.

[1:20:40] Bob Dobbs: I'm into Take Today right now,

[1:20:42] Bob Dobbs: highlighting the good stuff.

[1:20:43] Bob Dobbs: That's what I'm doing.

[1:20:45] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:20:45] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:20:45] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:20:47] Cameron McEwen: I remember you saying good,

[1:20:49] Cameron McEwen: interesting stuff about

[1:20:51] Cameron McEwen: Take Today

[1:20:52] Cameron McEwen: 25 years ago.

[1:20:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:20:54] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:20:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:20:56] Bob Dobbs: it's always been my favorite book,

[1:20:58] Bob Dobbs: almost my favorite.

[1:20:59] Bob Dobbs: But I go back to the other stuff,

[1:21:00] Bob Dobbs: and they're all great,

[1:21:01] Bob Dobbs: too.

[1:21:01] Bob Dobbs: But there's so much in Take Today that no one notices.

[1:21:05] Bob Dobbs: It's just very a lot,

[1:21:06] Bob Dobbs: a lot of pages,

[1:21:07] Bob Dobbs: a lot of information.

[1:21:09] Bob Dobbs: that most people don't have the patience to wade through.

[1:21:14] Bob Dobbs: So I've been wading through it for,

[1:21:16] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:21:16] Bob Dobbs: many,

[1:21:16] Bob Dobbs: many decades.

[1:21:19] Bob Dobbs: More than other people,

[1:21:20] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[1:21:22] Bob Dobbs: Nobody quotes it as much as I do,

[1:21:23] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[1:21:29] Cameron McEwen: That's a side of your work that

[1:21:31] Cameron McEwen: I don't understand.

[1:21:33] Cameron McEwen: I have no idea why,

[1:21:35] Cameron McEwen: how you have the patience or even the desire.

[1:21:39] Cameron McEwen: to do a huge amount of stuff with people that,

[1:21:44] Cameron McEwen: in my view,

[1:21:45] Cameron McEwen: have no idea what they're talking about.

[1:21:49] Bob Dobbs: You're talking about the content that Barry highlights.

[1:21:52] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:21:52] Cameron McEwen: I'm talking about your activities with other...

[1:21:57] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:21:57] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:21:57] Bob Dobbs: the ne'er-do-wells,

[1:21:59] Bob Dobbs: the fucking lazy ones.

[1:22:00] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:22:03] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:22:05] Bob Dobbs: like Jesus,

[1:22:05] Bob Dobbs: I go to the pub.

[1:22:09] Bob Dobbs: I hang out with them at low life.

[1:22:12] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:22:13] Bob Dobbs: I'm very tolerant for that for some reason.

[1:22:17] Bob Dobbs: I find meaning in what they do.

[1:22:20] Bob Dobbs: I'm always catching them.

[1:22:21] Bob Dobbs: I'm always pointing out,

[1:22:22] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:22:22] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:22:22] Bob Dobbs: you just illustrated this.

[1:22:24] Bob Dobbs: Then I tell them what they illustrated by what they had said or done,

[1:22:28] Bob Dobbs: and they usually don't understand what I got out of it,

[1:22:31] Bob Dobbs: but it makes them think for a minute,

[1:22:33] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:22:33] Bob Dobbs: geez,

[1:22:34] Bob Dobbs: I did something that Bob got great meaning out of,

[1:22:35] Bob Dobbs: and I don't know what it is.

[1:22:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:22:41] Bob Dobbs: so I recommend it.

[1:22:43] Cameron McEwen: There's nothing that's not material for analysis.

[1:22:47] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:22:49] Bob Dobbs: I'm an exemplary of that.

[1:22:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:22:56] Bob Dobbs: people have commented on who I talk to.

[1:22:59] Bob Dobbs: I am not a snob.

[1:23:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:23:03] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[1:23:04] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:23:08] Cameron McEwen: I don't object to that whatsoever.

[1:23:11] Cameron McEwen: That's like what we were saying earlier when we were talking about going to a region like Pictou,

[1:23:19] Cameron McEwen: Nova Scotia,

[1:23:20] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[1:23:21] Cameron McEwen: and talking to anybody that's there and getting information through that.

[1:23:27] Cameron McEwen: My objection or my observation doesn't have to do with talking to anybody.

[1:23:34] Cameron McEwen: It has to do with the percentage of time.

[1:23:37] Cameron McEwen: that you spend doing that as opposed to other possible things.

[1:23:41] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:23:41] Bob Dobbs: I do in many ways have more time than people have.

[1:23:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:23:46] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:23:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:23:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:23:48] Cameron McEwen: if a person doesn't need to sleep,

[1:23:53] Cameron McEwen: right there,

[1:23:53] Cameron McEwen: they're multiplying their time,

[1:23:55] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:23:56] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:23:57] Bob Dobbs: so let's go into the page 160.

[1:24:01] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:24:02] Cameron McEwen: but maybe as a start to that,

[1:24:05] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:24:05] Cameron McEwen: do you...

[1:24:06] Cameron McEwen: I find as I do that the stuff we're talking about from

[1:24:11] Cameron McEwen: Lewis and McLuhan relationship with Lewis,

[1:24:14] Cameron McEwen: that relates closely,

[1:24:16] Cameron McEwen: in my view,

[1:24:16] Cameron McEwen: to what you're talking about with the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:24:20] Cameron McEwen: Do you agree with that?

[1:24:22] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure.

[1:24:24] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:24:24] Bob Dobbs: I was thinking,

[1:24:25] Bob Dobbs: it came to me the other day that the Anthropomorphic Physical,

[1:24:31] Bob Dobbs: what I'm referring to is not the user is the content,

[1:24:36] Bob Dobbs: but the used is the content.

[1:24:40] Bob Dobbs: And we'll see how that goes.

[1:24:42] Bob Dobbs: But,

[1:24:44] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:24:44] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan in Take Today talks about the flip into,

[1:24:47] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:24:48] Bob Dobbs: that's the first quote I have here.

[1:24:50] Bob Dobbs: It is man who has become both

[1:24:51] Bob Dobbs: figure in ground via the electrotechnical extension of his awareness,

[1:24:55] Bob Dobbs: page 11 in Take Today.

[1:24:58] Bob Dobbs: And I always thought that was an important quote,

[1:25:02] Bob Dobbs: and it probably is what I'm trying to get at with the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:25:06] Bob Dobbs: And then I always cite the playboy,

[1:25:09] Bob Dobbs: where he says the content is the new ground,

[1:25:12] Bob Dobbs: and he has content italicized.

[1:25:14] Bob Dobbs: So something had come together in the late 60s.

[1:25:20] Bob Dobbs: So that the Understanding Media phase in 64 of form and content,

[1:25:27] Bob Dobbs: they go through a phase where form and content merge.

[1:25:32] Bob Dobbs: And then he says a few years later,

[1:25:34] Bob Dobbs: man is both figure and ground.

[1:25:36] Bob Dobbs: So if you've been reading McLuhan separately,

[1:25:39] Bob Dobbs: I mean seriously,

[1:25:40] Bob Dobbs: and learning about the difference between form and content,

[1:25:42] Bob Dobbs: then you come to,

[1:25:43] Bob Dobbs: or figure and ground,

[1:25:44] Bob Dobbs: then you come to the statement,

[1:25:46] Bob Dobbs: it's going to throw you,

[1:25:47] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[1:25:48] Bob Dobbs: You say,

[1:25:48] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:25:48] Bob Dobbs: how could that be?

[1:25:50] Bob Dobbs: How does man become figure and ground?

[1:25:52] Bob Dobbs: How does forming content come together?

[1:25:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:25:55] Bob Dobbs: when you write a book,

[1:25:56] Bob Dobbs: you highlight opposites.

[1:25:59] Bob Dobbs: It's diachronic.

[1:26:01] Bob Dobbs: It splits things up.

[1:26:02] Bob Dobbs: It makes it too clear.

[1:26:04] Bob Dobbs: So you've got to read,

[1:26:05] Bob Dobbs: look at Finnegans Wake,

[1:26:05] Bob Dobbs: which merges words and syllables so that you can't even get a clear word,

[1:26:12] Bob Dobbs: let alone two clear words.

[1:26:14] Bob Dobbs: So in that situation,

[1:26:17] Bob Dobbs: people project.

[1:26:20] Bob Dobbs: What they think or hope makes them human or special or something that's not glued to the environment.

[1:26:36] Bob Dobbs: So to put human characteristics in animals is to establish your domain over nature.

[1:26:44] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:26:45] Bob Dobbs: nature is not something...

[1:26:48] Bob Dobbs: against me,

[1:26:49] Bob Dobbs: I can control it by saying it's just like humans.

[1:26:53] Bob Dobbs: So that desire is where we get once we've canceled out everything,

[1:27:00] Bob Dobbs: the satellites extended the planet,

[1:27:03] Bob Dobbs: and then the effect of that is a hologram,

[1:27:07] Bob Dobbs: and then you have the increasing implosion of digital media,

[1:27:11] Bob Dobbs: so the hologram gets tinier and tinier,

[1:27:13] Bob Dobbs: and you're going to get into the homeopathic.

[1:27:17] Bob Dobbs: In that,

[1:27:18] Bob Dobbs: somebody is looking,

[1:27:20] Bob Dobbs: everybody is looking for a memory of the human.

[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: And that is a major concern today.

[1:27:27] Bob Dobbs: People are saying,

[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: beginning with Katherine Hayles' book,

[1:27:30] Bob Dobbs: How We Became Post-Human,

[1:27:32] Bob Dobbs: over the last 20 years in academia,

[1:27:34] Bob Dobbs: they're wrestling with what is still a residue of the human.

[1:27:38] Bob Dobbs: So that desire to project and find the human or...

[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: Find it,

[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: maybe I would say each of the bodies has a different aspect of human in it.

[1:27:51] Bob Dobbs: And that is now the ground.

[1:27:55] Bob Dobbs: The ground is not technology.

[1:27:57] Bob Dobbs: It is the search of consciousness of whatever humans think they are when they're conscious.

[1:28:05] Bob Dobbs: So let's see if that's what I'm trying to say.

[1:28:09] Bob Dobbs: So the user is the content.

[1:28:11] Bob Dobbs: You could say the user is the content is taken over.

[1:28:14] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:28:15] Bob Dobbs: Frank Zingrone says this in Media Simplex in 2001.

[1:28:19] Bob Dobbs: He says the content is now ruling the form.

[1:28:22] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:28:23] Bob Dobbs: I see it all over the place.

[1:28:26] Bob Dobbs: What I'm thinking the AP is,

[1:28:27] Bob Dobbs: I see lots of groping for that.

[1:28:31] Bob Dobbs: It could be considered after McLuhan,

[1:28:33] Bob Dobbs: post-McLuhan.

[1:28:35] Bob Dobbs: There needs to be another kind of questioning.

[1:28:38] Bob Dobbs: And it seems to be about what is left of the user.

[1:28:43] Bob Dobbs: So that's my introductory explanation.

[1:28:47] Cameron McEwen: Let me say that

[1:28:50] Cameron McEwen: I don't agree with any of that.

[1:28:52] Cameron McEwen: I think that these questions are pre-McLuhan,

[1:28:55] Cameron McEwen: not post-McLuhan,

[1:28:57] Cameron McEwen: and that they're already said in stark terms by Lewis.

[1:29:03] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:29:04] Cameron McEwen: let's see that.

[1:29:05] Cameron McEwen: When he says arts and science,

[1:29:08] Cameron McEwen: he's talking about the human being as both

[1:29:14] Cameron McEwen: figure and ground,

[1:29:14] Cameron McEwen: or man becomes both figure and ground.

[1:29:23] Cameron McEwen: when when lewis talks about people being governed by philosophy uh that itself is philosophy you could say so there's figure and ground is the

[1:29:38] Cameron McEwen: the matter and the form of what needs to be thought yeah i go with these words um yeah um

[1:29:50] Bob Dobbs: Remember,

[1:29:50] Bob Dobbs: the Anthropomorphic Physical on the Tiny Note chart is the whole chart.

