So the process of renewal can't come from above. It can only take the form of reawakened critical faculties. The untrancing of millions of individuals by millions of individual acts of the will. Psychological decentralization. A merely provisional image of how it might (not how it should) occur could be formed by supposing every mechanical agency of communication in the world to be suspended for six months. No press. No radio. No movies. Just people finding out who lived near them. Forming small communities within big cities. It would be agony. All psychological drugs cut off. No capsulated thoughts or melodies. To say that anything like this could never happen, or that it should never be allowed to happen is a remark worthy of those mesmerized practical men who are efficiently arranging for the obsequies of our world's mind and body alike. If something like this doesn't happen it is quite plain what will happen.
"Psychopathology of 'Time' and 'Life’", in SCENE BEFORE YOU: A New Approach to American Culture, New York: Rinehart, 1955. (First published in Neurotica 5, 1949).
Year: 1955
Chapters:
Wake Them Up! | Drugs
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan