The Global Village is Too Large

The following is an excerpt of an 10 November 2015 email exchange between Art and Will.

Art:

McLuhan considered cultures with non-alphabetic languages, like the Chinese, to still be tribal. Alphabetic characters are, by the their very nature, devoid of meaning. Emojis show a return to non-alphabetic literacies. Memes are a similar development. The ascendancy of the Chinese and other cultures less removed from their tribal roots is another sign of the times. We shouldn't misinterpret the seeming uptick in oppression of these groups as a counterargument. It's a sign of a weakening, a waning. 

But I think it's more helpful to imagine this as the formation of one conflict-ridden tribe rather than the proliferation of many warring ones. That latter phenomenon I chalk up to the last gasps of the print paradigm. 

Then again, Ghengis Khan and Mao killed about 14 million a piece.

Will:

It makes sense that Steffi would see the possibility of the Internet making the whole world one tribe/cult. I think the reason the one tribe idea limps, though, and I'm pretty sure I'm taking this from McLuhan, is that the global village is too large for people to feel the intimacy of the global village. We can't have a multibillion-person village that works like a 300-person village. I can find my network of 300 like-minded people, though. 

You are right that he saw the electronic age as easternizing the west and westernizing the east. A thing that makes McLuhan misleading is that he tried to remove his feelings about technological advancement from his inventories. He wanted to say how things worked, not whether they were good or bad. In general, though, he preferred print culture to electronic culture. That didn't keep him from examining the dangers and benefits of both. In general, he said he was against all change, and that he wasn't an optimist or a pessimist but an apocalist—his hope was in the end of the world.

The Notion of Roles

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art and the group on 10 November 2015.

Installing folding tops at Ford's Highland Park Plant, 1915

I think we're both touching different parts of the same elephant!

McLuhan blamed industrialization for homogenizing us, and industrialization is a byproduct of the age of print. Print creates centralized government and bureaucracy, but it fragments psychically in that we read alone and in silence, which creates the primacy of the individual instead of group-oriented tribal thought. Industrialization gives us jobs where the tribal mindset gives us roles, and roles allow for greater expression than fragmented jobs. But tribes also live in a state of nearly constant warfare and tend to reject pluralistic viewpoints. Literate man is more open-minded. Literate man overheated is industrial man, who tends to conform. Electronic man tends to position himself in the tribe of his choice, then go to war.

Henry Ford wouldn't partake in the digital retribalizing impulse, but there is definitely a lot of engagement with social Darwinism and the segregation of people into distinct tribes with a goal of pitting them against each other for self-serving ends. There is an element of masterminding group conflict for personal gain that seems lodestoneish to me.

To get back of the idea of roles, these are how the tribe, in McLuhan's terms, express diversity. Belief in tribes is supposed to be orthodox and relational. Beowulf identifies himself as Beowulf, thane of King Hygelac of the Danes, son of Ecgtheow. Odysseus tells Polyphemus his name is Odysseus, King of Ithaca, son of Laertes. If you ask a tribal person why he doesn't steal, he says my people are not thieves. A literate person says I am not a thief. A digital person says I don't feel like it. If I am an eccentric member of the tribe, the tribe finds a role for me, probably as priest, artist, or fool. If I am violent, I'm a warrior. If I'm scholarly, I'm a wise man or advisor. In this regard, everybody can support the same values despite individual charisms, and everyone can value difference. The tribal values are the same; the ways of serving them vary, and everyone depends on the differences in roles. That is a different approach than the industrial vision in which the jobs are the jobs and you conform to them, quit, get fired, or find a new job. It's a sign of change, though, that business keeps on talking about getting everybody on the right seat of the bus; that's a sign that business is embracing the notion of roles.

I agree that social media should probably start leaning more toward the ear. That would explain the ascendancy of video and the archaic feel of email. I think the print aspect of words and images is part relic, partially something closer to the hieroglyph. That would explain the transition from the emoticon to the emoji. I also think the short sentences we get from Twitter thought are like grunts—the little brother equivalent of newspeak. The content tends to polarize, and for McLuhan, the tendency toward polarization would be the form itself—the medium is the message. I see a parallel between the 140-character message, the advertising slogan, and the battle cry.

In some form, if McLuhan is correct, as print becomes obsolete, it should find new life as art. Of course, I'm reminded of Liza's word art.

The Fractious Facebook Feed

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 10 November 2015.

