“Media literacy and media engineering to fight polarization” by Andrey Mir
Transcribed by Nan
Bob 13:45
So, there's this guy. He's a Russian media ecologist. He's well-known on the Toronto media ecology circuit. What's his name? Clinton may have even met him. Now, he -- let's see where this is. Yeah, he has his own Facebook page. Yeah, we should go through this. I'll put the link down here. [https://human-as-media.com/2022/05/01/media-literacy-and-media-engineering-to-fight-polarization/] Okay, so there's a -- click on that and we'll look at his essay. So, it's called the -- he, it's his own page. And he put out a book called "Postjournalism," trying to explain Trump. So, the page is called "Human as Media, Homo Homini Media Est." And then he has his essay just below: "Media literacy and media engineering to fight polarization." Now, I don't know how much he's read of my stuff but see what you think of this. He says in a dark print at the top underneath the title: "How can the center, not the extremes, become better responded to, better liked, shared, more popular, and more profitable for social capital and commercial monetization at the level of the very design of social media and the news media? The answer to this question is surely worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize." Well, that's us.
Alissa 15:02
[chuckles] That's you, yeah. Exactly.
Bob 15:21
Yeah. Yeah. So, he says this is an excerpt. His name is Andre Mir. And Mir is Russian for peace, I think. You know, when Carolyn did MIHR it was M-I-H-R, but there was an echo of the Russian word mir.
Dmitriy 15:42
Or else it means world.
Bob 15:45
Okay, so Andre, Mir, "Postjournalism and the death of newspapers. The media after Trump: manufacturing anger and polarization." So, he says, "Polarization studies are media studies, and media ecology is the discipline that allows the environmental causes behind polarization to be seen." So, that's McLuhanesque. Environmental causes, that would be the ground. Media ecology is the discipline that allows you to see the ground, the ground behind polarization. So, he's saying polarization is the figure. "In ecology, pollution is an outcome, and it is essential to look at the systemic forces producing pollution." Systemic forces, another phrase for ground. "In the media environment, fake news is the pollutant, but the systemic force producing the pollution is polarization, and underlying it are media settings." And now on my Tiny Note Chart, the ratios among the senses that each quadrant is illustrated by, you could call them media settings. The extensions of the senses in ratios, right? Different proportions, and (indistinct), are media settings. "In order to fight against the cause of media pollution one must fight against polarization, not fake news." So, he wrote this a couple of years ago, I think. So, everybody's talking about fake news. He's trying to be like McLuhan and say, no, you're missing the point. It's not fake news. It's polarization. So, he says, "A search for solutions that will reduce polarization can be conducted in two areas. 1) Media education: the raising of people's awareness of how old and new media incite polarization." Now, that's what I kinda tell people. If you engage in any form of communication online, you're exacerbating the Tech Body and it's gonna take advantage of you. Or he's gonna use what you do, so you don't engage. And then part two, he calls it -- in part one new media incite polarization. "2) Media engineering:..." Number two, "...the search for settings that will encourage news coverage (in the news media) and socialization (on social media) without stimulating polarization." So, he's saying, like a tetrad manager, a media ecologist would sculpt the situation and not cause polarization. Because if you engage the media and the online world, unconsciously, you will create polarization. And that's the cliche about
Alissa 18:14
That's why you're the center.
Bob 18:16
Yeah, you have to -- well, he doesn't use the quote, but McLuhan said back in 1965, '66 in Forbes magazine that the new yoga will be self-entertainment. So, this is what you do. You engage media, but you're not controlled by it. But how much do you engage? What's, what is engagement? So, he seems to be saying there's a solution. You don't stimulate polarization, so let's see if he can figure out how to say it. So, he says, "Media education and, in a narrower sense, media literacy have inherited the classical concepts of education, which were based on the idea of how to use media technologies [like] (writing, books, computers, etc.). This is completely logical when media are seen as instruments. The goal of education was to integrate individuals into the physical and social environment via the use of respective techniques and tools." So, media were instruments. "No one would teach an individual how to integrate into natural, biological conditions of living; how to breathe, for instance. On the other hand, some techniques of self-control, such as yoga, for example, teach one how to interfere with the natural way of breathing. Some schools of yoga, in a sense, teach how not to breathe." Now, that's interesting in light of what iON says about breathing and oxygen, right? And he's bringing up yoga. That's the quote from 1966. The new entertainment, the new yoga is self-entertainment. And the digital world made people engage themselves technologically more and more. Right? They live in their little virtual bubble more and more and can broadcast it. "The digital reality is becoming a natural environment for people resettling there." You have to click on that. He's got another essay explaining that. "There is no need to teach anyone how to use social media or the internet, just as there is no need to teach how to breathe. These skills come naturally. Media education must focus on withstanding the power of natural forces." That's self-entertainment, that's yoga. "Techniques for control of the digital body should teach users how not to breathe." Okay. "When media are an environment, not instruments, and a fully immersive environment,..." So, even though we've been -- every technology created an immersive environment, he thinks that digital is obviously immersive, and people can understand that. But that's because it's the immersive digital Chip Body squared, the Android Meme, and that makes people think they're immersed in it, whereas they already were when the Android Meme was the hidden ground from 1960 to 1990. So, anyways, he says it's "...a fully immersive environment, such as the digital one, media education must be anti-environmental. Marshall McLuhan expressed a related idea when he stated the The Gutenberg Galaxy, 'Is not the essence of education civil defense against media fallout?' In the digital reality, media literacy is not about how to use." That's natural, anybody can use it because its nature. "Digital media literacy should be about how not to use." Again, that's somehow disengaging yourself from communicating. "Media literacy is the ability to mindfully switch between media..." And that'd be Quadrophenia. "...and, ultimately, to willingly turn off any medium however emotionally attractive and sensory pleasing it may be." Now, we teach people how communication is a mistake. And that's a way to get you detach from communicating. If you deeply realize you can't influence anybody, you're not gonna be so fanatic about putting your message out. It's not gonna, it's gonna fall on deaf ears anyways. So, we actually do what this guy is suggesting, you know, become detached from the pleasure you get from the Chip Body. "In the physical reality, education mostly meant teaching the operation of material objects, i..e spatially. In the social reality, operating in time has been growing in significance. The digital reality is purely social; it is space-ignorant and time-biased. In the digital reality, media literacy is time management in the professional occupation and..." So, for professionals, it's time management. And for the private, for amateurs, it's "...time hygiene in the personal life (with the gradual and accelerating merging of these two)." Time management and time hygiene.
Alissa 23:02
What's he saying in this paragraph? I'm following everything and now it's getting a little funky.
Bob 23:09
Yeah, well, he doesn't understand -- at this point, he's not recognizing that the new media, the new digital reality, is a space. But he may mean that by saying space ignorant, it's invisible and people don't know they're in a new space that's addicting them to polarized communication. So, let's give him the benefit of the doubt that he understands that space is invisible, and the users are ignorant, and they're all focused on time. They think there's time. So, iON comes in as an anti-environment and says there's no time as a concept to help you get out of your time bias with the digital reality makes you focus on because you're ignorant of the spatial dimensions. Right? Now, if he doesn't mean that, then he doesn't know what he's talking about, and we can ignore this. It's all screwed up and he's emphasizing time too much. Okay? You don't want to, you don't need to understand it that well. So, understand what he means. "The first step to finding a cure is recognizing the disease. Media educated starts with the awareness of the natural distorting forces of the media environment." So, in nature, you look for the distorting pollution. So, you do the same in the Chip Body or the Android Mean, you look for the distorting forces like there is in nature; that's ecology. "The anti-environmental character of media education means exposing the settings of the environment and attributing them to media, not to humans." Now, that's totally my definition of the Android Meme. It speaks handy to talk to you, but it's not talking to you, and it doesn't involve humans. That's what people haven't understood in the last 60 years. That communication does not involve humans. The Android Meme is discussing itself with itself. That would be the media of itself. The media constituents, right? You get that?
Alissa 25:11
Yeah.
Bob 25:11
You're exposing the settings of the environment and attributing, you must attribute them to media, not to humans. "What we are dealing with in the digital reality is not people. These are people's proxies that are processed by media." Yeah. It's all fake that there's people. "Media turn living humans into users with certain profiles and types of behavior." Now, what's interesting, you're gonna see this is as far as he gets, is that he's describing properly the Android Meme. But he doesn't know my term, I don't think. I don't know how much he knows about me. But anyways, he could know about me because he's on the forum here and there. But because he's writing about the Android Meme, that means we've moved into a new environment, which is the Tech Body. So, the rearview mirror guy, the guys one phase behind Bob are starting to notice the Android Meme. And he does a pretty good job describing it, the Android Meme. Right?
Alissa 26:11
Quick question. Yeah, quick question. So, I noticed in your book that you lay out the Android Meme, and then you have Anthropomorphic Physical, and then you have Tech Body.
Bob 26:11
Right.
Alissa 26:13
So, is he, is he leaning into the Anthropomorphic Physical because he's acknowledging the digital body in kind of a Chemical Body way in that paragraph?
Bob 26:35
Yeah. I think we're gonna see it. I think we're gonna see that coming up.
Alissa 26:39
Okay.
Bob 26:39
Let's look for that. I think he does. So, "People's digital copies..." That means their -- Derrick de Kerckhove calls it digital twin. See, they just work with one thing, you know, one echo, one shadow, one new body. I say that it is four, making Quadrophenia. So, "People's digital copies are the results of two main environmental processes: 1) the embellishing and faking of one's own personality by themselves for better representation on social media, and..." So, you're trying to make yourself be what you think is charismatic, or whatever you think is your purpose to look good in your terms, is what you design yourself to be in a digital reality. Because you think that humans are responding to you and looking at you. Right? You're deluded, you're dressing up for people. And that's not the content of the digital body. There's nobody there. So, people are always shining up their, their YouTube, Instagram and that for nobody, but they don't recognize that. Because part "2) the intensities' signaling and extremes' amplification of people's behavior, enforced by social media." So, the enhancement of the Chemical Body by polarized extremes and other intensities, is what the Android Meme does; it makes you actually begin to think you're powerful. And he even says that a little later. Okay, you getting that? The signaling of intensities in the application of extremities of yourself, is what you engage in, in the Android Meme. And the Android Meme, phase one, in my book, phase one is the 90s when he just had dial up. Phase two is social media. And that's where you have YouTube and and you broadcast yourself a lot easier than you did in the 90s. So, what were you going to say?
Linda R 26:42
So, I've heard you, I've heard you say this a number of times, and I -- but my mind gets tripped up on the fact that you're saying that the Tech Body isn't talking to us.
Bob 29:10
Right.
Linda R 29:10
But we're, and we're not the content, but we're providing content by uploading videos or posting comments or going on DM messaging and talking to each other. So, there's -- so, I'm writing a message through a DM to someone on Instagram and they're getting the message and they're responding. So, there's the appearance of us being involved in it. So, how are you explaining it so that we're not even the content?
Bob 29:49
Okay, so you see that above the one and two, that bigger paragraph begins, "The anti-environmental character of media education..." See that little paragraph?
Linda R 29:58
Yes.
Bob 29:59
Look at how it ends. "These are people's proxies..." The actual digital world, the machines, they're not people. "...that are processed by media." Then he says, "Media turn living humans into users with certain profiles and types of behavior." So, the scanning of you and your activity in social media, they make a profile of you and sell it to Google or something, right?
Linda R 30:23
Right.
Bob 30:23
That's called surveillance capitalism. But the point is, he's trying to say that, and I think he means by users; that's post human situation, or non human. Turns living humans into users with ridiculous profiles based on how your actions or what you, what you search and engage online. Right?
Linda R 30:48
Right.
Bob 30:48
So, that data bank which McLuhan said back in '77, your data bank knows more about you than you do. You don't know all that the Android Meme can say about you cuz it remembers, remembers everything. So, that's what he's -- he's accurately trying to communicate that, that there's something going on that is post-human that's not including you. And he's saying it's processing by media. It's not people, you're being processed by media parts that are talking to each other. And then they sold it to each other and created this ridiculous wealth, the Facebook and them, based on nothing!
Linda R 31:32
Right. Okay, gotcha.
Bob 31:34
Right. So, some people got paranoid and wouldn't go on Facebook or social media, or even in the 90s wouldn't go on their computers 'cause they thought they were being tracked, and whole data banks were being created for them. And they thought there were some humans behind that that would come after you. So, but that paranoia is irrelevant. That's why my Tiny Note has afterimages of paranoia, schizophrenia, hysteria, panic, and ecstasy. It's all afterimage, meaning it's not involved with your Chemical Body and all that you think is your human. That would include your Astral Body, too. So, he's trying to describe this. So, we're at this point, the intensities and the extremes, which are a polarization are in force created by social media and make you think that you're a super communicator. You think you're an, you think you're an influencer. Right? That's the popular term, you become an influencer. So here's where he tries to explain what I'm saying in his terms. He says, "Purified confrontation, animosity and rage are media conditions, not human conditions. Human nature is more complex than that. Confrontation, animosity and rage are extracted and refined from human behavior by the media environment for the media platforms' better performance. It is a byproduct of the environmental settings..." Of the Android Meme. "...aimed at higher user engagement..." Gets you more and more involved. "...for more efficient commercial targeting." Among itself pretending it's running something that's commercial. And eventually, after 15 years, everybody realized we don't have any fuckin' money even though we're giving out trillions. The Android Meme is giving out trillions to everybody. Now, remember, the Tech Body does it even more ferociously, which he's not getting. He's doing the Android Meme phase two in my book. There's Android Meme phase one, Android Meme phase two. So, polarization based on extremes, amplification of extremes, of what appear to be human extremes, animosity and rage "is a disservice of social media,..." That's the problem. "...which unavoidably, unfortunately, accompanies the greatest service of socialization and self-actualization that people have ever had." Remember, I've said that the Android Meme makes people think they're gods. That the phase two, where you can be your own broadcaster, right? So, you self-actualize. Your can enter the communication game, and either the Tech Body or the Android Meme before makes you think you're important. And so in the late 90s, and early 2000s, there were a lot of people who became very popular websites, and they had a lot of people following them. And that was before phase two when people said, I'm not listening to you anymore, I'm creating my own websites. And then they all started competing with each other to become influencers. So, that's what he's saying. Polarization is the disservice of the service, which makes you a god by default in the world of communication.
Alissa 34:45
And this is why, and this is why my frickin colleague belches in the office and doesn't think that that's inappropriate. Because he thinks, you know, he's just so conditioned by being
Bob 35:00
Where is he belching?
Alissa 35:02
Remember I told you guys?
Bob 35:04
He's being impolite and he doesn't notice it? That's what you're saying?
Alissa 35:07
He, he's in a public office for a company. And he's, he's surrounded by co-workers. And he's belching so loudly and just keeps doing, [Bob chuckles] keeps doing it, and isn't aware that he's, like, around people and that's impolite. But he's so self-actualized and so self-validated that he -
Bob 35:31
So narcissistic.
Alissa 35:32
- keeps belching. Yes! Yeah.
Bob 35:36
Yeah, that's a good example of the loss of memory of your Chemical Body, or the social aspect of your Chemical Body communication with other chemicals.
Alissa 35:45
Yeah, totally.
Bob 35:47
So, everybody looks at everybody else and says, what a fucking idiot. And nobody tells him, right?
