I recently re-read Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. I must say – sometimes it’s necessary to read certain books twice.  It was published in 1964, but it’s relevance to today shows not only how prophetic McLuhan was, but how deeply he understood human nature.

McLuhan remained fairly obscure throughout his life, though certain intellectual circles lauded his work. He was the Director of the Center for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto. He also taught classes and gave lectures at Universities and on television.

My image of him always takes me to that scene in Woody Allen’s film “Annie Hall”.  Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are listening to a guy behind them in a movie line pontificate about how much he dislikes Marshall McLuhan. Allen steps off camera to retrieve the real life McLuhan to tell this guy that he has no idea what he’s talking about.

McLuhan coined the phrase “The global village”, as well as the concept of “surfing” information, though he died before the birth of the internet.

In Understanding Media, he posits that modern society, even after all of its technological advances, is forever looking in the rear view mirror. He claims that through various sources of media (tv, radio, news, telephone) we are unconsciously trying to re-create our tribal roots. That modern life is just an elaborately decorated version of the village.

When radio was invented and became a form of entertainment, McLuhan suggests that this was like listening to stories around the campfire. The intimacy of storytelling began in tribal settings. The sound of the human voice will always be the most evocative. Like the sound of a drum, there is a hypnotic pull towards the past.

The further the modern world progresses, the more this seems to be true. Tattoos, retreats, outdoor music festivals – modern humans inevitably revert back to our earliest incarnations. Of course we see this a lot in new age circles. The concept of “Returning to Source” couldn’t make this point any clearer.

Arguably, this is also about returning to mother and our earliest ideas of nurturing. This is about the child wandering off to be become an adult but eventually returning home. This begs the question: is modernity just a distraction? Is it possible that “progress” isn’t actually happening at all?

Thinking of media as apparatus, McLuhan makes some brilliant points about how technology becomes an extension of our physical bodies:

“The principle of numbness comes into play with electric technology, as with any other. We have to numb our central nervous system when it is extended and exposed, or we will die. Thus the age of anxiety and of electric media is also the age of the unconscious and of apathy. But it is strikingly the age of consciousness and of the unconscious, in addition. With our central nervous system strategically numbed, the tasks of conscious awareness and order are transferred to the physical life of man, so that for the first time he has become aware of technology as an extension of his physical body. Apparently this could not have happened before the electric age gave us the means of instant, total field-awareness. With such awareness, the subliminal life, private and social, has been hoicked up into full view, with the result that we have “social consciousness” presented to us as a cause of guilt-feelings. In the electric age, we wear all mankind as our skin.”

The dystopian visions of the future we often have as a collective, even if we don’t read or watch science fiction, reflects a fear of losing our sense of community. Colonizing Mars is a perfect example. What would we really be trying to achieve? Re-creating our earliest beginnings like a kind of simulation? Or removing ourselves completely from anything familiar; anything tribal?

It would likely end up an experiment that lasts for a finite period of time. Humans will always want to come home. We are programmed to come home. Evolution requires us to let go of mother’s hand, but the question remains as to whether or not we are capable of this.

In both the big city and the jungle, there’s an undeniable pulse; the feeling that you are part of an interconnected network. However, in both of these environments, there’s a kind of stagnancy. They are both teeming with life and stimulation, but the mind becomes cluttered. In these environments, we continually harken back to our beginnings and try to tap into “Source” – but for what purpose? Comfort? Unhealed trauma? It seems we are forever in an endless feedback loop.

Now, in the electronic information age, our interconnectedness has never been more apparent. Via the internet and cell phones, we are the most connected we have ever been as a species. Unfortunately, our modern definition of “Oneness” has become more of a colonizing mindset than anything rooted in tribal mysticism. It is the anthem of imperialism. 

As if orphaned, the modern human becomes obsessed with itself as a means of understanding the outside world. Modern humans continue to revert back to the Cosmic Mother, trying to understand indigenous wisdom through the lens of themselves. Perhaps this is the inevitable distillation of consciousness. Who are you and what are you trying to achieve? And for what purpose?

It’s exhausting, frankly. All of these forms of technology are really meant to remind us that we haven’t evolved much at all. Sometimes, telling stories around the campfire feels like enough. It doesn’t matter if the stories are true.

McLuhan makes an astute point about news media:

“Why do we prefer novels and movies about familiar scenes and characters? Because for rational beings to see or re-cognize their experience in a new material form is an unbought grace of life. Experience translated into a new medium literally bestows a delightful playback of earlier awareness. The press repeats the excitement we have in using our wits, and by using our wits we can translate the outer world into the fabric of our own beings. This excitement of translation explains why people quite naturally wish to use their senses all of the time. Those external extensions of sense and faculty that we call media we use as constantly as we do our eyes and ears, and from the same motives.”