[1:29:54] Bob Dobbs: 1960 to 1990 is the Dobbs quadrant.

[1:30:00] Bob Dobbs: And the other quadrants are subsets or phases through that

[1:30:04] Bob Dobbs: 30-year process or that span of time.

[1:30:08] Bob Dobbs: So the Anthropomorphic Physical this chart is saying is the new ground.

[1:30:15] Bob Dobbs: So let's see if I get anywhere near saying that.

[1:30:19] Bob Dobbs: page 160 at the top part five of six parts the Anthropomorphic Physical in brackets ap so when i put ap i'm referring to anthropomorphic Anthropomorphic Physical not Anthropomorphic Physical Anthropomorphic Physical so

[1:30:35] Bob Dobbs: um i say look at the first quotation below man becomes both figure and ground another merger of medium and message because i talked about that was like the fifth or sixth definition of the medium is the message right McLuhan said to the father

[1:30:49] Bob Dobbs: to the priest that he didn't know the difference anymore.

[1:30:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:30:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:30:53] Bob Dobbs: so there's the merging coming.

[1:30:56] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:30:56] Bob Dobbs: he may have always worked from the merger since the 40s and recognized it in Lewis,

[1:31:03] Bob Dobbs: but when you write books,

[1:31:04] Bob Dobbs: you're going to separate things.

[1:31:07] Bob Dobbs: So you create a diachronic problem,

[1:31:09] Bob Dobbs: and then you're going to spend a lot of work trying to cancel it.

[1:31:12] Bob Dobbs: And so that's what Joyce did with Finnegans Wake.

[1:31:14] Bob Dobbs: So he's going to redo

[1:31:16] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake.

[1:31:17] Bob Dobbs: It starts off by making the fallacy.

[1:31:20] Bob Dobbs: Remember he says,

[1:31:20] Bob Dobbs: you think my fallacy is wrong.

[1:31:22] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:31:22] Bob Dobbs: it's not wrong if it was a useful beginning.

[1:31:25] Bob Dobbs: So that leads me to agree that

[1:31:30] Bob Dobbs: Lewis did it.

[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: so then you have the quote from

[1:31:36] Bob Dobbs: Marshall McLuhan,

[1:31:37] Bob Dobbs: Barry Nevitt,

[1:31:39] Bob Dobbs: is a man who has become both figure and ground via the electrotechnical extension of his awareness.

[1:31:46] Bob Dobbs: That's crude awareness.

[1:31:48] Bob Dobbs: Raw awareness is what people are trying to figure out what of that remains,

[1:31:55] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:31:56] Bob Dobbs: This is not part of a person or concept.

[1:31:57] Bob Dobbs: This is awareness.

[1:31:59] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:32:00] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan once said,

[1:32:02] Bob Dobbs: I think,

[1:32:03] Bob Dobbs: that original sin was lack of awareness.

[1:32:07] Bob Dobbs: You remember that quote?

[1:32:09] Cameron McEwen: No.

[1:32:10] Bob Dobbs: Hmm.

[1:32:10] Bob Dobbs: He says that somewhere.

[1:32:13] Bob Dobbs: He talks about original sin as lack of awareness.

[1:32:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:32:16] Bob Dobbs: I'll see if I can find that at some point.

[1:32:19] Bob Dobbs: So I say,

[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: once that background is acknowledged,

[1:32:22] Bob Dobbs: figure and ground have merged,

[1:32:25] Bob Dobbs: I suggest the application of my five-bodied model implies the following phrases.

[1:32:31] Bob Dobbs: Then I have myself saying,

[1:32:34] Bob Dobbs: these titles fit what I'm trying to say.

[1:32:37] Bob Dobbs: What titles am I talking about?

[1:32:44] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:32:45] Bob Dobbs: so I've got different articles.

[1:32:48] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:32:51] Bob Dobbs: so I suggest the application of my five-body model implies the following phases.

[1:32:57] Bob Dobbs: That might be too diachronic for you.

[1:32:59] Bob Dobbs: So the following titles fit what I'm trying to say,

[1:33:02] Bob Dobbs: not the details of their article.

[1:33:04] Bob Dobbs: So I'm isolating the titles.

[1:33:06] Bob Dobbs: First one.

[1:33:07] Cameron McEwen: So I think you mean the titles that are going to follow.

[1:33:10] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:33:11] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:33:11] Bob Dobbs: I see them.

[1:33:11] Bob Dobbs: I number them.

[1:33:12] Bob Dobbs: One.

[1:33:13] Cameron McEwen: But one thing I want to just bring out here,

[1:33:16] Cameron McEwen: you use the word merger,

[1:33:19] Cameron McEwen: and

[1:33:20] Cameron McEwen: I'm not so sure that that's a good word to use.

[1:33:25] Cameron McEwen: Man becomes both figure and ground.

[1:33:27] Cameron McEwen: That's not intended,

[1:33:30] Cameron McEwen: at least in my reading,

[1:33:31] Cameron McEwen: as a merger.

[1:33:33] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:33:33] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:33:33] Bob Dobbs: the better word is tactile,

[1:33:35] Bob Dobbs: if you understand tactile is the on and off.

[1:33:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:33:37] Cameron McEwen: absolutely,

[1:33:38] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[1:33:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:33:40] Bob Dobbs: So.

[1:33:41] Bob Dobbs: But see,

[1:33:41] Bob Dobbs: that's a conversational statement,

[1:33:44] Bob Dobbs: merger.

[1:33:45] Bob Dobbs: I'm more lazy and relaxed in what I say in the blue parts.

[1:33:49] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:33:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:33:51] Bob Dobbs: It's bar talk.

[1:33:52] Bob Dobbs: I'm talking to some guy in the bar who doesn't know merger is not a good word.

[1:33:59] Bob Dobbs: And then I pose the pink quotes.

[1:34:02] Bob Dobbs: It's more precise with that phrase,

[1:34:07] Bob Dobbs: electrotechnical extension of his awareness.

[1:34:09] Bob Dobbs: So once you get what I'm saying about that...

[1:34:13] Bob Dobbs: Content becomes ground.

[1:34:15] Bob Dobbs: And yes,

[1:34:16] Bob Dobbs: there's a tactile flipping back and forth,

[1:34:17] Bob Dobbs: I like to say,

[1:34:18] Bob Dobbs: even though that might not be the right image,

[1:34:20] Bob Dobbs: flipping back and forth.

[1:34:22] Bob Dobbs: But that's the way people hear it.

[1:34:24] Bob Dobbs: Once that background is acknowledged,

[1:34:25] Bob Dobbs: I suggest the application of my five-body model implies the following phases.

[1:34:30] Bob Dobbs: Have I laid out the five bodies already?

[1:34:33] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:34:34] Cameron McEwen: we went through your chart.

[1:34:37] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[1:34:39] Cameron McEwen: But of course,

[1:34:39] Cameron McEwen: we can go back there at some point.

[1:34:41] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:34:41] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:34:41] Cameron McEwen: no.

[1:34:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:34:42] Bob Dobbs: so we got the five bodies,

[1:34:43] Bob Dobbs: I already said it.

[1:34:45] Bob Dobbs: Here are the titles.

[1:34:46] Bob Dobbs: The Media Fit the Battle of Jericho.

[1:34:49] Bob Dobbs: That's July 1956,

[1:34:51] Bob Dobbs: Explorations Magazine No.

[1:34:53] Bob Dobbs: 6.

[1:34:55] Bob Dobbs: Republished in

[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: Pamphlet No.

[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: 16 in 2005 in the Ginkgo Press

[1:35:00] Bob Dobbs: Collection, Marshall McLuhan Unbound,

[1:35:03] Bob Dobbs: where they take

[1:35:04] Bob Dobbs: 20 important McLuhan articles.

[1:35:08] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:35:09] Bob Dobbs: Media Fit the Battle of Jericho.

[1:35:10] Bob Dobbs: That's where the walls get knocked down.

[1:35:12] Bob Dobbs: So all the walls are disappearing.

[1:35:16] Bob Dobbs: That's the kind of fusion.

[1:35:17] Bob Dobbs: So I say the walls are knocked down for the chemical body and astral body via analog media.

[1:35:24] Bob Dobbs: That's the 20th century,

[1:35:25] Bob Dobbs: before you get to the digital,

[1:35:28] Bob Dobbs: which is late.

[1:35:28] Cameron McEwen: And we should point out that the knocking down of walls is an image that

[1:35:37] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan took from the...

[1:35:42] Cameron McEwen: André

[1:35:45] Cameron McEwen: Malraux. Malraux,

[1:35:46] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:35:48] Cameron McEwen: And he used it for Classroom Without Walls,

[1:35:53] Cameron McEwen: Pornography Without Walls,

[1:35:55] Cameron McEwen: Brothel Without Walls,

[1:35:57] Cameron McEwen: on and on and on,

[1:35:58] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:35:58] Cameron McEwen: So it was one of his favorite images.

[1:36:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:36:01] Bob Dobbs: and that's,

[1:36:03] Bob Dobbs: in the Arthur Kroker Quadrant,

[1:36:04] Bob Dobbs: you have number 14.

[1:36:05] Bob Dobbs: The 1 of 1-4 represents the no walls.

[1:36:11] Bob Dobbs: The four is the necessary Anthropomorphic Physical of propping up walls,

[1:36:17] Bob Dobbs: fake as they could be or fragile,

[1:36:19] Bob Dobbs: to create a bit of difference to the implosion.

[1:36:24] Bob Dobbs: So the four is,

[1:36:27] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:36:27] Bob Dobbs: quadrophrenia,

[1:36:28] Bob Dobbs: it's hysteria,

[1:36:29] Bob Dobbs: panic,

[1:36:30] Bob Dobbs: ecstasy,

[1:36:32] Bob Dobbs: schizophrenia.

[1:36:33] Bob Dobbs: I got five conditions in the Tiny Note chart.

[1:36:39] Bob Dobbs: So that's these...

[1:36:41] Bob Dobbs: fraudulent selves or walls that people have been propping up the last 40 years,

[1:36:46] Bob Dobbs: which you object to,

[1:36:50] Bob Dobbs: is the AP.

[1:37:01] Bob Dobbs: These are grasping at attempts to duck.

[1:37:05] Bob Dobbs: You don't get the whole of your head blown off.

[1:37:09] Bob Dobbs: Okay?

[1:37:11] Bob Dobbs: This is the attack on people,

[1:37:13] Bob Dobbs: on their awareness.

[1:37:15] Bob Dobbs: So the walls are knocked down for the chemical body and astral body,

[1:37:18] Bob Dobbs: which at that time,

[1:37:20] Bob Dobbs: 30 years ago,

[1:37:20] Bob Dobbs: I was saying was original,

[1:37:22] Bob Dobbs: first nature,

[1:37:24] Bob Dobbs: not second nature,

[1:37:25] Bob Dobbs: which is the technologies.

[1:37:27] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:37:31] Bob Dobbs: did you say something?

[1:37:33] Cameron McEwen: No.

[1:37:34] Bob Dobbs: Just another voice came in.

[1:37:39] Bob Dobbs: The TV body and chip body are made by humans.

[1:37:44] Bob Dobbs: They're not given by first nature.

[1:37:47] Bob Dobbs: I might not agree with that anymore,

[1:37:49] Bob Dobbs: having talked to iON,

[1:37:51] Bob Dobbs: but that's not in this article.

[1:37:55] Cameron McEwen: But when you say made,

[1:37:58] Cameron McEwen: that's an interesting distinction from merge,

[1:38:02] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:38:02] Cameron McEwen: So I think made is the right term then.

[1:38:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:38:06] Bob Dobbs: that they were made by first nature,

[1:38:08] Bob Dobbs: you mean?

[1:38:10] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:38:10] Cameron McEwen: I'm just saying that the distinction between merging and making is at the very heart of McLuhan's work.

