ATSDECK
iON: Shit Just Got Real (written in 2011)
iON - Shit Just Got Real
OK, a highly misleading title. I couldn't help it. The line from the movie, Bad Boys, just popped into my head. I think I'll keep it...Moving on.
What I’m engaging in here is an update and a sort of assessment of the iON situation as I’m (and others are) in the midst of it. It’s a mystery unfolding, and there’s a lot to digest, but this doesn’t mean that iON (and Bob, etc.) are waiting for anyone to catch up.
In fact, those wishing to become involved are invited (by iON and Bob) to speak, question, dialogue, explore, learn, define, and every other form of purposeful engagement one can think of with this whole situation - while it’s happening.
As iON has said, you can’t get it wrong and you never get it done. The point isn’t to know everything right now completely and totally, in a crystal clear manner.
The point is to be purposeful and deliberate - to participate and take responsibility for yourself; your life. To create!
The point is the process itself - and that process never ends. Actually, there is a definite turning point when we reach an ascended state, which is, in fact, what iON says we’re on the brink of experiencing.
Still, the wonder, experience and creation will continue.
A lot of what both iON and Bob have shared has been cryptic or abstruse. Much of that is deliberate. If it was spoon fed to you, what worth would it be?
There is a sort of adhesion, or an embedding that occurs when the information is gained through one’s own effort / exertion; through one’s own deliberate probing and investigation.
From what one can immediately glean (and, especially, later from reflection or spontaneous realizations) from their interaction with (in whatever form) Bob and iON, the revelations are profound and exciting.
Just as significant, however, is iON and Bob’s urging and prodding of those interacting with them to delve, probe, question, search, digest, think, learn and grow.
This is often done through iON keeping his responses / answers terse, or Bob (a la Marshall McLuhan and James Joyce through "Finnegans Wake") making cryptic or abstract statements.
The mechanics - the artifice of what is occurring there isn't meant to make iON and Bob appear erudite, or simply as an irritant to the listener (although, the latter may be a badge Bob wears proudly). Frustration in not having loose ends tied up, or an immediately clear picture are the impetus.
It is meant to be intriguing and compelling; and yes, frustrating. It's a galvanizing force designed to compel the listener to be proactive and involved in the process.
In the case of Marshall McLuhan (Bob has posted an hour-long analysis of McLuhan by Terence McKenna at Bob's MOM (McLuhan on Maui) site), an associate said that even on his deathbed, McLuhan had felt that few people, if any, really understood what he was trying to say.
And in Bob's case, it was twenty years before someone really understood what Bob was trying to say. I want that guy's phone number. hehe
So, it about the process.
Bob has made reference to Marshall McLuhan in using the rearview mirror as an analogy for our interpretation of experience. McLuhan has said the following, regarding the rearview mirror,
“People never want to look at the present; people live in the rearview mirror because it is safer, they’ve been there before, they feel comfort.
The present is an area that people have always avoided throughout human history – the utopias of mankind are all rearview-mirror images of the preceding age…
This habit of seeing back one stage when thinking that one is looking at the present is an age old human habit. And it may be that we are the first to discover a means of overcoming the limitations of this habit.” – 1965
Bob uses the term in much the same way, explaining that when one encounters new experiences / information, these events are (for most people) cast in a historical light.
The experience or new information immediately recalls a past experience and, because of this, there is a comfort in being able to place the experience in a known category / context.
What Bob recognizes from McLuhan’s insight here is just as McLuhan stated.
Bob agrees that this rearview mirror event misleads us into thinking we have fully understood the situation, when all we’ve done is imparted an antiquated projection onto the event / experience.
In the case of many of Bob’s (and iON’s) cryptic statements, one might walk away thinking one has “figured it out”.
The point is that, not that it’s impossible to figure out, but to be aware and cautious as to how one approaches one’s experiences (i.e., the present; the timeless now).
Do not do yourself a disservice by killing, encapsulating (boxing up) and coming to a ready conclusion about your experiences, because a) there is a (very) good chance you’ve missed the point, and b) when you feel you’ve come to a conclusion (i.e., the “end”) with regard to your experiences, then you’ve effectively sucked the vigor / life out of them; your explorations cease, and that’s not the point. It never ends!
And even when you've been granted clarity on a statement or notion that either Bob or iON have proffered, it is important not to hang your coat, so to speak, on that finding, because the meanings and the experiences will shift and evolve.
This is the nature of existence.
