Did you ever have that word that you’ve been misspelling since junior high school, and just figured it out?

So, I’m wandering Manchester-by-the-Book, one of my favorite small bookstores (where I discovered one of my favorite books ever, James Salter’s Burning the Days), and I stumble on The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan.

Wait, isn’t it ‘The Medium is the Message‘?

Well, no. All my life I’ve thought the book was named after his famous saying, but no. Apparently, it’s a semi-intentional pun. The Medium “massages” us, manipulates us. Sound familiar?

But this is 1967, the internet is not really a thing, there are faint stirrings of Arpanet, but no Twitter, no web browser, no Facebook, no TikTok. There’s really just TV and Radio. I open to a random page and find:

All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.

All
media
are
extensions
of
some
human
faculty-
psychic
or
physical.

OK so that is ahead of its time. The book is attractive in a 1960-ish way, all strangely formatted text, black and white photographs, illustrations on every page, pages you have to read in the mirror because they are printed backwards….sold.

I take it home and start reading more seriously. 

The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions-the patterns of mechanistic technologies-are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval, by the electrically computerized dossier bank-that one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgetful and from which there is no redemption, no erasure of early “mistakes”.

Ever posted something on TikTok/IG/Facebook you wanted to take back? Ever worried about the ever-growing Surveillance State, or Surveillance Advertising? McLuhan is on the case, in 1967 before it all existed. 

I’m about halfway through the book, and so far, here’s the money quote:

Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication. 

….

It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media.

The 24×7 outrage machine we call the internet: do you understand how deeply your worldview is shaped by what you read? Or don’t read? The news sources you visit, or don’t visit? The media you consume, or don’t? How deeply what you see is impacted by the monetary imperatives of the media? (ALL of them, not just the bad guys, whoever they are for you!).

As Ryan Holiday says, “If you start your day with social media, the news, or email, realize: you’re starting your day at the mercy of others.“

A lot of people are coming to realize that much of the modern internet really just isn’t good for us. And yet, can you get away from it?

The first step is being aware. That pretty much everything that comes at you has an agenda. Question it. Why am I being told this now? What is the (economic/political/marketing) motivation for them to tell me? Does it resonate with my worldview? If so, maybe it’s false – just a re-enforcing echo chamber? Question all that you read, watch and hear, especially if it re-enforces your worldview or agrees with your intuition.

And read a book now and then :). The Medium is the Massage is a fun way to start – fast, thought-provoking, and fun. If you want to really embrace the ambiance of this book, throw on Philip Glass’s soundtrack to the cult film Koyaanisqatsi.

Because getting a massage should be good.

So, I’m having shoulder surgery in January, for a torn rotator cuff. Too much tennis, not enough outside strength training. I basically won’t be able to use my right arm for a month after the surgery, it will be in a sling. And tennis is probably 1 year away after rehab. 

The shoulder really hasn’t been right for some years now. While this surgery is seriously inconvenient, and likely painful for awhile, I’m looking at this at the path to getting my shoulder back to full health and full strength. Rather than looking at the downsides. As Ryan Holiday says, The Obstacle is the Way. 

To get myself ready, I’m collecting some of my favorite Marcus Aurelius quotes from The Meditations, the “bible”, if you will, of Stoic philosophy. These from the Gregory Hayes translation. (This is more for me than you :)).

The first one seems a bit too literal 🙂

Practice, even things you don’t expect to need.

Practice even what seems impossible.

The left hand is useless at almost everything, for lack of practice. But it guides the reins better than the right. From practice.

I’m going to be practicing left hand stuff for awhile!

Control your mind and attitude:

Don’t be overheard complaining about life at court. Not even to yourself.

Shorter, my adaptation: Never be overheard complaining – even to yourself.

How not to feel a victim:

“It’s unfortunate that this has happened.”

No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it—not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it. Why treat the one as a misfortune rather than the other as fortunate? Can you really call something a misfortune that doesn’t violate human nature? Or do you think something that’s not against nature’s will can violate it? But you know what its will is.