[1:38:20] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:38:21] Cameron McEwen: The reason that figure and ground can merge without becoming sort of obviated is that the...

[1:38:36] Bob Dobbs: The complementary making process is involved.

[1:38:39] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:38:40] Cameron McEwen: Correct,

[1:38:40] Cameron McEwen: so that a figure can be an appropriate representation of ground.

[1:38:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:38:46] Bob Dobbs: and that could be what I'm getting at with AP.

[1:38:49] Cameron McEwen: Uh-huh,

[1:38:50] Cameron McEwen: I think it is.

[1:38:51] Cameron McEwen: I think it is.

[1:38:52] Cameron McEwen: So you have the big question that's being raised is,

[1:39:00] Cameron McEwen: if something is inherently plural,

[1:39:03] Cameron McEwen: can it still come to some sort of resolution,

[1:39:08] Cameron McEwen: some sort of focus?

[1:39:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:39:10] Cameron McEwen: And the answer to that is yes,

[1:39:11] Cameron McEwen: it can,

[1:39:12] Cameron McEwen: because focus is a matter of making,

[1:39:14] Cameron McEwen: not of merging.

[1:39:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:39:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:39:17] Bob Dobbs: merging can have an aspect of matching in it.

[1:39:20] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:39:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:39:22] Cameron McEwen: the urge to merge is the urge to match.

[1:39:26] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:39:27] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:39:27] Bob Dobbs: so then I have the quote from page 21 in Finnegans Wake.

[1:39:30] Bob Dobbs: Why do I am a lookalike,

[1:39:32] Bob Dobbs: a poss of porter peas?

[1:39:34] Bob Dobbs: That is replayed in Finnegans Wake all through the book.

[1:39:38] Bob Dobbs: It's originally said in the Prank Queen section,

[1:39:41] Bob Dobbs: I think,

[1:39:43] Bob Dobbs: where the woman knocks on the king's door and intrudes.

[1:39:50] Bob Dobbs: She's known as the Prank Queen.

[1:39:51] Bob Dobbs: And when my copy of

[1:39:55] Bob Dobbs: The Skeleton Key of Finnegans Wake,

[1:39:58] Bob Dobbs: which is McLuhan's copy,

[1:40:00] Bob Dobbs: and I have it,

[1:40:04] Bob Dobbs: there's not many annotations by McLuhan.

[1:40:06] Bob Dobbs: book by Campbell and Robinson,

[1:40:08] Bob Dobbs: but he does say at the beginning that Campbell does not understand what the Prank Queen is.

[1:40:14] Bob Dobbs: The Prank Queen is the effect of the alphabet,

[1:40:17] Bob Dobbs: the beginning of visual space.

[1:40:19] Bob Dobbs: And so this merger or fusion,

[1:40:25] Bob Dobbs: why do I look like a possum porter peas,

[1:40:29] Bob Dobbs: is a major effect or theme in Finnegans Wake.

[1:40:33] Bob Dobbs: So I say...

[1:40:35] Bob Dobbs: Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker,

[1:40:36] Bob Dobbs: HCE,

[1:40:37] Bob Dobbs: pronounces variations in different languages of the sentence above,

[1:40:40] Bob Dobbs: meaning the posse of Porter Pease,

[1:40:42] Bob Dobbs: all the way through Finnegans Wake.

[1:40:43] Bob Dobbs: He's trying to figure out,

[1:40:45] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:40:45] Bob Dobbs: why have I changed?

[1:40:47] Bob Dobbs: Why do I look like this now?

[1:40:49] Bob Dobbs: Unquote.

[1:40:50] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't know the media changed him,

[1:40:52] Bob Dobbs: or he's asking rhetorically because he does know.

[1:40:57] Bob Dobbs: To see if you know.

[1:40:59] Bob Dobbs: The walls have been knocked down,

[1:41:00] Bob Dobbs: but then they're rebuilt by the digital technology.

[1:41:02] Bob Dobbs: So...

[1:41:06] Bob Dobbs: When I bring in Cosmic Awareness,

[1:41:08] Bob Dobbs: and it said that the original separateness merged with the plane of essence in 67,

[1:41:14] Bob Dobbs: and you then have the,

[1:41:17] Bob Dobbs: and that original separateness was called Rai,

[1:41:19] Bob Dobbs: and that was another esoteric source.

[1:41:22] Bob Dobbs: I remember McLuhan says a lot of my sources are esoteric,

[1:41:25] Bob Dobbs: well this is very esoteric.

[1:41:27] Bob Dobbs: And so the afterimage that's left is the internet and string theory.

[1:41:36] Bob Dobbs: The answer,

[1:41:36] Bob Dobbs: the AP,

[1:41:37] Bob Dobbs: all these things are what the digital tech,

[1:41:41] Bob Dobbs: we didn't need to do the digital,

[1:41:44] Bob Dobbs: but we did because we were incomplete,

[1:41:47] Bob Dobbs: so we wanted to put some walls up,

[1:41:49] Bob Dobbs: and that's the very transparent digital walls.

[1:41:54] Bob Dobbs: They're rebuilt by the digital technology,

[1:41:55] Bob Dobbs: and that is another aspect of the urge for the AP.

[1:42:00] Bob Dobbs: So then the second title.

[1:42:03] Bob Dobbs: I say it's symptomatic of this,

[1:42:04] Bob Dobbs: is what we just quoted,

[1:42:08] Bob Dobbs: December 68,

[1:42:09] Bob Dobbs: Playboy magazine,

[1:42:10] Bob Dobbs: the reversal of the overheated image.

[1:42:12] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:42:12] Bob Dobbs: the subtitle is,

[1:42:13] Bob Dobbs: mind your meteor men,

[1:42:15] Bob Dobbs: or you'll catch a cold environment.

[1:42:17] Bob Dobbs: And we caught a cold environment after 69.

[1:42:23] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[1:42:24] Bob Dobbs: And it became acoustically defined as string theory,

[1:42:29] Bob Dobbs: or a reference to acoustic effects.

[1:42:34] Bob Dobbs: And what else?

[1:42:35] Bob Dobbs: And the internet,

[1:42:37] Bob Dobbs: which is an interesting imploded environment where a lot of making goes on of no consequence.

[1:42:47] Bob Dobbs: They even have an economy based on it.

[1:42:50] Bob Dobbs: It's adding up the number of people who bought a fucking chocolate bar.

[1:42:57] Bob Dobbs: Talk about superfluity of information.

[1:43:01] Bob Dobbs: Yet it becomes a ground or a pseudo ground.

[1:43:05] Bob Dobbs: So this is the nebulous area.

[1:43:08] Bob Dobbs: This is where it's called post-McLuhan,

[1:43:10] Bob Dobbs: post-his-time,

[1:43:12] Bob Dobbs: post-media.

[1:43:13] Bob Dobbs: That's what I'm groping with here,

[1:43:16] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:43:18] Bob Dobbs: We are somewheres,

[1:43:19] Bob Dobbs: but it's very hard to say how it is.

[1:43:22] Bob Dobbs: And that's been the problem for 34 years.

[1:43:24] Bob Dobbs: People haven't,

[1:43:25] Bob Dobbs: I've seen people say,

[1:43:26] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:43:26] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was right on for his time,

[1:43:28] Bob Dobbs: but...

[1:43:28] Bob Dobbs: this is a new,

[1:43:29] Bob Dobbs: different time.

[1:43:30] Bob Dobbs: We need a new McLuhan.

[1:43:32] Bob Dobbs: You ever see that plea?

[1:43:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:43:34] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:43:35] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:43:35] Cameron McEwen: It's ridiculous,

[1:43:36] Cameron McEwen: but I see it all the time.

[1:43:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:43:37] Bob Dobbs: but it's communicating something that we got somewhere that McLuhan is relevant to,

[1:43:43] Bob Dobbs: but we don't understand McLuhan or we don't understand the continuity of him.

[1:43:48] Bob Dobbs: We think that he's just talking about TV and it's been grown to complain that he couldn't talk about TV with his students in the 90s.

[1:43:55] Bob Dobbs: They didn't have a TV.

[1:43:57] Bob Dobbs: They didn't know what the fucking word referred to.

[1:44:00] Bob Dobbs: So that's why he came up with the phrase simplex,

[1:44:04] Bob Dobbs: the digital added complexity,

[1:44:06] Bob Dobbs: even though it made things easier and simpler.

[1:44:10] Bob Dobbs: That's his thesis.

[1:44:14] Bob Dobbs: That's part of the figure ground merger,

[1:44:16] Bob Dobbs: making an AP reality.

[1:44:20] Bob Dobbs: So after I say that,

[1:44:22] Bob Dobbs: I go,

[1:44:22] Bob Dobbs: mind your media men.

[1:44:24] Bob Dobbs: These are the intelligence agency personnel.

[1:44:27] Bob Dobbs: These are the people that make the patterns that dominate and rule society.

[1:44:33] Bob Dobbs: They're being ruled by ICON now,

[1:44:35] Bob Dobbs: by slogan,

[1:44:37] Bob Dobbs: by what the White House says.

[1:44:40] Bob Dobbs: And remember,

[1:44:41] Cameron McEwen: notice what what Bob is saying here is exactly what Lewis said in 1926.

[1:44:47] Bob Dobbs: When I'm reading Lewis,

[1:44:49] Bob Dobbs: I feel that way.

[1:44:50] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:44:51] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:44:52] Bob Dobbs: I'm really struck by what he what he did,

[1:44:55] Bob Dobbs: what he said.

[1:44:55] Bob Dobbs: He really got it.

[1:44:57] Bob Dobbs: And it's interesting how nobody they projected on him that he was paranoid.

[1:45:03] Bob Dobbs: He was schizophrenic and hysterical.

[1:45:06] Bob Dobbs: They were that.

[1:45:08] Bob Dobbs: Boone's very projected that.

[1:45:11] Cameron McEwen: And they were the ones.

[1:45:13] Cameron McEwen: He was,

[1:45:13] Cameron McEwen: Lewis was not understood,

[1:45:18] Cameron McEwen: but people knew unconsciously that what he was saying was disturbing.

[1:45:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:45:27] Cameron McEwen: And so then what they did was they took the disturbance and put it onto other stuff like politics or race or...

[1:45:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:45:36] Cameron McEwen: Hitler.

[1:45:37] Cameron McEwen: Whatever.

[1:45:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:45:38] Cameron McEwen: so it was...

[1:45:40] Cameron McEwen: Lewis for at least

[1:45:43] Cameron McEwen: 100 years has been seen only through a glass darkly.

[1:45:51] Cameron McEwen: It's been seen through distortion that may be coming to an end now.

[1:45:58] Cameron McEwen: We'll see.

[1:45:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:45:59] Bob Dobbs: now this is

[1:46:01] Bob Dobbs: Paul and

[1:46:02] Bob Dobbs: Alan, the two baby boomers who were just born before baby boomer time.

[1:46:08] Bob Dobbs: Early 40s say they led the

[1:46:12] Bob Dobbs: Lewis quote revival or tried to,

[1:46:15] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:46:16] Bob Dobbs: and they're both in the society.

[1:46:19] Bob Dobbs: So I'm doing anthropology on the Wyndham Lewis gang.

[1:46:21] Bob Dobbs: What are they going to do with this change that you just stated?

[1:46:25] Bob Dobbs: And they have said

[1:46:27] Bob Dobbs: Joyce dominated in the 20th century.

[1:46:30] Bob Dobbs: We're going to make Lewis be the figure of awe and wonder in the

[1:46:35] Bob Dobbs: 21st century.

[1:46:36] Bob Dobbs: I think that's going to be pretty hard to do,

[1:46:38] Bob Dobbs: but they have the motive.

[1:46:40] Bob Dobbs: They see that

[1:46:41] Bob Dobbs: Lewis in some way is more relevant than looking at Joyce.

[1:46:45] Bob Dobbs: And remember,

[1:46:46] Bob Dobbs: Lewis said that,

[1:46:47] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:46:47] Bob Dobbs: Joyce,

[1:46:48] Bob Dobbs: that he's Ulysses.

