Exploring ignorance (6) continued

In McLuhan’s view, modernity is the time in world history when humans press their case for merger, especially — and first of all — the merger of ontic or phenomenal reality with itself, in such a way that its essential relation with the ontological fails to be observed. This fulcrum falls into obscurity and the world enters its night.

This failure of observation has many forms which future posts will need to analyze. Suffice it to note here that it is subject to a range of expression varying from outright rejection of the possibility of ontological-ontical relation to unconsidered lack of notice. Nearly always it is subject to a fateful sort of double forgetfulness where the forgetting is itself forgotten.

In any case, the gap between the two, “where the action is”, becomes displaced — if not erased — within the phenomenal.  So, as seen for example in Chrystall’s suggestion for exploring ignorance, “dialogue” (although always presupposing some kind of gap between different persons and different views) is not seen as an original power to which humans are subject, but as a “resource” which humans can and should turn to advantage.

A strange kind of humpty-dumpty effect occurs where humpty, instead of falling into the inherent fractures of human being — fractures which, once passionately explored, are revelatory of ontological relation — instead rises into an ethereal unity with himself.

Humpty-dumpty becomes a satellite, Sputnik.

In such gravity-defying flight, the one thing which might save — falling, fracturing — is what is most feared. And the one thing that is unavoidable is what is to be avoided “at all cost”.