COAR 64

Do I have to do this all over again?

Didn't I do it right the first time?

Do I have to do this all over again?

How many times do I have to make this climb?

Didn't I? Didn't I?

Can I see my way to know what's really real

They say time can fix things by itself

I know life's more than just some kind of deal

Won't you tell me what all, when my soul comes off the shelf

Didn't I, oh, didn't I?

Peter Tork, Monkee

"We are imprisoned inside the linear assumption that I'm a person in a place, I'm alive, most people aren't - but in fact when you deconstruct all that, THAT is fiction - the truth is more an onrushing magma of literary association. The character of life is like a work of literature. We are told we are supposed to fit your experience in the model that science gives you - probabilistic, statistical, predictable - and yet the felt datum of experience is much more literary than that - we fall in love, we make and lose fortunes, we inherit mansions, we lose everything, we get terrible diseases, we're cured of them or we die of them - it has this "Sturm und Drang" aspect to it which physics is not supposed to have but literature always has. What I'm willing to entertain at some depth is the idea that salvation is somehow the act of encompassing comprehension, an act of apprehension of understanding and this act involves everything.

Somehow the career of the Word is the overarching metaphor of the age, and if the book is the central metaphor for reality then reality itself is seen as somehow literary, somehow textual, and I believe this is how reality was seen until the rise of modern science. Everyone assumes tools are tools and that's that, but for McLuhan the entire toolkit of modern Western man can be traced to the unconscious assumptions of print - for example - the idea of the individual is a post-medieval concept legitimized by print. The idea of the public, this concept did not exist before newspapers because before newspapers there was no public, only people, and rulers very rarely passed on their thinking and only then for utilitarian reasons. The idea of an observing citizenry somehow sharing the governance of society is a print-created idea... the idea of interchangeable parts without which our world would hardly function there would not be automobiles, aircrafts or modern buildings - that idea comes from the interchangeability of letters in a printer's block, the concept of easily reformulated sub-units. The linearity of modern city planning is an unconscious bias imbibed from the world of print - they make sense if you're a print-head, but one of the peculiar things is that animals do not possess language, many human societies do not possess writing and very few human societies invented printing and yet once invented it feeds back into the evolution of social structures and defines everything and yet it is an extraordinary artificiality. Reading is not looking, reading is an entirely different kind of behavior; nobody opens a book and looks at print, we READ print.

Notice that the world created by print is a world of gestalts - buildings, highways, bridges - we know how they're supposed to look, we don't experience astonishment each time we enter a home or institutional edifice. There is a built in set of syntactical expectations in linear space, and when those are violated this is very noticeable and becomes the basis for architectural or design innovation. All of the breakdown of linearity in the 20th century can be seen as new behaviors emerging as the cloud of print-constellated constipation is lifted."

Terence McKenna, monkey

Before I go further, you must decide whether or not you believe that there exists a physical and spiritual bondage that necessitates salvation.  If you do not believe or have no life experience that suggests that such a condition blankets the human condition, than this whole blog probably seems a bit silly, and a bit fucked up.  More power to you.  I sometimes review what I have written here and laugh, secretly thinking that a cry for salvation is simply a symptom of weakness, fear, and sloth.  But not as much as I used to.

If you have had life experiences that suggest that a physical and spiritual bondage does exist, or if you find yourself in a state of physical and spiritual bondage right now, salvation is our number one priority.

"The unconscious is not aware of its own 

mortality"

Sigmund Freud

"The unconscious mind is aware of its own 

immortality."  

Aleister Crowley

What if physical death does not release us from bondage?  What if good behavior and good deeds are not enough.  What if prayer and devotion are not enough?  What if money, fame, and the security of possessions only make us forget the task at hand?   If Terence McKenna is correct, that salvation involves "the act of encompassing comprehension," then school is always in session.  Every blind spot must be illuminated, every chicken accounted for.  We cannot allow any informational monopolies, no Christian wisdom, Hebrew wisdom, Muslim wisdom, Sufi wisdom, scientific wisdom, occult wisdom, Republican wisdom, Democratic wisdom, ancient wisdom or modern wisdom.  There can only be Human Wisdom, and the goal would be to access as much of this information as possible and then share, analyze, and interpret All and Everything in as many ways as possible, increasing all of our chances for salvation.   We are all Detectives working on the same case.  