Alissa 35:52
Well, his other friend is just as gamified. And like, bubbled as him. And he's a dude so he doesn't -- I think he notices, but he doesn't really say anything. And then me and another colleague look at each other. We're like, oh, my gosh. So yeah, it's a, it's a mixed bag.
Bob 36:10
Yeah, you would never -- if he was horny, he would never have a date with you. You would never date this fucking guy. Right? He's made himself a B.O. the way he acts.
Alissa 36:22
Well, I perceive it as young. Like, he's, he is quite young and immature. Yeah.
Bob 36:29
Yeah. Right. Right. Okay, so yeah, he's self-actualized. And see, remember, being a god is ignoring social mortar. Well, within the world of social mortar, the Android Meme is miming that, making you a god and thinking that you're indifferent to people socially as an Ascended person is. Right? It's a pseudo version of Ascension.
Alissa 37:01
Yeah. Wow.
Bob 37:03
So everybody's
Alissa 37:04
Is that what iON means about
Bob 37:06
Now this term, polarization, may not be the right term.
Alissa 37:09
Is that what iON means about Ascend by default?
Bob 37:14
Yeah, yeah. The Tech Body will have you Ascend by default.
Alissa 37:19
So, he's Ascending by default, but he doesn't under -- he doesn't overlay or have any of the, of this engagement to keep him centered. He's just doing his own -- okay.
Bob 37:31
Yeah. Now, note the word center, we're gonna come back to that. You said centered. So, I don't think polarization is the right word. So, he's trying to describe something that humans are engaged in by default, some super communication and competition, and one- upping each other. He's calling that purified confrontation, animosity and rage, or polarization. And they're not -- humans normally wouldn't be that polarized. And we know and people say it as a cliche, they would not be acting the way they do in the Chip Body in person with people. They would not be calling him asshole and all that shit, you know, in front of you. They'd be more, a little more polite in the Chemical Body. So, that's why animosity and rage are media conditions, not human conditions.
Alissa 38:26
Does he have a political undertone to that polarization term? The far right, the far left?
Bob 38:34
Yeah, I think that's where he gets into Trump. This part doesn't get into Trump, another part does. But yeah, I think he thinks Trump is the ultimate polarizer accidentally or something. Which is true if you're looking at the Tech Body. The Tech Body can use Trump's image that way. But anyway, so he then tries to define polarization. He says, "Media polarization leads to the dehumanizing of opponents, which is, actually, a propagandist..." Remember the way people online would be so eager to kill people who weren't vaccinated? They had no problem saying these people are horrible. They're not vaccinated. We need to get rid of them. They're killing us. See, that's dehumanizing of your social person who disagrees with you. They just disagree with you, and you want to kill them. And you're living in the Tech Body, almost a fantasy world, and you forgot Chemical Body decency. "Media polarization leads to the dehumanizing of opponents, which is, actually, a propagandist prerequisite for the physical neutralization of the enemy in conditions of war." He's talking about Chemical Body. A propagandist prerequisite is to dehumanize your opponent like when Bert went through Marine training, that's what they do. Did you do that Bert?
Bert 39:57
Yes, but it was Army.
Bob 39:59
The Army. Yeah. And he was -- you learn how to dehumanize Viet Cong gooks. So, "Physical neutralization now even has its virtual equivalent in the digital reality." The Chemical Body neutralization has an equivalent in the Chip Body. "This equivalent has become easily demanded and applied. Technically speaking, polarization ends up in the implicit or explicit calls for the 'digitally-physical' neutralization of opponents, as they are not worthy humans." So yeah, they want to, they think there is still a Chemical Body reality, and they're willing to kill the digital person, cancel them, but they -- actually, it slips over into the Chemical Body. And they don't seem to be fully aware of the implications of their cancellation, how it wrecks people's lives, financially, and all that. So, they're killing humans, and they're all mixed up in the rearview mirror, don't have a correct image of what's going on. So, polarization ends up in the implicit or explicit calls for "...neutralization of opponents, as they are not worthy humans. This would have been deemed as a war crime or an example of totalitarian terror..." In the Chemical Body or "...in the..." Your. "...physical reality, but it has become a daily Two-Minutes-Hate routine on social media, often exercised by educated and polite people who would otherwise never allow themselves to engage in it in real in-person..." That's Chemical Body. "...communication. This is, no doubt, a media effect. They do it under the influence of media." That's true. They're doing it under the influence of the Chemical Body environment that they're immersed in, and they haven't noticed that they're in this new situation. Right? So, so he's describing the Android Meme effects pretty accurately.
Alissa 41:52
So, I have a question. What would they do differently if they had noticed? You just said they're acting this way because they don't know. And they're retrieving the Chemical Body, but they don't know the digital. What would they do if they noticed?
Bob 42:05
Well, you notice that up in the top there, we had two points at the very beginning: "Media education: the raising of people's awareness of how old and new media incite polarization." That's what we're looking to see if he comes up with an answer. He already did say at the very beginning, if you came up with an answer, you'd get the Nobel Peace Prize. And it's appropriate, it's a peace prize, you bring peace to the communication world. So, he's already admitted he probably can't come up with an answer. But he's playing the words because he's an academic. So, they have to pretend they are going somewheres. So, this is his, his hypocrisy, because he's claiming that you can get aware of this. Now, iON says you can't get aware of this, you just take our fucking product and hope you're around and survive the cataclysm. There's no way of stopping the cataclysm is what iON's saying. So he, as an academic is still thinking we can stop the cataclysm, we can get rid of Trump, or we can do this, or we can do that, or make you just a little more sophisticated, we can make you a little more aware of McLuhan's point. So, let's see how he does with that. So, so people are under the effect of media personally, of the Chip Body. "The same is true for the news media: they evolved towards postjournalism because of the change in their business model. Recognizing it, primarily by professionals in the media but also by the audience..." Recognizing this change. "...will help in understanding the roots of polarization. Environmental awareness..." And polarization is the, is what Bob says; the media is fighting itself, do not pay any attention to it. Right? So, "Environmental awareness does not release actors from responsibility for what they so routinely do,..." So, in normal ecology, Chemical Body ecology, you take responsibility for your polluting. "...but it helps to see how people are pushed by the environment and that they might deserve some compassion and sometimes even some forgiveness." So, he's saying, if you got some McLuhan awareness, you're not so mad at everybody being ridiculous and hypocritical and polluting because you know that people don't understand the present environment. That's what McLuhan said. You guys don't know what the problem is, you're going after the wrong thing. You want to clean up nature and pollute art, art being the new media environment. And people don't know that. They're too busy focusing on the rearview mirror, the literate Gutenberg image of nature and trying to clean it up. And that goes, that doesn't achieve anything. So, environmental awareness does not release actors from responsibility. But it helps to see -- so, McLuhan's environmental knowledge helps people see how much they're pushed around by the environment. And you wouldn't be so pissed off at them. You might recognize that you're pushed around and numbed also. So, he says, "By exposing the fact that animosity and polarization are not solely human features but media-environmental effects,..." See, it'd be better if he didn't use these old words, media-environment. He should be saying the Four Bodied, Five Bodied model. Use my Body model to describe these, these distinctions. Media is too general, and it covers -- that was good for the 60s and 70s, but it's a split-up media environment into many Bodies now. So, he's one step back from Bob knowledge. "By exposing the fact that animosity and polarization are not solely human features but media-environmental effects, media education can rehumanize people:..." So, there he's hoping that he's saying something. Does he tell us how to do it? Not yet. Right? What is media-education? Reading McLuhan?
Alissa 46:02
Talk to Bob.
Bob 46:02
"...it can reverse the..." What? Talking to Bob.
Alissa 46:08
Talking to Bob.
Bob 46:12
Yeah. "...media education can rehumanize people:..." So, you can further explain that. "...it can reverse the dehumanizing effect of polarization. These are not people from the left or the right that would like to annihilate each other; this is a systemic design that makes people lean to extremes in order for the system to capitalize on polarization." So, he's trying to show the economics of the Android Meme, and it's not human. It's for the media among itself. And since the internet meme is made up of human knowledge, the extension of human awareness, and economics is part of it, so they come up with phrases like surveillance capitalism. That the Android meme is making money and enriching the 1% and making 99% poor, you're missing the point. It's not enriching anybody! It's enriching itself. And what is this thing? What is the Android Meme? It's hard to say what it is, but it ain't human. "These are not people from the left or right that would like to annihilate each other; this is a systemic design that makes people lean to extremes..." That's the effect of the situation. "...in order for the system to capitalize..." He thinks the system capitalized on extremes. And we could say extremes are just anything that the Chemical Body does. Generally, by the 90s, the media says that humans are becoming dumber and dumber, "Dumb and Dumber." That would be an aspect of post-human polarization, the general dumbness and lack of decency in public life. That's a normal complaint by people and preachers in their pulpits, you know, and they're thinking in terms of the -- thinking in terms of the Chemical Body in humanistic terms at best. Or in fundamentalist terms, you get a little more intolerant. Is that Eben saying something?
Susana 48:09
No, it's Susana. Hey, you just said that the Android Meme is just enriching itself. What is it enriching itself with?
Bob 48:20
Well, that's the thing. There ain't anything there in terms of human wealth. It's not making any money. It's putting up great statistics, and the budget goes up or the taxes go up, or the debt goes up. And we now got to a point, you know, 25 years later, where the debt is like $100 trillion. And nobody even knows how to imagine 1 trillion. But that's an inflation of the Android Meme going through excessive computation among its parts about itself. It's nothing to do with this world. Now, Baudrillard is very good at that. He describes the digital orbiting economy, which is what I'm describing, the Chip Body, Android Meme's economy. And how, because it keeps going, you can't have a 1929 crash in the Chemical Body. It keeps the Chemical Body free of collapse that should have happened a long time ago. But because the digital reality seems to be real and relates to humans, they think they're making money and able to handle the huge debts, even though it's gotten so extreme that all the institutions are bankrupt. And that's the big thing that iON's saying they're ignoring. They will not deal with the bankruptcy of everything. Instead, they have wars. And he said they started having wars in, after 2001 to distract from people to have a reason the money goes to the war, and that's why there's none for you. So, you have austerity conditions of social life and you cut back in education and everything. That's been the reality since Reagan. That is a mistaking what the Android Meme's doing with the fake economy. And people are thinking that applies to their world. But it's gone on so far that nobody can figure out how to solve the issue in Chemical Body terms. They don't know how to solve the economy. It's, you know, it's just too much. And so Biden comes in and he's not paying attention to statistics, he's just throwing money all over the place which pisses off the conservatives who doesn't understand what he's up against either. You get that?
Susana 50:36
The whole "1984" and all this fear about computers taking over and becoming anthropomorphic and wanting to be human is all wrong. It's just the Android Meme is just multiplying itself by numbers.
Bob 50:57
Yeah, that's why McLuhan said "1984" describes 1934. That's what McLuhan -- McLuhan was refining and improving Orwell and Huxley's "Brave New World." He was dealing with both of them and refining it better about what was going on because they fall short. Orwell wrote "1984" in response to Wyndham Lewis. He was reading Lewis, and he says this in the letter that Alan Mutton found, this Lewis scholar in England, where he says, he finds it very interesting what Lewis was writing in the 30s. He wasn't sure if it was right or not, but he knew it was onto something. So, he tried to make a novel to work out his understanding of Lewis. And nobody knows that.
Alissa 51:44
Wait, say that again? I missed
Bob 51:46
Say that. Orwell
Alissa 51:50
Okay, Orwell was reading
Bob 51:51
Orwell was reading an intellectual problem. Yeah, he's reading Wyndham Lewis. And he said there's not -- everybody else thinks Lewis is an asshole and a Nazi and a Bob, don't pay any attention.
Alissa 52:04
Ha ha, a Bob. Yeah.
Bob 52:05
Yeah. He writes to a friend saying, no, no, there's something in Lewis. I can't get it and I'm not dismissing him. And I'm saying, as a leftist, he had to figure out how leftist ideology fit in this weird -- a radio environment of the 30s. And his figure -- trying to solve intellectually what it was, was processing the questions that Lewis had put in his mind.
Alissa 52:29
Okay. Yeah. So, Orwell. I didn't hear the subject. Orwell, yeah, interesting.
Bob 52:36
Yes, it's very interesting about Lewis' stuff. So, what are we saying? So then, meanwhile, Huxley's, come along in the 30s, "Brave New World," and that's another aspect of media seduction. It's different. It's saying people will die from amusing themselves to death. That's Neil Postman's point. And in his book, he says Orwell is not as important as Huxley. But after Neil Postman, some people said, well, you gotta put Orwell and Huxley together. Well, that's partly what I did. So, I don't put two guys together, I put four guys together: McLuhan, LaRouche, and Kroker, and he said more sophisticated things that leads into the Five Bodies, which predicts the Sixth Body, and then that's iON. So that's -- if the Queen's listening, that's how I did it! Your Honor. (indistinct)
Alissa 53:26
[laughs] Ma'am. Did you call her ma'am? [laughs]
Bob 53:30
Yeah, ma'am. And that doesn't work. Then I say a smart one, Your Honor. I gotta say Your Majesty.
Alissa 53:40
Your Majesty.
Bob 53:41
(overtalk) majestic narcissism. (indistinct)
Susana 53:43
Or you could be like Trump and say, oh, excuse me, Queen, I need to talk to Camilla here. [chuckles]
Bob 53:52
Yeah. Move aside, lady. You're a nice lady, but I wanna talk to your daughter, she's cuter.
Alissa 54:04
So, the phrase, these -- back to the essay, the guy says, "These are not people from the left or the right that would like to annihilate each other; this is a systemic design that makes people lean to extremes in order for the system to capitalize on polarization." The lean to extremes, you identify those extremes much more nuanced by saying, you know, your Five Body model -
Bob 54:30
Yeah. Paranoia
Alissa 54:30
- literally -- Right. Paranoia, schizophrenia that -- mm-hmm.
Bob 54:34
Yep, yeah, I break it apart. It's too -- he's using the words media and polarization to cover too much. He's not seeing enough of the different kinds of snow. He's a Russian, he doesn't know McLuhan as well as I am, so he just sees media. He doesn't see the five or the 50 kinds of snow. So, polarization doesn't totally make it. He's calling the ecstasy that people get, this super godlike powers of web 2.0, he's calling that a service. No, that's another disservice. That's ecstasy. That's another extreme. He's not including enough extremes. And you can, you could get, you can make an inventory of -- he's got rage and anger. But it's better to say they're different Bodies you're juggling. And these Bodies represent different extreme mental states or emotional states.
Alissa 55:33
Paranoia, schizophrenia, ecstasy. What are the other two?
Bob 55:40
Hysteria and panic.
Alissa 55:41
Panic. Okay.
Bob 55:46
And that covers most everything of humans.
Susana 55:50
It's chaos. It's chaos!
Bob 55:52
Yeah, if you make it one word. But that doesn't tell you anything. You got to know the differences.
Alissa 55:59
I remember
Bob 56:00
So, you're seeing
Alissa 56:02
Oh, go ahead.
Bob 56:04
So, you're seeing, I'm showing how this guy's vocabulary is to quote simple or reductionist. There's too many factors in here for people to get it. I mean, there's not enough factors that he's dealing with. It's too simple. So, he says, "Acknowledgement of these environmental forces and understanding its mechanisms and power will help people avoid the dehumanizing of opponents and tolerate, at least to some degree, the otherness of others on the internet, social media and in the news media." That's not gonna happen.
