Cure for Media Frenzy: the right-side of your brain

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.

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!

McLuhan Predicts-- an Era of Feelings

"We are heading into a very McLuhan-esque year. Marshall McLuhan-- the Patron Saint of WIRED-- made his name in the 1960s, studying how pivotal technologies produced widespread, non obvious changes. The Gutenberg press, he argued, created a spirit of "detachment" that propelled science while giving a new sense of agency to individuals. Electricity had a "tactile" effect, keeping us in contact with the world via telegraph, telephone and TV. "
The Social Medium is The Message (Feb 2017-- Wired magazine)

Clive Thompson's article, The Social Medium is the Message, appearing in this month's Wired magazine, explains so much about the present situation-- a world coming unglued by Trump's single week as President of the United States.

Donald Trump aroused a conflagration in 2016, getting elected against long odds and defeating Hillary Clinton, the heavy favorite. Hillary was favored by the most computer savvy people. I attended a dinner party on the night of the election, intended to be a celebration party for our group of liberal-minded friends. Instead, the party took on the feeling of a wake. We were shocked, along with the rest of the world.

The aftermath of Hillary's defeat proved as surprising as the actual loss. The supporters went into an extended period of mourning. The reason partly can be explained by Trump's extreme positions and shady track record. Trump displayed traits of a schoolyard bully. He oozed bile for his enemies-- beginning with Low Energy Jeb, followed by Lyin' Ted, Little Marco, and Crooked Hillary. The epithets had a catchy ring to them-- and you couldn't get them out of your head. Trump has some of the talent of a Madison Avenue composer of catchy phrases and memorable memes. But that Trumpian bombast and vitriol does not fully explain the deep sadness of the anti-Trump forces. After all, we had George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon in the nation's recent past.

Why didn't the liberal left collapse in a heap of emotions when right wing candidates took office in the past? The answer lies in Marshall McLuhan's prediction-- today's electronic man has feelings where the Gutenberg, literary man maintained an air of detachment. We are totally involved in our cellphones, our Facebook, our electronic Friends, our instant communications, and our feelings.

Trump has taken office  and instituted a number of actions, fitful and intense stabs at public policy. They include talk of a wall between Mexico and the US and trade tariffs. Trump ordered a shutdown of Muslim visitors to the United States from 7 Muslim countries--and feelings are raging at levels rarely seen in public discourse. Trump's wrongheaded policies and purple rhetoric does not totally explain the emotional response exhibited in big cities across the country. I attended Vietnam era anti-war rallies and did not see the level of emotion in today's rallies.

So what's going on.... The electronic vortex, the social media, news at 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light, has brought us all closer together. We are a global village, just like Marshall McLuhan predicted. We are the villagers crowded around the tribal campfire. We take events quickly to heart. We no longer are the detached, literary men of the era of newspapers and train transport. The world changes in the blink of an eye. The same explosive media tools used by Donald Trump, the Twitter, the catchy phrases, the anger hurled at enemies real and imagined, that worked to get him elected can bring also bring him down. The social media giveth-- and taketh away.

Life At the Speed of Light

McLuhan said we get messages from satellite transmissions careening around the globe at the speed of light. That is the new reality.

Check out the article from Slate online magazine entitled-- "Is Facebook Live Video The Future Or The Latest Social Media Fad"

Mr. Zuckerberg knows that the faster moving process races around the slower media and will defeat the slower moving programs. TV defeats movies, Online media defeats newspapers. So getting you face-to-face, literally, with your Facebook friends is the place he is headed.

Marshall McLuhan makes life easier. He is the Oracle of Toronto!

See-you,

John