"Find The Others"

Timothy Leary

For 17 years I've followed a trail of clues that have led me to read, listen, attend, endure, and experiment with just about EVERYTHING that promised a new source of information, a new clue towards the mystery of salvation.  And from the start I scribbled my thoughts in school notebooks, napkins, the inside cover of books, envelopes, in a Moleskine or two, and finally over the last three years an official journal.  I had entertained throughout the years of writing the next great American science-fiction novel, a Hollywood screenplay, or developing a stand-up routine.  My intent was to transform my pain and suffering, my trials and tribulations, my notes and my gnosis into fortune and fame.  Turn on, cash in, cop out.

But this is not the world I was born into, the world has changed.  We are living in the Age of Information.  With this blog, I AM writing a novel, I AM writing a screenplay, and I AM doing a stand-up routine.  It's just all happening at the same time.  And this melting pot of memories, observations, ideas, dreams, and feedback is available to anyone who stumbles upon it, from Japan to Belize to Germany to Arizona.   


Not only is it available to read, it is open for global response.  Anytime someone responds to these posts and adds a new idea, offers a correction or disagrees with anything, the informational content increases and we get closer and closer to our goal.    


We must keep our eyes and ears wide open to the North, to the East, to the West, and to the South.

Blog Lady

"I carry a log - yes. Is it funny to you? It is not to me. Behind all things are reasons. Reasons can even explain the absurd. Do we have the time to learn the reasons behind the human being's varied behavior? I think not. Some take the time. Are they called detectives? Watch - and see what life teaches. "

COAR 2600

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, than a symbol is worth a thousand pictures"  

Jay Weidner's Second Law of the Universe

Here is a review of the Control Open Apple Reset post, in which the Unprogrammed, the Programmed, and the Deprogrammed are asked "What do you see in this picture?"

U: a giant, a tree, a man, a man, a man, a man, a man, flowers, mountains, leaves, berries, the sun, a hill, blue sky, grass, deer

P:  The Buddha achieving enlightenment

D:  Balance

U: a man, a woman, a snake, lions, horses, sheep, a turkey, bulls, an elk, a peacock, birds, a zebra, an ostrich, a river, trees, mountains, grass, flowers, a tiger, a rabbit, a cheetah, a pelican, a rooster, a chicken

P:  Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as Eve hands Adam the Forbidden Fruit that leads to the Fall of Man

D:  Awakening

U:  a man, boxes, a woman, a room, a floor

P: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, redeeming the sins of Man upon the Cross

D:  Sacrifice

U: a man standing, a man lying down, ropes, a crowd of people

P:  Muhammad Ali defending his title as World Champion

D:  Success


Each of these types has unique qualities that are hardwired into them.  For example, lets's say I ask them if there is a dinosaur in the painting of the Garden of Eden.

The Unprogrammed will look again, and if the dinosaur is there, they will agree.
The Programmed will without looking, tell you there isn't a dinosaur.
The Deprogrammed person will say "I didn't see a dinosaur".

There is a Fourth Way of perceiving these pictures.

This fourth way incorporates the vision of the Unprogrammed, the Programmed, and the Deprogrammed.  This fourth type of person can see the thousand words, the picture, and the symbol.  They have access to and process all of the available information.   For example, when looking at the picture of Muhammed Ali, the fourth type of person can see a successful man named Muhammad Ali.  They also can see the Balance and Sacrifice necessary for success, as well as the world Awakening to this new type of Champion.  They also see Enlightenment, The Fall, Redemption, and War.  This person can also see violence, fear, exploitation, and corruption.  This person sees how all of the animals, rivers, plants, planets, and human beings that ever were are involved.  This person is extracting All and Everything from this picture.

Did Stanley Kubrick see the All and Everything?  

Գեորգի Իվանովիչ Գյուրջիև

"There is art and art. You have doubtless noticed that during our lectures and talks I have often been asked various questions by those present relating to art but I have always avoided talks on this subject. This was because I consider all ordinary talks about art as absolutely meaningless. People speak of one thing while they imply something quite different and they have no idea whatever what they are implying. At the same time it is quite useless to try to explain the real relationship of things to a man who does not know the A B C about himself, that is to say, about man. We have talked together now for some time and by now you ought to know this A B C, so that I can perhaps talk to you now even about art.
"You must first of all remember that there are two kinds of art, one quite different from the other - objective art and subjective art. All that you know, all that you call art, is subjective art, that is, something that I do not call art at all because it is only objective art that I call art.
"To define what I call objective art is difficult first of all because you ascribe to subjective art the characteristics of objective art, and secondly because when you happen upon objective works of art you take them as being on the same level as subjective works of art.
"I will try to make my idea clear. You say - an artist creates. I say this only in connection with objective art. In relation to subjective art I say that with him ′it is created.′ You do not differentiate between these, but this is where the whole difference lies. Further you ascribe to subjective art an invariable action, that is, you expect works of subjective art to have the same reaction on everybody. You think, for instance, that a funeral march should provoke in everyone sad and solemn thoughts and that any dance music, a komarinsky for instance, will provoke happy thoughts. But in actual fact this is not so at all. Everything depends upon association. If on a day that a great misfortune happens to me I hear some lively tune for the first time this tune will evoke in me sad and oppressive thoughts for my whole life afterwards. And if on a day when I am particularly happy I hear a sad tune, this tune will always evoke happy thoughts. And so with everything else.
"The difference between objective art and subjective art is that in objective art the artist really does ′create,′ that is, he makes what he intended, he puts into his work whatever ideas and feelings he wants to put into it. And the action of this work upon men is absolutely definite; they will, of course each according to his own level, receive the same ideas and the same feelings that the artist wanted to transmit to them. There can be nothing accidental either in the creation or in the impressions of objective art.
"In subjective art everything is accidental. The artist, as I have already said, does not create; with him ′it creates itself.′ This means that he is in the power of ideas, thoughts, and moods which he himself does not understand and over which he has no control whatever. They rule him and they express themselves in one form or another. And when they have accidentally taken this or that form, this form just as accidentally produces on man this or that action according to his mood, tastes, habits, the nature of the hypnosis under which he lives, and so on. There is nothing invariable; nothing is definite here. In objective art there is nothing indefinite."

G.I. Gurdjieff from P.D. Ouspensky's In Search Of The Miraculous
    

❄️😇❄️😇🔥❄️😇❄️😇🔥❄️🔥❄️😇

❄️😇

COAR

Control = Set and Setting.

Open Apple  =  ?

Reset  =  !

What iAhuasca Is: The Lunatic Is In The Second To Last Row

If you want to experience first hand the differences between how the programmed and the un-programmed man experience film, follow these directions:

iAhuasca

1.  Pick a new release movie that is playing at a local theater, preferably an action/adventure movie that will most likely be heavy on visuals and special effects, and preferably isn't more than 100 minutes.  Avoid reading reviews and seeing extended previews as much as possible as the less you know of the plot the better.  In reality, it can be any film.

2.  See the film at a time when the movie theater will be crowded.  Friday night, Saturday matinee or night, or opening night are the best options.  There is a certain adrenaline that is more accessible while trying this in a crowded theater as opposed to an empty theater.  Trust me, it's the best way.

3.  Select an album of music that you plan on listening to on repeat for as long as the duration of the movie.   I suggest Dark Side of the Moon because it is a cinematic album, and contains very universal themes, but really, use your intuition, and select any album that you enjoy.  

4.  Bring an iPod or any mp3 player and set the repeat option on.

5.  DO NOT BRING ANY EXPECTATIONS OTHER THAN BOREDOM.   ACCEPT THAT THIS IS AN EXPERIMENT AND THAT THE RESULTS VARY.  

6.  When the movie starts, understand that the burden of the storyteller is completely on you.  Pay attention to all of the available information on the screen and construct your own narrative.  Try to anticipate where the story is going to go based on your intuition.   If you think this is something too strange or weird, understand that this is a very natural process, one that is pushed into the subconscious of the heavily literate programmed man.  It is what young children do every waking moment of their lives.  A two year old is constantly inventing a narrative to explain the world they inhabit, and this is precisely the nature of the un-programmed mind.  Trust that any questions you have will be answered, and that it will all make sense eventually.  

7.  At the end of the film, take notice of the energy and emotion you are feeling, and see if it matches the energy and emotion of the theater.  Observe the audience with the same lens that you have been observing the movie.  

8.  Now that you have your own experience of the film, you can read the reviews, and see if your experience of the film matches the experience of the programmed minds of the reviewers.  See if there are themes that you missed, or themes that they missed.

9.  After a few days or a week, or when the movie comes out on DVD, watch the movie as it was intended.  Try to see how much of the story matches with the story you created on your own.

I first tried this myself in 2009.  The idea arose during a walk to the movie theater.  I knew the idea was absurd, but the idea that somehow this could ruin a Hollywood movie, or that I could lose out on important experience was equally absurd.  The only thing to lose was the $9.50 for the ticket.

So I walked into the Friday night showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and pressed play on Dark Side of the Moon.    I had not read the Harry Potter books, and to be honest, even though I had seen the previous films, I remembered very little.  They were all very long and to be honest quite boring.  I knew the characters, but I wasn't really in tune with where the story was going.

The two and half hours raced by and I was caught off guard when the credits rolled.  I was in an absolute state of shock.  I could hardly move.  As I turned to look at the crowded theater, almost every single person was already standing up, putting on their coats, and racing for the doors.  I wondered, did we see the same movie?  Had they even processed the experience?

TRY THIS.  JUST ONCE.  YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE. 

This is modern magick that is legal, safe, and available to anyone with an mp3 player and $10.  Most people who read this will dismiss it as too bizarre, or can convince themselves that they get it, they understand it, that it can't teach them anything new.  Don't be that asshole.  I should know.  Most of the time, I am that asshole.

A Really Big Shew Pt. 5: The Chicken Is The Chaos Of The Egg

A quick recap:

Kubrick, having read and understood McLuhan, realized that when watching the same film, "literate" man and "non literate" man have access to information the other does not.

"Literate man" has been programmed to see film in a specific way.
"Non literate" man has not been programmed to see film in a specific way.
This begs the question:  does this programming effect the way in which "literate" man "sees" reality?  If so, what information is "literate" man no longer able to see?

Let's return to the story and of the violinist in the subway.  Is this proof that the programming of "literate" man has altered his sense ratios in such a profound way that the violinist in the subway was as invisible to them as the chicken was to the filmmakers?  Did they not stop to listen not because they were in a hurry, but because they simply did not know that the violinist was even there?

McLuhan and Kubrick recognized that the programmed man was living deep in a Gutenberg Galaxy, and the un-programmed man was still living on planet Earth.  The goal of modern man is not to maintain residence solely in one domain, but to be able to travel freely between both.

Chess involves a certain type of literacy, in which the player must be able to read and interpret as much information as possible.  Information, in chess, is power.  Seeing the game from multiple perspectives gives us more information, and a good player sees the game from the perspective of both sides of the board, as well as aggressive and conservative.  Chess is also a game that is as much about technicality as it is about psychology, and moves are made that occur outside the realm of the board itself, moves that are within the rules, but subject to integrity and etiquette.  They are just as important to the language of chess as the moves of the pieces.  An extremely literate player, the programmed player, is aware of all of these sources of information.  

But, does the truly un-programmed player still have access to information that is invisible to the programmed players?  Is there a source of information that is only available to the person who has never played the game of chess?  

McLuhan and Kubrick would say that there is a source of information within a game of chess that is only observable to the un-programmed, and the programmed player who can access this information becomes a more powerful player.  So how does a programmed player learn to see something that has become invisible to them by virtue of their programming?  