It's an awesome tenet - there are no fixed positions. I like Marshall McLuhan's position that he did not have a "point of view".
“I am an investigator. I make probes. I have no point of view. I do not stay in one position. I don’t explain, I explore” (Schewe, 1971, p. 1).
This may be Marshall McLuhan’s most famous quote and helps to understand how McLuhan viewed his work and why he did not work on one specific theory. The entire basis for McLuhan’s work is the creative process, the first stage of academic research, the creation of ideas.
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McLuhan, as the quote cited above suggests, was not interested in criticism, discussion or testing of his ideas; he “explained” his ideas by fitting them into metaphors and left the reader with the work of interpretation, and criticism.
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It's a fluid and ever-expanding process; and it breathes life back into our experience; something onto which we've made some woefully inaccurate projections, frozen into this image and thereby killed.
You think you know what you are? What you think you are, you are not. What you’re seeing is memory; you’re seeing past experiences, and form, and you’re attributing something you’ve called yourself to that mosaic.
You have picked isolated elements of that mosaic and called them you. Even this physical body you consider you is simply a form.
Don’t think you have this one down pat (I realize many do see the potential for having mislead themselves, but even the image we have for our larger or higher self is based on past forms / images).
What we are learning, what we are experiencing, and what we are about to experience will obliterate these inadequate and limited notions. iON has actually share that what we are is so big that we could easily swallow the planet Jupiter as if it were a mote of dust.
It will, as iON and Bob have stated, obliterate the last great unknown, the Mystery Landscape - and that landscape is also us; it was created by us and from us. We just need to experience / remember that.
This is an alive, vigorous, wondrous and profound engagement.
The information and revelations coming out as a result of iON’s appearance, and subsequent appearance on the Internet (what Bob Neveritt calls the Chip Body) are coming on fast and furious - and the process is evolving and expanding.
According to Bob (per iON), the iON situation is going to expand and eventually permeate every conceivable media and form of interaction / communication, from the spoken word to movies, music, paintings and forms of expression we likely haven’t experienced yet.
Since iON has arrived on the scene, sometime, I believe, in early March of 2009, his appearance has been like a clap of thunder that has reverberated in the beings who have become fixated on the phenomenon of iON.
For those closer to the iON situation (e.g., listeners to his Internet radio broadcasts; those who have had personal engagements / private sessions with iON, and those otherwise closely involved), iON’s appearance has struck a sort of resonance within us, much like a gong or a tuning fork being struck.
Folks involved with iON will tell you that their indoctrination may not have been sudden, but virtually as soon as they started interacting (listening, primarily) with iON they start to see synchronicities or signs. One's curiosity may be piqued.
After a little more time, they'll just start to notice that they've lost interest in other radio programs and have a desire to listen to / interact more with iON.
When this happens, one really starts to get a sense that iON is legitimate and, by extension, one's excitement and wonder begins to grow.
And when you've gotten a little more involved, with iON, with the RnA Drops, with the Revelations series, it's all over, but the ascension. Seriously.
And there is nothing of a cult here. iON, speaking through J.W., only engages in casual conversation, often making double entendres and waxing on fashion and celebrity.
Nothing on the surface (or underneath, as I've not only had a private session / engagement with iON, but have interacted more with iON and Bob) of the iON situation intimates or smacks of those more mischievous forces seeking to warp minds.
And don't look at Bob with his SubGenious history (for another story...). He's the worst cult leader around - he insults his would-be converts by calling them "idiots", nothing he says makes sense, he keeps talking about some McLuhan guy when nobody has a clue who that guy is, and he charges for everything(!).
Sorry, he wins the worst cult leader award. I haven't even been instructed to kill anyone yet. I wanted to be a real cult member and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
In any event, getting serious again, the iON situation, if you decide to get involved, and maintain you interactions with an open mind, the environment that iON is will seep into your reality. Actually - and you're allowing and opening for this to occur from the get-go - as iON has said, you are in a parallel world when you're listening to Cash Flow.
This notion hasn't been pursued too much by listeners, but I think I learned recently that we can travel between worlds, or connect with other worlds through our faculties / senses. It is possible, therefore, to travel to a parallel world via the auditory senses; hearing.
The subject would require more clarification, but this is just to say that you learn, in time, through your own insights and revelations, how much your reality has been and is being affected by this interaction.