[1:46:49] Bob Dobbs: He's old-fashioned.

[1:46:49] Bob Dobbs: What old Dublin?

[1:46:50] Bob Dobbs: Who gives a damn about that?

[1:46:51] Bob Dobbs: What about we're dealing with radio?

[1:46:53] Bob Dobbs: We're dealing with newspapers and movies.

[1:46:55] Bob Dobbs: Come on,

[1:46:56] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:46:56] Bob Dobbs: in the 20s.

[1:46:58] Bob Dobbs: And he was picking up on what was the real issues,

[1:47:01] Bob Dobbs: not nostalgia for old Dublin.

[1:47:03] Bob Dobbs: So that...

[1:47:05] Bob Dobbs: part of Lewis is what stands.

[1:47:08] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan replayed Lewis exactly.

[1:47:11] Bob Dobbs: He had the same problem,

[1:47:13] Bob Dobbs: if you want to say he had a problem.

[1:47:17] Bob Dobbs: He did Lewis again.

[1:47:21] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.

[1:47:22] Cameron McEwen: If you read Paleface today,

[1:47:27] Cameron McEwen: in the age of wokeness,

[1:47:30] Cameron McEwen: it's like somebody set out in 1929.

[1:47:34] Cameron McEwen: and actually that was written in 27,

[1:47:39] Cameron McEwen: somebody came from England to the United States for the first time and looked at the United States and then wrote Paleface.

[1:47:50] Cameron McEwen: And what did they write?

[1:47:51] Cameron McEwen: They wrote that the world has become a moral place.

[1:47:56] Cameron McEwen: That's what Lewis says.

[1:47:57] Cameron McEwen: Everything has been taken over by morality.

[1:48:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:48:02] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:48:03] Cameron McEwen: That's where we are today.

[1:48:04] Cameron McEwen: 100 years later,

[1:48:06] Cameron McEwen: all the world has done is made concrete what Lewis could already see in the abstract.

[1:48:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:48:14] Bob Dobbs: and that's where

[1:48:17] Bob Dobbs: Kroker and them,

[1:48:18] Bob Dobbs: in their journal,

[1:48:20] Bob Dobbs: put together a book about value.

[1:48:22] Bob Dobbs: The valuation of values is the new trend in the

[1:48:25] Bob Dobbs: 80s. I think that's what he meant by morals.

[1:48:29] Bob Dobbs: His buddy,

[1:48:30] Bob Dobbs: John Fekete,

[1:48:31] Bob Dobbs: the student of...

[1:48:32] Bob Dobbs: Theall,

[1:48:32] Bob Dobbs: who taught at Trent,

[1:48:34] Bob Dobbs: he gets into the moral stuff of the

[1:48:37] Bob Dobbs: 90s.

[1:48:39] Bob Dobbs: But they also call it values,

[1:48:41] Bob Dobbs: which is content.

[1:48:42] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan predicted that content would become ground.

[1:48:45] Bob Dobbs: So the arguing over values and morals is the afterimage of the human.

[1:48:53] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[1:48:53] Cameron McEwen: So that's,

[1:48:54] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:48:54] Cameron McEwen: that's all that happens these days,

[1:48:56] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:48:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:48:58] Cameron McEwen: That's,

[1:48:59] Cameron McEwen: that's...

[1:49:00] Cameron McEwen: what politics is about,

[1:49:02] Cameron McEwen: what education is about,

[1:49:03] Cameron McEwen: what art is about.

[1:49:06] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:49:06] Cameron McEwen: it's just,

[1:49:06] Cameron McEwen: it's all nonsense.

[1:49:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:49:09] Bob Dobbs: and we read Lewis books.

[1:49:11] Bob Dobbs: We read them in this group.

[1:49:13] Bob Dobbs: And they're always,

[1:49:14] Bob Dobbs: when we start talking about them once a month,

[1:49:17] Bob Dobbs: whatever we've read,

[1:49:18] Bob Dobbs: everybody says,

[1:49:18] Bob Dobbs: it's amazing.

[1:49:19] Bob Dobbs: The guy is right up there with today.

[1:49:22] Bob Dobbs: This stuff is relevant today,

[1:49:24] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[1:49:25] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:49:25] Bob Dobbs: They're struck by that.

[1:49:26] Bob Dobbs: You can't miss it.

[1:49:28] Bob Dobbs: He's talking like someone.

[1:49:30] Bob Dobbs: about today,

[1:49:30] Bob Dobbs: in today,

[1:49:32] Bob Dobbs: but from a detachment that is ahead of everybody on the issues.

[1:49:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:49:38] Bob Dobbs: that's what's interesting about it.

[1:49:39] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:49:39] Bob Dobbs: like,

[1:49:40] Bob Dobbs: he put into English what Joyce didn't know how to put into English.

[1:49:43] Bob Dobbs: He could only paint it.

[1:49:47] Bob Dobbs: He did the pictorial tactile presentation of the dilemma,

[1:49:51] Bob Dobbs: and Lewis knew how to talk about it in English.

[1:49:54] Bob Dobbs: So he didn't have to,

[1:49:55] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:49:56] Bob Dobbs: jump through multilingual,

[1:49:57] Bob Dobbs: multi-punning hoops.

[1:50:00] Bob Dobbs: Though he recognizes that's the issue that Joyce is pointing to.

[1:50:06] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:50:08] Bob Dobbs: and maybe Dobbs is doing this.

[1:50:11] Bob Dobbs: So the walls are then rebuilt for the TV body,

[1:50:15] Bob Dobbs: but not for the chemical body.

[1:50:18] Bob Dobbs: And the astral body's rebuilt by the chip body,

[1:50:20] Bob Dobbs: which is the

[1:50:21] Bob Dobbs: 21st century.

[1:50:25] Bob Dobbs: So then I say,

[1:50:26] Bob Dobbs: citing the cold,

[1:50:27] Bob Dobbs: so-called violent late 60s.

[1:50:30] Bob Dobbs: 60s,

[1:50:31] Bob Dobbs: the Westerners sometimes like to say it was more violent back then than now.

[1:50:36] Bob Dobbs: People in the West,

[1:50:37] Bob Dobbs: I guess I mean.

[1:50:38] Bob Dobbs: It was violent because people wanted to be able to experience it from the safety of their home.

[1:50:43] Bob Dobbs: They didn't walk out there among the non-walls.

[1:50:48] Bob Dobbs: So citing the cold,

[1:50:49] Bob Dobbs: so-called violent late

[1:50:51] Bob Dobbs: 60s, it was more violent,

[1:50:55] Bob Dobbs: they thought,

[1:50:55] Bob Dobbs: back then.

[1:50:59] Bob Dobbs: And they didn't know it would get even more violent.

[1:51:01] Bob Dobbs: Because people stayed in their home and watched it on TV.

[1:51:03] Bob Dobbs: They didn't want to walk among the global theater,

[1:51:05] Bob Dobbs: the Global Membrane.

[1:51:07] Bob Dobbs: They didn't want to walk out there among the non-walls.

[1:51:10] Bob Dobbs: So then I quote James Joyce,

[1:51:11] Bob Dobbs: chalking ogres on walls,

[1:51:14] Bob Dobbs: projecting ogres,

[1:51:16] Bob Dobbs: humans,

[1:51:17] Bob Dobbs: into the post-human,

[1:51:20] Bob Dobbs: into the environment,

[1:51:22] Bob Dobbs: which is being projected as Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:51:28] Bob Dobbs: or being seen that way.

[1:51:29] Bob Dobbs: So then I say,

[1:51:30] Bob Dobbs: in Understanding Media,

[1:51:31] Bob Dobbs: there's a page where McLuhan talks about the photograph is the brothel without walls.

[1:51:36] Bob Dobbs: He uses the phrase without walls many times.

[1:51:40] Bob Dobbs: Different parts.

[1:51:43] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.

[1:51:45] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:51:45] Cameron McEwen: that's what I was talking about a little while ago,

[1:51:48] Cameron McEwen: and here you are saying exactly the same thing.

[1:51:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:51:51] Bob Dobbs: Malraux.

[1:51:52] Bob Dobbs: He uses the phrase without walls many times.

[1:51:54] Bob Dobbs: Different parts of the media are without walls.

[1:51:56] Bob Dobbs: It's the end of the fragmented,

[1:51:58] Bob Dobbs: isolated,

[1:51:58] Bob Dobbs: private self.

[1:52:01] Bob Dobbs: That's what my gossipy in the bar says.

[1:52:04] Bob Dobbs: That's what we're going to call the blue part.

[1:52:05] Bob Dobbs: That's Bob hanging out in the bar.

[1:52:06] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[1:52:09] Bob Dobbs: Talking among the peasants who don't deserve to hear my talk.

[1:52:15] Bob Dobbs: But I'm doing it.

[1:52:16] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying that McLuhan,

[1:52:18] Bob Dobbs: whatever he said.

[1:52:19] Bob Dobbs: has no anti-environmental impact anymore.

[1:52:23] Bob Dobbs: The digital phase of the Android meme aping us,

[1:52:27] Bob Dobbs: that's 1980 to 2000,

[1:52:30] Bob Dobbs: when he died in 1980,

[1:52:32] Bob Dobbs: popularized by Twin Peaks,

[1:52:34] Bob Dobbs: the Return series in 2019.

[1:52:38] Bob Dobbs: So the digital phase of the Android meme aping us is a flip from the analog phase of the Android meme shaping us.

[1:52:46] Bob Dobbs: So we're not being shaped anymore.

[1:52:49] Bob Dobbs: We're up against the aping or us projecting that something out there is aping us.

[1:52:54] Bob Dobbs: We're looking for something to connect with.

[1:52:58] Bob Dobbs: So the shaping is 60 to 80,

[1:53:01] Bob Dobbs: popularized by the Matrix series,

[1:53:04] Bob Dobbs: but then the aping is Twin Peaks.

[1:53:08] Bob Dobbs: So the tools weren't shaping us anymore,

[1:53:11] Bob Dobbs: perhaps popularized by

[1:53:13] Bob Dobbs: 2001 A Space Odyssey from Stanley Kubrick.

[1:53:17] Bob Dobbs: I what is that I'm saying the medium is the message is popularized I mean he did think he was doing McLuhan but in the Playboy interview he does around that time he says he actually did the opposite of McLuhan but he wanted McLuhan was on his mind in making that movie even

[1:53:33] Bob Dobbs: wanted McLuhan to uh see it force him to watch it uh so they say that man Andrew okay so here we get into what's being extended.

[1:53:43] Bob Dobbs: Not us.

[1:53:45] Bob Dobbs: damn fucking mammal,

[1:53:47] Bob Dobbs: if the machines are mammals or mammalian,

[1:53:49] Bob Dobbs: they are extending themselves.

[1:53:51] Bob Dobbs: So I'm saying the Android meme is extending itself.

[1:53:54] Bob Dobbs: Its different parts are not extensions of human faculties.

[1:53:57] Bob Dobbs: We're witnessing this thing.

[1:53:59] Bob Dobbs: this mammal growing wings extending itself.

[1:54:02] Bob Dobbs: It's not influencing human beings other than they have a general depression because it's the end of technology and they're taking that as the end of World War III.

[1:54:11] Bob Dobbs: The shaping us is in the Matrix series.

[1:54:14] Bob Dobbs: The tools weren't shaping or massaging humans anymore.

[1:54:17] Bob Dobbs: That's what's funny.

[1:54:18] Bob Dobbs: The Android meme replays McLuhan,

[1:54:20] Bob Dobbs: creates a McLuhan revival,

[1:54:22] Bob Dobbs: while what McLuhan says is not applicable anymore,

[1:54:24] Bob Dobbs: if you listen to me.

[1:54:26] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:54:26] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said it 50 years ago.

[1:54:28] Bob Dobbs: You can't tell what's the medium and what's the message.

[1:54:32] Bob Dobbs: The Android meme is aping us.