A player must deprogram, or to put it more poetically, a player must be born again.  How does someone go about deprogramming?  

How can someone be born again?

We now have three people in this game of chicken:

1.  Un-Programmed Person

2.  Programmed Man

3.  Deprogrammed Person

A fourth Person will arrive at some point, but let's just focus on this power trio for now.

A Really Big Shew Pt. 4: The Other Side

In film, a continuity error is a mistake that eludes the careful eye of the director.  Even after watching a scene dozens of times, these errors often go unnoticed for years.


Stanley Kubrick was a perfectionist as a person, as a chess player, and most famously, as a film director.    So why are there so many continuity errors in his film The Shining?  Many of these errors are well documented here, here, and here.


There are many theories as to why such a well known perfectionist allowed so many imperfections in The Shining, and I agree with those theories that contend that these continuity errors are not in fact errors, and should not be considered imperfections.   They are deliberate choices by the director.  I call these deliberate choices chickens.


It has been established that Stanley Kubrick incorporated his understanding of the writings of Marshall McLuhan into 2001: A Space Odyssey, so it is no leap of faith to suggest that Kubrick, the obsessive-compulsive perfectionist, read The Gutenberg Galaxy cover to cover several times.  I believe he knew about the magical chicken that, in only one second of screen time, helped to illuminate the divide between how literate man and non literate man experience film.


The appearance of this chicken can be considered a type of continuity error, an unintentional element that became part of the film without the intention of the filmmaker.  Remember, the literate man literally could not see the chicken, and had to watch the film frame by frame to be convinced that it was there.


But to the non literate man, the chicken was the star of the show.


I believe that Kubrick understood this and began to recognize that his audience was comprised of the "literate" and the "non literate", and started experimenting with a kind of intentional continuity error, a deliberate chicken, that was obvious to some and invisible to others.


Kubrick makes use of the chicken during this scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey:

Let's call those that have little or no knowledge of the game of chess "non literate" and those with a deep knowledge of the game of chess "literate", and assemble an audience of both to watch 2001.  If we were to stop the film at the end of this chess scene, and ask the audience what they saw, we would find the opposite result of the study in Africa.  The "literate" man would mention the chicken, a chicken unnoticed by "non literate" man. 

"To convolute McLuhan, in 2001 the message is the medium."

The general consensus of the "non literate" audience would be that Frank and HAL were killing time on the ship playing a game of chess, a game which Frank loses.


A "literate" audience would have more to say.  They would mention that the game of chess depicted between Frank and HAL does not follow the established rules of chess, a fact unnoticed  and unmentioned by the "non literate" audience.  This is our chicken.


If we believe that HAL’s bluff is an accident, a continuity error, then it does nothing to further the narrative of 2001.
If we believe the bluff is not an accident, and is in fact intentional, the chicken opens the doorway into a mystery, and the narrative of 2001 comes alive.  This hyper-literate chicken in 2001 was no without purpose.  In fact, it convoluted McLuhan’s non-literate chicken.


Kubrick was an above average chess player with a very deep knowledge of the game.  The game depicted is the master game Roesch vs. Schlage from 1910 which is documented and published.     There is a 0% chance that the inaccuracy of the chess game was a continuity error or that it eluded Kubrick.  


In fact, the comprehension of 2001 depends completely on the bluff.  And yet, it is hidden from the majority of the audience.  Why?  If The Shining is loaded with these hidden chickens, how are they important to the comprehension of the film? 

A Really Big Shew Pt. 3: Chicken of the See

Why Are There So Many Chickens In The Shining?

In the previous post I discussed the "Film Literacy in Africa" study that Marshall McLuhan references in The Gutenberg Galaxy.  At the center of the study was a short film shown to non-literate tribal natives in Africa.  The film was designed to demonstrate the proper techniques for removing standing water, and actors were filmed doing so in a very slow and deliberate fashion.  When asked what the natives had seen in the film, they quickly responded that they had seen a chicken.  With further questioning they mentioned that they had seen a man as well, but they had not processed what the man was doing.  They hadn't "made a whole story out of it" and, to the surprise of the researchers, were unable to see the film in a three-dimensional perspective.   Much has been made out of the inability of the native to process the film, but there is another angle to this that I want to focus on.

