Dear Heidi
Thank you for the link Robert K. Logan (2011). Figure/Ground: Cracking
the McLuhan Code.
www.e-compos.org.br/e-compos/article/download/709/548/0
Figure-ground clarifies my own process. I am also a person who focuses
on the ground or the condition or the context that enable things to
happen.
The fragmentation is caused by the dependence on literacy. So literacy
is the ground and fragmented humans are the figure. So also
masculinity is the figure and printed text is the ground.
If you look closely you will understand that the rise of feminism
coincides with images coming into the book and so also the movies, and
television. The image begins to reactivate seeing. It is the
reactivation of the sense that awakens the feminine qualities. But due
to the dominance of the printed text even in this situation, the
feminine is still within the masculine.
But digitality is turning all this upside down. The feminine seems to
be dominating in this context. It seems to be feminizing the males
also. the present digital world is predominantly feminine
(fragmented). The generation that is brought up in the digital
environment is going to be feminine.
Medium is not the only just the message but also our formative source.
We are formed or shaped by what we engage with. The content not only
dictates the process but also instills its qualities in us in order
for us to make sense of it. In order for us to 'understand' the
innocence of a child, we have to have the quality of innocence. This
is true for everything we engage with. So in order to understand the
printed word the whole attributes/ properties/ structure/ organization
by which the printed word is made will have to be developed in each of
us to engage with it.
The eye has to change from its normal way of seeing. In fact, it
learns to stop seeing and start thinking. From unfocused attention and
peripheral vision, it learns to be focussed and bounded by the size of
the source. Slowly the ability to SEE gets numbed and we become
physically absent and mentally present.
Somewhere McLuhan mentions that the root meaning of the word reading
is 'rapid guessing'. So in fact by reading we are just making our own
convenient stories! (I call this appropriation)
The most crucial thing to be revisited is about childhood. what kind
of environment needs to be provided so that their integrity is
retained, they are autonomous, biocentric and life-sustaining.
But I doubt whether 'modernity' will be able to do this with its
strange biases and beliefs.
--
Jinan,
TEXT DISTORTS, DIGITAL DESTROYS, WORLD AWAKENS
http://jinankb.in/
http://existentialknowledgefoundation.org/
http://rethinkingfoundation.weebly.com/
http://sadhanavillageschool.org/
https://www.youtube.com/user/sadhanavillagepune
https://www.youtube.com/user/jinansvideos
www.re-cognition.org
https://independent.academia.edu/JinanKodapully
09447121544
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