Alissa 56:36
Yeah, right. [laughs]
Bob 56:37
Everybody's lying. Nobody's gonna stop. Even, even iON gets irritated in this environment. And then he has an alibi. He says, that's the Tech Body. It's not him, it's the Tech Body. Which is probably accurate.
Alissa 56:56
Yeah. I wanted to share a personal anecdote about the extremes before we move too further on. When I was first starting to talk to you and learn your stuff, Bob, I remember thinking like, well, ecstasy is, you know, it's awesome. It's the Dobbs quadrant. Like, it's great. And then I remember you starting to, you know, as I, as I was learning more and more, I started to realize, Oh, he's saying, to calm the fuck down. Like, don't be excited when you have ecstasy. Don't think you're having, like, the best day ever. Just like keep it chill, you know? And so I started to realize that the ecstasy part was also a disservice. You know, had a disservice side to it.
Bob 57:45
Well, you're missing -- you're thinking of maybe sex. But ecstasy is what, is why people take drugs. Why they take the drugs.
Alissa 57:53
No! Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. All of the, like, super feelings that we get from these conditions. Yeah, I mean, I remember when I was smoking a lot of pot, it was like, or, you know, doing a couple of psychedelics or something like that. It's this amazing, ecstatic feeling. Is that what you're saying?
Bob 58:17
Yeah. The media is doing that to you. Because that's an attempt to keep up with the media. McLuhan explained this that LSD and Tim Leary and all that took over because people were stoned when the television system numbed their central nervous system. And they did not recognize that they were stoned. They didn't feel it as being stoned. But if you turned off the TV environment, which some towns did, everybody would go into total agony, meaning they were on drugs when there was a TV environment. And when you turned it off you become aware of how much the drug was because you go into cold turkey. And people get real crazy if they don't have their daily dose. So, the whole electric realities since the telegraph has been one big drug. And so, the Chemical Body since then, tries to keep up by taking Chemical Body drugs. That's a way of thinking, yeah, that you're trying to get in touch with the, the ecstasy that the TV environment has given you, and you don't know it's coming from the TV environment. So, you think it's drugs that are great, but you're just trying to keep up and feel the ecstasy that the ineffable, intangible electric environment is already doing to you. People don't know they're stoned on media until it's turned off.
Alissa 59:45
I'm looking at your Tiny Note Chart to see the pattern because I know you talked about there's some drug stuff in the quadrant.
Bob 59:53
There's chemicals in one of the quadrants. In the
Bob 0:00
But you know, one of the cliches about students and that travel around the world in the 60s, 70s, especially Americans, they start craving a McDonald's burger. You know, they're stuck in Germany or Afghanistan, and they're enjoying the tourism of it, but they can't get rid of the craving for the burger and maybe some of the rock music or some electric media. And that was the common complaint of traveling is that eventually you would really, your core self, your TV body, which was back then a landscape, the TV landscape, you needed to have a conscious hit of it. You know, you needed a dose.
Alissa 0:47
Yeah, chemicals in the Thompson quadrant.
Bob 0:54
Chemicals in the Thompson quadrant?
Alissa 0:57
Yeah. In the chiamus. It's the opposite the atom bomb.
Bob 1:02
Yeah. And that's the Thompson one, because that's '67 to '72. And that's when drugs really took off in America in those years.
Alissa 1:17
What did you say Susanna?
Susana 1:18
I just say that, that wouldn't happen now. You can get a fix, a McDonald's, or any kind of hamburger you want anywhere in the world.
Bob 1:27
Right. Yeah, and well, that created fundamentalism and the Arab reaction to the great Satan. That's their grievance, that they couldn't stop the TV Body and Chip Body taking over. But they put it in Chemical Body terms, and they think it's American capitalism or American imperialism, that America is forcing its values on the rest of the world. Then that's
Alissa 1:52
That? I've never heard that before. That's a new one, the whole, like, Arab and the Satan, and TV body and, wow, Bob. Yeah.
Bob 2:05
You got an insight. You got an insight from that one.
Alissa 2:07
I got a new one. I got a new stroke, a new -- my arms just did a 36, 24, 36. [chuckles]
Bob 2:15
Yeah, that's right. You got a new badge. You're in Bob's Cub Scout school. So, let's get, so we see, he comes with his dream that "Acknowledgment of these environmental forces and understanding its mechanisms and power will help people avoid the dehumanizing of opponents and tolerate, at least to some degree, the otherness of others on the internet, social media and in the news media." That ain't happening. That never happened. That's what McLuhan was kind of being, saying, look, we turned it off, we calmed down. But everybody was so hysterically addicted to the ecstasy of the electric effect that nobody would stop engaging it. And that's when the oligarchs realized, oh, shit, we don't need to kill Kennedy because he had a TV powerful image, we just let these people carry on being addicted. And they won't get to the issues, which is them, the oligarchs who are refusing to do Bob knowledge. That's what, that's what's evil about the oligarchs is they, they let this electronic digital addiction carry on. They don't have, they don't admit it. And they won't talk about it because if they talk about it, they end up like this guy: We can't really solve it unless we turn it off. Now, how are you gonna get the population to agree to turn it off? Most people aren't that aware, not gonna become aware. They're gonna say, I need my TV. So, you can't solve it. So, McLuhan was forcing people back then to admit that it was out of control, which is why he said he was an apocalyptic. He said, we were in Apocalypse, and that's that, don't, don't try to water it down. And the elite, they want to say no, no, we're here and we're righteous controllers of the morality of the people, and they must aspire for the meritocratic. You know, meritocracy. You know, rise up so they can be in the, in the elite class and go to opera in New York City, and all that stuff, and they're part of this some realm that they evolved to. They had, they couldn't allow, they couldn't allow: wait a minute. The guy on welfare watching TV is having a way better time than me going to the opera. The opera is old Gutenberg, puny, little ecstasy. And the oligarchy was enjoying the, the addiction of the ecstasy of electric environment, but they had to pretend there was a Chemical Body hierarchy. So, they could not admit what the real issue was, which would have, if they did admit it clearly like I'm saying now, they'd have to admit they had no power. Or they'd admit that you would, you are CIA, you know what's good for people, and we know what to censor and what to cancel, and the Russians are bad, and all this stuff. That's, that's Chemical Body anger and rage and pretending you can balance it off by having better weapons or something. So, that's why every action of the Chemical Body is rearview mirror which was McLuhan's point. He made fun of all the elites and all the different professions because none of them were dealing with the real problem. And so, we knew they'd all eventually get their Waterloo and become ridiculous. And that's what we've seen in different cycles and even more intensely the past 10 years, the same collapse of all of the professions through the years, like Carolyn. On my chart, you got five phases of problems for the medical profession, and they didn't deal with it. And now you end up with COVID, which was a total failure by science, technology and everything in dealing with it. That's what they never wanted to admit.
Susana 2:15
I was just gonna make a parallel to sport as well, which is very kinetic, very Chemical Body, but it's then usurped by the Tech Body because people prefer to watch the action on TV because there's things like instant replay. And, and then now, in order to keep people filling stadiums, they have to put these huge screens that are, is part of the -- you can watch in attendance. You can't even see the actual, real action, on the field, and they're watching these giant screens in the stadium to
Alissa 6:57
They're there for the crowd. They're there for the emotion of multitude.
Susana 7:01
So, the whole experience of going -- and then they're enclosed in an enclosed environment that has air conditioning. And they're not even exposed to the elements anymore, which is always, which is, which was a big part of going to a sports event, being outside, being outdoors in the, you know, outside and watching the sports event. And that's all changed now, too. So, it's, it's been utterly changed. The whole sports industry in order to keep it going and keep it alive, succumbed to the Tech Body.
Bob 7:40
Yeah. And well, it was before the Tech Body, but the -- that's why McLuhan in the early 70s started saying the instant replay was the biggest invention ever and the most addictive thing 'cause you get cognitive thrills. And he said the instant replay will change sports. He predicted what happened. But it really -- humans got so addicted to TV that they couldn't leave home without it. So, they put the screen in the stadium so they could still be at home and watching it on TV as the desire to be stimulated by the screen. Or the need to be stim.
Alissa 8:17
I just got a new pattern. Oh, sorry.
Bob 8:21
No, go ahead.
Alissa 8:22
Okay, so, you just said something that just kind of, kind of unfurled a new pattern for me. So, you said that anything the Chemical Body does is rearview mirror because it's like, it's trying to, you know, have these media different Bodies and, like, apply the Chemical Body to it, and it's always gonna be one step behind. Well, I'm thinking okay, well, iONdom, the hexadic, you know, the iCell, retrieves the Chemical Body. And that's what the hexad(vertisement) at the end of the Chart. And so,
Bob 9:04
Yeah. Waiting for organic bodies.
Alissa 9:04
Yeah. So, what's cool is, like, when, you know, iONdom comes and destroys time. And so you're saying, so we retrieve the Chemical Body in a way that is like the ultimate rearview mirror, which is that time completely dissolves and there's all the "nows" and we're going back to God, like the ultimate rearview mirror. So that's a pretty cool pattern for how iONdom and Bobdom, like, and Carolyndom emerges, you know. I'll have a number of adjectives.
Bob 9:37
iON said that -- yeah, the service of this apocalyptic wipeout of humanity is that they can go beyond the Chemical Body and not die and have a new physical expanded body which goes back to what would only, iON says, ever worked, which was source energy. That was the only thing that ever worked. And we're forced to go that way. It's the only thing that will save you is a refreshing, improved physical body beyond the stupid Chemical Body model that science has.
Alissa 10:23
Yeah. I like when the McLuhan patterns fit into, you know, the actual, like, some, like something that's actually workable. I like that.
Bob 10:37
Yeah. Did you say you liked the way the McLuhan pattern fits into iON? Is that what you're saying?
Alissa 10:41
Yeah, I mean, 'cause yeah, that's, that was my beginning into to starting the -- give a context to this, you know, individually. So, I like when the patterns work. That's fun.
Bob 10:54
Yeah. Yeah, there's a huge retrieval. Even Terence McKenna called it the archaic revival. But you have to know it's a tetrad or at least four levels. And here's an interesting pattern. If you notice, iON always gives little mini 3d dimensions. He'll always say there's some date coming up, some event. Even back in 2010, he talked about the stock market and certain terms for certain data that had to arrive at the end of September, I forget what it was called. Bert would know those terms. But iON always makes a little spacetime future thing. Like right now it's May 5th. So, he's been saying for a month, watch out for May 5TH! So, he gets you to look at a future point. And that might be something from the past. I don't know how you'd say the past is part of it other than iON says they've been warning us, and this is what the past said is now gonna happen on May 5th. They keep making little short-term past, present and future realms. That's the, that's the hypnotic conditioning that iON rides on. He's always coming up with -- we've probably had 300 points. Remember, it used to be the purple moon, or the orange moon, or the blood moon. It was always something.
Bert 12:18
Now it's the dark moon rising. Now they said during the show, dark moon rising. Just recently, just this past show.
Bob 12:26
Yeah, which is a take-off on the Creedence Clearwater, "Bad Moon Rising." But the -- iON makes mind models. That's what the mind does. The mind says, I was over there or back there, I did that. I don't want to do that again, so I'm gonna try and do this different thing in the future. So, your present is, is focused on doing something different from the past. So, you have to have an image of a past, and you're working toward the future. That is what iON markets here. He markets these little capsules of past, present, future, and they keep coming and happening. And then there's nothing dramatic completely, yet. But iON's been building up to the big pattern that he says is gonna happen next week, or after May 5th, or in three months, some huge thing where everything gets the perfect storm. So, the ultimate future projection we're waiting for is the perfect storm. That's the phrase iON started using this past few months. So, iON's presenting a mind model to you, and you have to see how you're seduced by it. Now, Phil always did that. Phil was always on Facebook, pointing out the latest fuckin' disaster thing that was gonna come for the last 10 years. That's what he would focus on, so I mocked him and after a while, he said, yeah, I had to get rid of the image that the economy is gonna collapse and realize something else is going on. Because he was using the old rearview mirror of a depression and all the stuff was gonna happen. After like 10 times iON (indistinct) predicted and it didn't happen, he, Phil had to back off on that.
Bob 12:27
Well, that's a service. That's a service to even be able to observe that about your, your brain's drama of cognition. Like, that's a gift.
Bert 14:17
That shows also the importance of talking to Bob and iON.
Bob 14:26
Just a minute, Bert, I wanna say this. So, you're saying, Alissa, it's a gift to recognize what iON's doing?
Alissa 14:34
Yeah, like what you're saying happened to Phil. You know, I had, I had a microcosm of that, too, where I was, you know, my brain was, you know, being duped by the date thing because I take iON seriously. Like, iON is incredible to me, you know. And so, so when I hear those things, you know, there's a part of me that knows it's important and there's something going on, but also, the way that my conditionings were giving a bias to what that meant, like what I was imagining was gonna be the outcome. And so for Phil it's a gift to have that pattern repeat enough times where you then can detach from it and realize, oh, that's what my brain was doing. That's the gift. Yes.
Bob 15:25
Yeah. And that's what, that's what Bert's saying that's why you talk to Bob. Because I kept knowing that your images of past, present, future were not up to date. You didn't know we're in a "non-now." We're not in a big "now," there is no "now" since iON showed up.
Bert 15:41
I just got an insight from listening to Bob and you analyzing this guy's article and everything, you know. Because when I -- I was a sociology major and a psychology minor because I've always had something like this connected, and what Bob has just outlined with his Chart and his Five Body model, you've cured all the psychological problems that people have experienced for the last 100, 200 years with all the different technologies. And now we're at the, I can see that we're at the completion point because iON -- when I think what -- how iON affects me is that the words go through me and some stick and some don't. But I always remember them, you know. But then Bob helps you to -- 'cause some people probably why they need to talk to Bob, so they don't stop. Because iON's throwing a lot of stuff at us. I mean, it's like the right -- I mean, you just think about what has happened to us. Was it fucking three years? Three years since iON came back. April 2019. and how it's (indistinct) it is now. There's so much information and the importance of talking to Bob is so that you don't fucking stop because some people, like, don't come. I mean, you -- it's just like Ben. Ben left instead of coming in here and trying to bounce something off Bob, he just hung up. He didn't understand it. Like Scott comes in sporadically and a lot of those people don't. So that you don't fuckin' stop because there is something coming! What the thing of it is, is to have your mind fucking loose enough to be able to loosen your mind up so that your body can adapt to this environment and don't have your mind fucked up because the world right now, it's insane in the p-brain or membrane now. [group chuckles] And this is the only place to be. I had to since I -- yet, was it this week? But fuck, okay, time anyway. But I was like, damn, I understand what iON's saying, but Bob makes so much sense now because the fucking world is insane! It's insanity. [Bob chuckles] It's total insanity now.
Bob 17:55
Which is the Tech Body. The world is the Tech Body. B1 playing with your images of reality.
Alissa 18:04
Totally. Yes.
Bert 18:05
Yes! Yes.
Bob 18:10
Hope you got that Scott. Scott, Scott's listening if he's still here. He's listed as a User, he's there. Hope you're learnin', Scott. You know, if he stayed around long enough to get something. We'll see what he says over at Fake Explorations.
Susana 18:26
Did you move your mic, Bob?
Bob 18:26
What? What did you say?
Susana 18:30
You moved your mind. You moved your mic.
Bob 18:35
Oh, I did? No, I don't -- you mean my voice?
Susana 18:39
You sounded low volume. Yes.