All of this creeps up on those involved. Just like on the RnA Drops, what happens to you happens very subtly. It's not something you notice at first, but in time, your behavior and outlook will start to change. And you didn't need to do a thing - it just happens.
It's like it bubbles up; but when you realize this is happening, and look back, to discover what is happening and the scale on which it is happening is profound. And from what? A radio show. So, there is more, much more than meets the eye (ear) here.
The beings also affected by iON’s appearance include not only those intimately involved with the iON situation, but also those who reside in the so-called highest offices of authority on this planet.
Bob Neveritt claims to have hard, physical evidence that there are groups (presumably, affiliated with various governments / religious institutions) monitoring the situation closely. And I have no cause to believe Bob is being deceptive, or is misguided on that subject.
He has a long history that reflects his own involvement with and study of these same institutions, and I take his statements seriously; especially, considering how I’ve come to realize the reality and significance of iON’s appearance at this time.
iON has actually stated that he/she/it is the voice spoken of in Revelation 3:20 (iON prefers the King James version),
Revelation 3:20 “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”
To those who have heard iON’s voice and responded (speaking as one of them), their lives have not been the same.
iON, and Bob has echoed this, has stated that the bible could not have fully been understood until now. And something that people were indeed taking notice of before iON appeared in 2009, is that we are in the time of Revelations.
So much turmoil and change - extreme changes, were occurring that it wasn't difficult to apply the Revelations to this period.
It's just that we are only now able to learn what they were really saying.
From the highest to the lowest, a situation has definitely emerged on this planet the likes we have never seen.
Various human and non-human beings on, in, and around this planet are aware of the iON situation (iON has named a few, including immortals, vampires, werewolves and Sasquatch, etc.); something Bob has summed up as both First Contact, and the Mystery Landscape speaking back to us.
Very briefly, on the Mystery Landscape.
Bob Neveritt, through his own encounters with some of our greatest thinkers, his research into the human condition, and what we might call de profundis experiences, has come to outline or create an overview (for one, in his inspired "Tiny Note Chart") of the greater processes affecting humanity; i.e., our environment.
The Tiny Note chart Bob has created (and iON has made statements to the effect that he was involved in that process) is an overview of the movements of human culture / society.
And it is on this chart that Bob anticipates (pre-casts) the Second Coming. The Second Coming, again, is not of an individual, but of an environment; a shift.
On a side note, in a brief article on the android meme, which Bob defines thusly, “…the ability of human-invented technology…to acquire the intimacy of speech and intuition. In other words, the Android Meme is technology that has the qualities of 'being alive'", Bob also does some pre-casting (or forecasting with intention),
Don’t panic though, put faith in the artists, for as Bob says, “The Android Meme absorbs any response made to it. The artist's task is to understand and meditate upon the why's and wherefore's of its present techniques.
This effort has nothing to do with how an artist survives economically.” Bob continues to say our consciousness will slowly integrate into a new type of environment (for details on the current time period see his breakdown) and one day we will never have to pay rent or walk around like programmed video game sprites!
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As much as Bob resists talking about the future, his notions have really resonated with my own. It should go without saying that there's a fire sale on Earth - everything must go!
What artists do, as Bob and McLuhan have pointed out, is to be able to step back and perceive society / culture as it really is.
When most of society is deeply involved in the environment, the artist exists outside of that environment (what Bob has called the "anti-environment") and perceives the situation clearly, without biases or projections.
The difference, mentioned in the analysis of McLuhan by McKenna I posted, is like that between someone who reads a book, and someone who looks at a book. The reader is deeply enmeshed in the content of the book, while the artist (perceiver) sees the book as an object / medium; it recognizes the environment (I'll hazard a guess to say that environment is the "ground" versus the "figure", but that's for another discussion...).
What McLuhan and Bob have said of the artist (or someone existing in an anti-environment) is that they see things as they are. McLuhan commented that artists often liked to capture impoverished areas, because that reality was more stimulating and inspiring than, If I remember correctly, clean, pleasant suburbia.
McLuhan said, "The artist is a person who is expert in the training of perception." In McKenna's analysis of McLuhan, he shared a simple (in McKenna's words, the best) example given of training our perception; training ourselves to "see"; and that was to draw, freehand.
The practice of the artist to look at something and to engage in the activity of eye hand coordination, for example, was a method of learning to see; to perceive real-time without the burden of all of the accompanying (and antiquated) ideas, notions, projections, biases, etc. It was pure, raw, unadulterated perception.