When the natives mentioned that they had seen a chicken, the filmmakers were baffled.  They had not, to their knowledge, filmed a chicken.  It wasn't until they watched the film frame by frame that they eventually saw that there actually was a chicken in the film, for about one second of screen time at the bottom right of the screen.

We have two radically different reviews for the same film.  This is not a subjective argument about how funny or entertaining the film is.  Both reviewers see something objective that the other cannot.

                    The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man, & when separated
                    From Imagination and closing itself as in steel in a Ratio
                    Of the Things of Memory, It thence frames Laws & Moralities
                    To destroy Imagination, the Divine Body, by Martyrdoms & Wars.
                                                                                 

                                                                                 William Blake, Jerusalem 1804

McLuhan argues the same idea as Blake, that any time a bodily or mental function is extended into a new technology, sense ratios are changed, and when the sense ratios of man are changed, the man changes.

The film study in Africa explicitly demonstrates this.  Let's say that literate man sees Film A and non literate man sees Film B.  Film A and Film B are not subjectively different, they are objectively different.  And neither can capture the completeness of the film on their own.   When analyzed through the lens of both perspectives, we reveal Film AB, which captures more information than is contained separately in Film A or Film B .  This is not to say that Film AB offers the complete film.  The complete film may only exist conceptually.  For now, lets refer to this concept of the complete film as just FILM.  


Obviously, non literate man is capable of developing the lens of the literate man, but is literate man capable of resurrecting the lens of non literate man?  Can man also have access to BOTH lenses, and if so, can these lenses coexist?  Do they work separately, at the same time, or both?

The Great Artificial Barrier

“2001 is a non-verbal experience; out of two hours and 19 minutes of film, there are only less than 40 minutes of dialogue. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalised pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconsciousness with an emotional and philosophic content. To convolute McLuhan, in 2001 the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does; to ‘explain’ a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation.”

                                                                                                                                                                                               Stanley Kubrick,  Playboy 1968

convolute 

       A.  (transitive) To make unnecessarily complex.
       B.  (transitive) To fold or coil into numerous overlapping layers.

Did Stanley Kubrick mean Convolute A or Convolute B?  Or a combination of both, Convolute AB?  Or did he mean CONVOLUTE?  And why did he say "message is the medium" instead of "medium is the message" as McLuhan had originally written it?  


If I attempt to "explain" Kubrick, am I also guilty of "emasculating" and "erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation"?  Probably, but my goal is to "tear down the wall" after I'm through.

A Really Big Shew Pt. 2: A Quest Called Tribe

Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy: the making of typographic man was published in 1962, and possesses an uncanny understanding of the world we live in today.  The language has a very modern feel, and is even structured in a modern way.   It reads like a newspaper, or more accurately, like a blog, eschewing long chapters for shorter bite sized chunks introduced by microcosmic titles like these:

The Gutenberg Galaxy was theoretically dissolved in 1905 with the discovery of curved space, but in practice it had been invaded by the telegraph two generations before that.

The twentieth century encounter between alphabetic and electronic faces of culture confers on the printed word a crucial role in staying the return to the Africa within.

Why non-literate societies cannot see films or photos without much training.

McLuhan argues that that the phonetic alphabet and the development of literacy had a profound effect on our sense ratios.  It changed the way our brain works.  To build his case, he references a paper by Professor John Wilson of the African Institute of London University from 1961 entitled "Film Literacy in Africa".  Wilson was using film to teach the native tribal people how to read.  A film was prepared to show the proper techniques for removing standing water,  Everything in the film was done slowly and deliberately in order to make clear the instruction.  When the audience was asked about what they had seen in the film, they replied simply that they had seen a chicken, which baffled the filmmakers because they did not know a chicken was in the film.  After carefully reviewing the film the frame by frame, a chicken did in fact appear for about one second of screen time through the righthand bottom part of the screen.

