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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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06981_Field_TCUM T546.txt
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1996-04-10
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991b
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16 lines
The wide appeal of the games of recent times—the
popular sports of baseball and football and ice hockey—seen as
outer models of inner psychological life, become
understandable. As models, they are collective rather than
private dramatizations of inner life. Like our vernacular
tongues, all games are media of interpersonal communication,
and they could have neither existence nor meaning except as
extensions of our immediate inner lives. If we take a tennis
racket in hand, or thirteen playing cards, we consent to being a
part of a dynamic mechanism in an artificially contrived
situation. Is this not the reason we enjoy those games most
that mimic other situations in our work and social lives? Do not
our favorite games provide a release from the monopolistic
tyranny of the social machine? In a word, does not Aristotle’s
idea of drama as a mimetic reenactment and relief from our
besetting pressures apply perfectly to all kinds of games and