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One of the greatest intellectual voyages of the twentieth century began with
the study of an obscure but vigorous Elizabethan pamphleteer named Thomas
Nashe. It was the 1930s, the world was in the middle of a great depression
and a young man in his mid-twenties named Marshall McLuhan was at Cambridge
University working on his Ph.D. thesis centred around Nashe.
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The choice of Nashe for his Ph.D. thesis provided a "small target" for his
growing intellectual power. It almost seemed too small and unimportant to
qualify as the target for a Cambridge Ph.D. thesis. Outside a relatively small
circle of people, Nashe is an anonymous footnote buried beneath layers of
history. Born in Lowestoft, England in 1561, and educated at Cambridge, Nashe
became one of the university wits. Arriving in London in 1588 he wrote for
the stage and the press and in 1589 published The Anatomie of Absurditie and
the Preface to Robert Greene's Menaphon.
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Nashe was also employed by the Church of England to answer the attacks made
on it by a group of Puritan writers collectively known as Martin Marprelate.
Under the pen name of Pasquil, Nashe responded with satiric pamphlets like An
Almond for a Parrat (1590). He also took part in a violent literary
controversy against the poet Gabriel Harvey and his brother Richard Harvey,
who had been extremely critical of the writings of Nashe and his friend
Robert Greene. The church, though, saw little value in Nashe and Harvey's
works and in June 1599 banned their books.
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McLuhan originally intended to write about the differences between Nashe and
Harvey. But soon McLuhan came to see Nashe and Harvey as symbols for
something much greater than the petty battles they were engaged in during
their time. As Mcluhan's son Eric notes, to his father they "were the latest
combatants in a struggle that had been going on, by then, for over 1500 years
and which for hundreds of years more showed no signs of abating".
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McLuhan located this struggle in the famous Trivium of Western intellectual
tradition which compressed all knowledge into three streams: rhetoric
(communication), dialectic (philosophy and logic), and grammar (literature).
Although knowledge about the Trivium has faded in our contemporary world, its
three branches serve as the foundation of the elementary school process based
around teaching grammar (in grades K-6 and ages 4-11), logic (in grades 7-9
and ages 12-14) and rhetoric (in grades 10-12 and ages 15-18).
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McLuhan's studies of the Trivium began with the Greek and Roman educational
systems, went through the Middle Ages and ended with James Joyce in the
twentieth century. It began with Cicero in Augustan Rome and ran to Nashe in
Elizabethan England and concerned itself with the key debates between great
universities such as Cambridge, Oxford and Paris.
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While many others had undertaken the study of philosophy and literature, it
was McLuhan's unique insight to place this study into a type of triumvirate
context by considering the relationships between the three disciplines of the
Trivium. As Eric McLuhan suggests, his father saw the Trivium "as a set of
Siamese triplets". Considered from this viewpoint, the overall perspective
of the Trivium changes enormously as well as the developments within each of
its three branches.
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Thomas Nashe fit into the Trivium scheme because he represented the age-old
claims of grammar (allied with rhetoric) for dominance of the Trivium.
Against this claim was the rival claim of dominance by dialectical reformers
represented by Gabriel Harvey.
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The eventual Cambridge Ph.D. thesis of McLuhan on Nashe and the Trivium was
one of the most learned papers that Cambridge had ever seen. It also served
as a type of "embarkation point" for McLuhan's study of media theory, placing
it in an overriding religious context.
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Yet this religious perspective served more as a hidden subtext to McLuhan's
work in media, remaining in the background like the set of a movie rather
than out in front of the "cameras" like a leading actor. In a sense, the
religious subtext was McLuhan's personal "medium" while the particular
"messages" were contained in his books and lectures. This religious
perspective was seldom addressed in singular works but rather strewn over a
half-century like scattered Tarot cards which were pieces to some great
puzzle. The pieces were in the form of letters, essays and interviews -- in
effect, much "offstage" ponderings and reflections behind his more public
persona.
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These pieces have recently been collected and published in The Medium and the
Light (Toronto: Stoddart, 1999), edited by his son Eric McLuhan and Roman
Catholic priest Jacek Szklarek. While most of the material has been published
in one way or another, this is the first time they have been drawn together.
As Eric McLuhan notes, his father had long thought about pulling these pieces
together and making a book of them. Appearing for the first time in English
are the four conversations with Pierre Babin recorded between 1974 and 1977.
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In some ways, the materials in the book serve as a background to McLuhan's
eventual conversion to Catholicism. Yet, as interesting and important as
McLuhan's conversion to Catholicism might be, The Medium and the Light is
really about far more than one influential individual's conversion to the
Catholic religion. Rather its real subject is more about an awakening rather
than a conversion. The awakening was to a faith in percepts over concepts,
and yes, an early discovery that "truth" and "light" is to be found in the
acknowledgment of the surrounding "medium" of life rather than in the
analysis of the "messages" and concepts inside this life. In effect, McLuhan
never set out to understand the idea of religion but to admit particular
feelings he had.
