Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08457_Field_TCGG T222.txt

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

     Eliade is under a gross illusion in supposing that modern
man “finds it increasingly difficult to rediscover the existential
dimensions of religious man in the archaic societies.” Modern
man, since the electro-magnetic discoveries of more than a
century ago, is investing himself with all the dimensions of
archaic man plus.  The art and scholarship of the past century
and more have become a monotonous crescendo of archaic
primitivism. Eliade’s own work is an extreme popularization of
such art and scholarship. But that is not to say that he is
factually wrong. Certainly he is right in saying that “the wholly
desacralized cosmos is a recent discovery in the history of the
human spirit.” In fact, the discovery results from the phonetic
alphabet and the acceptance of its consequences, especially
since Gutenberg. But I question the quality of insight that
causes a human voice to quaver and resonate with
hebdomadal vehemence when citing the “history of the human