Question:  Do you literally mean that when you talked with the audience you came to believe that they          had not seen anything else but the chicken?

Wilson:  We simply asked them: What did you see in this film?

Question:  Not what did you think?

Wilson:  No, what did you see?

Question:  How many people were in the viewing audience of whom you asked this question?

Wilson:  30-odd.

Question:  No one gave you a response other than "We saw the chicken."

Wilson:  No, this was the first quick response - "We saw a chicken."
Question:  They did see a man, too?

Wilson:  Well, when we questioned them further they had seen a man, but what was really interesting was that they hadn't made a whole story out of it, and point in fact, we discovered afterwards that they hadn't seen a whole frame - they had inspected the frame for details.  Then we fond out from the artist and an eye specialist that a sophisticated audience, an audience that is accustomed to film, focuses a little way in front of the flat screen so that you take in the whole frame.  In this sense, again, a picture is a convention.  You've got to look at the picture as a whole first, and these people did not do that, not being accustomed to pictures.  When presented with the picture they began to inspect it, rather as the scanner of a television camera, and go over it very rapidly.  Apparently, that is what the eye unaccustomed to picture does - scans the picture - and they hadn't scanned on one picture before it moved on, in spite of the slow technique of the film.

Of this McLuhan writes:  "The key facts are at the end of the passage.  Literacy gives people the power to focus a little way in front of an image so that we take in the whole image or picture at a glance.  Non-literate people have no such acquired habit and do not look at objects in our way.  Rather, they scan objects and images as we do the printed page, segment by segment.  Thus they have no detached point of view.  They are wholly with the object.  They go empathically with it."

McLuhan is saying that the human being not subjected to the demands of literacy is simply not  programmed yet.   McLuhan argues that in order to do so, the sense ratios of the human brain must be adjusted like the levels of an equalizer on a stereo.

This is demonstrated quite nicely by the Magic Eye 3D picture phenomenon:

Remember, McLuhan writes that "Literacy gives people the power to focus a little way in front of an image so that we take in the whole image or picture at a glance."  The Magic Eye requires that the observer focus a little way behind the image in order to see the embedded 3D image.  The brain must be adjusted in the opposite manner, an adjustment many people find impossible.  I don't think anyone would judge a person to be of less intelligence for not being able to adjust their senses in order to see a 3D image.

READ MARSHALL MCLUHAN.  

Immersion in the Gutenberg Galaxy has changed the structure of the human brain and has created a kind of tunnel vision in some that prevents them from experiencing the world in a natural way.   I think it helps to explain this:

You can't fault a microscope for not being able to see the rings of Saturn, and you can't fault a telescope for not seeing bacteria.  Each instrument is designed to focus in a certain direction.  A ultra-literate man in a Gutenberg Galaxy simply cannot see or cannot even hear certain things because of the sense-ratios programmed into the brain.

Now, if you were to walk around this subway station with eyes crossed, in the Magic Eye Galaxy, you might get lost in the beautiful sound of the violin, but you also might walk in front of a train.  

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(This large, bold print is only obnoxious to the literate man)

Now, I don't think any of this is breaking news now, and I know most people understand this concept.  But remember, McLuhan wrote about this in the early 1960's, and if you claimed to understand McLuhan in the 1960's you were considered either extremely educated or a liar.  

History is a Nightmare From Which I am

       Trying to Awake  James Joyce

In the modern world, the slightly in front focusing technique of literacy is a requirement, necessary hundreds and hundreds of times a day.  What kind of strain and stress does this require of the brain?  Try to imagine if the slightly behind cross-eyed focus of visualizing the Magic Eye was required hundreds of times a day.   Try to imagine the stress and strain of incorporating that into your daily life, and I think it becomes apparent that any permanent reprogramming of the sense-ratios will have a profound effect on the brain.

