As I have been reading Understanding media book by M.L. I was really captivated by the ideas how media keep us numb because of senses and mind auto amputation but even more I really like the interpretation of Narcis story.
McLuhan explains that Narcissus did not fell in love of himself as a reflection in the water instead he did not recognise himself in the reflection. "The extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image. Echo tried to win his love ......., but in vain. He was numb. He had adapted to his extension of himself and had become a closed system."
"Medical researchers like Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas hold that all extensions of ourselves, in sickness or in health, are attempts to maintain equilibrium. Any extension of ourselves they regard as "auto-amputation" ............... . the central nervous system acts to protect itself by a strategy of amputation or isolation of the offending organ, sense, or function."
"The function of body, as a group of sustaining and protective organs for the central nervous system, is to act as buffers against sudden variations of stimulus in the physical and social environment."
"Therapy, whether physical or social, is a counter-irritant that aids in that equilibrium of the physical organs which protect the central nervous system. Whereas pleasure is a counter-irritant (e.g., sports, entertainment, and alcohol), comfort is the removal of irritants. Both pleasure and comfort are strategies of equilibrium for the central nervous system."
"Shock induces a generalised numbness or an increased threshold to all types of perception. The victim seems immune to pain or sense. Battle shock created by violent noise has been adapted for dental use in the device known as audiac. The patient puts on headphones and turns a dial raising the noise level to the point that he feels no pain from the drill. The selection of a single sense for intense stimulus, or of a single extended, isolated, or "amputated" sense in technology, is in part the reason for the numbing effect that technology as such has on its makers and users. For the central nervous system rallies a response of general numbness to the challenge of specialised irritation"
"Any invention or technology is an extension or self-amputation of our physical bodies, and such extension also demands new ratios or new equilibriums among the other organs and extensions of the body."
"In audile-tactile Europe TV has intensified the visual sense, spurring them toward American styles of packaging and dressing. In America, the intensely visual culture, TV has opened the doors of audile-tactile perception to the non-visual world of spoken languages and food and plastic arts."
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