Most saliently, Merleau-Ponty’s lecture reveals points of affinity between the Cartesian self, the syncretic self and McLuhan’s Narcissus-Narcosis. As stated above, Merleau-Ponty’s syncretic self does recognize some differentiation between self/other but does not yet
acknowledge this as a distinction, i.e., self-other. The mirror image of one’s own body for the syncretic subject is an ambivalent, definitive double. Incorporating McLuhan’s notion that
Narcissus-Narcosis mistakes his own reflection for another person into this line of reasoning,
one could suggest that McLuhan views electronic media encouraging a recollection of this syncretic self in adulthood – as electronic media offer the overwhelming proximity of the global with the local, compromising resonance of proximity-distance rather than encouraging its mediation as a resonant between.
As McLuhan’s M.E. suggests, ancient oral-aural cultures are syncretic (GG). Oral-aurals create present-focused time and space through syncretic action (e.g., ritual, myth, etc.). There is no situated “I” who participates amidst a community of distinct, particular others, but rather a “me” who is propelled by a homogenous “we.” There is thus no private-public distinction and action tends to the extreme of strictly-public, concrete involvement. One’s situation is given by one’s place amidst the group rather than being mediatively constituted through the resonant between of self-other, private-public, abstract-concrete and proximity-distance.
As Merleau-Ponty indicates, during the syncretic moment, “the child is … the situation and has no distance from it” (147). Without the spatialization and temporalization – the
situatedness of self, borne through the good anxiety and narcissism of the specular image – there is not time or space for any degree of abstract reflection. The immediate and proximate structure of syncretic existence does not permit such activity. As McLuhan, influence by Innis, contends the extreme tendencies of purely oral-aural cultures encourages a pattern of closed social organization through which one experiences connection, i.e., the subsumption of particular distinctions, rather than mediating contact. In other words, the electronic age of Narcissus-
wildly different, syncretic social structure – the crucial difference, of course, being the scope, size and reach of the tribe, which complicates the necessary element of distantiation.
Purely oral-aural cultures are spatially coherent and temporally unified via a single common moment. Electronic tribalism conversely is comprised of spatio-temporal diversity and historical narrative multiplicity. What is more, as the extremely distanced and abstract Cartesian medium of mechanical print precedes this seemingly syncretic electronic environment, the human condition must now cope with the stress of shifting ground as we transition from the unbridgeable, ambivalent abyss of Cartesian individualism to the ambivalent overwhelming
proximity of situatedless depth.
The syncretic, concrete extreme negates distance to equate the person with the tribal situation. The Cartesian, abstract extreme increases distance to remove the person from his or her situation entirely. Thus, I suggest that for both McLuhan and Merleau-Ponty, the former is a realm of pathological anxiety and narcissism due to overwhelming proximity; the latter is a realm of pathological anxiety and narcissism due to unbridgeable distance. Both extremes offer the possibility of pathology. For, without acknowledgment of our vital and social need for self-other, self is rendered a fragile and unmoored “figure-minus-ground” (McLuhan and McLuhan LOM). Per McLuhan, to achieve comfort we withdrawal and close ourselves off or submit our
particularity to the masses. With the Cartesian, abstract, private-self extreme, we are closed to affect and other. With the syncretic, concrete public-we extreme, we are closed to reason and self. Electronic communication media encourage both forms of closure as the residues of the Cartesian self, blend into the syncretic (GG; UM).
As previously stated, McLuhan suggests that choosing to retreat to the extremes of private isolation or public mass existence are easy paths to personal comfort, which we assume
due to our technological blindness and our tacit acceptance of the promises of technology. Yet, this comfort is paradoxical. Without the experience of good anxiety and narcissism, which discloses self-other reciprocity, we suffer narcissistically anxious nervous exhaustion –
Americanitis. We find sporadic glimmers of comfort in extremes due to relief from the anxious
work of existence, and we find shelter from the threat of the temporal, i.e., change, in the
psychologically rigid commitment to strictly private or strictly public reifications.
Thus, for both Merleau-Ponty and McLuhan, the experience of good anxiety and
narcissism is necessary to human existence as we are perceptively introduced to the ambiguity
and situatedness necessary for experiencing human communication and communication ethics practices. Communication media technologies encourage Americanitis because their material presence and their embodiment of prevailing cultural assumptions perpetuate ambivalence. Both Merleau-Ponty and McLuhan idealize face-to-face, dialogic speaking-listening due to the
structure, the rich, dynamic form, the grounding process, of the situation. When I am physically distant from my interlocutor (e.g., reading), and when the media form compromises
intersubjective reciprocity (e.g., news, film), I am not always able to feel the perceptive- expressive good anxiety and narcissism of self-other.
