INTERVIEWER: Can you love someone fully before you have encountered the self?
McLUHAN: I am not sure. Kierkegaard went through this agony all his life and didn’t ever bring himself to the encounter with the other person on the same terms he had encountered himself. He felt he wasn’t equal to it. He didn’t want to get that deeply involved in another life. And here the responsibilities for these encounters can become quite terrifying. The repercussions. What it means to be the other person can become absolutely terrifying if you allow your thoughts to really probe. The whole change in our world has been from the package to the probe, from accepting a conveniently wrapped-up package to dropping it in favor of the profound probing of reality. It would be somewhat the difference between giving someone a present from the department-store and spending a whole year devising one artistically for just that person on that occasion. It presents a hair-raising difficulty. Or rather a hair-removing difficulty – it makes my hair fall out, just to think about it!