Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/09023_Field_TCGG T788.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 869b | 16 lines

in the Renaissance when he felt that he existed in all the
reaches of space and duration. He is now given no more than a
moment at a time, but each moment can be one of illumination
and fullness. . . .” (96)

     Inseparably, however, from visual awareness and order, is
the sense of discontinuity and a feeling of self-alienation:
“Every hour we are swept away from ourselves,” says Boileau,
and a hectic urgency invades the time sense: “Aware that the
instant in which he thinks and wishes is slipping from under
him, man hurls himself into a new instant, an instant of a new
thought and a new wish: ‘But man without rest in his mad
course / Flutters incessantly from thought to thought.’ ” (97)

     From the isolated present moment, Poulet writes (p. 19),
“God the creator and preserver is absent. The principal actor is