Orestes Pursued by the Furies by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

As far as the fractious Facebook feed, I personally feel this is the last gasps of print literacy and individualism trying to assert itself before it is dragged down into the tribal world of the ear, of the chorus, of the chthonic, of chaos, of chanting, of moira, of ritual, of dithyrambic dance.

When you really look, those exchanges and the resultant fragmentation are still due to the paradigm of print. The fact that this fragmentation is accelerating is due to the extreme anxiety produced by retribalization and the end of 400 years of print literacy. When I ask my students about Snapchat, they have a hard time explaining their enthusiasm for it. But they are largely uninterested in Facebook and increasingly uninterested in Twitter.

If McLuhan was right, we should see new types of social media with an even greater emphasis on the ear. Snapchat has deemphasized print literacy, but it's still visual. The movie Her seems to imagines that social media will go in this direction.

Then again, maybe the fragmentation and fighting is our reacclimating to the levels of conflict present in the tribe.

But Henry Ford would not partake in this tribalizing impulse. This is the full flower of mechanization, specialization, isolation, fragmentation. Tribalizing is the opposite impulse: stay in the same community or village and experience the conflict!

The Homogenized Urban Society

The following is an excerpt from an email sent from Art to Will on 10 November 2015.

Henry Ford with 1921 Model T

My information on McLuhan's view is from an interview: "Print centralizes socially and fragments psychically, whereas the electric media bring man together in a tribal village that is a rich and creative mix, where there is actually more room for creative diversity than within the homogenized mass urban society of Western man."

Maybe this is what you're talking about regarding greater conflict:

The tribe, you see, is not conformist just because it’s inclusive; after all, there is far more diversity and less conformity within a family group than there is within an urban conglomerate housing thousands of families. It’s in the village where eccentricity lingers, in the big city where uniformity and impersonality are the milieu. The global-village conditions being forged by the electric technology stimulate more discontinuity and diversity and division than the old mechanical, standardized society; in fact, the global village makes maximum disagreement and creative dialog inevitable. Uniformity and tranquillity are not hallmarks of the global village; far more likely are conflict and discord as well as love and harmony—the customary life mode of any tribal people.

In other words, he likens the inevitable conflict to that which occurs in a family. Fragmentation and militarism—another kind of conflict—is the kind driven by alphabetic literacy. Arguably, the latter kind of conflict has been the more brutal of the two. Henry Ford's (Don Gilber's?) ambitions seem to fit the "urban conglomerate housing thousands of family" description better.

Here's another awesome one:

Literate mechanical society separated the individual from the group in space, engendering privacy; in thought, engendering point of view; and in work, engendering specialism—thus forging all the values associated with individualism. But at the same time, print technology has homogenized man, creating mass militarism, mass mind and mass uniformity; print gave man private habits of individualism and a public role of absolute conformity. That is why the young today welcome their retribalization, however dimly they perceive it, as a release from the uniformity, alienation and dehumanization of literate society. [italics are mine]

Anyone Can Fire Our Neurons

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art and the group on 10 November 2015.



Have you read McLuhan's War and Peace in the Global Village?

He's pretty insistent in that and in several interviews that renewed tribalism brings more war, not less. He says the cost of electronic culture is civilization. It would be lovely if stretching our consciousnesses all over the world resulted in one village, but it doesn't. Stretching our nerves everywhere means anyone can fire our neurons. Our tribes are just not as geographically organized as they were before, that's all.

Two seconds scrolling through a Facebook feed shows that we aren't all in one tribe, and that the enmity between tribes is accelerating. Also, the way people reduce tribal conflict on Facebook is to defriend anyone who create conflict, which paradoxically reinforces tribalism, since one limits one's interactions to those with people of the same tribe. 

It makes sense to address the issue of tribalism, as the 70's begin with the end of the 60's dream of one tribe, we get the age of cults, then we end with the digital age trying to absorb the power of The Lodestone. 

I see Arthur as tribal, too. He's torn by the family tribe and the universal tribe of man, as well as a personal relationship with God.

Molten or Molded?

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 10 November 2015.




I read this article, which makes me wonder if our method of "caressing" the content of this project could be Snapchat.

If you have a chance to read this, it kind of clarifies why Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even the blog are not appropriate. Implicit in "Return" is "Disappearance." In other words, whenever Arthur's world returns, it means that it has previously disappeared. If we believe Hegel that "no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit," then we need to understand why youngsters seem to prefer things that disappear like they do on Snapchat.

Why do youngsters increasingly NOT care to make themselves look good and eternal when they arguably have all the necessary tools to do so? Instead, they are increasingly okay with being authentic and transient (and authentically transient?). Liza's recent set of "unfinished" illuminated texts partake of a similar impulse.