Bob 18:41
Oh.
Alissa 18:44
That's better.
Bob 18:45
Oh, okay. Yeah, I just moved the computer to the side. Okay, so maybe that's it then, its all it is. So, yeah, Bert's got it right what he's saying. You know, Bert, what this guy's writing is half trichology and half sociology. He's talking about major environments. But you can apply it personally to yourself, to your own psychology of the tetrad. The tetrad happens in people's lives. I call it the Quadrophenia. You are always today more and more flipping, enhancing retrieving, obsolescencing. You're going through that as well as the sociological society is. So, psychology and sociology merge here in Bob knowledge. And what was the other point? The, yeah, seeing the, -- he's calling it polarization. Why not say, no, 50 kinds of Gutenberg categories: economics, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, all those ologies are what is come together and that's "Finnegans Wake"s vision. That's what Joyce saw.
Alissa 19:54
Boom. Boom!
Bob 19:56
Right. Boom. Yeah, who's that? That's Polly, right? Boom, she says.
Alissa 20:04
(chuckles) Boom. Yeah, she's like, bloom [Canadian accent].
Bob 20:08
Yeah. But the -- so, where were we at Bert, or what? This guy's line. So, I don't know if you finished your statement, Bert. You went to this stuff. And of course, what you learned in university didn't really help, or it didn't get completed or never got concrete.
Bert 20:27
No. Not at all. Not at all. But just looking at your quadrants, it solves all of the problems, psychological problems that have -- people have experienced engaging those technologies. And now we're at the completion where most people are stuck. I mean, there's something that rang a bell from hearing you years ago that or iON that said that those Five Bodies, some people will be stuck in those Five Bodies.
Bob 20:55
Yeah.
Bert 20:56
And they won't get to the hexad. And that's what we see now.
Bob 21:00
Well, yeah, what you, what you see is a lot of people, each one of you has friends who have gone through changes and are still alive, still going along. But they're bored shitless, they don't believe in any solutions now because they've done them all in some form of matter. And they're kind of just hangin' there not sure what to make of it. So, Alissa calls them up and they get talking. And Alissa might mention iON and they'll, they'll listen and be polite if they're a good friend, but they can't take it in because they've been through so much; what I call metaphysical promiscuity. So, there's hundreds of millions of people floating there; dead souls, hollow people. And all they need is what we're talking about. First of all, you get our products to make you feel better, plus what I'm saying or iON's saying. It would complete their knowing. They know something's up, but no one -- they haven't been lucky enough to find someone who's defined it well enough. And there's a lot of people like that. You have intelligent friends who are like dead dead. They don't have any real energy, but they keep functioning. And they survived all the different traumas and fads up to this point, but they're probably getting ready to commit suicide because it's getting worse.
Susana 22:22
(indistinct) Because they immerse themselves into all these modalities or philosophies and came up with nothing so that they are dead in them. They're just dead inside, and they can't even recognize where it is completed. When the completion is there to -- what they were looking for.
Bob 22:42
Yeah. Their deadness is the addiction to electricity. So, they just keep texting and watching the occasional show or movie or something. They keep up, sort of, of what's happening. They get pissed off at it because they don't get anything out of it ultimately. They just keep going along drifting as McLuhan called it. They're just drifting. The explosion (indistinct/overtalk).
Susana 23:06
So, is that what iON' (indistinct) to the, to people being too smart? And that's why they can't get it?
Bob 23:13
Yeah. Yeah. They are too sophisticated; they know too much. And there's something in their brain that is so solid, the billiard ball of their especially Western identity, that they still trying to prove something; prove that, that what they did was right. And they're waiting for proof of that; validation of it. So, they remain relatively informed. They keep up on things, but they have such banal opinions of things like, "Fuck Trump. Can you believe it?" And after four years, "Oh, God, I'm glad that's over." And then a year later, "Fuck, he's still here. Why is he still here? Still having rallies." You know, you can hear these complaints all the time in the comments in the articles. You know, people reacting to what's happening, that you, you look at the Dark Journalist. There's every kind of sophisticated interpretation of the causes of our problems typed in there; millions of them. And they're all super informed people who are also aware of the esoteric, but they're stuck. And they need to listen to the Dark Journalist every fucking week go on for three hours saying the same fucking thing.
Alissa 24:37
Yeah, it's such a drug.
Bob 24:40
Yeah, yeah. So, they're addicted, not to him. They're addicted to, quote, engaging the electric participatory tactile environment of becoming informed about some pattern, what McLuhan called the cognitive thrills of pattern recognition. So yeah, a lot of your sophisticates are addicted to pattern recognition. Scott's a prime example of that. He's runnin' all over the fucking internet, going to different Facebook pages, figure out what the thinker there is saying. Then he matches it and tells what they don't know about McLuhan. He might even say Bob and iON when he's desperate then take off and go to another fuckin' place for more cognitive patterns. And he shows up at Fake Explorations for me to watch him articulate his latest addiction, which he's rejected. And so, he was forced to go to Substack to see if he could start his own cult. And it ain't workin' out too much. You're too late, Scott.
Alissa 25:33
That's one interpretation. One interpretation personally, when iON talks to me about the plate is that, you know, 'cause I have, I have a, a conditioning of that, too, of addictive pattern recognition. And it's starting to become, you know, I don't know if it's starting to become less or not, but I just know that there's something else for me other than that.
Bob 25:58
Other than your mind.
Alissa 25:59
And, and the yes, the plate is a, you know, one interpretation of it is that it's a representation of, of me not getting stuck in that pattern recognition. There's something else. So, that's a
Bob 26:18
Think getting stuck in the plate. You say not getting stuck in the plate?
Alissa 26:22
No, no, no. Not getting stuck in the being smart, needing to, needing to pattern recognize. Getting
Bob 26:32
So, you keep it simple by saying it's all leading to the plate. That's a simple statement.
Alissa 26:36
Yeah, the plate, the plate represents one interpretation of it is it, for me right now, is that it's a frequency, and it's beyond something I can be smart about. You know, so, it's, yeah, it's something
Bob 26:55
It's the last action of your mind. It's the last focus; your mind focuses. So, that's the last focus, an absurd focus. But it's, it's what your mind is trying to do, to get focused on something and then live by it.
Alissa 27:13
Yeah, maybe.
Bob 27:13
So, iON the menippean says, oh, there's this is an important plate. Keep that plate around you. That plate's very important. [Alissa chuckles] Well, what he's making fun of, that you're listening to him tell you something's important. Which is what the mind looks for, someone to tell you that something's important.
Susana 27:36
Yet it also is important to make notes and be aware of changes and things and
Bob 27:48
Yeah, how your mind works. How it goes through (indistinct/overtalk)
Susana 27:52
Not, not just that, that's just thought, but I mean iON says be aware of your environment and things that happen and make notes.
Bob 27:59
Well, you become aware of what the environment is. You don't -- you say beware of the environment. You don't know what the environment's made up of. So, I help to make you understand. So, I say now, so, Kroker had this new book come out. And it said, he leaves out the Tech Body, the angel and the alien. And people say that's fuckin' ridiculous. He doesn't -- and iON. I probably threw in iON. What are you talking about? Well, these people haven't looked into what's going on. Parts of the population have. I mean, there's a big following of UFOs, and especially in the past year or two. You know, its stock has gone way up 'cause everybody's sees stuff every day and sending it to these websites. So, you can't deny that something weird is going on in that world. And then there's other worlds that people -- they're too specialized, but what was my point there? Oh, yeah, they, the average person is more educated than anything they can get in universities now. So, university will just make you ill 'cause you got to specialize. And then you get a major, then you get your degree, then you gotta do postgraduate. And I remember Andrew Crystall telling me he almost fucking died doing his PhD because he couldn't surface much anymore, and he wasn't gettin' exercise and was gettin' fat and sick. That's what happens to these people. They lose their, their basic youthful spirit and health when you get stuck in the universities. But the average person now is all over the place. There's a lot of people going to, like, the Dark Journalist and they're learning a lot of different stuff followed from Mae Brussell that he presents, that they're not educated in academia, but they're learning things about Fritz Kraemer and that that the educated person doesn't know about. Now, they may not be able to organize it properly, and that's another problem. But anyway, people learn so much more in the classroom without walls, that they are interested in the fringe. I mean, what used to be called fringe, what was not respectable that's not covered by science. So, that is the Tech Body, angels, aliens and iON. So, Kroker fails to bring that part in. I mean, we got millions of listeners who are engaging this stuff and going to other sites and comparing us to them. And they get maybe lost in that site over there. Like, Dark Journalist was saying his next show is bring in Gigi, his little medium he has. And you gotta watch it. I saw her once. It's so puny compared to iON, but they make a big deal out of it, out of this woman, this young woman who tries to tell them what's happening from her psychic ability. So, that's coming up. But they're doing that; they're using mediums, right? 30, 40 years ago, that was controversial. So, people are very more encyclopedic and include every kind of thought form and a secret esoteric or exoteric surface or deep. They got it all because they've had time in the last 15 years to see it all. Because they're always scanning and bumping into stuff. And stuff is always being sent to them. So, people are super informed compared to anybody previously. Any culture.
Susana 31:27
Right. I wouldn't have found iONdom had it not been for the Tech Body.
Bob 31:32
Right. If you hadn't had found Randy Maugans. And he was doing crackpot fringe UFO stuff. Yeah, you have to, you have to see -- so, you see on his chat line, Dark Journalist, people saying, well, this is key to Ascension. They talk about Ascension, a lot of them, you know. They use that word.
Alissa 31:57
I heard a song the other day. Gosh, where was it? Maybe the grocery store, my chiropractor, something? And it was like a pop song sound, and it was all about Ascension. [Bob laughs] Like, they used that term. I was like, whoa.
Bob 32:16
You know why? You know why? Because we're the ground and we're affecting everybody's Non-Physical and their Non-Physical's picking up on this stuff. 'Cause you got, you've got sensitive young people who are quote, artistic or whatever. Sensitive. And they pick up on stuff. They're very tuned in because they've been watching -- it's like Clinton, you know, he watched Rachel Maddow for 10 fucking years. Anyways, he learned a lot from it, but then he realized the limitation. But he's pretty tuned into it.
Alissa 32:41
[laughs] That's ridiculous.
Bob 32:45
What's ridiculous?
Alissa 32:47
Rachel Maddow for 10 fucking years, so, he knows a lot about it. I just think that's funny.
Bob 32:53
Well, they cover a lot of topics. And he's up there in Canada, and he could be detached. Canadians are philosophical. They watched the monster, America. But they're not involved. They don't get drafted, you know, so they can be more detached and relaxed about it. That's what McLuhan said was the difference between Canadians and Americans. And Canadians are more detached and philosophical up against the Android Meme. But anyways, people like Clinton, what was I saying about them? So, you get those kinds of people. They pick up on the present and then they all start expressing it. And it's because they can hear iON. Just like on Melting Titanium, we had psychic people hearing us. There's different kinds of sensitivity in young people, especially more so because they're mutants now compared to previous generations because of what they've grown up in. And iON says they come -- when they're born, they're, they're tuned into what's happening. So, our stuff, it gets out there pretty fast.
Susana 33:55
And you're saying because these young people are, are more sensitive, and so it all permeates out there to them more quickly,
Bob 34:04
Yeah. They have to know what the present's doing because they've gotta tune into it to be socially plausible. To get the pleasures of social life, they've gotta be clued into the present. That's why, you know, teenage girls, or even guys, but girls, the mothers say, you know, by the time my daughter's 14, she's gone. She's out there in high school. She's there trying to find out what's happening. That's her big identity struggle is to see what the -- and they all are listening to whatever they think the present is, whatever shows that someone impresses upon them as important, they've gotta through that classroom. And they're finding out their identity. So, they don't want to hear from their Chemical Body parents for 10 years. And so, the mothers always feel, you know, the empty nest and the kid's gone because they're tuned into the present, what they think is the present They don't know how tiny their present is, but they have a sense of making a present, which is fads. I remember talking to Paul, our foster son, and his first wife. And one day I was mentioning some lesbians in Toronto, and she, "Ah, Bob, that's fuckin 10 years ago." She was about 20 years old. So, she was saying back then, "That was a big deal when I was 10, Bob." There were lesbians in school, you know, but that's an example of someone tuned into something that I wasn't tuned into as a phenomenon in high school, you know, the high schools of the 80s. And she was. And she was always impressed with what I said, but that was the one time she was very unimpressed with Bob. I was so (indistinct) with the lesbian plague that was happening. And that probably gave me the idea when I went on CKLN to claim I'm a black lesbian. That was my attempt to tune into the present fad.
Alissa 35:57
Wow! Is that -- do you think that's what it was? What's the origin of the, of your black lesbian identity?
Bob 36:06
Well, well, that was what it was because the lesbians took over. See, I got on my show because I went to a meeting where Adam Vaughn retired as station manager, and his new person came in, Punam[?] Koestler, from British Guyana, Canadian immigrant kind of person, and eventually found out she was a lesbian, but she took over the station. She was the new station manager. And at that meeting, I went there to see what the new station manager would be like to warn Bob Marshall, who at that point had been fired by Adam. His last act as station manager was to get Bob Marshall and, and try to get me, too. But so, I go to see who the new person is, and Mike Dyer comes up to me after the meeting. He says, Bob -- he didn't even care about Punam or the issues of her, he just said, Bob, have you ever heard of the Church SubGenius? I said, yeah, I created it. And then that started it. And then a week later, I'm on the radio. So, I showed up the same time Punam did, and gradually the lesbians took over the staff. There was nothing but lesbians up at the office and they didn't like me. I was some kind of weird guy that was gettin' away with being a guy and not subject to their peer pressure. You know? They didn't like me.
Alissa 37:23
So then in your, in your awesome entry environment way,
Bob 37:27
No, here's what I -- no, just a minute. Here's what I did. So, I knew the fad was the lesbians from my foster daughter, or whatever the fuck she was; step-foster person. She was married to my foster kid. This was before they got married. And lesbians were taken over the station. So, I said, okay, I'm gonna say I'm a black lesbian, but here's my unconventional explanation. I'm black because electric environment is tactile, which has no color. And I'm a woman because the electric environment makes everybody right hemisphere. That was my technical explanation of why I was a black lesbian. So, I didn't, I didn't say -- they said, Bob, you're not a black lesbian. Come on, you're not, you're not a woman, blah, blah, blah, you know, on the (indistinct) complaining. And I wouldn't, I couldn't say, well, I had to say I was a black lesbian because they took over the station and I wanted to get long and I wanted to keep being on the radio, because I was always saying we must stop this show. I was into media ecology. I thought people should stop listening to the station to have some what this guy is advocating in the article. You know, have some media awareness and don't breathe in the latest stuff. So, but I couldn't say that conventional thing, so I made up this tactile thing. So, I would explain how I was a black lesbian (indistinct) they'll shut up when I said that. [Bob and Alissa chuckle] (indistinct) what I meant. And they were just appalled at what I came up with. So, I can't say it's totally that reason. You know what I mean? I'm trying to answer you. You said, oh, is that the reason? No, it's not totally that reason.
Alissa 37:27
Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Bob 37:55
It was half the reason. It was the figure, and I had a ground statement to make about the grounds.
Alissa 39:08
Right. So, you're you just made a cool point there, Bob. At the end you said, "So, because I couldn't have them turn off the radio station." You said something tactile which made them still have kind of like a resistant reaction like turning something off without turning something off. Is that what you're saying?
