Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06485_Field_TCUM T50.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 1KB | 16 lines

includes. When ballerinas began to dance on their toes a
century ago, it was felt that the art of the ballet had acquired
a new “spirituality.” With this new intensity, male figures were
excluded from ballet. The role of women had also become
fragmented with the advent of industrial specialism and the
explosion of home functions into laundries, bakeries, and
hospitals on the periphery of the community. Intensity or high
definition engenders specialism and fragmentation in living as
in entertainment, which explains why any intense experience
must be “forgotten, “censored,” and reduced to a very cool
state before it can be “learned” or assimilated. The Freudian
“censor” is less of a moral function than an indispensable
condition of learning. Were we to accept fully and directly every
shock to our various structures of awareness, we would soon
be nervous wrecks, doing double-takes and pressing panic
buttons every minute. The “censor” protects our central