Why is summer the only time that I can muster the time and effort necessary to caress, shape, and pattern my existence sufficiently for Instagram and Facebook? Why should it take time to share reality with one another?

With Snapchat, we are more in touch with the "do it for the Fat Lady" ethos. But at that point, are we even "a thing"?

Perhaps this discussion is too abstract, too remote from the reality of being a band. Everyone needs to compete, to assert themselves in that arena, right? But the effort required strikes me as very linear, rationalizing, Gutenbergian, insincere. It's so wearisome this effort to become universal, definitive, infinite, immortal—seeking tîmê and kleos like we still live in an age of heroes.

As Herodotus pointed out, Zeus put an end to all that with Helen. That thematic decline of heroes continues through Odysseus and Oedipus until it is finally transformed in Christ. We are no better than the chorus. We are the chorus.

Actually, inasmuch as we don't have Christ's hypostasis, the thematic decline of heroes is transformed in Mary. Her Magnificat is now the model and pattern for all other utterances of transcendence.

So there's the negative: that kind of heroism is no longer possible. On the positive side, think of the French onomatopoeic, Gutenbergian word, cliché, "the sound of a mold striking molten metal." Do we want to be molded or remain molten? I have a hunch that the two are mutually exclusive.

But perhaps this line of thinking is unnecessarily absolute.

Certain things persist. As we've mentioned before, people still buy CDs and records and books. But Arthur at least seems further along this path. He has remained molten in spite of Will's attempts to mold him.

Will, I know that this doesn't really respond to your recent email, but I feel like we have a different definition of tribal. I feel like Arthur is tribal. Like McLuhan, I consider the return to tribalism to be a positive development, one that will result in our being more in tune with the rest of humanity, as in his "global village" concept. In your email, you seem to see it as a negative development, presided over by the lodestone. I point to Gutenberg and the Reformation as evidence that widespread alphabetic literacy has resulted in widespread militarism, specialization, individualism, malaise, alienation, schizophrenia.

This is the opposite of the tribe, and yet, it is what has caused the fragmentation.

This World of Leisurely Terror

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 10 November 2015.

The Minotaur

I'm hoping to get back to this world of leisurely terror, but I'm currently bogged down in my ill-advised choice of profession, reading a bunch of timed writings on a poem I should have never assigned ("A Bird Came Down the Walk" by Emily Dickinson).

My notebook is filling up with ideas/topics of discussion worth pursuing, but I haven't had a single minute to share any of these, nor to participate in any of this most recent uptick. Such is life in the tunnels, I suppose.

Nor have I had a chance to read this article, which you probably just received in the mail too, Will. But the pictures look cool. My 12-year-old son does Lego animated films all the time. I have so many figurines, including dinosaurs, although I gave away a lot of them at the last show. Could "we" (feminine singular: Liza) do video or photostory dramatizations of episodes using miniature scenery and figurines?

If not it's fine. Ever since I lost my way in the labyrinth I've resolved just to keep yelling. If some kind of monstrous Minotaur finds me first, so be it.

I'll eventually start leafing through these shredded maps, hotel napkins...just need a little light to work with.

The Lodestone

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 9 November 2015.

I've been trying to deal with how inordinately white our story of Detroit is, and I think I gained some insight into the Lodestone. Reading Beowulf again has helped.

In the days of Scandinavian warriors, the tribes believed in the same gods and the same code. They sang of each other in their songs. Still, they were at war. Why? It would be easy to point to blood feuds and what not, but I say the Lodestone.

The Lodestone tribalizes people, makes life us vs. them. At the end of Beowulf, Beowulf has to fight a monster who is guilty of the worst abuses of warrior culture—it marauds mercilessly in the dark, it exacts too harsh a price in vengeance, it obliterates, it hoards, and it honors no loyalties.

In fighting the dragon, Beowulf dies in a sense for the sins of his culture. I can see Leif's sister on a similar quest. She understands that the Lodestone pits tribe against tribe and risks her own life trying to bury it deep within the earth's core, surpassing Beowulf in bravery by fighting furry dinosaurs along the way. Somewhere along the journey, though, she goes from being like the tribeless man who buried the treasure that the dragon made his nest to the dragon itself. She hoards the Lodestone in the caves of Detroit, disturbed only every few decades by people drawn to the stone's power.

The tribalistic effect of the stone accelerates the American myths of The Law of the Jungle and Social Darwinism. The Lodestone makes Henry Ford create Inkster for black workers and Dearborn for white workers—it tribalizes and spurs conflict and misunderstanding. This lodestone causes uneasy alliances that break into wars, like union conflict and Ford's horizontal monopoly approach to business, so that even peace fuels conflict.