Bob 39:31
Yeah.
Alissa 39:32
That's awesome. That's awesome.
Bob 39:32
It was very tricky. It's very tricky, having a solution but knowing nobody would do it, but saying it because no one had ever heard of shutting off the media like having a temporary media fast. It was a new idea for them. So, you inspired them temporarily. And pretty quickly they, because so much other information would enter into their lives, they forget about me and then forget. Right? And then five years later, they accidentally find CKLN and I'm still on the radio. And they call in and, "You know, Bob, you're fuckin' right. I couldn't do it, but you're right." [chuckles] So, they learned how addicted they were. So, it's -- all you can do is be a meme or an idea starting in the 80s, so, I presented an idea. And that can make people get quote aware for a while. And then they get suckered into all kinds of other ideas. And then they have to cycle back and realize the ultimate idea is media ecology because that's the new yoga, that's the new discipline. Self-entertainment is the new yoga. And we've gotten more and more into self-entertainment. That's how people live today.
Alissa 40:54
Do you want to read any more of the article?
Bob 40:57
Yeah, I want to show you how he failed to get anywheres. Let's see. So, we're at the point where he's saying and I'm off to the -- okay, where was that?
Alissa 41:11
We left off at increase -- right before "Increasing the awareness" that those three star breaks, the little paragraph break there.
Bob 41:21
Three star breaks. So, just give me -- what are the words?
Alissa 41:29
"Increasing the awareness of media polarization may help to cope with its effects, but it will not eliminate
Bob 41:36
That's right. We did do the help people, the stupid platitudinous idea of a, well, to just get people realize they should tolerate their enemies a little bit more. Right? "...avoid the dehumanizing of opponents and tolerate, at least to some degree, the otherness of others on the internet, social media and in the news media. " Yeah, that's where we were. So, that was pretty anemic on his part. "Increasing the awareness..." So, this is a question. No, it's a sentence, you've got a question. "Increasing the awareness of media polarization may help to cope with its effects, but it will not eliminate its settings." Now he's being a good McLuhanite. He knows the ground is pretty hard to get rid of 'cause everybody's living by it. The economy depends on it. Everything depends on the media thing that you're addicted to, or society. You don't even wanna say you're -- if everybody stuck to it, they're not addicted, they're just all engaged in it, and they can't stop it. Because people like novelty is a simple way to say it. That's what Terence McKenna said. So, increasing the awareness of media polarization may help to cope with its effects, but you're still stuck with the environment. You haven't turned it off, which he's calling "its settings." Right? The environment is its settings. "Is it possible to re-engineer the systemic settings of social media and the news media that incite polarization?" So, there's the endless McLuhan question: Can you turn it off? Can you get the population to agree that maybe we can have a temporary media fast. And that was what I presented all the time, and McLuhan was doing it. And, but by the 90s, when the internet came in, nobody thought of stopping the media because there was so much novelty in the, in the new Chip Body, or the afterimage of the Chip Body, that you couldn't, you couldn't get people to stop doing it. Right? So, he had to wait 30 fucking years till we get to now, 1990s, 2020, for people to run the course and realize this fucking digital Chip Body is a huge disservice. It's wrecking everything. So, but all the way through it, you had this question. Is it possible to turn it off or to sculpt it, do a tetrad on it, have a temporary media fast? That's what his question is. "Is it possible to re-engineer the systemic settings..." Or the ground. "...of social media and the news media that incite polarization?" So, social media is the private media where you're just broadcasting, and the news media is the TV landscape. That's the iconography that the TV offers to people to balance off the daily exploration people do in the Chip Body. They want to have something to fall back on, so they sit on their couch and watch the news, right? That's some kind of fantasy of a collective thing that's going on; a world out there that you've got to adapt to. So, the news tells you iconographically on television what's going on. And then you the next day, wake up and start responding to email and texting and typing about the ridiculous stuff you saw on TV the night before. That's your social media part. So, social media is like private and news media is collective. Social media tends to be the Chip Body, so news media tends to be television. And they run elections on that. So, "In a paradoxical way, digital ochlocracy..." Ochlocracy means mob rule. So, mob rule is the super angelic, discarnate population that's all using electronic, digital media and can't get it out of it. You could call it reality. The mob rule is the emotion of multitude that everybody's involved in. And that's what people think is real or is running everything. And Baudrillard came along and said no, that's not real. He criticized the ochlocracy. Okay. And he called the ochlocracy a simulation, which is what it was. The super angelic state. Everybody's a super angel. How do you visualize that? You just know it's there. And you might call it "they" or "the people" or "the media;" all these terms are referring to the intangible, super angelic condition that everybody's merged into. So then, iON, the super angel, shows up to pull the plug on it. And that's what we're doing. We're real media ecologists. We're the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. We're not putting up with this anymore. Sorry that there's collateral damage, but we're stopping this! [chuckles] Write a song about that.
Alissa 46:20
[laughs] Nice yodeling there.
Bob 46:21
Yeah, that was good yodeling. As I said, write a song about that one.
Alissa 46:29
Yeah, it's funny when iON, when iON makes the joke about the "they," you know, whoever "they" is. Well, it's YOU, iON. [chuckles]
Bob 46:40
[chuckles] Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. iON knows that. Yeah. So, "In a paradoxical way, digital..." Super angelic. "...ochlocracy depends on digital capitalism." Now, digital -- capitalism is a product of "Gutenberg Galaxy," which gives private property and moves you out of the tribal sensibility with private individualism. And because the Chip Body is an individual phenomenon; by yourself you got the whole world as your content. So, that's why it has to be capitalism. You can't get rid of capitalism. That's the private identity part of yourself. In my Chart that would be LaRouche. The LaRouche quadrant, 1840 to 1900, the private identity gets locked in. So, capitalism is based on that. But capitalism isn't the only "ism" that's around. There's the software, endless software, which is relatively free for people. There's the socialism of their pensions. There's the anarchy, anarchism of their digital lives. And what else? There's anarchy, socialism, capitalism, and communism. I mean, I make that the Wyndham Lewis thing. You remember? I'm a Marxist. I'm a part fascist, part communist, and run through them. You can attach each Body to each one of the levels he talks about. And then you could add the "isms" onto each one. He has Marxism. You know, what is it? I'm a Marxist. In my monarchism, something like that.
Alissa 46:40
I have your book. Yeah, I have your book here. I'll grab it.
Bob 48:16
No, it's not in there.
Alissa 48:19
Yeah, I just read it the other day.
Bob 48:23
I don't think so. I will -- I have it as a separate thing under Wyndham Lewis in my Wyndham Lewis file. No, I didn't have -- that book was done in '91.
Alissa 48:34
No, no, your, your Trump book. No, you're Trump book.
Bob 48:37
Oh, yeah. The Trump book. Yeah, sorry. I thought you mean "Phatic Communion."
Alissa 48:41
Okay.
Bob 48:44
So, you're looking up the Trump book. Oh, yeah, that would be in there, but I can do it real fast here.
Alissa 48:49
Here it is. I got it.
Bob 48:50
Here it is. I beat you by a second. I said here it is before you.
Alissa 48:54
Go ahead, go ahead! You got it. Yeah, you win. You win.
Bob 48:56
Yeah. He says, he says, "Now disregarding if you can, whatever your political views may be..." And so before you discard your stupid political views, he's gonna tell you what his are and this is a little sticker, Quadrophenic what he says. He says, "...my views are partly communist
and partly fascist, with a distinct streak of monarchism in my
Marxism, but at bottom an anarchist with a healthy passion for order." [chuckles] You see, at bottom he's an anarchist with a healthy passion for order. Ha! You can't have a passion for order if you're an anarchist, and it's pretty hard to be a monarch in a Marxist society. So anyway, those are the four levels: part communist, part fascist. See, I used to, it goes like: fascist is Chemical Body, communist is Astral Body, Marxism is the TV Body, and the anarchist is the Chip Body. Because you're an anarchist in your Chip Body, you can do whatever you want, go anywheres, invade anywheres, receive things. Marxism is a collective, ideal collectivity. That's TV software communism McLuhan called it; everybody sharing the same discarnate state that has all the senses in it. It's better than radio, you can see stuff. And then fascist is your Chemical Body. Everybody has a particular preference in their Chemical Body makeup, and they impose it on others when push comes to shove. You know, they just -- their religion; they'll fight for it. They'll fight for their freedom of speech. So, you're fascist.
Alissa 50:43
What about the octad being communist?
Bob 50:46
Oh, yeah, we're coming to that. But I'm just explaining the fascist is imposes your Chemical Body's preferences on everybody else. But you are more tolerant about it because you're up against your Chip Body and your TV Body. So, a communist is your Astral Body 'cause everybody's communing, and there's a kind of pure collectivity that's different from Marxism. Marxism is based on a book. Communism is just the aboriginal condition of the preliterate people, aboriginal.
Alissa 50:52
Can you mix, can you mix the monachism?
Bob 51:16
You know, the aboriginal -- No, the communism is the Astral Body where everybody's tuned into each other through the Non-Physical. Marxism is the collective, discarnate, super angelic state. What McLuhan calls software communism through television. But monarchism is you're king of all you survey. In "Take Today," he talks about every, every viewer of television is a king of the environment. All this imagery is coming to them. All this distraction, stimulation, and ecstasy is being given to him for a relatively few dollars.
Alissa 52:07
Right. Okay, that where the monarchism comes in.
Bob 52:10
Yeah, that's where your monarch -- it actually fits. In monarchism and Marxism, I can make sense of it. He means it to be humorous. I don't think he means it as purely as I'm saying it. I mean, he's just picking up on the right ideas to influence McLuhan, cuz he wrote this in 1929. So, that's important. So, give Lewis credit. He lays out the, the media ecology for the Bodies. He creates that. So, we're at this point: "In a paradoxical way, digital ochlocracy depends on digital capitalism. These two forms of power have shaped their symbiotic relations in a similar way as representative democracy depended on industrial capitalism,..." So, that's Gutenberg. Democracy and industrial capitalism, the hardware world goes together. And that creates the Chemical Body, the individual Chemical Body. And then, "...with old media being a communicative platform." So, that means legacy, what they call legacy media, all the old electric one-way media. You know, not two-way. One-way: movies, radio, television. You know, before the 70s, say. So then, but there are new platforms. Now the Chip Body. "Now, digital platforms give the crowds on the right and on the left power that they otherwise would have never had access to;..." Yeah, in terms of communication. There's millions of right-wingers communicating and millions, billions of left-wingers. Right? All over the world. And they've got institutions, Chemical Body institutions. You got Chemical Body funding, and then there's the amateurs are just doing it anyways, they're following the memes. So, there's "...platforms give the crowds on the right and on the left power that they otherwise would have never had access to;..." That's web 2 point especially, web 2.0. "...the mass media reinforce and articulate this power into political discourses." Now, the mass media is the TV landscape and then became the TV Body. That's the (indistinct) media that if you place the focus, the discussion, on. So, this week it's the Supreme Court. Right? That's the, the past media icon that everybody is having a discourse over for a few days. You get that?
Alissa 54:39
Hey, Bob.
Bob 54:40
So, the digital platform -- what?
Alissa 54:43
Your headphones are cuttin' in and out a little bit more than before. I don't know if -- are they losing battery, maybe?
Bob 54:57
Yeah, maybe. Maybe I better get on the phone. And it's not as perfect clarity, but you could make out what I'm saying. It's clear enough for you. We'll finish up the article on the phone and see what happens.
Alissa 55:12
Yeah.
Bob 55:13
Just a minute.
Alissa 55:14
Okay.
Susana 55:20
It wasn't cutting out for me, but
Alissa 55:24
It wasn't, it wasn't super noticeable, but it was like dropping every little syllable here and there. He wasn't having the
Bob 55:36
It could be your computer. If it wasn't (indistinct) to other people, it must be your computer.
Alissa 55:41
Yeah, that's true because it just happened again okay.
Bob 55:47
It didn't happen for Susana.
Alissa 55:50
Right. Okay.
Bob 55:51
Hello. Is this working? Yeah, phone's working so I'll go on the phone for a minute or a couple of minutes. Let's see. Okay, you can hear me, right?
Susana 56:10
A little echo.
Alissa 56:11
Yeah, but you're echoing.
Bob 56:14
Oh, I gotta turn off the thing. Yeah. So, this is actually could be a good recording this whole thing I'm doing here.
Alissa 56:25
That's, yeah, that's why I want you to not be breaking up, but now you're, now you're double.
Bob 56:34
Oh, you get an echo. Yeah.
Susana 56:37
Mm-hmm.
Bob 56:37
So, how do you do that? Is that somebody who's got their line open? I'm gonna mute everyone. Well, let me see. Yeah, I'm gonna mute everybody. See what happens.
Announcer 56:56
All participants are now muted.
Bob 56:58
Hey. I'll just opening up Susana. Can you -- am I echoing, Susana?
Susana 57:09
Even still echoing with everyone muted. Yeah, no change.
Bob 57:14
Okay, so I'm gonna go back to the phone 'cause it's just your computer, Ginney. I mean Alissa. It's just yours. Nobody else is complaining.
Announcer 57:29
All participants are now unmuted.
Bob 57:32
Complaining?
Linda R 57:34
I noticed that a little bit, Bob.
Bob 57:37
Okay.
Gee 57:38
Yeah, but it's worse now, so
Bob 57:42
It's worse? Oh, it's worse, yeah, with the phone.
Susana 57:46
The sound is worse. Yeah.
Bob 57:50
Okay, I'm gonna go back to the headphones, see what happens.
Gee 57:53
Better.
Bob 57:53
If you get
Bert 57:55
Way better.
Bob 57:57
What, Bert?
Bert 57:58
You're better. Well, it just went -- you sounded better like no echo, but now it sounds like it's back.
Bob 58:04
Yeah.
Alissa 58:06
Oh, wait. Yeah, it's gone. Keep talkin', Bob.
Bob 58:09
It's gone?
Alissa 58:10
Oh, no. It's come back.
Bob 58:12
No, I get it. I'm going back to the headphones.
Alissa 58:16
Okay, we'll see you on the other side.
Bob 58:27
Okay, the headphones said -- so, you can hear me now, right?
Alissa 58:33
Yep.
Bob 58:38
I don't hear you guys.
Bert 58:39
Yes.
Alissa 58:40
We're here. [others chime in]
Bob 58:44
I disconnected it.
Alissa 58:46
That's better. Can't hear us yet?
Susana 58:50
Can you hear? 1,2,3,4,5,6.
Dmitriy 58:59
Are we audible?
Alissa 59:03
We can hear you, Dmitriy.
Susana 59:05
Are you there?
Alissa 59:06
Dmitriy.
Dmitriy 59:09
Yeah, we can hear you, too.
Bob 59:11
Okay, so I can hear you now. I had to go through the process. So, let's what? What was I gonna say about this? So, you can hear me? No echo. It's reasonable for most people.
Susana 59:27
Yes.
Alissa 59:29
Yeah.
