Masteroflightchick wrote:
ION - love what you said to Bob about McLuhan. You took the words out of my mouth that had been building for quite some time. Who cares what some dead dude said in the past - let's stop hanging on his stuff. Sure, his points may have validity but it's now time for each and every one of us to make our own words and thoughts better realities, or McLuhisms, if you'd like that terminology better Bobbie. You rock more than him (as we all do). Run with it.
BOB: Well, you've stepped in it this time, Masteroflightchick. But this is not said in pique:
When one mentions McLuhan to me, it's wise to know at least a little about him. And trust me, 99.9999999999% of Earth's occupants never heard of him, let alone read him. But he is undoubtedly the most original thinker (as more and more people are now acknowledging) of the last 50 years - the "Einstein" of the second half of the 20th Century.
But, thanks to iON, I found out a few other facts about McLuhan. First, he was a rift-rider (parallel worlder); second, he had 2 or 3 other wives and children in other worlds. This certainly is not mentioned in the most recent book about him:
http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Can ... 242&sr=1-1So it turns out McLuhan was not only the first metaphysician of rift-riding, he was the first to understand the dynamics of rift-riding by our inventions. That's right... by our MACHINES!!
See JW's recent adventure with his computer:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=139
iON says that this is a fine example of the Chip Body intercoursing with non-physical.
Now iON can't create in the physical but McLuhan could. So for the record (on this forum) this is how he applied his creativity:
"PLAYBOY (March 1969): If man can't prevent this transformation of himself by technology - or into technology - how can he control and direct the process of change?
McLUHAN: The first and most vital step of all, as I said at the outset, is simply to understand media and its revolutionary effects on all psychic and social values and institutions. Understanding is half the battle. The central purpose of all my work is to convey this message, that by understanding media as they extend man, we gain a measure of control over them. And this is a vital task, because the immediate interface between audile-tactile and visual perception is taking place everywhere around us. No civilian can escape this environmental blitzkrieg, for there is, quite literally, no place to hide. But if we diagnose what is happening to us, we can reduce the ferocity of the winds of change and bring the best elements of the old visual culture, during this transitional period, into peaceful coexistence with the new retribalized society.
If we persist, however, in our conventional rearview-mirror approach to these cataclysmic developments, all of Western culture will be destroyed and swept into the dustbin of history. If literate Western man were really interested in preserving the most creative aspects of his civilization, he would not cower in his ivory tower bemoaning change but would plunge himself into the vortex of electric technology and, by understanding it, dictate his new environment - turn ivory tower into control tower. But I can understand his hostile attitude, because I once shared his visual bias.
PLAYBOY: What changed your mind?
McLUHAN: Experience. For many years, until I wrote my first book, The Mechanical Bride, I adopted an extremely moralistic approach to all environmental technology. I loathed machinery, I abominated cities, I equated the Industrial Revolution with original sin and mass media with the Fall. In short, I rejected almost every element of modern life in favor of a Rousseauvian utopianism. But gradually I perceived how sterile and useless this attitude was, and I began to realize that the greatest artists of the 20th Century - Yeats, Pound, Joyce, Eliot - had discovered a totally different approach, based on the identity of the processes of cognition and creation. I realized that artistic creation is the playback of ordinary experience - from trash to treasures. I ceased being a moralist and became a student.
[NOTE: McLuhan "had discovered a totally different approach, based on the IDENTITY of the processes of cognition and creation."]
As someone committed to literature and the traditions of literacy, I began to study the new environments that imperiled literary values, and I soon realized that they could not be dismissed by moral outrage or pious indignation. Study showed that a totally new approach was required, both to save what deserved saving in our Western heritage and to help man adopt a new survival strategy. I adapted some of this new approach in The Mechanical Bride by attempting to immerse myself in the advertising media in order to apprehend its impact on man, but even there some of my old literate 'point of view' bias crept in. The book, in any case, appeared just as television was making all its major points irrelevant.
I soon realized that recognizing the symptoms of change was not enough; one must understand the cause of change, for without comprehending causes, the social and psychic effects of new technology cannot be counteracted or modified. But I recognized also that one individual cannot accomplish these self-protective modifications; they must be the collective effort of society, because they affect all of society; the individual is helpless against the pervasiveness of environmental change: the new garbage - or mess-age - induced by new technologies. Only the social organism, united and recognizing the challenge, can move to meet it.
Unfortunately, no society in history has ever known enough about the forces that shape and transform it to take action to control and direct new technologies as they extend and transform man. But today, change proceeds so instantaneously through the new media that it may be possible to institute a global education program that will enable us to seize the reins of our destiny - but to do this we must first recognize the kind of therapy that's needed for the effects of the new media. In such an effort, indignation against those who perceive the nature of those effects is no substitute for awareness and insight."
BOB (continuing): Now, I took my power about 40 years ago and became very "creative". So creative, that I extended McLuhan's work. You can see and hear it here as it proceeds:
http://www.fivebodied.com/archives/audi ... eline.htmlBack to iON: iON has only a few principles to utter and often states they will not change their words. Natural for a phenomenon that's not creative. Thus, to the degree one comes into "one's power" and becomes a full-blown creative person in the physical, iON is only helpful in the former aspect - coming into one's power. After that, it becomes debatable how much iON can be involved. But McLuhan definitely will be involved, not to mention what I present on the "fivebodied" front (Chemical Body, Astral Body, TV Body, Chip Body, and Mystery Body).
I see iON as a revolution in the Astral Body (Non-Physical) aspect of ourselves, in this sense: with the thinning of the Veil, the Astral Body is now forced to engage with the new environments (both psychic and social) engendered by our TV Body and Chip Body. To the degree we "look for a reason", one will find that the strange phenomena due to the unprecedented interaction of these 5 Bodies are "explained" by my model/map. And understanding McLuhan and James Joyce's FINNEGANS WAKE (1939) is the necessary undergraduate study and prelude to perceiving my postgraduate work and its delineation of how iON came to be and why iON is a colossal antidote to "2012" and its urgencies/enthusiasms (two conversations).
Therefore, I will be around to pick up the slack once the iONite has shaken iON's hand and proudly exclaimed, "Nice knowin' ya, but I will never join your church!"
So c'mon in, Pam, the "pH" is fine.
Bob Neveritt
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