El Papa Knows Best....Father Knows Best

A sitcom from the late 50s, "Father Knows Best", depicted life in America in idyllic terms. The grass was cut, the children behaved and most problems were small enough to be solved in 30 minutes, 22 minutes if you don't include the advertisements. The actor Robert Young depicted father as a gray-haired kindly man with the wisdom to keep the family on a healthy, happy course and that reflected the optimism of Post - WW II life in the United States.

What made me think of this show in the present era, a time of intense globalize, all-at-once communication was an article I read in a Spanish newspaper while on my travels in Northern Spain. My Spanish language is less than perfect, but... here's what it said. The Pope, El Papa, presiding over the mass of Corpus Christi, said (my interpretation follows) "pages move quickly and our exterior  life gets fragmented while our interior life stays inert." He added a cautionary word on the importance of memory saying with "living in the instant and we run the danger of living permanently in the superficial, in the style of the moment without understanding who we are and where we have been."

First, I apologize foe any mistake in translation. As a big fan of Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian media guru, a convert to Catholicism, I got a kick out of the Pope's observations on a topic that would interest Professor McLuhan.

Listen to this quote from Janine Marchessault on page 182 of her book "Marshall McLuhan" (Sage Publications, 2005). She, explicating McLuhan, confronts the inert feeling inside of the digital generation:

"McLuhan sees the electric environment as a homeostatic system. According to Selye's theory, any physical extension is an attempt to maintain equilibrium. They regard any technological extension as an 'auto-amputation'. In the midst of the electronic environment we numb our central nervous system when it is extended 'or we will die'. The new media support an awareness of others and of social responsibility. They compel commitment and participation through their creation of Anxiety, for in 'the electric age we wear mankind as our skin'."

There's a lot there, including Selye's theory which I do not know. McLuhan stated all technology is an extension of the human body, from clothes, to hammers, to automobiles. The cellphone extends our central nervous system outward. We must numb ouselves to deflect the power of this extension. That may be what the Pope has observed?

Because Pope Francis has dared to go where no other leader seems comfortable on so many issues, including ecology and climate change, he must be applauded. Now he discusses the reality most of us choose to ignore, the way digital technology rules our every moment.

"History has become a thing of the past," as Marshall McLuhan and his colleague Edmund Carpenter, the anthropologist, so sagely warned, long before we had cellphones. They anticipated the terrible challenge of such formidable change ahead where we "wear mankind as our skin."

Pope Francis, El Papa, has stepped forward like Robert Young in the final 2-3 minutes of "Father Knows Best" with some fatherly advice. The question remains-- is any anybody paying attention? Or just going to their next text message or Facebook or Twitter post...

The Camino to Santiago de Compostela: by train (June 19)

Many travelers to the north of Spain have heard of the "Camino"-- the walk from the south of France to the city where Saint James was buried at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. This is a Catholic pilgrimage of several hundred miles or more. Some take the big walk as an expression of religious devotion; others take the journey as a personal spiritual encounter.

My friend Reed, asked me to visit Spain. He knew my mother's family has roots in Galicia and we will eventually visit her home village of Sada, a fishing town situated above Portugal. So my Camino is part tourist trip and a return to family ancestry. Instead of a walk, we took a massive 12 hour train journey, from Barcelona to Santiago. Okay, it's easier riding a comfortable train, complete with a cafe car, than traversing miles of Spanish countryside.

The Renfe train revealed very productive land for the first several hours. The many miles of cultivated land impresses me with Spain's agricultural richness. Believe it or not, I visited Spain in 1963 as a 14 year old. Okay, so I'm older than you! My Aunt Carmen took mt to Espana to expose an American teenage kid to our family's homeland. We started in the south. We saw arid land and beautiful orchards of olive trees with shimmering leaves of silver. The cork trees really shocked me. The bark had been carved out, to make corks, I guess, for wine bottles. The trees survived despite have big square blocks carved out of their sides. We saw Malaga, Sevilla, Córdoba and Granada. Spain seemed more isolated in 1963. Nobody spoke much English. Times have changed. The average  storekeeper or citizen in the street now chatters away in English before "puedo hablar ni una palabra."