McLuhan theorizes that this reprogramming of the mind is not only responsible for tunnel vision, he also theorizes it is responsible for certain types of mental illness, specifically schizophrenia.  Now, obviously if this was a black and white issue, everyone who learns how to read and watches films would be mentally ill, and this is clearly not the case.  But this doesn't mean that McLuhan isn't on to something.  I suggest comparing McLuhan's theory with what we know about alcoholism: some people can drink alcohol, some people shouldn't drink a lot of alcohol, and some people shouldn't drink ANY alcohol.   Literacy, like alcohol, affects different people in different ways.

INSERT REFERENCE TO COSMIC TRIGGER HERE

When I was about four or five years old, my older sister learned how to read.  Now, I had no idea specifically what it was my sister was doing, but I must have recognized that she was receiving a lot of positive attention for doing something I couldn't do, attention that I was jealous of.  This became my first obsession, and with the help of a very patient mother who would read Dr. Seuss books out loud so that I could follow along, I effectively programmed my brain and learned how to read.  Now, I don't have a crystal clear memory of all the details, but I can still recall the feeling of that "AHA" moment, when the markings on the page became words, and the words on the page became sentences, and my brain locked into the ability to read.  It was disorienting and extremely powerful.  A switch had been magically switched and a whole new universe emerged out of thin air.  This is nicely mirrored in the "AHA" moment of the person staring at the Magic Eye picture for forty-five minutes who suddenly sees the 3D image that had been there all along.

I was considerably younger than most when I learned to read.  This distinction gave me all the positive attention that I was looking for.  It gave me identity, as I was now considered "gifted",  and it gave me an incredible amount of confidence.    It also may or may not have been responsible for the emergence of "night terrors".  

  

Everyone knows the image of the frightened child as the boogey man emerges from the closet or the monster under the bed starts to creep.  I might have been afraid of these monsters in my room, but I was deathly afraid of falling asleep, of the monsters in my head, in my dreams.  My mother has told me of the many nights she was awakened by my screams, and of being unable to wake me up as I climbed the walls of my bedroom.   I think about my mother trying to console me, a frightened, suffering child, and not being able to simply because she could not wake me up.  Not good.  But a pretty good metaphor for Human History in the Gutenberg Galaxy.

I don't know for sure if my obsessive quest to reprogram my brain was responsible for the emergence of my "night terrors", but the two definitely seem connected in some way.

INSERT REFERENCE TO VALIS HERE

A Bun In The Oven

McLuhan was an optimist though, and he was very supportive of the new electronic media that was beginning to change the landscape of the world.  In 1961, he predicted that electronic media would reduce the worst symptoms associated with this phonetic dark age within the Gutenberg Galaxy, symptoms best illustrated in the conformity and schizophrenia of Industrial Revolutions and Nazi Germany.   McLuhan saw the rigid border lines of kingdom and country becoming vulnerable to an emerging tribalism that was being made possible by electronic media.

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It is 50 years since The Gutenberg Galaxy was published, and, as I see it, we are living in the future world that Marshall McLuhan foresaw.   The World Wide Web has replaced the book, the film, and the television as the most ubiquitous form of media in the world.  We literally carry it around with us in our cars, in our pockets, in our schools and in the office. Take a few moments to really grok how many new modes of communication exist, how many new channels of communication it provides, how many new "tribes" are forming.  Facebook is only eight years old, and it has already been turned into a movie, an Academy Award nominated movie.

The dominance and monopoly of The Book is dissolving, and today's students are no longer subjected to hours and hours of phonetic instruction.   Modes of education have become more "empathic", and are not as invasive.  It seems as though the Sensual Revolution is near.

It is important to stress that the World Wide Web is not a Home, or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  It is an oven, a global electronic alchemical oven.  A digital Tower, and successor to that Tower of old, that multi-national alchemical melting pot known as America.  In my opinion, as long as the fires of the Web are burning, we have a fighting chance to improve the conditions of life on this planet.

INSERT REFERENCE TO THE DIVINE INVASION HERE

(or The Invisibles, The Matrix, The Truman Show, Dark City, etc)

Despite All My Rage I Am Still Just Rat In A Maze In A Cage

A Really Big Shew