Without self-other, other is an abstract-general other, an object available for my inspection, subsumption and use.5 I may attend to the spectacle through which they are presented, yet I do not attend to the other as a sinew of my common flesh with whom I am
similar-different (Carman 124). With face-to-face dialogue, the reverse often results. The quality of the situation temporalizes and spatializes self-other in a manner that invites our attentive openness – our bodily presence at the world. The originative, incarnating self-mediation of perception tacitly calls upon that anxiously narcissistic incorporation of our extended bodily
reflection to open our intentional attention. Through the perceptive-expressive opening experience of good anxiety and narcissism, I contact and choose to acknowledge self-other as concrete, particular, similar-different bodies, who respond together to poet the world (McLuhan
M&L 169; Merleau-Ponty Signs 313).
Yet, amidst electronic media environments, communication technologies complicate the attendant perception necessary for contact by reflexively shaping spatio-temporal dimensions of existence, as well as the ambiguous distinctions between self-other, private-public, abstract- concrete and proximity-distance. Though McLuhan definitively addresses the abstraction of the physical, material body with his Narcissus-Narcosis metaphor, his corpus also offers a critique of the entire Western philosophical tradition. From his dissertation through LOM, McLuhan’s Thomistic, Catholic humanist assumptions suggest that neglect of the body in the philosophical tradition produces amnesia regarding our vital need for perceptive-expressive engagement with others amidst a world. This amnesia, reinforced by the narrative grounding-grounds of
mechanical and electronic technology, allows us to forget our need for self-other.
This need is not only social. With their prioritization of the perceptive-expressive body, Merleau-Ponty and McLuhan indicate that self-other relating is also vitally important, revealing that the experience of pathological anxiety is a physiological, psychological and communicative response to the unmet need for self-other. Traditional medical and psychological interpretations indicate that we experience anxiety, a correlate with the fight-or-flight sympathetic response, when we perceive a danger that is not actually present.6 However, per Merleau-Ponty and McLuhan, as well as a recent study from the University of Chicago, the lack of self-other engagement is actually a vital threat (Scutti; Cole et al.).
Persons who indicate feeling lonely demonstrate biological evidence of increased fight- or-flight responses, which compromise physical health by increasing white blood cell count and inflammation as well as decreasing the body’s ability to fight infection (Scutti; Cole et al.). This conclusion is noted in earlier literature as well. Physician Mimi Guarneri, who began with traditional practice, pioneered the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine in the late 1990s after noticing the correlation between heart disease and loneliness. Additionally, a series of
sociological studies regarding phenomena of narcissism, anxiety and loneliness emerged during the middle decades of the twentieth century with attention to our vital need for community (e.g., Bellah et al.; Lasch; Reisman et al.; Tillich). Like Merleau-Ponty’s and McLuhan’s respective works, this acknowledgement of the vital-social link, and our need for self-other is a recollection of our embodiment, embedment and vitally interdependent need for ambiguous, reciprocal relating that emerges between the Cartesian and syncretic ambivalent extremes of technologized human experience. Pathological narcissism, involving fight and flight, is thus a physiologically and psychologically protective response to an unmet, vital need for self-other (Turkle; Lasch; Levin) – an adverse reaction stemming from the modernist, ambivalent assumption “that we can function without regard for the Other” (Arnett, Fritz and Bell 17). Yet, as McLuhan and
Merleau-Ponty indicate, the protection found by ambivalent Narcissus only perpetuates the anxiety of loneliness – an actual threat to human existence.
Ultimately, what emerges through this interweaving of Merleau-Ponty and McLuhan’s assessments of human existence, human communication and communication ethics is a narrative understanding7 of how and why we suffer the ills of Americanitis. The narrative indicates that divisive ambivalence, particularly when coupled with the rapid pace of technological change, encourages a desire for controlled connection without responsibility, rather than ambiguous
contact with others. The electronic self suffering from Americanitis is extremely fragile, unable to comprehend and tolerate the complex demands of others (Turkle), and strives for absolute autonomy or absolute belonging. The electronic self also commands the immediate satisfaction of affirmation without concern for reciprocity. The appropriation of objects, including persons who we perceive as abstract objects rather than particular beings, satisfies our desire to a degree, yet also leaves us facing the vital threat of loneliness. The promises of technology indicate that we may remedy our vital disequilibrium by breaking free from the body and controlling our environment. Yet, Americanitis offers evidence to the contrary. How, then, might we respond to our narcissistically anxious nervous exhaustion – our digital Americanitis?