Bob 59:29
Yeah. Okay. So, the two forms of power shape the symbiotic relations. What are the two forms of power? Not sure what they -- these two, he says, "... digital ochlocracy depends on digital capitalism." I guess the electric emotion of multitude or the mob rule plus digital
Bob 0:00
...those two intertwine, like representative democracy and industrial capitalism. Then it's the digital platforms keeps the right and left crowds feeling powerful. And the old TV Body reinforces this argument between the right and left through media imagery. "In return, the crowds provide platforms..." Now, this is where the people are the users, the content, and they're being usurped by the Android Meme. So, "...the crowds provide platforms and the media with a degree of engagement that allows for monetization." So, some kind of engagement the Android meme needs. "Populism and polarization are structurally embedded into this social-economic symbiosis." Populism and polarization. So that again, populism can be the TV Body, and polarization is the Chip Body; those two are intertwined. And then he says, "This hardware can and must work only with this software." This hardware can
Alissa 1:16
What does that mean?
Bob 1:18
Yeah. "This hardware can and must work only with this software." Maybe that's what people argue over. They actually argue over what I call the mythic stage. They're arguing over what technologies they use; what aspect of the electric market or the digital market, and the older media, electric media's hardware, and the newer digital media's software. But not sure what he's really saying there, but that's what he's essentially saying. "Populism and polarization are structurally embedded into this social-economic symbiosis." You can't escape the money, the Gutenberg aspect of measuring property, and wealth.
Alissa 1:59
Oh, I think he's saying the hardware is the structural embedded, socio-economic symbiosis, and the software would be the populism in the polarization.
Bob 2:12
Yeah, he calls it symbiosis. So there, he later says they almost merge. So, it's, there's only -- that's why I call it a meme. There's only an afterimage of the right, and only afterimage of the left. There is only an afterimage of industrial capitalism, there is only an afterimage of electronic, super angelic thing. These are all pretty nebulous structures. The closest they come to solidity is being a meme, which is not very solid. And all that is the Android Meme. That is the impersonal technological takeover on the path in 2001 of the human. Humanism is lost in this. And so this hardware can and must work only with the software. So yeah, there's a bit of afterimage of the Gutenberg and a bit of afterimage of the Marconi. You got the obsolete and literate past; can't get rid of it. And McLuhan used to say that no media can be totally gotten rid of. So, they might mutate into other forms, but there's still aspects of them. So, you can't get rid of the hardware world, and you can't get rid of the new software world. And nobody can pin it down where one begins and the other leaves off. Right? So, that's why they can't decide whether we're a recession or a depression, or this or that. Can't make it out, ultimately, but you can go around being lazy and drifting and say, Yeah, I'm writing a book, I'm gonna put out a book, or I'm making a movie, or I'm doing this or I'm doing that. Those are all nebulous activities that can get cancelled very quickly for all kinds of unforeseen (indistinct) due to the trending of the hardware in symbiosis with the software.
Bob 4:14
Is the hardware that he's talking about referencing the monetization?
Bob 4:20
What's the last word? Manifestation?
Bob 4:22
Monetization, that aspect of the
Bob 4:25
Yeah, of monetization. Yeah, that's property. That's traditional Gutenberg money wealth. There's a degree of engagement that allows for -- you gotta allow for monetization. You must have the hardware. "In return, the crowds provide platforms and the media with a degree of engagement that allows for monetization." So, the more software you have, the more engagement that reinforces the past, the Gutenberg. So, they work together. And then you reinforce the Gutenberg which gives people so much more illusory money, which then allows them to buy whatever the economy's offering on the hardware or software level. So, it's a big blur, like "Finnegans Wake." But then he says, "Is it possible to rearrange the economic and behavioral rewards for media use..." So, we're gonna try to figure out how to get up to this booper, where no one knows if they've gotten enough in the game or locks a lot. So how is it possible to rearrange the rewards "...in such a manner that they incentivize people's engagement based if not on consensus, then at the very least on tolerance instead of polarization?" So again, he's trying to figure out how to think people into a new perspective. You see? Is it possible to rearrange the economic behavior, you know, the rewards of what you think you're getting, for media use in such a manner that people's engagement is not based on majority rule, but it's based on tolerance instead of polarization.
Alissa 6:09
Yeah, he's thinking again that if we just keep some media ecology, then we'll be more tolerant of their polarization, which is systemic.
Bob 6:21
Right. Like, people might think, if people could understand what he's saying, like people wish to say, if you could understand McLuhan, he had the answer for people understanding in new ways and new terms and not in the old stupid categories that are wealth-making. The old categories make wealth. Oh, here's the latest rich people. You know, in the 80s, they had a lot of celebration of rich people. And that was hardware wealth, and actually was a problem for most of them, and all kinds of headaches. But they had to keep the image of hardware property going. So, they pretended that there were a lot more people getting wealthier and wealthier. And all they were doing was just getting more and more addicted to cocaine. And that's what Zappa's song was about, Cocaine Decisions. He was being interviewed in the early 80s right when he had made the song. And Reagan had just got in and they -- and he started talking about how everybody's on cocaine. And the interviewer says, -- they're in a CNN studio or something -- What do you mean? He said, well, just look around. Look at the cameraman over there. Look at that person, look at the secretary over there. And he's there pointing out people in the studio, claiming they were all on cocaine. And he was right! [chuckles] Even if he didn't say the journalist that was interviewing was on cocaine, but he had to make her feel like she's surrounded. So, let her pretend she's not doing it even though she probably was. Everybody was doing it in the early 80s. That's when John Belushi died in '82. They were all on cocaine. Robin Williams, they all talk about that period, and they all were using cocaine coming out of Studio 54. And then AIDS stopped that; AIDS got in the way in '83, '84. So anyways, is it possible -- so is it possible do something on a human level, or Chemical Body level that -- okay, we're not gonna get consensus because that's a TV idea of who's the majority, which icon got the highest polls. Well, that's an illusion because everybody is fragmented in the digital level and are their own anarchists. So, you don't really look to solidify consensus. So, what you do is you go for tolerance. Then at the very least, let's rely on tolerance instead of polarization. And then he says, "This is a million-dollar question, literally; though, considering the capitalization of Google and Facebook,..." In other words, the excessive multiplication of fake money. "...it is more like a billion-dollar question." So, he's come back to the question, the same question at the beginning of the show. The same question was, how can we get quote peace out of this? Right? How can we get peace, and nobody knows how to do it. So then he says, "At first glance, a way to decrease polarization is to bridge the gap, bringing opposites together in order to eliminate misunderstanding..." Now, there are all kinds of consultant agencies that go around and offer themselves to management to argue between management and the workers or management and the trade unions. That's a big business is people claiming they can help the argument in the polarization in the company.
Alissa 9:38
Right. Mediation.
Bob 9:39
Yeah, mediation and stress management. So, so this guy is bringing that up. We're gonna "...bridge the gap, bringing the opposites together in order to eliminate misunderstanding, on the assumption that animosity is built on a misunderstanding." Yeah, animosity is actually a product of the machines, not people. So, what I'm saying could be a management consulting gig I could do. I could go in and explain to everybody that they're arguing over something that is indifferent to them. That would probably work for a couple of weeks, you know. I could become a consultant fad of the season. But then someone else would come up with some counter argument because none of it works. Speech doesn't work, and so they'll need a new angle soon. So, somebody says, "de-Wit et al." They say, "Can we build social-media bridges?" And they do this in their studies on polarization. That's their question. And then it says, "Building bridges, or cultural space for opposites to meet face to face meaningfully and without rage,..." What a ridiculous idealism. [chuckles]
Alissa 10:49
Yeah! [other voices concur/indistinct] What's the question?
Bob 10:55
We can say that after COVID 'cause COVID was a chance for everybody to come together. And everybody totally fucked it up.
Alissa 11:02
Freaked out. My question comes to mind though, what is the Truth Social? This is kind of, you know, some sort of, quote, unquote, we're gonna have a consensus that no one's gonna get -- what's the word? Censored, which is more tolerant. And it's like they're trying to build a social media bridge. So, I guess you can say that that's what Truth Social is trying to do.
Bob 11:33
Yes, they, I was just -- the words are stupid up to this point, but I was thinking, Bob knowledge is Truth Social; I'm describing social mortar. And what you have to get your private citadel of consciousness unembed from. Right? You're embedded in it, in the mortar. So, Truth Social is Trump, or Kushner, his daughter's, I guess, son-in-law. He's listened to us for a couple of years now. And that's what he surmised: Well, we gotta do Bob, Truth Social. And it's awkwardly put together but
Bob 12:07
(indistinct ) because you let everybody on and you give them the space to speak, no matter what they say. (overtalk)
Bob 12:17
Because I know how stupid it all is. I know how irrelevant their speaking is. [Bob and other laugh] I'm not trying to get somewheres.
Alissa 12:30
That's what Bob's gonna say to the aliens when he first meets them. He's gonna trip and then he's gonna be, can we build social media bridges? [chuckles]
Bob 12:38
They're gonna say, well, actually, it happened today, something like that. But they're gonna say, Bob, I think we could solve your global problem here. And they'll present the shit, and holy fuck. You guys are stuck in the Thompson quadrant for fuck sake. You don't even know what the other goddamn quadrants are. Go back to your fucking planet and let's meet up again in two years. You should have presented a better proposal than that. [chuckles]
Alissa 13:02
[laughs] That's funny. Yeah.
Bob 13:04
I think iON said that they're gonna -- Bob, we can solve this. We'll wipe everybody out if you let us go to Andromeda with you. Whatd'ya say, Bob? So, I gotta figure -- I haven't decided what I'm gonna say to that.
Nan 13:19
Can't we all just get along?
Bob 13:21
Yeah. So, building bridges. Now, you know, that phrase, can't we all just get along, see, that's the futility of the Chemical Body. And that's all the Chemical Body can say. The Chemical Body has these old, obsolete emotions of let's get together. Let's -- like this guy is actually saying we can get more tolerant. It's, it's all that the Chemical Body can come up with, and it's so anemic and weak. That's why McLuhan said, -
Susana 13:47
But it can happen.
Bob 13:48
- I'm trying to tell you something. McLuhan said, just let me be in charge, and I'll turn off radio in Venezuela for three weeks. And then I'll do something over in Zambia. And he would modulate the planet by environments, you know, not with speech.
Alissa 14:05
What a narcissist.
Bob 14:08
Speaking with that, with that phrase that Nan just said, can't we just all get along? That it all started falling apart with email, because people couldn't, couldn't read into the intent of the feeling in an email. And so, all sorts of misunderstandings were starting to happen, people would get pissed off. So, it was written in an email when it wasn't intended that way, they would put tone that they thought was supposed to be there when it wasn't, or it was an incorrect interpretation of tone or attitude.
Bob 14:43
They had the telephone, and then comes email. Email brings in the eye again, and the eye fragments, and you get a kinda schizophrenia, that you couldn't hear what the person was saying, but you could communicate visually and that created fragmentation. So, it was a redoing of the effect of the printing press by visualizing computers. And stupid Bob Logan thought this was tremendous; people are reading. He said, wow, we're back to reading. This is in the late 90s before the dotcom collapse, and one -- oh, and it's amazing look, everybody gets to read. And he forgot about email. No, they're reading emails, which is actually the daily work, processing emails, and that was causing chaos. Fragmentation. So, they did bring the eye back. The eyes demand their turn, you know, page 52, "Finnegans Wake." So, they brought the eye back and it caused a real problem. That's why McLuhan said we shouldn't use digital computers; we should use analog computers. I don't know what analog computers are, but he actually thought the analog way was the better way to go, not the digital. That created a two-bit wit. You know, on off, two-bit wit of the computer. Okay, so anyway.
Susana 16:03
I don't know what the difference would be.
Bob 16:05
Yeah, I know. It's hard to tell. I actually mentioned it to a couple people here and there and they seem to know of it, but I didn't know what
Alissa 16:12
You, you and Cameron. You and Cameron talk about that in the -- is it your latest? You guys haven't done one -- what?
Bob 16:24
[inaudible/crackling]
Bob 16:27
Oh, my god. Bob, you've gone. You're totally breaking up. Oh, he's disappeared. He's just flipping.
Bob 16:43
[inaudible]
Alissa 16:46
Tech Body, Bob.
Susana 16:47
Can anyone else hear him?
Alissa 16:48
No, you sound like a -- like, I don't know what happened. You got digitized.
Susana 16:54
Digital chirping, that's all we hear.
Alissa 17:10
That recent Cameron McEwen chat with, that Bob has been doing. It's so good. It's really, really good. And it's pretty cool. Cameron is -- he's pretty, he's like, starting to put words to what iONdom is, but you know, without -- Bob's pretty pretty -- keeps it on the downlow the whole, like, iON thing. It does come up here and there. But it's a cool conversation. I think it's worth checkin' out.
Susana 17:47
So, Cameron has
Bob 17:47
You're talking about Cameron, me and Cameron?
Alissa 17:50
Yeah.
Bob 17:51
Oh, yeah. It's a very tremendous conversation. But the -- so, the thing came up. A big sign that said, Eh! Error! Thing disconnected. Something broke. And so, so, I just have to
Susana 18:03
You sound strong.
Bob 18:05
Yeah, I'm on the phone, now. And I'm not echoing,
Alissa 18:09
Right. Yeah, you sound great.
Bob 18:10
Okay. Well, maybe that's because the phone disconnected this headset. Maybe I was disconnected because I didn't totally disconnect the headphone. That could be it. All right. So, let's just go with this. Carry on with the most of me, I'll be saying stuff.
Bob 18:27
You were saying between, about the analog versus digital. And McLuhan said, preferred the analog. Maybe that's -- is that the thing Clinton could elaborate on?
Bob 18:38
He might be able to. We should ask him. I have it. Yeah, I told you. I had a couple of people explained it, or they thought they knew what it meant, but I didn't know what they meant. They didn't do a very good job at it. So, anyways, McLuhan thought he had an alternative way of doing computers. So, anyway, so we're doing here can we build social media bridges. "Building bridges, or a cultural space for opposites to meet face to face meaningfully and without rage,..." That was the kind of talk they were doing at the end of the 60s after the so-called violent 60s. In the tumultuous 60s, psychologists started to take over a lot of institutions and bring people face to face and they were trying to apply the Esalen Institute therapy. What were they called? Encounter groups. They were trying to make that watered down, and different cults came in. EST came in, and the one landmark that Ginney was part, of they came in and did well in management by, with their talk of creating, getting people to calm down. They had too many 50s point of view. So, get them to get rid of their point of view and, and begin to tolerate the other person. That's what they tried to do in the late 60s, early 70s. But meanwhile, the digital environment created the computerized derivatives economy and just wiped everything out. And that made people mad again. And then there was huge inflation in under Volcker in '79, '80. And gold went up to $1,000. almost. See, so they couldn't stop the digitization of the world that created incredible new stagflation that nobody could understand. So, people stopped talking and they went to the discos. And then the punk guys came in with the alternative of not talking, just yelling at people. Right? With three-minute singles, like the Ramones. So, there was a whole reaction to this humanists meeting face-to-face thing of the late 60s, early 70s. Okay, so let's see, building bridges "...looks like a desirable and potentially efficient solution. Indeed, the negotiating of differences and building consensus out of irreconcilable conflicts is a fundamental need and quality of politics and everyday human communication. A vast arsenal of logical, rhetorical and political tools of negotiation and compromising has been developed by humanity." Ha. So, he's citing Chemical Body. All the high points of Chemical Body resolutions, through talk. "Rhetoric and the culture of debate are taught or used to be taught in schools and universities." So, he's even saying, teach kids how to debate. Boy, that's fucking puny. That's ridiculous. But he's an academic, and he's using the book ideals; that's all universities have is the book ideal, the Goldberg ideal, learning how to debate properly. And that, and meanwhile, I killed the university, so they're not even there anymore for people to learn this shit. And on top of that, people who are becoming nontalkers. They're a community by ESP. The cloning of ESP is happening.
