Here is it, 12:20 in the morning and I have almost been awake for 24 hours straight now. At this state of near delirium I think it’s almost appropriate that I attempt to tackle one of McLuhan’s points that has the strongest pull for me. Since I don’t believe a paraphrase would do it justice I’ll offer a quote:
“That every generation poised on the edge of massive changes should later seem oblivious of the issues and the imminent event would seem to be natural enough. But it is necessary to understand the power and thrust of technologies to isolate the senses and thus hypnotize society. The formula for hypnosis is “one sense at a time.” And new technology possesses the power to hypnotize because it isolates the senses … Every new technology thus diminishes sense interplay and consciousness, precisely in the new area of novelty where a kind of identification of viewer and object occurs. This somnambulist conforming of beholder to the new form of structure renders those most deeply immersed in a revolution the least aware of its dynamic.”
I must admit that McLuhan’s work isn’t a favorite of mine thus far but this statement is incredibly powerful to me. We’ve spoken before about a work of Daniel Quinn called Ishmael. In this Ishmael puts a name to a ‘song’ he says is sung to keep the populace quiet, complacent and asleep. There he suggests that this song of Mother Culture is the very hymn that dulls our consciousness and prevents us from reacting, even mildly, to the cliff’s edge we so obviously seem to be hurdling towards at breakneck speed.
Could the hymn of technology and Mother Culture be one in the same? I’ve often noted that when McLuhan suggests technology allows us to extend our senses to incredible length that some form of numbness develops. So long as our senses are strained at these unnatural extents we seem oblivious to the immediate world around us. In this global village we’ve become so ‘aware’ of issues taking place all across our world that we’re often completely ignorant to the issues facing our immediate surroundings.
So often in this class I find myself playing the part of a pessimist but never have I been confronted with concepts that I feel are so very relevant to my view of this world. My ‘numbness’ to things like advertisement is not due to an over stimulus but from my active choice to moderate where my attention is given. The truth of the matter is that I see the cliff’s edge steadily approaching and I see it taking all of us further away from the world I love. If I did not close my eyes to these painful and blatant signs of forthcoming danger I couldn’t function; I would find myself screaming all my might to wake a world that has been so long asleep.
We’ve talked about advertising and how it is everywhere, both obvious and subtle. We’ve agreed, as Erika mentions, that it is a part of everything including our homes, our sanctuary and place of privacy. So willingly we bring these icons into our homes without a further thought; they’re harmless after all, right? But now I have to ask you, with all these sources pulling at us in every direction, invading our thoughts while we wake and even while we sleep, do you have any idea if these thoughts in your head truly belong to you? In a world where we’re entrenched, drowning in advertisement and subliminal messages we become, as Haraway says, nodes in this network. While we’re plugged in can we ever be truly certain that our thoughts, our feelings and our beliefs are truly our own or are they simply the product of this relay network propagating an ever constant signal?
I believe that there is hope and there is a chance to save these qualities of a world that is quickly becoming trivialized. I believe that this hope lies in consciousness, both self-consciousness and objective consciousness. I only hope that we can wake from Mother Culture’s hymn before it’s too late.
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