It's scary out there? People are talking, tweeting themselves into a nervous breakdown. Civility... or Civil War? Above the frenzy we have Donald Trump. Trump savors the sound of dropped jaws and shocked gasps only he seems capable of creating daily to feed the 24/7 news beast. Donald Trump is operating from the right side of the brain. Let Marshall McLuhan, media guru and the Oracle of Toronto, explain:
Marshall McLuhan felt that the Edgar Allen Poe short “A Descent into the Maelstrom” (1841) about two Norwegian fishermen brothers pulled out of their boat by the swirling waters anticipates our media vortex. One brother drowns. The other survives. The second brother survives the maelstrom. He attains a revelation while in the midst of the whirlpool, a moment of beautiful clarity, an understanding of how objects are moving, being hurled through the water. That is the moment of clarity we need now.
The surviving fisherman’s revelation suggests we can achieve clarity regarding our media situation, or "nightmare" situation, as some would characterize the hurly-burly of social media.
People feel afraid. The natural order seems upended by Donald Trump. Sure he's a fast-talking, constantly shifting New York real estate developer with a penchant for bankruptcy and attacking enemies without conscience. But the fear that this is all Trump may be misplaced.
But Trump may simply be a signal, a blinking neon sign perhaps, that the medium has changed—from analog (newspapers) to digital (cellphone).
Trump may just be the first political candidate to grasp the speed and ferocity of social media. His strategy, obviously, has worked. He is on the lips of all, friends and enemies alike, 24/7, night and day, sun up to sundown.
We’re talking about a change in the medium—from print to electronic—that has turned the world upside down even more than Donald Trump.
On September 6, 1976, Marshall McLuhan appeared on NBS’s Tomorrow Show with host Tom Snyder. Their exchange helps us understand the panicky nature of our digital lifestyle. McLuhan explains that “right-brain thinkers” do better in this All-at-once vortex of electrons we now inhabit.
Snyder: Before I go too far, what is the world of electronic simultaneity?
McLuhan: All-at-onceness. At the speed of light there is no sequenced; everything happens at the same instant. That’s acoustic, and everything happens at once. There’s no continuity, there’s no follow-through, it’s all just now. And that, by the way, is the way sport is. Sports tend to be like that. And in terms of the new lingo of the hemispheres, it’s all right hemsphere. Games are all right hemisphere because they involve the whole man, and they are all participatory and they are all uncertain. There is no continuity. That’s just all surprise, unexpectedness, and total involvement.
Snyder:Is that okay, do you think?
McLuhan: The hemisphere thing?
Snyder:Yes, but I mean the whole thing, all surprise, all spontaneity, no connection, just all at one time. Is that okay for people?
McLuhan: Well “okay,” meaning is it good for people?
Snyder: Yes.
McLuhan: We live in a wworld where everything is supposed to be one-thing-at-a-time, lineal, connected, logical and goal-oriented. So, obviously for the left-hemisphere world, this new right hemisphere dominance is bad. We’re now living in a world which pushes the right hemisphere way up because it’s an all-at-once-world. The right hemisphere is an all-at-once simultaneous world. So the right hemisphere, by pushing up into dominance, is making the old left-hemisphere world, which is our educational establishment, our political establishment, make it look very foolish. It’s just a flip that is taking place.
Understanding Me, 2003
Lectures and Interviews (page 246-2247)
Marshall McLuhan
Right brain thinking moves the world. The simultaneous environment has taken over. The shift from print to electronic, as massive as the invention of the printed book by Johannes Gutenberg, has all of us by the throat and will not let go. The best plan... try to get some perspective like that surviving Norwegian fisherman from the Poe story. Otherwise, we may all sink into the maelstrom.
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