[1:54:33] Bob Dobbs: Now this is a line in the album,

[1:54:36] Bob Dobbs: The Medium is the Massage,

[1:54:37] Bob Dobbs: where somebody says the media are shaping us,

[1:54:41] Bob Dobbs: and then later it said,

[1:54:44] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:54:45] Bob Dobbs: they're aping us.

[1:54:46] Bob Dobbs: Now actually,

[1:54:47] Bob Dobbs: I heard the album the other day,

[1:54:49] Bob Dobbs: and I realized the aping is said first.

[1:54:52] Bob Dobbs: Then the shaping sentence is later in the album.

[1:54:57] Bob Dobbs: I had remembered it backwards all these years.

[1:55:00] Bob Dobbs: So anyways,

[1:55:01] Bob Dobbs: that was a new shocker.

[1:55:02] Bob Dobbs: The Android meme is aping us with more Jerry Springer type shows and the audiences think that the world is getting dumber and dumber.

[1:55:10] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:55:10] Bob Dobbs: the Android meme is getting smarter and showing how humans can believe they are still humans.

[1:55:15] Bob Dobbs: There's allowing the AP to appear to be viable.

[1:55:20] Bob Dobbs: This is all a fighting against the fact that everything has disappeared.

[1:55:23] Bob Dobbs: Every now and then,

[1:55:24] Bob Dobbs: somebody from way back then will shout to me,

[1:55:26] Bob Dobbs: Hey Bob,

[1:55:27] Bob Dobbs: everything's disappeared.

[1:55:28] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:55:28] Bob Dobbs: I used to say that in CKLN 40 years ago.

[1:55:31] Cameron McEwen: Yep.

[1:55:31] Bob Dobbs: They remember.

[1:55:32] Bob Dobbs: It comes rushing back to them 30 years later.

[1:55:36] Bob Dobbs: That's my slogan.

[1:55:37] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:55:37] Bob Dobbs: that's what I'm identified with.

[1:55:38] Bob Dobbs: That's my medium is the message.

[1:55:40] Bob Dobbs: Hey Marshall,

[1:55:40] Bob Dobbs: medium is the message.

[1:55:41] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:55:42] Bob Dobbs: they say,

[1:55:42] Bob Dobbs: hey Bob,

[1:55:42] Bob Dobbs: everything's disappeared.

[1:55:45] Bob Dobbs: So shaping is the medium massaging you and doing something to you.

[1:55:49] Bob Dobbs: But the media aren't doing anything to you now.

[1:55:51] Bob Dobbs: Most people would believe knowledge is doing something to us.

[1:55:54] Bob Dobbs: They take the conventional literate view,

[1:55:57] Bob Dobbs: but they don't notice that you can't figure out what it is,

[1:55:59] Bob Dobbs: who's doing it,

[1:56:00] Bob Dobbs: plus nobody can stop it.

[1:56:02] Bob Dobbs: You can't find the faucet to turn it off.

[1:56:05] Bob Dobbs: And then the sober Bob says,

[1:56:07] Bob Dobbs: I'm now back in the classroom,

[1:56:09] Bob Dobbs: and I know this is a difficult percept to get.

[1:56:13] Bob Dobbs: Then,

[1:56:13] Bob Dobbs: it's not blue,

[1:56:14] Bob Dobbs: but,

[1:56:15] Bob Dobbs: oh no,

[1:56:16] Bob Dobbs: this is a quote,

[1:56:16] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[1:56:17] Bob Dobbs: So then there's this long quote from Kroker,

[1:56:23] Bob Dobbs: where does it end?

[1:56:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:56:27] Bob Dobbs: 164.

[1:56:28] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:56:28] Bob Dobbs: a real long quote.

[1:56:29] Bob Dobbs: It's interrupted.

[1:56:30] Bob Dobbs: Holy shit.

[1:56:31] Bob Dobbs: So that's from his great book,

[1:56:32] Bob Dobbs: Spasm,

[1:56:33] Bob Dobbs: in 1993,

[1:56:34] Bob Dobbs: subtitled Virtual Reality,

[1:56:35] Bob Dobbs: Android Music,

[1:56:37] Bob Dobbs: and Electric Flesh.

[1:56:39] Bob Dobbs: So...

[1:56:40] Bob Dobbs: He's starting to use the word android in that period,

[1:56:43] Bob Dobbs: around the time I'm starting to use it.

[1:56:45] Bob Dobbs: So let's go back to this quote.

[1:56:50] Bob Dobbs: It's a good one,

[1:56:52] Bob Dobbs: and it is attempting to complexify what McLuhan simplified.

[1:56:59] Bob Dobbs: So Kroker writes,

[1:57:00] Bob Dobbs: Maybe we are already living in another dimension of space travel,

[1:57:04] Bob Dobbs: in a subspace warp jump.

[1:57:07] Bob Dobbs: A virtual reality where we can finally recognize that we are destined to leave this planet because we have already exited this body.

[1:57:14] Bob Dobbs: Not simply the violent expulsion of the body from the weight of earthly gravity into galactic space,

[1:57:20] Bob Dobbs: but the development of microscopic gene astronauts.

[1:57:23] Bob Dobbs: Colonies of genes,

[1:57:25] Bob Dobbs: which...

[1:57:25] Bob Dobbs: Look how well I read this,

[1:57:26] Bob Dobbs: eh?

[1:57:27] Bob Dobbs: Reading it very well.

[1:57:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:57:28] Cameron McEwen: much better than me.

[1:57:30] Bob Dobbs: Colonies of genes.

[1:57:32] Bob Dobbs: I'm Barbara Frum.

[1:57:33] Bob Dobbs: You're Knowlton Nash.

[1:57:34] Bob Dobbs: You were knocked aside.

[1:57:36] Bob Dobbs: You're off Celeste by Barbara Frum.

[1:57:38] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:57:39] Bob Dobbs: Colonies of genes,

[1:57:40] Bob Dobbs: which once might have fled the primeval soup of the ocean and taken refuge in the geological structure of crystals,

[1:57:47] Bob Dobbs: the chemistry of plants,

[1:57:48] Bob Dobbs: then animals,

[1:57:49] Bob Dobbs: and finally humans,

[1:57:50] Bob Dobbs: but which now warp-jump from the human body into the galaxy of virtual reality.

[1:57:55] Bob Dobbs: This is a time of primordial genetic rocketry,

[1:57:58] Bob Dobbs: in which genes suddenly are accelerated into orbit around their previous liquid station,

[1:58:03] Bob Dobbs: imploding human bodies.

[1:58:05] Bob Dobbs: A new stellar history of TV genes,

[1:58:07] Bob Dobbs: recombinant shopping,

[1:58:09] Bob Dobbs: war meiosis,

[1:58:11] Bob Dobbs: gene nostalgia,

[1:58:12] Bob Dobbs: what molecular biologists call inversion,

[1:58:15] Bob Dobbs: and advertising mimesis is at hand.

[1:58:19] Bob Dobbs: Then there's a little back in the bar for a minute and I say,

[1:58:23] Bob Dobbs: you see the genes parasited in that novel by Tom Robbins,

[1:58:27] Bob Dobbs: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

[1:58:28] Bob Dobbs: It shows the amoeba riding evolution from the beginning to the end.

[1:58:32] Bob Dobbs: Arthur Kroker got the genes just riding along.

[1:58:35] Bob Dobbs: Finally,

[1:58:35] Bob Dobbs: they realize this chemical body is a dead end,

[1:58:37] Bob Dobbs: and they warp jump to another dimension to go right into the digital grids.

[1:58:41] Bob Dobbs: It's the warp jump from the Android meme to the tech body.

[1:58:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:58:45] Bob Dobbs: we're jumping ahead there.

[1:58:47] Bob Dobbs: Back to the quote.

[1:58:48] Bob Dobbs: And why shouldn't genes go cybernetic?

[1:58:50] Bob Dobbs: They have always existed at the forefront of virtual reality.

[1:58:54] Bob Dobbs: Mutants,

[1:58:55] Bob Dobbs: replicators,

[1:58:56] Bob Dobbs: cloning,

[1:58:56] Bob Dobbs: viral genes.

[1:58:58] Bob Dobbs: Perhaps we have already moved beyond the first stage of the exteriorization of the human sensorium.

[1:59:02] Bob Dobbs: the externalization of the human nervous system,

[1:59:04] Bob Dobbs: and are now entering the second and more decisive phase,

[1:59:07] Bob Dobbs: which consists of actually flipping the body inside out,

[1:59:10] Bob Dobbs: the exteriorization of human genetic history.

[1:59:13] Bob Dobbs: In this case,

[1:59:13] Bob Dobbs: technology and its communication would be the means by which the genes escape their long evolutionary imprisonment in the body and inscribe themselves in the labyrinthine electronic highways of recombinant culture.

[1:59:25] Bob Dobbs: The primal gene,

[1:59:26] Bob Dobbs: therefore,

[1:59:27] Bob Dobbs: finally prepared to abandon its evolutionary home in bodily chemistry,

[1:59:31] Bob Dobbs: to fulfill his destiny by going virtual what a fucking quote McLuhan would never write like that he might have liked to yeah he might have been impressed with it yeah

[1:59:47] Bob Dobbs: here's a side thing guess who's hanging around me and iON all the time now Marilouise Kroker arthur's wife who apparently wrote a lot of this stuff Marilouise

[2:00:01] Bob Dobbs: likes what we're doing.

[2:00:02] Bob Dobbs: She's hanging around.

[2:00:03] Bob Dobbs: She,

[2:00:03] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:00:04] Bob Dobbs: the late,

[2:00:04] Bob Dobbs: she died four days apart from Eric McLuhan.

[2:00:08] Bob Dobbs: They died together,

[2:00:09] Bob Dobbs: basically.

[2:00:12] Bob Dobbs: So there's a lot of Marilouise in this stuff,

[2:00:14] Bob Dobbs: because Arthur said that he would talk to

[2:00:17] Bob Dobbs: Marilouise and have these dialogues and then get all inspired and quickly write it down,

[2:00:21] Bob Dobbs: whatever crazy stuff they were saying.

[2:00:24] Bob Dobbs: So do you want to unpack the quote?

[2:00:28] Bob Dobbs: What does it prompt you to say?

[2:00:34] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:00:34] Cameron McEwen: one of the things it prompts me to say is that

[2:00:37] Cameron McEwen: I think we're getting near the end here.

[2:00:41] Cameron McEwen: Maybe because that quote is so impressive and so interesting,

[2:00:47] Cameron McEwen: maybe what we want to do is leave it for the next time.

[2:00:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:00:51] Bob Dobbs: see where we go.

[2:00:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:00:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:00:53] Bob Dobbs: how do I recover from this quote?

[2:00:59] Bob Dobbs: What concepts do I do with this percept?

[2:01:03] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:01:03] Bob Dobbs: so that's good.

[2:01:04] Bob Dobbs: Let's carry on.

[2:01:05] Bob Dobbs: As we move into the more extreme case of the present cloned ESP environment and the tech body,

[2:01:10] Bob Dobbs: perhaps Finnegans Wake will stay the course as the non-now,

[2:01:14] Bob Dobbs: there's no now anymore,

[2:01:16] Bob Dobbs: echoes Frank Zappa's concept of xenochrony,

[2:01:20] Bob Dobbs: which I'll have to explain.

[2:01:21] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[2:01:21] Bob Dobbs: I was in England in 2008 when Mrs.

[2:01:28] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan died.

[2:01:30] Bob Dobbs: I was meeting with this intelligence agent.

[2:01:32] Bob Dobbs: Chris Story,

[2:01:33] Bob Dobbs: The Day She Died.

[2:01:35] Bob Dobbs: But the guy that I met there knew all these poets in London,

[2:01:41] Bob Dobbs: so I met with these poets.

[2:01:43] Bob Dobbs: And then we were talking in the cafe on the sidewalk,

[2:01:46] Bob Dobbs: and someone said something about the present.

[2:01:51] Bob Dobbs: The present is all there is.