Here is more from McLuhan on the artist,
The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present.
Poets and artists live on frontiers. They have no feedback, only feedforward. They have no identities. They are probes.
As McLuhan likened ubiquitous communication to an externalization of our central nervous system, the experience of abstract art likewise connects to the multi-sensory pathways of a culture’s CNS. In this way, the patterns that emerge reveal the hidden ground (in McLuhan’s terms) that reveal the actual dynamics of a culture.
McLuhan has also said, "Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen." (SOURCE)
Further, "The poet, the artist, the sleuth – whoever sharpens our perception tends to be anti-social; rarely "well-adjusted", he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists among anti-social types in their power to see environments as they really are." (SOURCE).
Finally, "The artist must ever play and experiment with new means of arranging experience, even though the majority of his audience may prefer to remain fixed in their old perceptual attitudes." (SOURCE)
McLuhan references James Joyce's Finnegans Wake in this regard, as does Bob Neveritt (Bob explains "Finnegans Wake" HERE and HERE).
In the case of Finnegans Wake, this work, like McLuhan, Joyce was not only describing the environment from the anti-environment, but at the same time, as a true artist, he was predicting the future. Bob Neveritt has gone a long way to explaining how this occurs in Finnegans Wake, but it follows from McLuhan and Neveritt's description of the true artist.
In an interview from 2008, Bob talks about Finnegans Wake as being predictive,
Bob [Dobbs / Neveritt]: Well, all of nature is metaphorized in FINNEGANS WAKE. Joyce said that he was trying to awaken from the nightmare of history. FINNEGANS WAKE, on one level, is a man dreaming during the night. He dreams the whole history of man. Part of it is a nightmare.
H. C. Earwicker's got all these thunders, noises and rainstorms going on during his dream. That's what we are hearing right now.
Gerry: Till the end of time? Is FINNEGANS WAKE predicting? Will man ever end?
Bob: No, it doesn't end. Remember, it doesn't end. FINNEGANS WAKE does not end with a period. But what is interesting - a few lines before the non-ending ending on page 628, it says "End here." (Laughs) Joyce wrote "End here." That's a few lines before the actual last words on page 628.
Gerry: Do you think that FINNEGANS WAKE will ever be obsolete?
Bob: No, it is the new Bible of the future. He has created a new religion, a new myth, just like all the great religions were.
Gerry: Will a new "James Joyce " ever come along and write a new "FINNEGANS WAKE"?
Bob: That is being written by all of us. That's what FINNEGANS WAKE means. All of us now in the global theater are both actors and audience participating in our own action, in our own participation, under electric conditions.
The computer environment feeds on itself - "Here Comes Everybody", because you don't need visionary awareness, extraordinary awareness or extraordinary talent, to provide content for the electric environment which creates endless diversity and unity at the same time. So, finally, man is no longer controlled. He is free to co-create and become like a god.
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Terence McKenna (in a Youtube video entitled, "Culture is not your friend") speaks on the "culture" (environment) as the problem, and suggests how to move forward in relation to this environment: by creating.
Now, art as McLuhan has described, is not about painting, or making music, but is an experience of existing outside of the environment ("system") and struggling to express this experience; which then necessarily becomes a sort of clear reflection and predictive mechanism.
So what is this environment that we are trying to see? Adding to McLuhan's and Joyce's contributions, Bob Neveritt describes the totality of this environment via his Five Bodies: “Chemical” (physical), “Astral” (ethereal), “Android" (machines / technology), “Chip" (Internet / television), and “Mystery” (the unseen / so-called unknown, or as-yet-to-be-known) is a process we created as a means of learning about ourselves.
(An aside: I was going on memory with regard to my separation of the Five Bodies as Bob describes them above. I could be off, and I definitely intend on returning to edit and make corrections to this article after it is posted.
I’m more interested in doing this right in the middle of things, and posting it as a sort of Wiki article. Can clean up as I go...).
A point Bob made early on when he named his five bodies, is that these bodies are extensions of us; and therefore, they are human.
McLuhan makes these statements early on as well,
“The personal and social consequences of any medium, that is, of any extension of ourselves– result from the new scale that is introduced into our affaires by each extension of ourselves, or new technology.”
