Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08322_Field_TCGG T87.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 918b | 16 lines

Nor is this to give any new meaning or value to “civilization” but
rather to specify its character. It is quite obvious that most
civilized people are crude and numb in their perceptions,
compared with the hyperaesthesia of oral and auditory
cultures. For the eye has none of the delicacy of the ear.
Carothers goes on (p. 313) to observe that:

     So far as Plato’s thinking can be considered
     representative of the thinking of the Greeks, it is very
     clear that the word, whether thought or written, still
     retained, for them, and from our point of view, vast
     powers in the ‘real’ world. Although at last it was seen as
     nonbehavioral itself, it now came to be regarded as the
     fount and origin not only of behavior but of all discovery:
     it was the only key to knowledge, and thought alone—in
     words or figures—could unlock all doors for