[2:01:53] Bob Dobbs: And I said,

[2:01:53] Bob Dobbs: there's not even a present anymore.

[2:01:56] Bob Dobbs: And the girl looked at me shocked,

[2:01:58] Bob Dobbs: and she quickly phoned her boyfriend and said,

[2:02:00] Bob Dobbs: Hey,

[2:02:01] Bob Dobbs: there's no more present.

[2:02:04] Bob Dobbs: She put it back into the community immediately.

[2:02:07] Bob Dobbs: So that's what I mean by the non-now.

[2:02:10] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[2:02:11] Cameron McEwen: But isn't that what I keep saying?

[2:02:13] Cameron McEwen: against the chronological?

[2:02:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:02:16] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[2:02:17] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[2:02:18] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:02:19] Bob Dobbs: as we move into the more extreme case of the present cloned ESP environment,

[2:02:22] Bob Dobbs: which is technologies intimately extending themselves,

[2:02:25] Bob Dobbs: and they've got the ESP among themselves,

[2:02:29] Bob Dobbs: and the case of the present cloned ESP environment and the tech body,

[2:02:33] Bob Dobbs: perhaps Finnegans Wake will stay the course as the non-now echoes Frank Zappa's concept of xenochrony.

[2:02:41] Bob Dobbs: Do I explain that here?

[2:02:43] Bob Dobbs: Xenochrony.

[2:02:43] Bob Dobbs: I say,

[2:02:46] Bob Dobbs: see if I can...

[2:02:48] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:02:49] Bob Dobbs: so

[2:02:50] Bob Dobbs: I have footnote 64.

[2:02:56] Bob Dobbs: What's that 64 after...

[2:03:00] Cameron McEwen: That's for the footnote at the bottom of the page.

[2:03:03] Cameron McEwen: It's a link to the Wikipedia entry for Xenochrony.

[2:03:08] Cameron McEwen: And I'll just say that

[2:03:10] Cameron McEwen: Xenos in Greek means...

[2:03:13] Bob Dobbs: Stranger.

[2:03:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:03:16] Bob Dobbs: X-E-N-O means stranger.

[2:03:17] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[2:03:19] Bob Dobbs: So

[2:03:20] Bob Dobbs: I hadn't noticed these numbers.

[2:03:24] Bob Dobbs: We've been going on all along,

[2:03:26] Bob Dobbs: I guess.

[2:03:26] Bob Dobbs: I don't remember seeing any numbered quotes.

[2:03:29] Bob Dobbs: I'm just going to scan back.

[2:03:31] Cameron McEwen: It's not a numbered quote.

[2:03:34] Cameron McEwen: It's a footnote.

[2:03:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:03:36] Bob Dobbs: I forgot to notice the footnotes.

[2:03:38] Bob Dobbs: Uh-huh.

[2:03:40] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:03:40] Bob Dobbs: so...

[2:03:41] Bob Dobbs: No.

[2:03:42] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:03:42] Bob Dobbs: so let's go to 64.

[2:03:45] Bob Dobbs: Let's see if this works.

[2:03:46] Bob Dobbs: I put in 64.

[2:03:48] Bob Dobbs: It'll go immediately there.

[2:03:50] Bob Dobbs: 1964,

[2:04:07] Bob Dobbs: 1964.

[2:04:08] Bob Dobbs: A lot of 64s to get.

[2:04:08] Bob Dobbs: 61,

[2:04:08] Bob Dobbs: 2,

[2:04:08] Bob Dobbs: 164.

[2:04:09] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:04:09] Bob Dobbs: all right.

[2:04:09] Bob Dobbs: So,

[2:04:09] Bob Dobbs: Xenochrony.

[2:04:09] Bob Dobbs: Do I need to talk about it for a minute?

[2:04:11] Cameron McEwen: Up to you.

[2:04:12] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[2:04:14] Bob Dobbs: Let's see what the Wikipedia says.

[2:04:17] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:04:18] Bob Dobbs: Xenochrony is a studio-based musical technique developed at an unknown date by Zappa as possibly as early as the early

[2:04:29] Bob Dobbs: 60s, and Zappa used it on several albums.

[2:04:32] Bob Dobbs: Xenochrony is executed by extracting a guitar solo or other musical part

[2:04:38] Bob Dobbs: from its original context and place it into a completely different song to create an unexpected but pleasing effects he said that this was the only way to achieve some rhythms so um he

[2:04:53] Bob Dobbs: would uh collage things you know a drum solo from a one concert with something uh guitar solo from another concert and hope that they kind of didn't jibe he wanted to create contrast which is

[2:05:08] Bob Dobbs: Tactility,

[2:05:08] Bob Dobbs: one of the definitions of tactility is contrast.

[2:05:11] Bob Dobbs: So he would always be surprised often that they would sync up or be pleasant.

[2:05:19] Bob Dobbs: They would kind of get along.

[2:05:22] Bob Dobbs: So

[2:05:24] Bob Dobbs: I took that experience,

[2:05:25] Bob Dobbs: that idea,

[2:05:27] Bob Dobbs: and when I started noticing myself being reflected in the media or mainly other people seeing it,

[2:05:41] Bob Dobbs: I was not identifying with the ESP,

[2:05:45] Bob Dobbs: cloned ESP.

[2:05:47] Bob Dobbs: So the Android meme would constantly try to say,

[2:05:50] Bob Dobbs: oh no,

[2:05:50] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[2:05:51] Bob Dobbs: you're in here.

[2:05:53] Bob Dobbs: They were trying to say that I was involved,

[2:05:55] Bob Dobbs: and I was trying to not be involved,

[2:05:59] Bob Dobbs: to be detached from it in some way.

[2:06:04] Bob Dobbs: And so the Android meme would anthropomorphize me and say,

[2:06:08] Bob Dobbs: look,

[2:06:08] Bob Dobbs: you're in this movie.

[2:06:09] Bob Dobbs: That's you.

[2:06:11] Bob Dobbs: So what

[2:06:13] Bob Dobbs: I was trying to avoid the ESP,

[2:06:15] Bob Dobbs: the merger,

[2:06:17] Bob Dobbs: the fusion,

[2:06:18] Bob Dobbs: the making,

[2:06:21] Bob Dobbs: that was natural to me.

[2:06:23] Bob Dobbs: And

[2:06:24] Bob Dobbs: I kept being undermined.

[2:06:27] Bob Dobbs: See,

[2:06:27] Bob Dobbs: so what Zappa was doing with his studio and making a musical composition for the ear,

[2:06:33] Bob Dobbs: he was avoiding,

[2:06:35] Bob Dobbs: trying to avoid pleasantness.

[2:06:38] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:06:38] Bob Dobbs: I was trying to avoid,

[2:06:39] Bob Dobbs: in my living and interacting with the Android meme as a consumer producer,

[2:06:45] Bob Dobbs: I was avoiding identifying with markers that would make me think I'm in there.

[2:06:53] Bob Dobbs: In other words,

[2:06:54] Bob Dobbs: I was trying to avoid the AP.

[2:06:57] Bob Dobbs: So in the Tiny Note chart,

[2:06:59] Bob Dobbs: the AP,

[2:07:00] Bob Dobbs: one of the meanings is everybody through the bodies and the extensions are looking for themselves.

[2:07:08] Bob Dobbs: trying to find themselves.

[2:07:09] Bob Dobbs: That's the identity crisis.

[2:07:11] Bob Dobbs: And so there's so much weird environment that they're looking for themselves in that you call it a projection,

[2:07:21] Bob Dobbs: Anthropomorphic Physical.

[2:07:23] Bob Dobbs: So

[2:07:27] Bob Dobbs: I'm avoiding the AP as much as possible.

[2:07:32] Bob Dobbs: So that's what,

[2:07:33] Bob Dobbs: so it's not going to be applied to music,

[2:07:35] Bob Dobbs: but I applied it to global environments.

[2:07:38] Bob Dobbs: for myself all right yeah but well i i i would be far from agreeing i would say that yeah we don't know what we're saying yet we don't have to worry about agreement yet okay

[2:07:56] Cameron McEwen: so um the the heart of uh xenochrony is that the the pieces already exist and uh what Thank you.

[2:08:08] Cameron McEwen: What's new is the juxtaposition.

[2:08:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:08:13] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[2:08:13] Cameron McEwen: So there is no such thing.

[2:08:18] Cameron McEwen: In this sense,

[2:08:18] Cameron McEwen: there's no such thing as removal from the AP because all there is is pieces of the AP.

[2:08:26] Cameron McEwen: What's different is how they're put together.

[2:08:29] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[2:08:30] Bob Dobbs: No,

[2:08:30] Bob Dobbs: that's the problem I've got.

[2:08:32] Bob Dobbs: If it's a problem.

[2:08:35] Cameron McEwen: No,

[2:08:36] Cameron McEwen: it's the human condition.

[2:08:37] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:08:39] Bob Dobbs: And

[2:08:40] Bob Dobbs: I'm advocating a new kind of human,

[2:08:44] Bob Dobbs: not post-human.

[2:08:45] Bob Dobbs: I like to say para-human.

[2:08:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:08:48] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[2:08:49] Cameron McEwen: Para is much better than post.

[2:08:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:08:55] Bob Dobbs: So perhaps Finnegans Wake will stay the course as the non-now echoes Frank Zappa's concept of xenochrony.

[2:09:03] Bob Dobbs: The early

[2:09:04] Bob Dobbs: 21st century can be perceived as the digital slash mobile phase of voluntary ESP.

[2:09:10] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:09:13] Bob Dobbs: the analog phase merged people,

[2:09:15] Bob Dobbs: fused them with the discarnate electric space.

[2:09:20] Bob Dobbs: So that's cloned ESP,

[2:09:21] Bob Dobbs: that's merging with the ESP.

[2:09:24] Bob Dobbs: Then the ESP got cloned by technologies.

[2:09:29] Bob Dobbs: They were extending.

[2:09:30] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[2:09:31] Bob Dobbs: I say the human is not extended anymore.

[2:09:33] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:09:33] Bob Dobbs: maybe the ESP part is being extended.

[2:09:37] Bob Dobbs: What's that?

[2:09:37] Bob Dobbs: We don't even know what it is.

[2:09:38] Bob Dobbs: So it's a nebulous extension.

[2:09:44] Bob Dobbs: But the atomization of digital media,

[2:09:49] Bob Dobbs: what

[2:09:50] Bob Dobbs: Theall called co-anesthesia,

[2:09:52] Bob Dobbs: which puts you in the driver's seat more and more,

[2:09:56] Bob Dobbs: Web 2.0,

[2:09:57] Bob Dobbs: social media puts you in the driver's seat.

[2:09:59] Bob Dobbs: You're being removed from the cloned ESP merger.

[2:10:03] Bob Dobbs: You're being removed from the one,

[2:10:06] Bob Dobbs: and you're engaging in quadrophrenia,

[2:10:08] Bob Dobbs: different moods.

[2:10:10] Bob Dobbs: So you blog either schizophrenia,

[2:10:12] Bob Dobbs: hysteria,

[2:10:13] Bob Dobbs: panic,

[2:10:13] Bob Dobbs: ecstasy,

[2:10:14] Bob Dobbs: or paranoia.

[2:10:17] Bob Dobbs: That's what the blogs are.

[2:10:19] Bob Dobbs: They're hoiking up these old human emotions in extremists as part of the gift of...

[2:10:27] Bob Dobbs: social media giving you voluntary ESP you don't have to engage with the oneness all the time that's 1984 in a way we've moved past that so there's incredible new free spirit going on technologically free

[2:10:43] Bob Dobbs: spirit to be stupid or to be a troll or to be a problem to project a problem that's what voluntary ESP is

[2:10:57] Bob Dobbs: So,

[2:10:57] Bob Dobbs: the early 21st century can proceed as a digital mobile phase of voluntary ESP,

[2:11:02] Bob Dobbs: a celebration of pinhead consciousness slash intelligence,

[2:11:06] Bob Dobbs: rather than simply discarnate connected tactile intelligence.