“All media are extensions of some human faculty – psychic or physical. The wheel is an extension of the foot. The book is an extension of the eye. Clothing is an extension of skin.” “With the arrival of electronic technology, man extended, or set outside himself, a live model of the central nervous system.” – 1964
“Electronic man like pre-literate man, ablates or outers the whole man. His information environment is his own central nervous system.” – 1969
Bob adds to this notion. He observes these extensions as part of who and what we are - what we call human - and says they are as much a part of who we are as our own arms and legs.
Here (below) are a couple of excerpts from an interview with Bob where he goes into this idea of extensions a bit. You can also see the rearview mirror analogy being alluded to here.
BD: [Bob Dobbs / Bob Neveritt] There's no such state as the discarnate state. Every medium starting with language is an extension of us, so it's *human*. Even though we think of machines as not us, they are made by humans. Look at a book, it has a simulation of the the visual experience. It is an extension of the eye. So it is an amplification of the eye.
It's not that it's *not* an eye, it is an *amplification* of the eye. So it is part of our human bodies. Mixed corporate-media disappeared by 1977, and since then we've lived in a 'negativland,--an afterimage situation.
By 1993 Wired Magazine had first retrieved McLuhan, who emphasized the discarnate condition. That condition was first described though by Wyndham Lewis and James Joyce in the 1920s. It is a normal perception now, something that people understand, it's obvious to them, it's a rearview mirror reflex reaction.
The discarnate state has become a buzz phrase in pop culture. My job is to point out that it doesn't mean we've lost our bodies, it's just that we live in an environment that's invisible, that's inaudible, is tactility--which is not a sense, it is the interplay of the senses.
Mixed corporate-media is an extension of the tactile sense. It is a platform that incorporates all the senses, like a CD-ROM. This tactility is human, it is in us, we extend it, it is human.
The discarnate state is a natural fulfillment of speech becoming aware of itself.
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BD: How does humanity retrieve human scale, or the anthropomorphic image? We have standard reference points of how humans look--2 arms, 2 legs, and all this stuff. Most people don't think of their automobile as part of their organism or sensory life while they are driving.
From 1750 to 1900, you have these huge metallic steel newspaper environments that look very inhuman. They were extensions and amplifications of our muscular structure, so they are extensions of our bodies.
And the extension of the central nervous system we're talking about starts with the electronic revolution at the turn of the century, beginning with the telegraph. It really blossoms in the 1900s through the 1920s. That's where people start to subconsciously think "we don't even have bodies anymore."
The industrial age with its pollutants is considered inhuman to small communities and to personal identity. Individuals now cannot put their signature on objects they make. ...Or even know where the apparatus they are making is going, or for what purpose!
For example I knew a person that worked on the first satellites that NASA put up and he didn't even know he was working on the satellite, it was top secret. That kind of impersonality is generally associated with the mechanical age and that is considered nonhuman scale, even though humans still had lives all through the last two thousand years and were interacting with people.
The problem was that language, the way people communicated with each other, was aborted by the larger linguistic structures of the industrial revolution, which sort of altered how people communicated about what was going on.
So, it was always a communication problem--because people still go on living in their bodies.
There are some profound statements in there, something Bob has become quite accustomed to uttering (I love it when Bob will make some statement and offer, “That’s totally new for you. That’s never been said before. What do you think about that?” haha).
Further, Bob explains this process of extension as (in my view) a sort of self-reflective process, where these extensions are manifested by us (whatever that is) as a means of fully learning and experiencing what we are in all aspects.
It is a being, or race of beings, extending itself to further know itself.
Finally, Bob resolves this whole process by seeing these extensions as ultimately being assumed (or subsumed) back into the whole.
iON has referred to the Five Bodies as Bob’s “bastard babies”; that Bob gave birth to them, and he will ultimately obsolesce / reabsorb them.
The last of the bodies to be experienced and learned from being the Mystery Body / the Mystery Landscape.
Bob describes the Mystery Landscape on a Cash Flow show. There's also a great Youtube video of Bob describing the Mystery Landscape as if it were broadcast from it.
We are just learning what the Mystery Landscape is composed of. We know it's us, but our experience of and familiarity with is expanding and increasing.
This is the final aspect of ourselves that we must extend, and experience and interact with before it can be known, assumed / subsumed and our full power reinstated (in a manner of speaking).
This is the arena from which all of the unusual or bizarre phenomena arise: the flashing lights, ufos, so-called ETs, portals, parallel worlds, non-human beings, hovering planes, vanishing objects (including craft, automobiles, people, etc.), the hexagon on Saturn (yeah, that’s a good one), and everything else going on in our galaxy and universe right now.
