Marshall McLuhan

(Re-posting from the old blog)>> This is my favourite video from 2010!

Transcript (not complete):

Fr. Peyton: To go back to the first thing or the most basic thing for you or me or anyone, faith itself.

Marshall McLuhan: St. Paul’s remark that ‘Faith comes by hearing’ would seem to have something to do with this resonance of the Word, the Divine Word resonating in the human heart is a kind of interface which changes the human heart and tunes it in a totally new way. And so the idea of resonance rather than logical connectedness or logical demonstration and mere sequence of proofs one following another rigourously, the idea of resonance as simultaneous and total and all-involving and demanding everything that we have and in turn feeding us and feeding back to us everything we need.

Fr. Peyton: Would you start over again regarding faith and resonance, that faith is all embracing. I’d love you to develop that a little better for us.

Marshall McLuhan: The idea of the visual world as compared with the world of resonance, the visual world offers evidence of a very different kind, that towards which you can feel an inclination of attention, you can focus your attention on it, we speak of having your conscious visual life, focalised on or concentrating upon an object – this gives you a point of view. Now you can have a point of view about anything you can see. But you cannot have a point of view about something you hear. Especially something you overhear. There’s a mystery there that we are much more powerfully involved in what we overhear than in what we hear. But in the world of resonance man somehow or other becomes completely involved. He is not involved in the visual world, as much, because this offers a means of detachment, you can stand back, you can look at it from different distances, and so on. But the world of resonance requires a complete involvement and consent on the part of the listener. However, we can switch off. Even to resonance, we can turn off. And many people of course have developed this power in the electric age, they are so embellished, or so flooded with data, with information that they tend to protect themselves by switching off. Just turning themselves off, going numb. Becoming sort of somnambulistic modules and unaware really of themselves or the world they live in, not relating and so on. But that is only one facet of this business of resonance, perhaps there are other ones we should keep in mind.

Fr. Peyton: I’d like to go to the fact of the faith again, all embracing, you cannot be halfway, it envelopes you.

Marshall McLuhan: I’m just wondering whether it’s possible to have, I suppose it’s possible to have little faith. The Scriptures even mention it. “Oh ye, of little faith.” However, it really seems to be directed to people who have switched off. People who just reject the sound and the Word. The world of St. Paul’s remark that ‘faith comes by hearing’, rather than by any visual manifestation suggests how total it is. It was the old philosophers who pointed out that the world of resonance, acoustic space, is a complete sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose margin is nowhere. And in the world of faith you have that experience of being always at the centre, and the centre is everywhere, and the margins are nowhere. This is the amazing structure about the resonance world of hearing as compared with the visual world with its sharp boundaries, its rigid points of view, its antagonisms, differences and contrasts and so on. Whereas, the world of faith with its much greater power to receive, and to involve, seems to rule out a lot of these petty differences, petty points of view.

Fr. Peyton: I'd like to say that once upon a time you knocked on the door of the Church. You found something in there. You are a man so rich with blessings of intellect and other resources and yet you came up to the door of the Church to knock on it and to say 'I want to get inside'. Would you elaborate on that.

Marshall McLuhan: It's not the sort of story I'm really accustomed to talking about. In my own case, as a student of Literature and the Arts I became aware of the enormous role the Church had played in underpinning these great human activities over the centuries. I was aware that the Church had always been on the side of art and intellect, and that the effects of the Church therefore were everywhere for men to see and admire. But the causes remain hidden. And as an approach to the causes I became curious to know what one had to do. And having as it were surveyed the world of conventional, historical, apologetics, argumentation and so on from many sides, I became aware that if you are really going to test the reality of the Church, you have to test it on its own ground. And the Church as a ground demands that we approach it by prayer. And I simply decided to meet that need of prayer as an approach to the Church and simply to ask "Show me, is it true? Just show me." And the evidence came unexpectedly and from many quarters, and unmistakeable, and I think that it might be a rather interesting scientific experiment for any non-believer, as they are called, to simply get down on his knees for a few hours every week and demand that that he be shown the reality of this unknown thing. And it doesn't depend, as anybody will soon discover, it does not depend upon concepts, theories, ideas. It is a thing with a life that is available to all who want to share in that life. But it must be demanded! "Seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you." But you have to knock, and you have to knock pretty hard.