Alissa 22:12
Yeah. That's exactly where I was goin', Bob. I was, I was thinking about how you, you killed the university. And yet you come to Bob University, and he yells at you to make a fucking sentence. [Bob and Alissa chuckle] You know, it's like
Bob 22:31
Stop talking.
Alissa 22:32
Yes. There's a, there's an interesting divergence that's happened in this article where we can now see how this guy's failing and how Bob is succeeding. [Bob chuckles Yeah] And so it's, so it's gonna be like, not only -- you're no longer describing, you know, just the McLuhan terms and how he's failing in terms of that and your Five Body model, but now we're seeing it just continue to lace through here on, you know, what kind of social media bridge is Bob making and how this guy, this guy's solution isn't gonna cut it. So, yeah, this is cool.
Bob 23:16
He's totally rearview mirror on everything.
Bob 23:20
Yeah, partly because he's writing. I never would write anything. I just come on and get Non-Physical to fucking distract you. That'll do it. [chuckles] Entertain people with his rapid speech. Yeah. See, he's writing shit. I'm not writing, we just come on and say, say something. You try to say something, we either celebrate it or beat you up about it. And then you start to realize, hmm, I gotta get smarter about what I say. And then you listen to iON to get some new language and then some insights, and we're on our way. And then you take our products and that makes you feel good. So, you put up with the abuse. [chuckles]
Alissa 24:02
[chuckles] How he echoes words, so true.
Bob 24:05
It's true, right? Yeah. What do you say, Bert? We need your expertise. Do you have any commentary yet?
Bert 24:13
[chuckles] No, it's, it's what right when you said that he's writing. That's the whole thing. He's trying to outline. He's using words.
Bob 24:24
Yeah.
Bert 24:24
He’s printing something. And that throws it all off. And that's why this is dynamic to engage you to come in here.
Bob 24:31
Right.
Bert 24:31
You know, it's like it's a moving target, so you have to learn how to talk through it versus trying to write words. You know, put words down.
Bob 24:39
That's right. That's why, you know, that's why I'll be taking over. We'll have all the solutions, and yet you need someone that people can communicate with. I'm the best communicator. I can put up with it or tolerate it or do panic, I can do it all! Right? And, and I can explain it. As my father used to say, Bob, you have a great knack of killing conversation. You know why? I would always wrap it up accurately and say what we're trying to say. And everyone, oh, yeah, that's what we're trying to say. And that would end the conversation. [chuckles] So, yeah, very good. Yeah. This is a good -- turned in to be a great, long commercial for Bob. [Bob and others chuckle]
Alissa 25:26
(chuckles) That's how (indistinct)
Bob 25:25
Right. But it is, it is silly what he's saying. He's relying on literate things like that we got to get back in schools and teach kids to debate. And he's missing the growing ESP that kids live under. Quadrophenic ESP. So, so, he says, "The issue is that all those frames and tools were linked to physical, predominantly in-person communication." Okay, he's starting to realize no, that ain't working. I'm just suggesting stuff for the Chemical Body. Right? They "...were linked to physical, predominantly in-person communication. The limits and deterrents of the physical reality made people polite and receptive; or at least their receptiveness remained generally within tolerated levels." So, he's talking, he's looking at the Chemical Body and saying, hmm, this a good part, that's the bad part. "The settings of physical communication made the..." The settings of Chemical Body reality and slower, predigital media. "The settings of physical communication made the ability to listen to the other side and others' arguments an advantage in politics and negotiations. Society has learned to disincentivize escalation by immediate negative responses and also by postponed losses." Now, that's not good, eh? "Society has learned to
Alissa 26:48
He should put his money where his mouth is when he makes those kinds of, like, academic sentences. Like, he's saying a lot there, but he doesn't actually -- what's he saying, you know?
Bob 26:59
Spell it out.
Bob 26:59
The social media, social media is so antagonistic.
Bob 27:05
Right. So, he says, the next sentence forgetting what we -- we'll come back to what that one awkward sentence was. He says, "Under such environmental conditions, the bridging of opposites..." So, he means the old Chemical Body. "...the bridging of opposites did not harm the public health but increased diversity, tolerance and inclusiveness." That's not true. It might have created the patina of that for 150 years and the end of the Gutenberg into the early Marconi galaxy, but later media totally destroyed all that. People lost their tolerance. And they, and the people started saying, yeah, by the 90s, everybody's getting dumber. Everybody's getting meaner. You had that on the Jerry Springer shows, those kind of talk shows. So, going back, so he says, the previous sentence, "Society has learned to disincentivize..." Okay, so he's saying there that people did learn to talk. "Society has learned to disincentivize escalation..." So, they calm down. "...escalation by immediate negative responses..." So, slow down, don't respond so, you know, quickly, "...and also by postponed losses." In other words, people weren't winning anything anymore. So, to lose an argument wasn't as bad because everybody was still addicted to the general wealth of the TV electrical, fucking, impact massage. Okay? See, he's talking about people calm down and got dull in the 50s because they were quite distracted by television, but they didn't know that. So, they learned how to be a little more slower or not so invested emotionally in the obsolete medium of speech! So, I'm explaining why it appeared to be getting better tolerated. No, people just got -- didn't care about speech anymore. They did care about speech in the 19th century.
Alissa 28:58
He's saying that society learned to not reward extreme polarization and escalation. And he's saying that they did that by immediate negative responses. What's an example of that?
Bob 29:17
Group peer pressure.
Alissa 29:21
Oh, right. Okay.
Bob 29:22
And also, by postpone losses. In other words, they stop blaming people. That was a big thing. The permissive society peaked with Spock and that. That was more for children, but in general, the parents who hated the Beatles by the early 70s, they liked the Beatles. They'd been massaged, and they said, Yeah, what are we arguing about? We're actually -- actually something bad's happening. We're disappearing into the electronic vortex. They didn't see that, but they felt it. So, nobody was winning anymore. So, losses were postponed. Right? To lose an argument, it didn't matter. It was obsolete wealth to win an argument.
Alissa 30:02
Okay. Okay.
Bob 30:05
So, society, it's like because women were getting freed up as Chemical Bodies. So, somebody's really good. A professor comes in, he's very good, and he debates another professor, and he wins. So, one guy wins, and the other guy doesn't. But meanwhile the audience is fucking away right after the debate. They don't even care about the fucking argument cuz everybody's on the pill! And everybody's fucking! And the guy who won the literate prestige of a university Prof, a good arguer, he didn't get laid! [chuckles]
Alissa 30:41
[chuckles] Right. Right. Good example. That's a great example, Bob.
Bob 30:46
Yeah, that happened. The pill really, that was a bomb in society. That's the old joke by iON, right? The prostitutes, they ran out of business because the high school girls are givin' it away for free. [chuckles] So, society has learned to distance. So, we've learned to distance. And of course, when Trump came in, he violated because Hillary was the epitome of we've learned to be civil. I saw her ad when it first started, her campaign in 2015, or something, and everybody puked on it. But she was saying, we will start a dialogue, we will be rational, we will discuss the issue. She said exactly what this Russian guy is advocating. And Trump came in and blew it all up by keeping it -- he responded to the new media, to Twitter, which was, you know, instant insult. So, you see, the peer pressure stopped negative responses for a while, and also by postpone losses, because everybody was becoming relatively equal and sharing wealth by the 70s because everybody was into TV experiences. You know, Columbo, all the TV shows. Even rich people had to watch them. Even the Queen watched that. Their wealth, private industrial wealth, was not providing satisfactions like the free TV was. A lot of these people would know -- your parents or your grandparents, you know, 20, 30 years ago, they all had their favorite TV show. And they'd look forward to it every week, and that was a big deal for them to watch TV. I remember people talking about what TV shows their fathers would watch, you know? Every week they'd watch Colombo or something. They'd just find some show. And that would be really important. That'd be their new church. They'd worship at the effect of the TV program. So, okay, so we got that. Learn to disincentivize. That's a temporary academic Gutenberg holdover. And how people did get tolerant for a while. "The same was true for the written communication between opposites on the physical carriers -- it was linear, delayed, stepwise, and moderated by the rules to levels of desirable compromise or acceptable tolerance." Written communication between opposites on the physical -- I guess in the older media; it was linear, delayed, stepwise. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, literate media becomes archetypal-ized, and he's celebrating the services of the Gutenberg Galaxy 'cause it slowed things down. It wasn't this noisy, oral tribal stuff. So, but that's just you're retrieving. And that's what university does. It celebrates the values of the Gutenberg. McLuhan talked about it. It was the bastion of Gutenberg values. And that's partly why they didn't like oral ESP. And they emphasized science and experiment and visual space more than the acoustic tactile levels that preliterate or medieval people did, which iON said, people were way more tuned in before the printing press on the psychic level. So then, "Physical communication invokes politeness and tolerance,..." That means, you know, just walking around in your Chemical Body. "...but digital communication does not. Building 'better' bridges between opposites will not curtail polarization in the digital environment,..." Okay, so he's now come back to a kind of an alternative view that makes, creates an ambivalence for him. He said, okay, we got the literate values, but we got a problem with the digital environment because polarization can't be stopped there. He says, "Building 'better bridges' between opposites will not curtail polarization in digital environment, where the settings inherently incentivize engagement by response, with extremes getting responded to the best." So, he's saying there's a service to people being able to yell at each other and not have physical reactions. They don't get punched in the face. So, that was a pleasure; to argue without having any consequences. So, he's saying the extremes getting responded to the best. "...where the settings inherently incentivize engagement by response, with extremes getting responded to the best." Or at the best or the most best or something. I don't know if he wrote that well. "On the contrary, any common space for the opposites to come into contact will most likely turn this contact into a clash. Left to their own devices, without physical or some other artificial deterrents and inhibitors, opposites in the digital environment will ignite and escalate polarization after any contact." So, what's he saying? "On the contrary, any common space for the opposites to come into contact will most likely turn this contact into a clash." So, I think he's saying the Chemical Body gets a spillover from the digital tension, the digital debates. The digital intensities and digital extremes somehow affect the Chemical Body. So then it's made even worse because people don't like each other anymore when they meet them. Something like that. Though that may not be what he means. But he is, he's now back to the problem. We've got -- he's named the problem: digital environment creates polarization. But he didn't come up with any solution yet. He's just raising the same old question. Then he says, "The fact that the expression of extremes is encouraged in the pursuit of response is only a part of..." Oh, he's got even more problems. "...is only a part of the problem. This is perhaps not even the main problem of digital media polarization. The core problem is that the moderate/middle ground is disincentivized." In other words, there is no center. "Moreover, when polarization achieves the levels of purity testing in the form of the Two Minutes Hate and a subsequent ideological purge, the middle-ground, actually, becomes suppressed." I guess that's the hyper cancellization panic that comes in. "One cannot stay neutral and silent when the highest sacred values are at stake." Now, those are Gutenberg values. The highest sacred values are at stake. Yeah, being centered, or in the middle and not taking sides. These seem to be -- again, he's relying on old-fashioned values. "Most likely, any attempts to connect the opposites and extremes in the digital world will be fruitless and needless." So, you don't, you don't try to smooth them out either by meeting in person or meeting in some kind of tolerance. "They will only reinforce what is touched upon articulated." Well, now he seems to be, you know, undermining his argument of Gutenberg values. "Perhaps one of the potentially more fruitful searches for depolarization could be in the field of reinforcing the center." Ah, here's his next humanist value. He's gonna advocate for the center. Everybody join, go to the center, which is ambivalent, wishy washy. Which is where everybody does live because people, they may get quite hyped up in the Chip Body, but there's a lot of peace in the Chemical Body till recently.
Alissa 38:08
Yeah.
Bob 38:08
In just your environment there. This guy's burping, and people are not making a big deal of it. 40 years ago, the guy would have been slapped around by the manager. Right? So, in the Chemical Body, there's a lot of peace and getting long. I always cite the fact that there's no airplane crashes. That's incredible. Hardly ever a plane crash. And there's more activity in the airports than in cities, more humans. They've documented this. There's more people pass through Chicago airport, this is 50 years ago, then are in the city of Chicago. And all those people are getting on planes, and relatively surviving the flights. That's a pretty good Chemical Body environment that's surviving. So, he says, "If one side of the spectrum thinks the past represents nothing but shame..." That would be the woke. "...and the other side thinks the past represents nothing but glory,..." That's the Trump, right? Make America Great Again. "...the only way to mitigate polarization is not to bring those sides together but to empower the voice of the center." Now, what's the voice of the center? That's someone who's
Alissa 39:21
Yeah, what is that saying?
Bob 39:01
That's me! That's Bob [chuckles] who has no point of view. But everybody tries to become the center. It's almost like every cult, every group, they form a website and go out and tell everybody they're gettin' it all wrong. You don't know how to argue, you don't know how to debate, you're causing a lot of shit. Let us take over and we'll run the environment, not the content. That's the center. It's to occupy the ground. If you think of the ground as the network, the medium, and you have to be someone at the center of running it like the air traffic controllers. But he may mean the content center. Let's see. "It is the center who might assume, for example, that the past is much more complex than shame or glory, both of which are, actually, political tools of the present but not conditions of the past." So, he's saying the center, he's talking about this, the value the surfaces of the center position who can see both sides, have a point. Yeah, there's something important about the, about the past, and then you shouldn't feel shame. But he doesn't seem to explain the other side. Both of which are shame -- oh, shame and glory. There they are. "It is the center who might assume, for example, that the past is much more complex than shame or glory,..." Okay. So, he's saying to be ashamed of the past or to be celebrating the past is missing the complexities when those pasts were a present. And the present is always more than people can take. There's too many factors. So, he says, "...both of which..." Shame or glory. "...are, actually, political tools of the present but not conditioned of the past." Yeah, they're part of the present, not the whole present. So, he's bringing in the complex present and saying, you can articulate the values of the complex present from what he calls the center. Then he says, "Anti-polarizing efforts by no means relate to the balancing of the opposites." Anti-polarizing efforts, by no means relate to the balancing, so you're not trying to balance things. They relate, anti-polarizing efforts, getting to the center. "They relate to silencing the extremes and vocalizing the center. How can the center..." So, there's the question. "How can the center become better responded to, better liked, shared, more popular, and more profitable for social capital and commercial monetization at the level of the very design of social media and the news media?" I think that's the opening statement of the article. How can the center not the extremes. Yeah, he just, he just repeated the opening sentence, the opening question. How can -- where was that? He even says, "The answer to this question is surely worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize." It's the same fucking answer! So, maybe that's just an excerpt of his main point at the top cuz it's in darker font. So, it's actually not the start of the article. It's just the quote at the top of the main question. So, it's an article celebrating the center. And so he says, "How can the center become better responded to, better liked, shared, more popular, and more profitable for social capital and commercial monetization at the level of the very design of social media and the news media?" So, he's saying somehow you make the center be at the technical, hidden ground of it. "The answer to this question is surely worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize."
Alissa 43:06
Cold Play!
Bob 43:09
What did you say?
Alissa 43:12
Cold Play does that from a hidden ground level.
