RT @nick_routledge: @lukeburgis Admittedly a McLuhan-made thug, moi: "...a certain anti-social power." Says Wiki: "When we say, please don’t take this personally, we look to Menippean satire..." Blessings, as always.
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Excerpt from tweet thread here: Menippean satire is a form of satire characterized by attacking mental attitudes rather than specific individuals; critique of the myths inherited from traditional culture, a rhapsodic nature, a fragmented narrative, the combination of many different targets, & the rapid… 3/ ...moving between styles & points of view. Typical mental attitudes attacked & ridiculed by Menippean satires are "pedants, bigots, cranks, parvenus, virtuosi, enthusiasts, rapacious & incompetent professional men of all kinds," which are treated as diseases of the intellect. 4/ ...Apuleius, Rabelais, Swift, Voltaire, Blake, Huxley, Eggers, and Marshall McLuhan: “Most of my writing is Menippean satire, presenting the actual surface of the world we live in as a ludicrous image.” Wiki: “Elements of Menippean satire have been pointed out in the Gospels.”
@gastoniudica @CChristogenesis "I am an intellectual thug who has slowly been accumulating a private arsenal with every intention of using it. To deal with the environment directly is my strategy. To have autonomy, we must push past environmental parameters right up into consciousness." ~ Marshall McLuhan
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As much as air and water, man-made media are environments, the garments worn by each technology. A light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence. Any new technology creates a new environment. It is the environment that changes people, not the technology. Environments are not passive wrappings, rather, active processes. For some biological, physiological reason, people never see the environment. Only the content *shows* and yet only the environment is really *active* as a shaping force. The ground-rules, pervasive structure and overall patterns of environments elude easy perception. The new environment is always invisible. If technology creates environments that brain-wash man, art creates anti-environments heightening consciousness. This need to confront environments with a certain antisocial power is manifest in the famous story, The Emperor's New Clothes. Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment. Marshall McLuhan