[2:11:11] Bob Dobbs: Someone,

[2:11:11] Bob Dobbs: I heard someone say they felt that most people in the social media environment at best have pinhead,

[2:11:20] Bob Dobbs: the consciousness of a pinhead,

[2:11:22] Bob Dobbs: and you don't need much,

[2:11:24] Bob Dobbs: so much is done for you.

[2:11:27] Bob Dobbs: first world anyways.

[2:11:29] Bob Dobbs: In this complex culture of tactility in extremists,

[2:11:33] Bob Dobbs: see Frank Zappa's,

[2:11:35] Bob Dobbs: see in quotes,

[2:11:36] Bob Dobbs: see Frank Zappa's musical concepts.

[2:11:39] Bob Dobbs: You have to read some Zappa,

[2:11:41] Bob Dobbs: his speculation,

[2:11:43] Bob Dobbs: his metaphysics.

[2:11:45] Bob Dobbs: In this complex culture of tactility and extremism,

[2:11:47] Bob Dobbs: we've witnessed the phrase artificial slash virtual intelligence lose its charisma.

[2:11:54] Bob Dobbs: Quite a mysterious and devastating implication that nobody was expecting from the global theater.

[2:11:59] Bob Dobbs: The greatest disservice that was foreseen was the evocation of desperation and urgency in national,

[2:12:05] Bob Dobbs: tribal,

[2:12:06] Bob Dobbs: and personal identity quests.

[2:12:07] Bob Dobbs: that created a more violent mood in the 70s and 80s.

[2:12:11] Bob Dobbs: That was the greatest disservice that was foreseen,

[2:12:16] Bob Dobbs: was the evocation of desperation and urgency.

[2:12:18] Bob Dobbs: So people first saw that,

[2:12:20] Bob Dobbs: then you replay the title of the McLuhan article in 68,

[2:12:24] Bob Dobbs: mind your media men or you'll catch a cold environment.

[2:12:27] Bob Dobbs: So he's projecting more and more panic,

[2:12:31] Bob Dobbs: hysteria,

[2:12:35] Bob Dobbs: schizophrenia,

[2:12:36] Bob Dobbs: and paranoia.

[2:12:38] Bob Dobbs: and ecstasy.

[2:12:39] Bob Dobbs: So then I say,

[2:12:41] Bob Dobbs: in the back of the bar,

[2:12:43] Bob Dobbs: to have a social identity,

[2:12:44] Bob Dobbs: you have to have violence.

[2:12:46] Bob Dobbs: You are a fascist.

[2:12:47] Bob Dobbs: You impose it on society.

[2:12:48] Bob Dobbs: I'm taking the cliche idea that power is aggressive.

[2:12:52] Bob Dobbs: You maintain your socially aggressive power if you want to have an identity.

[2:12:56] Bob Dobbs: Establishing an identity is an act of violence.

[2:12:59] Bob Dobbs: Becoming literate is a violent act.

[2:13:01] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[2:13:02] Bob Dobbs: in one of his books From Cliché to Archetype,

[2:13:05] Bob Dobbs: quotes people fearing the literate

[2:13:07] Bob Dobbs: back in the

[2:13:09] Bob Dobbs: 1400s.

[2:13:10] Bob Dobbs: Then I quote,

[2:13:12] Bob Dobbs: Joseph Frank discusses Dostoevsky's The House of the Dead in terms which gives stark,

[2:13:17] Bob Dobbs: iconic force to the division between the literate and the illiterate classes in a feudal society.

[2:13:23] Bob Dobbs: To the peasant,

[2:13:24] Bob Dobbs: the literate man is armored.

[2:13:27] Bob Dobbs: He calls them iron beaks.

[2:13:28] Bob Dobbs: You gentry,

[2:13:29] Bob Dobbs: iron beaks,

[2:13:30] Bob Dobbs: you devoured us.

[2:13:32] Bob Dobbs: That's when visual space took over,

[2:13:34] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg Galaxy.

[2:13:37] Bob Dobbs: So then I quote McLuhan and Take Today,

[2:13:39] Bob Dobbs: page 261,

[2:13:40] Bob Dobbs: the maintenance of social power is in fact the manifestation of social identity.

[2:13:45] Bob Dobbs: So I'm saying the AP is the weird version of identity that people are reaching for.

[2:13:52] Bob Dobbs: And it's violent,

[2:13:54] Bob Dobbs: and it has what are considered negative qualities,

[2:13:58] Bob Dobbs: schizophrenia and that,

[2:14:00] Bob Dobbs: but they are not seen as negative.

[2:14:02] Bob Dobbs: They have a useful purpose.

[2:14:06] Bob Dobbs: for the user to be used.

[2:14:08] Bob Dobbs: They're used by those attitudes,

[2:14:11] Bob Dobbs: those mind states or emotions.

[2:14:14] Bob Dobbs: So nothing but violence.

[2:14:18] Bob Dobbs: So then I quote,

[2:14:21] Bob Dobbs: who's this?

[2:14:22] Bob Dobbs: There's another Kroker quote.

[2:14:24] Cameron McEwen: No,

[2:14:24] Cameron McEwen: it's McLuhan from New York Times.

[2:14:26] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[2:14:26] Bob Dobbs: the famous one,

[2:14:27] Bob Dobbs: New York Times.

[2:14:28] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[2:14:28] Cameron McEwen: this is a new quote.

[2:14:32] Bob Dobbs: He's trying to show something.

[2:14:34] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:14:34] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[2:14:35] Bob Dobbs: One of the peculiarities of the new electronic world is to be seen here,

[2:14:39] Bob Dobbs: for the very immediacy with which people interrelate at electric speeds also has the effect of reducing their private and individual identities to a very low profile.

[2:14:48] Bob Dobbs: If everybody is a nobody at a ball game,

[2:14:51] Bob Dobbs: the simultaneous presence of everybody to everybody at electric speed makes everybody a mass man.

[2:14:57] Bob Dobbs: One of the effects of this simultaneity in dimming down private identity is the weakening of personal ethics and moral constraint.

[2:15:04] Bob Dobbs: in the private sectors of daily life,

[2:15:06] Bob Dobbs: and then more and more talk about morals.

[2:15:08] Bob Dobbs: Rearview mirror,

[2:15:09] Bob Dobbs: right?

[2:15:10] Bob Dobbs: When no one's actually living morally anymore,

[2:15:13] Bob Dobbs: in the terms that morality used to mean.

[2:15:16] Bob Dobbs: Concurrently,

[2:15:17] Bob Dobbs: however,

[2:15:18] Bob Dobbs: with the loss of moral standards in these private sectors,

[2:15:22] Bob Dobbs: there is a corresponding new demand for high standards of conduct and integrity in the public sector.

[2:15:28] Bob Dobbs: This reversal of values has suddenly elevated politics to the utopian level.

[2:15:32] Bob Dobbs: by virtue of the rigorous and unremitting public inspection resulting from electric media,

[2:15:38] Bob Dobbs: the global surveillance.

[2:15:41] Bob Dobbs: This reversal has provided public and political life with a cast of representatives left over from the old order.

[2:15:55] Bob Dobbs: That is,

[2:15:55] Bob Dobbs: the figures in the political drama are still men of private goals and ambitions.

[2:15:59] Bob Dobbs: Recruited from the individualist age when politics seemed to most people to be a dirty game,

[2:16:04] Bob Dobbs: to be played by individuals with private ambitions.

[2:16:07] Bob Dobbs: To many people,

[2:16:08] Bob Dobbs: President Nixon may well appear as a leftover from that older political era when private ethics were expected to be high,

[2:16:14] Bob Dobbs: but public behavior was permissively much lower than it can ever be again.

[2:16:20] Bob Dobbs: Public behavior cannot be casual.

[2:16:23] Bob Dobbs: There's your woke.

[2:16:26] Bob Dobbs: The new political pattern demands idealism,

[2:16:29] Bob Dobbs: not only of profession but behavior and public figures.

[2:16:32] Bob Dobbs: But this demand is made by people who are quite permissive in their private ethics.

[2:16:37] Bob Dobbs: A new kind of hypocrisy has been born among those who have grown up with the new media.

[2:16:41] Bob Dobbs: They now demand of public figures a level of moral dedication,

[2:16:44] Bob Dobbs: which they feel no need to exemplify in the private sector of their own lives.

[2:16:50] Bob Dobbs: New York Times,

[2:16:50] Bob Dobbs: May 10,

[2:16:51] Bob Dobbs: 1974.

[2:16:54] Bob Dobbs: So then,

[2:16:55] Bob Dobbs: Academic Bob comes in and says,

[2:16:57] Bob Dobbs: As the Android meme provided cover for itself by allowing humans to perceive more and more that the Android meme looked and acted like them,

[2:17:05] Bob Dobbs: that's...

[2:17:05] Bob Dobbs: projecting AP,

[2:17:07] Bob Dobbs: while at the same time it appeared to slowly disappear,

[2:17:10] Bob Dobbs: the shrinking Android meme evoked a renewed sense of anthropomorphic power in humans'

[2:17:14] Bob Dobbs: chemical bodies.

[2:17:17] Bob Dobbs: What's that mean?

[2:17:17] Bob Dobbs: The shrinking energy evoked a renewed sense of anthropomorphic power.

[2:17:21] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:17:22] Bob Dobbs: Chemical brains,

[2:17:23] Bob Dobbs: chemical body brains were projecting,

[2:17:26] Bob Dobbs: beginning with the mood of having survived Y2K and 911,

[2:17:30] Bob Dobbs: in brackets,

[2:17:30] Bob Dobbs: overcoming the fear of the landscape of chip technology.

[2:17:34] Bob Dobbs: The chemical body sought out nano communities online and in person and righteously announced a new confidence in their particular favorite physical bias of form.

[2:17:43] Bob Dobbs: That's AP,

[2:17:45] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:17:45] Bob Dobbs: your bias of projection of an Anthropomorphic Physical bias of physical bias of form.

[2:17:52] Bob Dobbs: This was misidentified as the culture wars.

[2:17:56] Bob Dobbs: Bob's back in the bar.

[2:17:57] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[2:17:58] Bob Dobbs: while the chemical body side out nano communities,

[2:18:01] Bob Dobbs: that's the texting.

[2:18:03] Bob Dobbs: and righteously announced a new confidence in their particular favorite,

[2:18:07] Bob Dobbs: it started announcing that they were transgender,

[2:18:09] Bob Dobbs: and that was better than a heterosexual.

[2:18:11] Bob Dobbs: New confidence in their particular favorite physical bias of form.

[2:18:16] Bob Dobbs: Form is becoming,

[2:18:17] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:18:19] Bob Dobbs: shapeable.

[2:18:21] Bob Dobbs: It was body wars.

[2:18:22] Bob Dobbs: It was over what to do,

[2:18:23] Bob Dobbs: what kind of shape to put the chemical body in.

[2:18:27] Bob Dobbs: So,

[2:18:27] Bob Dobbs: when you weren't being shaped anymore,

[2:18:29] Bob Dobbs: then everybody got involved with shaping themselves.

[2:18:32] Bob Dobbs: You get that?

[2:18:33] Bob Dobbs: rearview mirror old environment um and the aping is mixed in there too so then um in comes a quote by Frank Zingrone in

[2:18:51] Bob Dobbs: his book uh the media simplex 2001 subtitle at the edge of meaning in the age of chaos so what's right bob let me

[2:19:01] Cameron McEwen: Let me point out that we're not going to be able to get to the end of this chapter.

[2:19:07] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:19:07] Bob Dobbs: that's all right.

[2:19:09] Bob Dobbs: That means the war won't end.

[2:19:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:19:16] Bob Dobbs: we're going to finish this before anybody's going to have any conclusion over there in the Middle East.

[2:19:21] Bob Dobbs: So,

[2:19:24] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[2:19:24] Bob Dobbs: we've gone for two and a half hours,

[2:19:26] Bob Dobbs: right?