The result on the Witkowskis is that even though they see themselves as enemies of racism and feel solidarity with those who suffer or yearn for better lives, they also "class off." Stan's exposure to the Lodestone causes the Chrysler and the Lodge, which is an unknowing act of tribal warfare. His view of himself as a self-made man makes him like Scyld Scyfing and his descendants like Hrothgars.

Will lacks the empathy skills to put human beings above the acquisition of wealth, power, and fame, and Arthur seeks out a cult to compensate for his inability to break past his princely obligations to the Witkowski tribe. He yearns for a universal brotherhood and sisterhood that the Lodestone works to prevent, and the misexpression of that desire is the cult membership.

There is a motif of very long delays in the fulfillment of quests in our story. The longest of these delays is the Benefactor's.

De Profundis

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 31 October 2015.

Destruction of Leviathan by Gustave Doré

More on the saline abortion avenger.

The two best stories in the world, Exodus and the Gospel, begin with a massacre of babies.

Evil is characterized most by its banality, which means it sets itself up against creativity, procreativity, prolificity, etc. Inarticulate babies sum up that impulse perfectly; that's why Satan has always laid siege to that stronghold.

I'm not sure where our story is heading, but I think it makes sense that this would be a starting point of sorts, albeit of a later episode.

Is the fact that it's twins the reason why Farthington seeks an abortion? Or was that his idea all along? In other words, all of his followers need to be emptied; some of the stronger ones need to be broken. It's clear that Farthington is pissed and that something didn't go as planned, either with Will, Arthur, or Steffi, or any combination of these three. Steffi almost certainly would have needed to be drugged at this point; Farthington doesn't have that kind of control over her. Will may have been on his way down to save her.

The fact that some horror occurred down in the tunnels is probably enough. That's the nature of the dark substratum: irrational, inarticulate, incoherent, unfathomable, yawning, awesome. But that something is born, unleashed upon the world is also important. God knows all about Leviathan: no dual Universe. He chose to use the primeval chaos as the sign of his first sacrament, for Moses, for Jesus, and for us.

So mind blowing and beautiful this strange faith of ours!

Part of what I want to do in creative pursuits is to "reconstitute" (wrong word) chaos. Then let God do what he's always done: bring order out of it. But I can't play the role of junior god; I can only describe the abyss:

De profundis clamavi ad te Domine!

Those Who Sow in Tears

The following is an excerpt of a 31 October 2015 email exchange between Will and Art.

St. Paul in Prison by Rembrandt

Will:

The podcast my friends Russ and Fred run has a structure that could work for us.  Basically, Russ tells the story of the inspiration behind one of his songs and then plays the song.  We could run a similar structure: Legends of Arthur White, in which we tell a story about Arthur that May or may not be true and end with a song from the era we address.  The whole, "correct" story could be told in another medium, and a podcast could go in multiple contradictory directions without any issues.

Art:

I noticed that; that's a really good idea.  

I feel too hampered, hobbled, hindered to accomplish that (or anything beyond emails and practicing songs with Francis). I'm not enjoying my small sharing in the swaddled/crucified existence right now. Half wishing the Benefactor could make all of this go away. But I'm sure Paul and John the Baptist and so many other heroes of the faith felt the same when they were imprisoned, their lives and voice snuffed out. But as Paul writes us from his prison cell: "Nothing can separate us from the love of God through Christ Jesus." 

I'm having a hard time believing this, both with teaching and with this project (Psalm 126:5-6): 

Those who sow in tears
shall reap with cries of joy 

Those who go forth weeping,
carrying sacks of seed,
Will return with cries of joy,
carrying their bundled sheaves.
will reap with cries of joy.  

I feel like I'm sowing in tears; I just don't believe the second part. Help my unbelief! 

I'm not sure what you were imagining with the podcast, but if you were able to create and host the show (along with the theme music, bumpers, etc.), you could actually just run the whole thing. 

What about having guests on who would learn the songs, possibly bringing their own interpretive flair, and play them up in T.C.? Then, you could call me on the phone (there are ways to set this up for podcasts) and see what I thought. When appropriate, you and I could provide some background about the song and it's meaning. I could just be myself or I could get into the Arthur White role. I could also play the song from my home, either instead of or in addition to the other person performing it. 

Alternatively, we could discuss some of the story lines. But I still like the idea of me being only a relatively small part of the show.