Does what’s happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness, and all the other qualities that allow a person’s nature to fulfill itself? So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.

It’s not what happens to you. It’s how you respond.

Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed.

Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.

Control your mind, as well as your outward behavior.

From Apollonius I learned: to be the same in all circumstances—intense pain, the loss of a child, chronic illness.

Looking at events as opportunities, not problems.

That every event is the right one. Look closely and you’ll see.

Not just the right one overall, but right. As if someone had weighed it out with scales.

Keep looking closely like that, and embody it in your actions: goodness—what defines a good person.

A visual to help you

To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.

Managing pain

[On pain:] Unendurable pain brings its own end with it.

Chronic pain is always endurable: the intelligence maintains serenity by cutting itself off from the body, the mind remains undiminished. And the parts that pain affects—let them speak for themselves, if they can.

Mental vacations

People try to get away from it all — to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like.

By going within.

Other people

What’s there to complain about? People’s misbehavior? But take into consideration: • that rational beings exist for one another; • that doing what’s right sometimes requires patience; • that no one does the wrong thing deliberately; • and the number of people who have feuded and envied and hated and fought and died and been buried.

. . . and keep your mouth shut.

and

Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people—unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind.

The big picture

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

Peace

The tranquillity that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do. (Is this fair? Is this the right thing to do?) < . . . > not to be distracted by their darkness. To run straight for the finish line, unswerving.

Focus on essentials

Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?” But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.

Maintaining control of your emotions and reactions

 The best revenge is not to be like that.

How the mind conducts itself. It all depends on that. All the rest is within its power, or beyond its control—corpses and smoke.

Have purpose and chase that

Then what is to be prized? An audience clapping? No. No more than the clacking of their tongues. Which is all that public praise amounts to—a clacking of tongues. So we throw out other people’s recognition. What’s left for us to prize? I think it’s this: to do (and not do) what we were designed for.

The Obstacle is the Way

In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them.

But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us—like sun, wind, animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.

The impediment to action advances action.

What stands in the way becomes the way.

The Obstacle is the Way.

( This article edited left handed 🙂 )

So, my sister was digging through the archives and discovered that our 6th great grandfather, Evan Watkins, built and owned Watkins Ferry which crosses the Potomac River where it divides Maryland and West Virginia (which I did not even know were adjacent). We have been up and down the east coast with family stuff, and yesterday we decided to detour over and take a look.

There’s no ferry any more obviously – there is a bridge which crosses from Williamsport, MD, into West Virginia. On the (now) West Virginia side, there’s an historical marker, which you can see in the photo, as well as what’s left of the house, known as Maidstone-on-the-Potomac.

It was raining pretty hard, and so after a few quick pictures we sat in the car at the side of the road looking around. I was startled out of my reverie by someone tapping on my window. It was a local woman who stopped to see if we needed any help – a reasonable guess, why else would anyone be sitting here?!). And isn’t it nice to know there are people like that still around! I explained why we were there, and she said “oh my goodness, I can’t believe it!” and launched into short speech, she was really into the history of the area and really seemed impressed that we had come.

I felt briefly and absurdly famous.

It got me thinking about what lasts. In philosophical approach I’m a Stoic – “memento mori“, Marcus Aurelius, and all that. So, I do think about death, and recent events have me thinking about it more. What will people remember about me? about you? If you have a family, you live on through your family, and they remember. But that usually only lasts a few generations. I remember my grandfather, but I expect nobody alive remembers much of my great grandfather. That Ferry, well, people remember. It was there. It’s marked. It’s a piece of history.

I write software. I look at it as a creative act, not unlike writing a novel. But software is ephemeral. Rarely does a piece of software matter for more than, say, a decade. The writer James Salter (whose work I admire very much) said:

There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.

James Salter, Don’t Save Anything.

I suppose I need to get started on that book that’s been running around in my head.