The Mystery Landscape is making itself known. It’s been said before, and iON has echoed this statement, but the veil is lifting. The Fallen state in which we have existed for eons is not our original state. And it is back to that original state that we are about to return.
It will be interesting to explore with iON / Bob what the relationship of the Mystery Landscape is to the ascension process, and how the pace of one’s (i.e., the Mystery Landscape) exposure, or our degree of knowing about that aspect of ourselves might be related to the pace or process of ascension.
Clearly, they are related, but I haven’t explored that point yet.
It is this Mystery Body / Mystery Landscape, this essence that is now speaking to us in the form of iON, who has himself admitted that he is the agent of his own obsolescence.
But he couldn’t be a happier essence. Really, he is blissful ne plus ultra.
I’ve written an article on my first introduction to iON (and his to us) where you might start to get an idea who or what iON is.
That article is entitled, “iON (Non-Physical) Speaks” and includes further links to iON related material, including a website specifically for iON, called howionic.com.
Are we any closer to determining exactly what iON is after these two years (and my own, approximately ten months)? No.
What he brings, however, is a confirmation and culmination of everything I have learned, and I know Bob shares this sentiment with regard to his own explorations.
It's the next phase. It's a phase that harkens back to what we would call the time before time; and it is the time of Revelations.
Paradoxically, as Bob has stated (on a recent Cash Flow, I believe), while it is a period of our greatest leaps and blossoming, it also happens to be our most restrictive and challenging as a race.
It’s an interesting situation. I found some passages of McLuhan’s that might shed light on the situation. Maybe not. I’m sure Bob would appreciate their inclusion, so here goes,
"Electrically speaking, there's nothing but nuzzling and cuddling and cooing, alternating with wild yells for love and food and help. It's always May Day in the global nursery." -- Marshall McLuhan
Also,
"When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself. Anybody moving into a new world loses identity...So loss of identity is something that happens in rapid change. But everybody at the speed of light tends to become a nobody.
This is what's called the masked man. The masked man has no identity. He is so deeply involved in other people that he doesn't have any personal identity." -- McLuhan, quoted in Forward Through The Rearview Mirror
"Violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence." -- Marshall McLuhan
All very interesting observations, and probably somewhat applicable to our present circumstance.
We have entered a stage of our collective experience where no previous authority has any validity. Those who used to be able to offer guidance (government, science, medicine, psychology / psychiatry, etc.) have all but become obsolete.
We are in uncharted territory, and this includes our grasp of who and what we are, and how existence - so-called reality actually works.
We have been rapidly thrust into this environment, and as McLuhan describes, many will have their previous sense of identity dissolved; leaving them naked and, perhaps, likely to express their search in a violent (whether physical or not) manner.
With regard to artists and the anti-environment, Bob shared in another interview that, thanks to technology, we have all taken on the role of the artist; the outsider.
Bob: Okay--first of all, everybody's an artist today: EVERYBODY. Even, even, umm--who's the stupidest guy you can think of? Maurice Strong at Ontario Hydro. [laughs] Or even [CBC reporter] Adam Vaughan. And you know why? Because the artist as a concept is obsolete.
Because the artist was a guy who could stand back, look at the pattern of the society, and hold a mirror up to society; the artist would have a role of getting people to check their involvement in society.
It might frighten people or it might stimulate them. Nowadays, we're so stimulated by information and by machines--movies and media, all media, they're like machines, they're like artists stimulating us--we don't need an artist in the same way...how do you get someone to hold a mirror up to that, like the artist traditionally did? No one artist can do that. So then every person is in the role of an artist.
Because basically the artist was someone who was outside of the society, was almost existential, was able to not believe in the society, take the risk of stepping outside of it in that unfamiliar zone...
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Bob: Right. Yeah. So the artist would traditionally come along and not believe everything, and go through the pain of dealing with that, and then come up with some metaphor to show it back to society, and then it would shock people, or whatever, and they would get an intimation of being outside of their culture.
The risk-taking that the artist takes, of getting out, EVERYbody is in that position today, because there's no anthropomorphic scale for humans today, it's all machines talking to machines, so everybody is alienated, everybody is outside the system, like the artistic view, the artistic consciousness.
So therefore, if everybody's an artist, then you can't talk about the guy, the person, the mind that's gonna show an anti-environment to the situation--the traditional role of the artist--he cannot use or be part of the artistic vocabulary, since everybody's already that. So what vocabulary or metaphor can you come up with? You see? You see the problem?
