"The Social Dilemma," Marshall McLuhan, And Bucky Fuller's Observation Concerning "Utopia Or Oblivion" Re: Humainologie Creative Dialogue Team Practice

 

Dear Arthur,

I just finished watching "The Social Dilemma."

What a revelation! 

When I was at the University of Toronto, Marshall McLuhan's office was next door to my mentor, Rev. J. Edgar Bruns, a beyond-brilliant philologist who wrote "The Christian Buddhism Of St. John: New Insights Into The Fourth Gospel" and "God As Woman, Woman As God." 

It was McLuhan who introduced me -- and the world -- to the inevitable (and differential) impact of technologies on "the quality of consciousness," focusing his analysis on how each technology, according to the impact of its structure (its "medium"), affected-and-biased our sensory ratios, thus "skewing" the quality of our "conscious field." Notably, it was McLuhan who introduced the term "re-tribalization," half a century before the phrase "tribal politics" came to dominate our political discussion.)

Your friend Jonathan Haidt has a small (but significant) part in this new Netflix documentary.

Here is how I described "The Social Dilemma" to a life-long friend - also a UT alum and NIOSH epidemiologist - with whom I've traipsed Mexico, Central- and South America.

Dear Paul,

Jim Sanfilipo strongly recommended I watch a new Netflix documentary called “The Social Dilemma.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Dilemma

In the last year or two, I have tended to spread movie watching over two or three nights.

This is my second night watching “The Social Dilemma” and right now — about 10 minutes from the end — I’ve paused the film to re-read a Bucky Fuller quotation that is now featured on the screen:

“Whether it is to be utopia or oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.” Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller: "The Most Idealistic Is The Realistically Most Practical"

https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/09/buckminster-bucky-fuller-most.html

I am eager to hear your analysis, but also understand that you may have other demands on your time.

Are you currently working with COVID?

What does the epidemiological community think about “a second wave?”

Best wishes to Velda.

Pax et amore

Alan 

On Fri, Oct 9, 2020 at 9:49 PM Arthur C wrote:

“Losing my dad exacerbated my sense that there was no time to sit around and ponder how my life should go.  My father was just fifty-five when he died. Suzanne [a friend who had died unexpectedly] had been twenty-six.  The lesson there was simple: Life is short and not to be wasted.  If I died, I didn’t want people remembering me for the stacks of legal briefs I’d written or the corporate trademarks I’d helped defend.   I felt certain that I had something more to offer the world.  It was time to make a move.”  - Michelle Obama

I will send the Zoom link for our team practice session, as well as a synopsis of Michelle Obama’s book, soon.  Here are two exercises for team practice next Wednesday.  Like Michelle Obama, you have something more to offer the world.  If you practice week by week, you will enable yourself to make that gift to the world that only you can give.  

1.    The first exercise assumes you already have an idea for something you would like to actualize in the year ahead.  Perhaps it’s been a dream of yours for a long time, perhaps you have already begun working on it.  By structuring this goal or dream of yours into a quest, with a timeline and a way to measure your progress, you will empower your creativity and make your dream achievable.  You might also keep a journal to record your progress.  That journal might become a treasure for your grandchildren.  Between now and next Wednesday October 14, structure your vision as a quest, and share it with us at team practice.   

2.    The second exercise is to come up with an idea for a quest we could do together as a Calgary dialogue group over the year ahead.

Just imagine!  

Arthur