[McLuhan] Yes. Everybody tends to merge his identity with other people at the speed of light. It’s called being mass man. By the way, one of the big parts of the loss of identity is nostalgia. So there are revivals in every phase of life today. Revivals of clothing, of dances, of music, of shows, of everything. We live by the revival. It tells us who we are or were.
[McManus] Do you feel that the fact that you and I have enjoyed the rewards of literacy, that we are more protected against television than a child?
[McLuhan] Yes, I think you get a certain immunity, just as you get a certain immunity from booze by literacy. The literate man can carry his liquor; the tribal man cannot. That is why in the Moslem world or in the native world is booze is impossible; it is the demon rum. However, literacy also makes us very accessible to ideas and propaganda. The literate man is the natural sucker for propaganda. You cannot propagandize a native. You can sell him rum and trinkets but you cannot sell him ideas. Therefore, propaganda is our Achilles’ heel. It is our weak point. We will buy anything if it fairly hard sell to it.
repeating:
[McLuhan] Yes. Everybody tends to merge his identity with other people at the speed of light. It’s called being mass man. By the way, one of the big parts of the loss of identity is nostalgia. So there are revivals in every phase of life today. Revivals of clothing, of dances, of music, of shows, of everything. We live by the revival. It tells us who we are or were.
That’s the whole basis of “great again”, electing a 78 year old geriatric as leadership. “Make America Old 78 years again”, loss of identity to Twitter and then feed nostalgia fiction of a fantasy Twitter reality of America 1950’s that never existed.
Donald Trump, Russia / Kremlin, and Cambridge Analytica in November 2012 cracked the equations that Marshall McLuhan had described.
https://marshall-mcluhan-speaks.com/interviews/violence-as-a-quest-for-identity
[McManus] So that’s what this is doing to me?
[McLuhan] Yes. Everybody tends to merge his identity with other people at the speed of light. It’s called being mass man. By the way, one of the big parts of the loss of identity is nostalgia. So there are revivals in every phase of life today. Revivals of clothing, of dances, of music, of shows, of everything. We live by the revival. It tells us who we are or were.
[McManus] Do you feel that the fact that you and I have enjoyed the rewards of literacy, that we are more protected against television than a child?
[McLuhan] Yes, I think you get a certain immunity, just as you get a certain immunity from booze by literacy. The literate man can carry his liquor; the tribal man cannot. That is why in the Moslem world or in the native world is booze is impossible; it is the demon rum. However, literacy also makes us very accessible to ideas and propaganda. The literate man is the natural sucker for propaganda. You cannot propagandize a native. You can sell him rum and trinkets but you cannot sell him ideas. Therefore, propaganda is our Achilles’ heel. It is our weak point. We will buy anything if it fairly hard sell to it.
repeating:
[McLuhan] Yes. Everybody tends to merge his identity with other people at the speed of light. It’s called being mass man. By the way, one of the big parts of the loss of identity is nostalgia. So there are revivals in every phase of life today. Revivals of clothing, of dances, of music, of shows, of everything. We live by the revival. It tells us who we are or were.
That’s the whole basis of “great again”, electing a 78 year old geriatric as leadership. “Make America Old 78 years again”, loss of identity to Twitter and then feed nostalgia fiction of a fantasy Twitter reality of America 1950’s that never existed.