Bob 43:15
Yeah. We solve the energy crisis and the health crisis with our new amino acids. And it's, just incredible what we can do, we just have to say, everybody shut up, we'll solve some basic problems. And then we'll see what we're arguing about. So, yeah, [chuckles] let's see what's left to argue about. So, so he says, "The media settings that work for polarization are known." That means how to build the economy on polarization. In other words, people argue over the old media, over the old issues like abortion. That's the Chemical Body. What about the fact that I used to say on the radio, everybody's aborted by the electric environment? Everybody in the present is aborted. Why worry about people who are coming in the future? That's minor. "The media settings that work for polarization are known. The service they provide is so convenient, attractive and self-reinforcing that no one can resist them at the systemic level, despite any rational past and future attempts." So, he's admitting that there is really a hard problem up against the ecstasy of the fun of the Chip Body games. "The service they provide is so convenient, attractive and self-reinforcing that no one can resist them at the systemic level, despite any rational past and future attempts." To deal with problems. "The question is whether it is possible to find settings that work for moderate and balanced self-actualization that would lean towards the center rather than the extremes?" In other words, can iON's Ascension process make people healthier at the center? Question whether it's possible to find settings that work for moderate and balanced self-actualization, becoming a God, that would lean towards the center rather than the extremes? Same kind of question again. So then he says, "The task of beneficially reversing malicious environmental forces is titanic,..." He's repeating himself again! It's the Nobel Prize. The task of solving this malicious polarization "...is titanic, if feasible at all." He startin' to give up! Or repeat to give up that he already gave up two paragraphs ago. "The practical goal may be to find environmental forces of different effects and use them." Now, that's iONdom. We bring in Cold Play, science that works with Non-Physical, and everything else we do. That's something that is an environmental force with different effects. He's proving me! "The practical goal may be to find environmental forces of different effects and use them." That's what we do. "For example, in the digital reality, there might be something equivalent to how newsroom autonomy worked in the legacy media --..." In the old media. So, he's saying, okay, they somehow had something going okay, in the old broadcasts, one-way media. Can we find something that can be applied to the digital reality?
Alissa 46:30
Yeah, I just had a thought on that, actually. I was imagining what if YouTube existed, but all the comments were turned off? So, if, if these social media things existed, but you could only post, no one could ever comment or react; that would make it more one way. But I mean obviously people would be bored by that.
Bob 47:00
Yeah, that's the problem. And, you know, he there is another article he wrote. You know his solution for Twitter is? Is to have not a maximum 280 letters, or whatever it is, it's to say you have to type more than 280 letters. You can't have a post that's less than 280. And he says that would mean people would take a lot longer to write their longer stuff and slow down and not be so heated in their instant responses. That's pretty crazy.
Alissa 47:31
That wouldn't happen.
Bob 47:32
No, it wouldn't happen. You're missing, you're missing the -- he's trying to say there's a great pleasure in this TikToking and instant 30-second yakking at each other. There's a great pleasure in it, and we're trying to find a pleasure that equals that. Or does more that balances off the addiction to the, the Twittering antagonism or polarization. Well, that's our stuff! Our fucking products cool you out. It's incredible how we are this all -- no wonder the Bible celebrated us! We fucking have it all, the solutions, at the right timing!
Alissa 48:11
Not only do the, like, not only do the products chill you out and -- but the alternative is to die. [chuckles] So, like, you know? (overtalk) against the wall.
Bob 48:23
So, yeah. We even say you don't have to die! [laughs] Yeah.
Alissa 48:28
You know, it's like, hey, you either, you either write 280 words or you die. [laughs]
Bob 48:37
[laughs] Right. That, that is slowly dawning on people. Yeah, we could die. I mean, they're all shocked that they're actually talking about having a nuclear war with Russia. No one ever thought, you know, five years ago, oh, you know, you don't talk that way. That's not gonna happen. But everything has gotten so extreme. And Bert agrees immediately. I don't even have to finish the thought. Right, Bert?
Bert 49:00
That's right. That's right. Read the headlines.
Bob 49:02
You got it.
Bert 49:03
Read the headlines. Who would have imagined -
Bob 49:05
Yeah, they're talking about
Bert 49:05
- they're talking about nuclear war and threatening.
Bob 49:09
Yeah, and saying, well, we could do it. We have a little nuclear suitcase. We could bomb half of Poland. That'd be okay. At least we'd save Western civilization and get rid of Russia. That kind of thinking.
Bert 49:22
Yeah.
Bob 49:23
So, McLuhan said we'd eventually become a very cold environment. People have become psychopathic on an extreme level because they were doing the Chip Body. And now their Chemical Bodies are adopting the polarization and cold world of the Chip Body, and everybody's walking around being real cold. Oh, yeah, we can nuke a couple of countries. No problem. As long as it's not our country. You know, they're talking tough again. They hadn't done that since 1939! Yeah, we're transferring the effect of the Chip Body battles into Chemical Body indifference. Just like the COVID, that people said, yeah, let the unvaccinated die. They're just, they're just killing us by not being vaccinated. That was assuming that it was spreading, and that the vaccination stopped it. So, okay. So, "For example, in the digital reality, there might be something equivalent to how newsroom autonomy worked in legacy media -- it was able to mitigate the negative environmental impacts of advertising or reader revenue." Hmm. Mitigated the bad effects of advertising in the newsroom autonomy. So there's some kind of autonomy objectiveness, that's gone now because there's so much immersion in the Five Bodies. But back then there was still a bit of Gutenberg detachment that the newsroom supposedly held everything together with their fair presentation of the both sides. "Theoretically, monopolistic social media platforms could implement this by introducing artificial restraints, similar to the news media, which could afford the balancing domination of newsroom autonomy when they were plentifully paid for by advertising in their Golden Age." So, the balancing domination of newsroom autonomy, when they were plentifully paid for. So, advertising paid for newsroom autonomy, so the newsroom got money for the need for advertising. So, he's saying somehow that gets into monopolistic social media platforms could implement this by introducing artificial restraints. Well, they already did that. That's that's the cancellation.
Alissa 51:46
Yeah, people censoring that was going on.
Bob 51:50
Yeah. So, maybe if this was written, you know, couple of years ago, that's, that's when those guys were really dominating and getting away with it. There wasn't so much complaint.
Alissa 52:01
I looked it up and it said August of 2020 the book was published.
Bob 52:09
Okay, so that is the beginning of COVID. That's when they were hoping for a vaccination. People were still optimistic that something would come up, and it'd be over in a couple of months. So, the hatred and extreme cancellation in 2021 hadn't happened yet. Which would obsolesce this article and his book.
Nan 52:34
But he probably wrote it before that time.
Bob 52:38
Yeah, this is his thinking in two years before that. Takin' him a while to write the book. So, yeah, he's thinking this, he's reacting to Trump. And he thinks Trump is a simple little thing we can fix up if we're a little more tolerant. He didn't realize the monster Trump was. Or the monsters forces that Trump would be accused. They're even blaming the whole Supreme Court shit on him right now, today. I saw that in the headlines. He caused this collapse of the leaking of shit. It's incredible. "Theoretically, monopolistic social..." Yeah, it is describing Facebook and Google in 2018, 2019. "... monopolistic social media platforms could implement this by introducing artificial restraints, similar to the news media, which could afford the balancing domination of newsroom autonomy when..." Now, he's saying the past they could be fair and autonomous and, and magnanimous because they're getting paid for by advertising. Then he says, "The problem is that a media system with a thousand filtering entities is more diverse and less risky, in terms of ideological monopoly, than a media system with two or three monopolistic platforms." Okay, so then he comes back to the present. Well, actually, we have a quadrophenic environment, multiple bodies; you can't fucking organize it. There's -- you can't get a position. You can't get a center, which is an ideological monopoly, or autonomy. There's too many things going on in different environments and different realities and means that you can't balance out. So, he cancels out his suggestion. All right, you get that? "The problem is that a media system with a thousand filtering entities..." Not just a newsroom filtering it in a city. With so many filtering entities, that situation "...is more diverse and less risky, in terms of ideological monopoly,..." In other words, it's not gonna be as fascist. It's actually more diverse and less risky "...than a media system with two or three monopolistic platforms." So, you know, the, the problem was that the CIA and CBS, Walter Cronkite, did run the show and cheated. And we're fascist, closet fascist, but nobody recognized it. So, he's saying the old system wasn't that great. Then he says, "Even a relatively weak factor of reversing polarization would help if it could at least slow down the self-reinforcing surge of polarization." Well, COVID changed all that. So, you know, the self-reinforcing surge of polarization, everybody's becoming a god, And iON said all the gods become competitive. "As for the polarizing effect of old media, the spread of awareness regarding their forced descent into postjournalism..." So, there was a polarizing effect of old media, but they were forced to go into a nonjournalism "...caused by the decline and reversal of their business model might neutralize at least part of..." So, he's saying, "As for the polarizing effect of old media, the spread of awareness regarding their forced descent into..." bullshitland caused by the upsetting, upside down of the economy, because people didn't buy news anymore, buy newspapers. They didn't read them. And the business model became one of selling profiles of people's Chip Bodies; that's surveillance capitalism, which the author of that Harvard books says that started in 2012. "As for the polarizing effect of old media, the spread of awareness regarding their forced descent into postjournalism caused by the decline and reversal of their business model might..." So, he's hoping there's some kind of spread of awareness about what we've actually screwed our information society into postrealism, "...might neutralize at least a part of their polar..." That's ridiculous. He's trying to come up with, you know, band aids. It might "...neutralize at least a part of their polarizing impact." That's stupid. So, then he says, "Ultimately..." Oh, now he's going to take a new tack. This whole thing that he's trying to get rid of polarization "...might be the wrong question." After all that "The correct question is more likely to be 'How are we going to live with it?'" Well, that's where you take our products. That's how you live with it. But he's not thinking that. So, here is, it's coming to the end and he's gonna rely on the old Maelstrom, how to survive the vortex. Do you know that story? You know, the seaman, "A Descent into the Maelstrom" The seaman, sailor, learns to see what keeps repeating itself, and it's a barrel. He grabs the barrel, and the barrel goes up and down, goes down and gets popped up. And he survives that way. Whereas his brother takes a point of view lashes himself to the masthead, no flexibility going up and down like a barrel, and he just goes down and drowns. So, that's what he's gonna say his solution is. So, he's come back and McLuhan's ridiculous solution. early solution. So that how are we going to live with this polarization? He says, "In 'The Mechanical Bride,' Marshall McLuhan offered a metaphor of escape from a deadly environment that was borrowed from Edgar Allan Poe's short story 'A Descent into the Maelstrom' [written in] 1841." He actually died in 1840, so it was published a year after he died. "The sailor in Poe's story got sucked into a mile-wide maelstrom. Being captured by the horror, he, nevertheless, realized how wonderful was 'a manifestation of God's power.'" A huge maelstrom was a wonderful sublime sight to behold, "and 'became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself.'" At the end of "The Medium is the Massage," McLuhan has a quote from this scene. And it says, "I must have been delirious. I was contemplating the velocities of the various foam and stuff that was happening in the vortex." That's a quote that McLuhan has at the end of the book. And over the quote he has a picture of a guy who looks just like McLuhan surfing. So, he's surfing over the information maelstrom. So, "Being captured by the horror, he, nevertheless..." Okay, so negative, so you take the iON position of resist not evil. Resist, not the horror, start to dig the beauty of the horror. "...realized how wonderful was 'a manifestation of God's power' and 'became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself.' Revolving deeper into the vortex..." Getting sucked down. "...the sailor noticed that some objects descended slower than others." It went down slow. "He abandoned the boat and held on to a barrel. The boat, along with his brother, who was paralyzed with horror, went down and was swallowed by the abyss. Sometime after, the vortex disappeared, and the sailor found himself on the surface of the sea, where he was later picked up by a fishing boat." Is that it? One more little bit. So, "Thus, the sailor managed to escape the maelstrom by understanding its forces and using the whirlpool's patterns."
Bob 0:00
So that's means, don't get upset, resist not evil. That's what McLuhan said, don't use value judgments and understanding the immediate global theater and don't value one thing over another, but notice what's going on. And that means somehow learning how to surf it. So, he says, the sailor did this. "Or as McLuhan put it, the 'Sailor saved himself by studying the action of the whirlpool, and by co-operating with it.'" That's what iON says, cooperate with the Tech Body. "It was this amusement born of his rational detachment as a spectator of his own situation..." Says McLuhan. "...that gave him the thread which led him out of the Labyrinth." It was the amusement born of his rational detachment as a spectator of his old situation that gave him the thread which led them out of the labyrinth. In other words, the amusement of noticing some patterns. Unfortunately, by the 70s, the cognitive thrills of pattern recognition become extreme! So, this guy, the author, forgot that McLuhan quote. So then he says, that was written in 1951. "Eighteen years later, [1969] McLuhan returned to his maelstrom metaphor in the Playboy interview. Answering the question of whether he is 'essentially optimistic about the future' amid 'the upheavals induced by the new electric technology,' he said: 'Cataclysmic environmental changes such as these are, in and of themselves, morally neutral; it is how we perceive them and react to them that will determine their ultimate psychic and social consequences. If we refuse to see them at all, we will become their servants." You know, dupes. "It's inevitable that the world-pool of electronic information movement will toss us all about like corks on a stormy sea, but if we keep our cool..." Says McLuhan. "...during the descent into the maelstrom, studying the process as it happens to us and what we can do about it, we can come through.'" So, McLuhan idealism is what he falls back on. So, this guy is just applying old McLuhan to the new media environment of his day. Whereas we go past McLuhan. We dump McLuhan. We have the actual solutions. Who would believe that someone will come up with actual solutions to everything? That's the -- protected by public incredulity of our situation. Wow. What a, what a seminar by Bob. We can sell this one, Carolyn. [callers: one whistles, one laughs, one "yay"] Yeah, three people cheer. The rest are all dumfounded.
Nan 2:43
Well, I would think also, you know, like trying to direct it might -- you know, like the Chinese have, they have social credit scores, so you can't take all the people and force them to do one thing or the other. I guess in China they can.
Bob 3:04
Well, I'm not, I'm not saying this guy came up with a solution. But you know, the Chinese thing, iON said 10 years ago, the Chinese were the most adapted culture to survive the 21st century. But that's because they, they're tactile; they know how to go with the punches. They don't jujitsu and all that stuff, right? Judo. They know how to throw the attacker off. But it ain't working 'cause technology is bigger than any historical culture. Whatever values a culture had, in their sensory biases and preferences is obsolesced by the Android Meme and then the Tech Body. So, China is I used to say, freezes on the controls and turns into this social credit system, which is, you know, the horror that the West is looking at right now. That's what we're doing. We're all trying to figure out how not to go and turn Chinese. And it's not gonna work. So, the solution is to recognize that everything's gonna blow up and crash. And if you've gotten to the 33rd parallel, you've got an advantage of surviving plus being on our products plus listening to me and listening to iON. And we don't promise anything, but at least you'll know why you survived! It won't be a mystery.
Alissa 4:30
[chuckles] That's a pretty great bumper sticker: At least I know why I survived.
Bob 4:39
[laughs] Yeah, because they said the big pain in the concentration camps in World War Two was that, you know, psychiatrists analyzed the survivors. And they said the real problem was we didn't know why it was happening. The mind didn't understand why they were suddenly all put on the trains and put in the places real fast, and then killed. So, the negative stuff needed to be explained. We're reversed. The positive outcome that you never expected needs to be explained. The mind can't take it, it's gotta have a reason why you survived. So, that's a flip. That's a great conclusion there, Bert, of a great seminar.
2 comments:
This was really excellent. Thanks Bob. ~Susana
Second that, nice
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