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Thursday, May 3, 2018

Marshall McLuhan Writes Ezra Pound About Secret Societies


Dear Pound,

Last year has been spent in going through the rituals of secret societies with fine comb. As I said before I'm in a bloody rage at the discovery that the arts and sciences are in the pocket of these societies. It doesn't make me any happier that Joyce, Lewis, Eliot, yourself have used these rituals as a basis for art activity.

Monopolies of knowledge are intolerable;
The use of the arts for sectarian warfare! ugh;
The use of the arts as a technique of salvation!
as a channel of supernatural grace!;
The validity of the rituals is entirely in the cognitive order;
|Art is limitation of the process of apprehension,
clarification of " " " " " "
Now that I know of the nature of the sectarian strife among the Societies I have no intention of participating in it any further, until I know a good deal more. To Hell with East and West.

Marshall McLuhan, 1953

From Letters of Marshall McLuhan, page 235.

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