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This is a weird sort of violence. He seems to be equating violence with influence. The woman who taught me to read fed her identity and was a great aid in dev
by cc101 4y ago
This is a weird sort of violence. He seems to be equating violence with influence. The woman who taught me to read fed her identity and was a great aid in developing my own identity. There is no hostility or harm to be found in this, nor was there any force. McLuhan seems to be defining the violence out of violence and leaving something else for which the ideas associated with violence (force, harm, hostility, hatred) are absent. What's the use of that? Violence is a way to influence identity, but influence that creates identity is not necessarily violent. To attach the negatives associated with violence to creating one's own identity and those of others sounds nilist.
- Fricken 4y agoThere is a tendency to associate violence with negativity, but we don't need Marshall to know that that is not really true. Most of us like Law and Order and that is enforced through violence and the threat of violence. The threat of violence is the same as violence. An armed robbery is conventionally regarded to be violent even if no one is physically harmed. A stop sign also threatens forceful consequences for failure to comply with it's instructions. A stop sign is violent. Violence is everywhere and we're so inured to it we do not notice.
- cc101 4y ago"Most of us like Law and Order and that is enforced through violence and the threat of violence. Not always. I conform to law and order because I sense a profound link to some essential but ineffable truth about the human experience.