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This transition, a natural expression of our evolution as a species (which Bob has stated isn't always an evolution to something better as far as society / culture is concerned) - this displacement has occurred quite naturally. Whether it was inevitable or not is unknown...Perhaps it was.
However, the fact of the matter is it was predicted by McLuhan and Joyce. So, as there are no authorities left as regards the state of things, or the state of things to come outside of the artist, we have all been thrust into the anti-environment and left to explore, define and create from here on out.
On a possibly related note, on a Cash Flow show earlier this year, Bob made an observation about Jared Loughner (the man who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in January of 2011) in this regard.
What Bob said was that this was an individual on a persona search for identity; that his actions (whether this was meant humorously or not) were is attempt to take back his power; to re-define.
This search for identity was, as Bob intimated, a spiritual search that expressed itself in physical violence.
On a side note, Bob can offer some interesting insights into violence; a subject also alluded to in an encounter between David Worcester and J. Krishnamurti (which Bob can also speak to).
Violence, in Krishnamurti's (and Bob's) usage doesn't necessarily mean physical violence. If you look up the word violence you find the following,
vi·o·lence
–noun
1. swift and intense force: the violence of a storm.
2. rough or injurious physical force, action, or treatment: to die by violence.
3. an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws: to take over a government by violence.
The word stems from the Latin "violo", which the Wiktionary defines as to "violate, mistreat, or defile".
Bob has said that his engagement / conversations with people can also be considered violent. The interaction and interplay being a sort of exertion, or application of power or force, which represents violence.
Bob is hostile, make no mistake about it.
Here is an excerpt from Krishnamurti on violence,
“Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear.
So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.”
Also, here is a conversation with Krishnamurti on violence.
In any event, returning to iON and where he / she is at this point.
As the voice of the Mystery Landscape, now having gone through the biblical Revelations, guided the process of manifesting the biblical Bread of Life / shewbread / Living Water, and making a general mess of the wingnuts who’ve decided to go along for the ride, iON has now gone rogue / solo and has begun broadcasting his own show, entitled, “Moi” (I believe borrowing from Bob Neveritt’s similarly titled “MOM”, or “McLuhan on Maui”; a discussion group on the one and only Marshall McLuhan).
What iON does on his Moi show is to share various media clips, including song, as well as his own interjections, in what amounts to a stimulating, humorous, enlightening and at times physically affecting process of indoctrination - iON style!
So far, iON has aired three episodes of his Moi series (found as MP3s at howionic.com under the "ROGUE iON" link), and I intend to do a breakdown and analysis of each of them for your enjoyment and edification.
Some of what iON shares are conversations with McLuhan, and other various novel information. And Bob has given me permission to go at it with both barrels, even if I get it wrong.
I intend to apply my own analysis of what is being said; and if I’m right, wrong, woefully misguided, or way off the mark, I still intend to publish my findings / comments. Even if items are left unresolved / open-ended.
On a side note, iON is, if I remember correctly, driving for us to define our experiences. This is something Bob has shared, and it would be an interesting subject to explore.
I realize that by speaking we create; so, I wonder if this defining is a method of digesting or assimilating these new experiences - to clarify them / put them in clear terms, because we are / will be using these terms / definitions as a clear way to create in this new environment...Just random thoughts.
I realize we are learning to be deliberate when we speak; that iON has proffered a way to come at our statements from an angle where our creations are quickly and easily the "fastest path to our joy" (iON's words).
However, this defining process is different. Perhaps we're creating a new vocabulary by defining these new experiences, and thereby developing our ability to create (draw to us) more of these novel experiences; to expand our creative expression within this new milieu.
What Bob Neveritt has done, through his advancement and addition to McLuhan's and Joyce's work is to resolve and bring to a culmimation those expressions / statements.
Bob has the perspective and insight McLuhan attributes to the artist (Bob claims he is the only artist alive), and through his observation and study of our culture he has predicted - as Joyce and McLuhan did before him about our present time, our future, which is now unfolding.
Bob called himself immortal; he's called us Gods, and he predicted (in his Tiny Note chart) the Second Coming.
And, as an artist, what Bob's also done is to dip his brush into the mystery busrting forth before us and begun to create anew. And he is prodding us - with iON - to do the same.
In any event, I’m sure there was something new to you that I shared here.
Pretty profound stuff, huh? What do you think about that?