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It was the admission of these feelings, not the attempt to understand them,
that led to his conversion and his ultimately his great discoveries in media.
For McLuhan, Catholicism was not the great churches and the grand liturgies.
It never was contained in that great Emerald City Dorothy set out to find in
The Wizard of Oz. Rather it was the fleeting shadow of something only
glimpsed at in the fading twilight hours of the day. An awareness rather than
a particular shape inside this awareness. It allowed him to relate to media
in a new way, not as contents within an environment but rather as the
environment itself.
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For McLuhan, concepts that stood in the way of knowledge. He once wrote his
friend Jim Taylor, editor of The United Church Observer, "I do not think of
God as a concept, but as an immediate and ever-present fact -- an occasion for
continuous dialogue ... . I don't think concepts have any relevance in religion.
Analogy is not a concept. It is a resonance. It is inclusive. It is the
cognitive process itself". Analogical awareness, McLuhan observed, "begins in
the senses and is derailed by concepts or ideas". Faith is a mode of
perception, a sense like sight or hearing or touch and as real and actual as
these.
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While the battle between idea and feeling was a relatively settled personal
issue for McLuhan, he knew that it was not a settled one for the great mass
of humanity bringing about a continuing battle of religion with other
branches of the Trivium for dominance of historical periods. The dynamics of
this battle came to seen by McLuhan as one of the key problems of the modern
condition.
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This battle underlies one of the most interesting themes which emerge from
The Medium and the Light as McLuhan speculates on the future of religion. In
a 27 March 1970 interview with Hubert Hoskins in The Listener, he offered
some observations on the possible future of Christianity from a media
perspective:
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Christianity definitely supports the idea of a private, independent
metaphysical substance of the self. Where technologies supply no cultural
basis for this individual, then Christianity is in for trouble. When you have
a new tribal culture confronting an individualist religion, there is
trouble.
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The relevance to our modern electric world is obvious. Christianity arose
during a linear, visual technology which encouraged privacy. Yet the dominant
medium today is the non-linear and auditory one of electricity. As he often
noted, the electronic medium makes the world into one great tribal village
where privacy (of early Christianity) is no longer possible. In a letter to
Alexis de Beauregard (11 May 72) he wrote "if the private person is an
artifact, then it becomes criminal to perpetuate him technologically in the
electronic age".
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Towards the end of his life, McLuhan pushed this speculation even further. In
"Tomorrow's Church: Fourth Conversation with Pierre Babin" (1977) he made the
following startling observation:
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In a certain way, I also think that this could be the time of the
Antichrist. When electricity allows for the simultaneity of all information
for every human being, it is Lucifer's moment. He is the greatest electrical
engineer. Technically speaking, the age in which we live is certainly
favourable to an Antichrist. Just think: each person can instantly be tuned
to a 'new Christ' and mistake him for the real Christ.
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The crucial thing needed in this critical period is not the ability to see a
new concept but rather to feel a particular "frequency". As McLuhan notes in
the final paragraph of The Medium and the Light, "at such times it becomes
crucial to hear properly and to tune yourself to the right frequency".
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The ability to listen rather than look for the answers to life goes back to
those early years in McLuhan's life when he listened to his heart at the
beginning of his journey through life rather than looked with his mind. To be
sure, it was one of the greatest minds of this century but it was always a
mind tuned to the frequency of life rather than a mind which tried to change
this frequency.
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While the collective mass is caught up today in the old trance of visual
images in a non-visual time, the "frequency" of Marshall McLuhan resonates
with a message more urgent than ever. Is it a tiny little radio station
broadcasting to no one or will a new generation "tune" in to hear and feel
rather than see? Only time will tell but at least we have a brilliant number
of "behind the scenes" speculations in The Medium and the Light.
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In this sense, these speculations serve more as a testament to the potential
in each one of us rather than as a road map to a particular destination. Will
we ever realise the possibility that "truth" has already arrived on earth and
that we don't know this because we keep looking for it with our eyes rather
than feeling for it with our hearts?
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Details
The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion. By Marshall McLuhan. Eds. Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek. Toronto: Stoddart, 1999.
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Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
John Fraim. "Tuning in to McLuhan: 'The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion'." M/C Reviews 24 Oct. 1999.
[your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/mcluhan.html>.
Chicago style:
John Fraim, "Tuning in to McLuhan: 'The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion'," M/C Reviews 24 Oct. 1999,
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/mcluhan.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
John Fraim. (1999) Tuning in to McLuhan: 'The medium and the light: reflections on religion'. M/C Reviews 24 Oct. 1999.
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/mcluhan.html> ([your date of access]).
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