[2:19:28] Bob Dobbs: Pretty close.

[2:19:30] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:19:30] Cameron McEwen: no,

[2:19:32] Cameron McEwen: I think we started fairly close to three this time.

[2:19:36] Cameron McEwen: So we've gone over three hours for sure.

[2:19:40] Bob Dobbs: Really?

[2:19:41] Bob Dobbs: I thought,

[2:19:41] Bob Dobbs: no,

[2:19:41] Bob Dobbs: we started one my time.

[2:19:43] Bob Dobbs: It's only 3.30.

[2:19:46] Bob Dobbs: So we've only done two and a half hours maximum.

[2:19:49] Bob Dobbs: I remember it was 1.07 and we hadn't started yet,

[2:19:51] Bob Dobbs: but we started right after that.

[2:19:53] Bob Dobbs: So let me read this quote and then we'll end with that for now.

[2:19:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay?

[2:19:59] Cameron McEwen: All right.

[2:20:00] Bob Dobbs: Because this is interesting what he says.

[2:20:04] Bob Dobbs: He's wrestling with what I call the AP in his post-McLuhan way.

[2:20:11] Bob Dobbs: His first chapter in the Media Simplex is about the bias of McLuhan.

[2:20:14] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is so out of date that Frank begins by saying,

[2:20:18] Bob Dobbs: well,

[2:20:18] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was biased this way.

[2:20:20] Bob Dobbs: Even though he's giving great tribute to McLuhan,

[2:20:22] Bob Dobbs: but he says,

[2:20:23] Bob Dobbs: no,

[2:20:24] Bob Dobbs: he's not going to be useful for what

[2:20:25] Bob Dobbs: I'm seeing.

[2:20:27] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[2:20:27] Bob Dobbs: he didn't see.

[2:20:29] Bob Dobbs: He didn't know his Lewis and McLuhan enough to see that,

[2:20:32] Bob Dobbs: well,

[2:20:32] Bob Dobbs: maybe McLuhan did see what he thinks he's seeing.

[2:20:35] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:20:36] Bob Dobbs: Politics and economics have always operated in secrecy.

[2:20:40] Bob Dobbs: In information circles,

[2:20:41] Bob Dobbs: media gatekeepers are the functionaries of the new Gnostics,

[2:20:45] Bob Dobbs: cyberspace bandits,

[2:20:47] Bob Dobbs: information high priests,

[2:20:49] Bob Dobbs: chaos investors,

[2:20:50] Bob Dobbs: hacker terrorists,

[2:20:51] Bob Dobbs: bank presidents,

[2:20:52] Bob Dobbs: and IMF globalists,

[2:20:53] Bob Dobbs: drug and biotech researchers,

[2:20:55] Bob Dobbs: communication moguls.

[2:20:57] Bob Dobbs: and sundry other infocrats across the data desert of the internet in one-person caravans.

[2:21:05] Bob Dobbs: There's your atomization.

[2:21:08] Bob Dobbs: One-person caravans,

[2:21:09] Bob Dobbs: that's everybody having the co-anesthetic role of the god at the center of their media sphere.

[2:21:17] Bob Dobbs: They are the god.

[2:21:19] Bob Dobbs: There is something fundamentally mysterious about the operations of electric process.

[2:21:23] Bob Dobbs: That's his term for the new media environment,

[2:21:25] Bob Dobbs: electric process.

[2:21:27] Bob Dobbs: Every square centimeter of Earth has become a holographic point containing all of the transmissions over the face of the globe.

[2:21:34] Bob Dobbs: The elimination of time and space in human interchange is a big enough revolution to completely change all social values.

[2:21:42] Bob Dobbs: Virtualized,

[2:21:42] Bob Dobbs: bodiless people can make no real society.

[2:21:45] Bob Dobbs: The discarnate realities of electric process and their great economic power may be the problem,

[2:21:50] Bob Dobbs: not the solution to our futures.

[2:21:53] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[2:21:54] Bob Dobbs: do I say much?

[2:21:59] Bob Dobbs: Let me get to Cavell.

[2:22:00] Bob Dobbs: So I'm just going to say my bar statement.

[2:22:02] Bob Dobbs: Every square centimeter of Earth has become a holographic point,

[2:22:06] Bob Dobbs: I quote from Zingrone.

[2:22:08] Bob Dobbs: There's your hologram.

[2:22:09] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:22:10] Bob Dobbs: now we keep typing,

[2:22:11] Bob Dobbs: but eventually we're going to run out of it.

[2:22:12] Bob Dobbs: And that's where we got to.

[2:22:14] Bob Dobbs: To show how silly things were,

[2:22:16] Bob Dobbs: you make the statement that,

[2:22:17] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[2:22:17] Bob Dobbs: the economy is run by typing.

[2:22:21] Bob Dobbs: That's how fragile the virtual economy was.

[2:22:23] Bob Dobbs: But it was very strong in the sense it orbited around the chemical body economy.

[2:22:27] Bob Dobbs: It sucked all the energy out of it.

[2:22:30] Bob Dobbs: So a bit of a paranoia,

[2:22:36] Bob Dobbs: schizophrenia,

[2:22:37] Bob Dobbs: hysteria,

[2:22:38] Bob Dobbs: panic,

[2:22:38] Bob Dobbs: and ecstasy in what I'm saying here.

[2:22:42] Bob Dobbs: Okay?

[2:22:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:22:46] Cameron McEwen: you're playing with the whole concept of the AP.

[2:22:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:22:50] Bob Dobbs: I'm playing with guys trying to come past McLuhan,

[2:22:56] Bob Dobbs: and they're verbose paragraphs.

[2:22:59] Cameron McEwen: Right,

[2:23:00] Cameron McEwen: and nowadays I'll bet nobody at all reads Zingrone.

[2:23:06] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[2:23:07] Cameron McEwen: Lots of people are reading Lewis and McLuhan.

[2:23:11] Bob Dobbs: That's right,

[2:23:12] Bob Dobbs: and after I read the Media Simplex a month or so ago,

[2:23:18] Bob Dobbs: I looked it up on Amazon.

[2:23:19] Bob Dobbs: It's down there,

[2:23:20] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:23:21] Bob Dobbs: one million,

[2:23:22] Bob Dobbs: almost like two million.

[2:23:23] Bob Dobbs: It's positioned as number two million popular book,

[2:23:26] Bob Dobbs: right?

[2:23:28] Bob Dobbs: And it has no reviews,

[2:23:30] Bob Dobbs: no buyers,

[2:23:31] Bob Dobbs: nothing.

[2:23:32] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[2:23:33] Bob Dobbs: Zingrone knew that he was screwed.

[2:23:35] Bob Dobbs: I think I told you.

[2:23:36] Bob Dobbs: He tried to get it reviewed in Globe and Mail,

[2:23:38] Bob Dobbs: and it got fucked up,

[2:23:39] Bob Dobbs: and he got very mad.

[2:23:40] Bob Dobbs: So he forced Don Theall to write a review somewhere.

[2:23:45] Bob Dobbs: I think it's in the Communication Journal.

[2:23:47] Bob Dobbs: The book never was the bomb that

[2:23:50] Bob Dobbs: Frank was hoping it would be.

[2:23:51] Bob Dobbs: So when I read it finally,

[2:23:53] Bob Dobbs: 22 years after it came out,

[2:23:56] Bob Dobbs: I was impressed with it.

[2:23:58] Bob Dobbs: He was getting towards what

[2:24:00] Bob Dobbs: I was looking at,

[2:24:01] Bob Dobbs: the AP.

[2:24:02] Bob Dobbs: He was trying to get to it.

[2:24:04] Bob Dobbs: So sorry,

[2:24:06] Bob Dobbs: Frank,

[2:24:07] Bob Dobbs: I wasn't around to acknowledge that,

[2:24:11] Bob Dobbs: but it will be in the famous essay,

[2:24:13] Bob Dobbs: the famous new book,

[2:24:14] Bob Dobbs: the last book of all time,

[2:24:15] Bob Dobbs: my book.

[2:24:16] Bob Dobbs: Wrapping it up and the review of it,

[2:24:20] Bob Dobbs: which we're doing,

[2:24:20] Bob Dobbs: has to be done before any conclusion in the Mideast.

[2:24:25] Bob Dobbs: So we're getting close.

[2:24:29] Bob Dobbs: What happens if you get,

[2:24:31] Bob Dobbs: we're on page 166.

[2:24:36] Bob Dobbs: What do I do?

[2:24:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:24:47] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[2:24:48] Bob Dobbs: more is Zingrone.

[2:24:52] Bob Dobbs: Yep,

[2:24:53] Bob Dobbs: I cram a lot of stuff in there.

[2:24:55] Bob Dobbs: So where are,

[2:24:57] Bob Dobbs: well,

[2:24:57] Bob Dobbs: you have to think about this.

[2:24:58] Bob Dobbs: You don't know how much you want to go over or whether you want me to keep going,

[2:25:01] Bob Dobbs: right?

[2:25:03] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:25:03] Cameron McEwen: I just,

[2:25:05] Cameron McEwen: I have things that I have to do with the dog.

[2:25:11] Cameron McEwen: No,

[2:25:11] Cameron McEwen: I don't mean that.

[2:25:13] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[2:25:14] Bob Dobbs: when we get together again.

[2:25:16] Bob Dobbs: Will you want to go over what I've read,

[2:25:18] Bob Dobbs: or will you want me to read some more?

[2:25:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:25:21] Cameron McEwen: I think the quotation from Kroker is pretty interesting,

[2:25:26] Cameron McEwen: so we could sort of start there,

[2:25:29] Cameron McEwen: and then we could then skip,

[2:25:34] Cameron McEwen: if you want to,

[2:25:35] Cameron McEwen: to the end of the Zingrone quote and go on to the

[2:25:41] Cameron McEwen: Take Today stuff,

[2:25:42] Cameron McEwen: which starts next.

[2:25:44] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[2:25:45] Bob Dobbs: so we're going to,

[2:25:50] Bob Dobbs: the Kroker quote starts on page 162,

[2:25:55] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[2:25:58] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[2:25:59] Cameron McEwen: it does.

[2:25:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:26:00] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[2:26:00] Bob Dobbs: there it is.

[2:26:01] Bob Dobbs: So we will start at the bottom of 162.

[2:26:05] Bob Dobbs: So you and your dog are free to go.

[2:26:11] Bob Dobbs: Class is over.

[2:26:14] Bob Dobbs: What did Lewis say?

[2:26:15] Bob Dobbs: Teacher and tot are both duped,

[2:26:17] Bob Dobbs: right?

[2:26:19] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[2:26:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:26:20] Bob Dobbs: I'll go look that up in my copy of The Art of Being Ruled,

[2:26:23] Bob Dobbs: page 111.

[2:26:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:26:25] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[2:26:26] Cameron McEwen: Important page.

[2:26:27] Bob Dobbs: Make a pardon?

[2:26:29] Cameron McEwen: Important page.

[2:26:30] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[2:26:30] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:26:32] Bob Dobbs: Congratulations.

[2:26:33] Bob Dobbs: You're still here.

[2:26:35] Bob Dobbs: Everything's disappeared except Cameron.

[2:26:38] Cameron McEwen: So we're doing well.

[2:26:40] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[2:26:41] Bob Dobbs: Thanks a lot,

[2:26:42] Bob Dobbs: Cameron.

[2:26:42] Bob Dobbs: Good,

[2:26:42] Bob Dobbs: Bob.

[2:26:43] Cameron McEwen: Keep the world going,

[2:26:44] Cameron McEwen: okay?

[2:26:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:26:45] Bob Dobbs: I will.

[2:26:46] Bob Dobbs: We're going to finish this before any stopping happens.

[2:26:49] Cameron McEwen: Excellent.

[2:26:51] Bob Dobbs: Very good.

[2:26:51] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:26:52] Bob Dobbs: Talk to you later.

[2:26:53] Cameron McEwen: Take care.

[2:26:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:26:54] Bob Dobbs: bye.