Ours is the first age in which many thousands of the best-trained individual minds have
made it a full-time business to get inside the collective public mind. To get inside in order
to manipulate, exploit, control is the object now. And to generate heat not light is the intention.
To keep everybody in the helpless state engendered by prolonged mental rutting is the
effect of many ads and much entertainment alike.
Marshall McLuhan, 1951:
MAD MEN: Season One, Episode 6 "Babylon"
The next medium, whatever it is - it may be the extension of consciousness - will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a salable kind.
Marshall McLuhan, 1962
Marshall McLuhan serves as a bridge between the two greatest artistic geniuses of the 20th century, James Joyce and Stanley Kubrick. And, in my opinion, in order to understand McLuhan, you have to understand all three. Matthew Weiner clearly understands all three.
Essential to the understanding of Joyce, McLuhan, and Kubrick, one must have an understanding of how the Qabbalistic Tree of Life and the Tarot are related, how this system is related to reality, and how reality is made of language. Again, Matthew Weiner clearly understands all three.
The above image serves as the basis for Matthew Weiner's production logo. It is The Sun, the 20th of 22 Trump cards in the Major Arcana of the Rider Waite Tarot, and is one of those loose threads that, when given a gentle tug, can unravel the whole sweater.
The question is, do you want to know what's under the sweater?
The Sun is associated with the Hebrew letter reish, which is associated with the head. This head is filled with "ego-consciousness", which feels itself separated from the unity of God. Only the fear of God can ready this "ego-consciousness" for wisdom.
Interesting pattern in that background, no?
