A Tree at Magic Hour
Waltz for Debby
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A quote that’s been attributed (and then unattributed) to legendary media scholar Marshall McLuhan is a quote that’s been with me for a long time. So that I don’t know or care if it was inspired or a rephrasing is something he once said. Whether or not it does is not important.
The quote goes “We’re not positive who first discovered water but we’re pretty be sure it wasn’t a fish.”
It’s a silly quote and makes little sense. It poses a larger question as it poses smaller ones. Who is the “we” in the message? How can anyone be positive about anything? Was water first discovered? But the larger question is the one everyone remembers. It offers a powerful analogy: an image all can visualize and immediately undersatand the meaning.
– a fish in its surroundings of water.
IN Process
is that it offers a simple meme for an entire way of seeing life. In effect, it translates the famous meme of McLuhan that “Medium is the Message”
Inspired by the current article titled “The Most Dangerous Thing In Culture” in the September 27th post by Ted Goia to his Honest Broker substack I’ve been a subscriber to for two years. By far the most intelligent views and thoughts on culture … and everything else. I’ve been on hist substack. Aways exploring a wide range of cultural issues.
With his post of September 27, 2026, Goia suggests new battle lines in the great on-going inner battle going on now.