I went to Galicia in 1963 and spent a month here. I come back an older person and to the nueva Espana. I'm glad Spain has gone through all these changes. Maybe when We get further into Galicia, to A Coruna, Vigo, Orense, Vigo, Lugo and Pontevedra and Sada, of course, I will get to try out my rusty, high school Spanish. Galicia is green, with rolling hills, a bit of Irish greenery at the top of Spain. I love the orange tiles on the roofs of the homes. Tomorrow we will be by the seaside, the Atlantic Ocean crossed by my grandfather Juan Lopez and his wife, maiden name-- Dolores Garcia Tie. I've heard the stories from my mother Beatriz and my aunts Carmen and Dolores. Now I get to walk the streets of the town-- my own personal Camino.

Barcelona: Gaudi's Vision provides a break from Gargoyles

Certainly the world is going through a terrible moment. Janine Marchessault, a brilliant writer and Marshall McLuhan expert, explains the paradox of the electronic environment as revealed in McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy:

In "The Gutenberg Galaxy" electric culture emerges from the literate world as a mutation transforming everyday attitudes and institutions into those grotesque gargoyles... Gargoyles represent the grotesque imagination, which is capable of illuminating the present and accessing the unconscious of a culture. Hence all the 'talk', Internet chatting, cellphones, email communication, is precisely this 'outering' of inner thoughts. Indeed 'illumination' and 'anxiety' are the key effects of this new age. Because all that is hidden is shared, illumination begets 'Anxiety'.

("Marshall McLuhan", by Jane Marchessault, p. 149-- Sage Publications, 2005)

I'm enjoying majestic Barcelona, the city of tapas and Gaudi artwork. I catch nothing of the conversation on the street and watch no TV. Still I hear the world's and America's incessant pain and clamor. Our gargoyle have been unleashed, just like the figures atop Norte Dame. McLuhan, the convert to Catholicism, made much of the invention of the printing press in 1450. He tells us of the psychic toll created by books and the rise of literacy in the Western world. McLuhan warns the digital age creates a similar trauma-- and we are in the midst of it. The gargoyles have been unleashed.

But back to Gaudi and La Sagrada Familia, his magnificent ode to nature built in stone and light, a work motivated by his Catholic religious faith and passion for art, creativity and architecture. La Sagrada Familia has the grandeur of a Middle Ages edifice but it is a 20th century product! We can only explain Gaudi's genius as other-worlds. The spindly spires enchant from the outside somehow more graceful, flexible, thin and kinetic than tall columns into the sky can normally achieve. I heard somebody say "it's like a forest inside." I could not imagine what they meant.

The magic of La Sagrada Familia continues as one enters the basilica. Not sure "basilica" is correct term? We are inside the massive church. Gaudi conveys nature inside by crating columns like towering tree limbs reaching to the top of the building. Like trees, the interior columns show knobs, are guide Josep called them "knots." Gaudi used extremely strong material and ingeniously figured the greatest load-bearing positions in the columns. The building rises upward without the need for buttresses, no signs of flying butress support structure like Notre Dame. This allow the feeling of a natural, organic world and the flood of colored light passing through stain glass window completes the effect.

Perhaps, as McLuhan states, the artist provides us a bridge into the future. Gaudi, a 20th century master, brings us to our tactile future, full of sensory richness, the crazy world of social media and open, sometimes frightening expression? Gaudi's playful, improvisatory houses and apartment buildings are known for their whimsy and fun. With La Sagrada Familia he chooses a normally sober setting and depicts the life of Jesus Christ while offering the life energy of his other works.

La Sagrada Familia was our first stop in Barcelona. You might want to the same. The gargoyles of modern life, racing across the social network, fade into the background as Antoni Gaudi takes you to higher ground.

Paris Journey: walking the city

This was a Mega-day in Paris. Leo, from our VRBO owner brought us through an entry door and past a mini-courtyard. We stood at a large heavy steel door, thick enough to protect Napoleon's Crown Jewels. This door would almost bring me to my knees in tears at the end of a long, jet-lagged first day in Europe. We would inadvertently lock ourselves out of our rented apartment and give up hope of ever getting in at the end of a race around Paris.

The Marais apartment has a swell location near the majestic City Hall and the incomparable Norte Dame. That, ND, was on our first stop and Molly and my jaunt and we have cellphone photos to prove it. Then we continued our mad dash, crossing the Seine to a couple of historic cafes, Deux Margot and Cafe de Flore. Café de Flor was home to Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre. Hemingway quaffed his drinks at Deux Margot. A "Margot" is something like a magi that appeared at Christ's birth. Not sure what happened to the third one on the way to the cafe? Maybe couldn't keep up with his pals, just like I was falling behind Molly—or crossed the street to Café de Flor. We were in the 6th Arrondissiment... that's the French word for neighborhood or district and there are 19 of them in Paris.

We pushed further west through some beautiful neighborhood streets, bleached stonewall and wrought iron grillwork fences on balconies overlooking the winding antique streets. Parisians do not honk their horns thankfully. You occasionally hear the bleating sound of emergency vehicles. The mournful horns make you feel like you're in a World War II movie.

Molly walks incredibly fast and darts between and around slower pedestrian and sometimes automobiles with grace and skill. After about 4-5 miles into our walk, and working on very little sleep I found myself wilting with exhaustion. I felt relieved when we came across a group of bystanders observing a formal welcome ceremony at the Foreign Ministry building, facing the Seine from the south side or Left Bank. Two rows of soldiers in dress uniform lined the staircase with swords pointed downwards as the dignitaries entered the building. We joined the group to watch for a few minutes.

I exhaled. Home was not far away. We crossed the river to our side. We are staying in Marais. We jumped into a Metro at Place de la Concorde. A couple of drunks looked us over with rheumy eyes and went back to their inebriated conversation. We got out at Hotel De Ville, our stop. We got in the first door but the heavy vaulted; steel door's lock would not budge. This problem smacked me like a George Foreman roundhouse right. We not only had No Exit and No Entrance.

Lord help me... we're just a few blocks from Norte Dame after all. The prayers were answered; luckily my cellphone worked. We called the rental agency and the blond VRBO lady with the English accent showed up. She opened the mighty steel door. We had turned the key the wrong way and double-locked it. We were stuck in the labyrinth with a Minotaur snorting torrid breath on us for a few scary moments. She showed up! We got in to our beautiful, roomy, sprawling Paris apartment with its own little courtyard. Life is good. Paris is enchanting.

Disappearing Worlds: social media and the loss of identity

Marshall McLuhan, my favorite philosopher, always ascribed violent behavior to the lack of identity. The perpetrator of violence against others lacks invariably lacks a sense of self. The lack of a sense of self probably leads to self-destruction as well.

An article in the New Yorker, June 5 & 12, 2017, entitled "The Addicts Next Door" described the catastrophic toll of opioid and heroin addiction plaguing the state of West Virginia. Entire communities have been ravaged by drug overdoses and author Margaret Talbot describes the situation in harrowing detail. Parents have overdosed in front of their neighbors and their own children. One scene depicted parents falling face down to the ground at their child's softball game. If lucky, the E.M.T. (Emergency Medical Technicians) staff arrives in time to revive the addict with with a dose of Narcan or by administering CPR. The article offers no satisfactory explanation for why opioid and heroin addiction has become a preferred lifestyle for so many residents of West Virginia.

I told a friend about the article and he texted me an interesting comparison, and a possible explanation:

When Spanish got to the Caribbean the Carib Indians began hanging themselves in large numbers-- lost their world. Like W. Virginia.

Let's turn to maestro McLuhan in his last book "The Global Village," co-authored with Bruce R. Powers. This is from chapter 8, Global Robotism: The Dissatisfactions (p.97)

What may emerge as the most important insight of the twenty-first century is that man was not designed to live at the speed of light. Without the countervailing balance of natural and physical laws, the new video-related media will make man implode upon himself. As he sits in the informational control room, whether at home or at work, receiving data at enormous speeds-- imagistic, sound, or tactile-- from all areas of the world, the results could be dangerously inflating and schizophrenic. His body will remain in one place but his mind will float out in the electronic voice, being everywhere at once in the data bank.

At that point, technology is out of control.

McLuhan died in 1980 and missed out on the development of the cellphone-- though he grasped more  completely the impact of digital technology than any of the more recent media analysts. The "informational control room" now sits in our hand and we stare at its contents incessantly. As McLuhan predicted, we are transported everywhere and vast amounts of information arrive at our brain and central nervous at the speed of light.

The total disruption of our sense of personal identity via the electronic vortex, now called the social media, has wreaked havoc-- and the West Virginia opioid/heroin catastrophe may just be a single expression of the problem.

Our old world has disappeared and countless worlds have intruded upon our existence. The new worlds lack a connection to "natural and physical laws" and leave us in a dispiriting situation, going crazy but meanwhile addicted to technology-- the beast that devours us!