The spiritual crisis of digital conditions
This interview took place Friday, with Mark Stahlman of the Center for the Study of Digital Life. It's way too much fun not to send out now. We address the soul-level struggle that digital leads to.
Hi all,
Before I have my meeting with a mermaid, an octopus and a shipwright, I have something for you.
This is an interview with Marshall McLuhan scholar Mark Stahlman, whom I have known and inquired with since around 2016. If you’re wondering what digital is, in terms of its impact on humanity, this discussion will open up the topic for you.
He is the founder of the Center for the Study of Digital Life.
Mark also has a strong emphasis on the study of television, which was swallowed whole by digital (the old medium becomes the content of the new medium*; hence, the old medium becomes figure, what is visible, and the new one becomes ground, or the invisible environment).
The conversation is an excellent example of how to think about the influence of any medium on consciousness and on society, and the relationship between older and newer environments.
We are still living under the spell of TV-induced fantasy and make-believe. We think our lives are TV programs, of which we’re the director.
This is delusional enough.
But digital conditions have pushed a whole new set of issues on us, including ease of involvement (typical of any electrical environment). However, digital is ALL about involvement, it’s extremely easy to get drawn in, and then get lost.
I’ve been grappling with some questions about how the Planet Waves audience responded to my coverage of “covid” and we get to that at the end. My observation is that most were not really concerned about getting sick, only with going along with the TV-based fantasy. Those objecting to my coverage were getting high on perceived danger and not actually interested in responding to a crisis, helping their neighbors or helping themselves.
Thanks to Cate Ryzhenko for processing and editing this project so quickly.
*Books became movies; movies became television; television became digital. OR, telegraph drives newspapers (wire services — we discuss this), newspapers become radio, radio became TV and it all becomes the internet. But every time this happens, new environments of services and disservices are created.
Mark and I both gloss over an important point in the transition from print to radio dominance. Mark says that the influence of print is about making individual decisions; hence, of private individuality. Radio invades that space, and takes people out of a state of mind where they feel that they can make meaningful personal choices. It invades the sense that one can decide for oneself. Mark has said before that in a radio environment, people feel good being told what to do. Like all electrical media, radio creates a TRIBALIZING EFFECT. As McLuhan has said, people don't like to admit that radio leads to Gandhi, Hitler and FDR all at once. All are products of the tribal, exterior consciousness of the radio era in the early 20th century through the 1940s. Notably, Hitler is the first to adapt to television, with the first televised Olympic games being those in 1936 (though few people had TV sets to see this).
Eric Francis: This discussion is brilliant, riveting, fabulous. I enjoyed it tremendously! I'll probably watch / listen to it again soon.
I need to comment on one specific thing you said near the end of the discussion: "No one wants to read my astrologically-informed coverage of the covid era." (Though I think you might have amended that, under your breath, to "or almost no one," to be fair to you.)
I DO! I read Part One of that riveting work a few days ago, when you posted a link to it, and I very much wanted to read Part Two, but I couldn't find the link to it. I wrote a comment to you, asking where to find the link, but didn't receive a reply. That's not your fault though. I asked about it on the comments thread of an article you wrote a few months ago, (I think it was in November 2022) expecting that you'd receive an email notification about that new comment and reply to it in that thread. In any case, I'd still love to read the second half of your brilliant, astrologically-informed covid history.
I'm 67, and I feel as strongly as it's possible to feel that digital conditions are toxic and damaging in the extreme to everyone who engages with them. I wish I could enjoy your work without having to engage with digital media! I refuse to have a smartphone, and I never watch television: there were only about four years in my entire life when I did, as a matter of fact, and even then it was to a very limited extent. (Like Mark Stahlman, I grew up without television.) I can barely tolerate listening to radio at all, and I only use the telephone when absolutely necessary. I read books, old-style, ink on paper.