“Western man acquired from the technology of literacy the power to act without reacting. The advantages of fragmenting himself in this way are seen in the case of the surgeon who would be quite helpless if he were to become humanly involved in the whole of mankind and to incorporate us with in his operation. We acquired the art of carrying out the most dangerous social operations with complete detachment.“

-p4

MM smartly uses the surgeon as his reference point for utter detachment, however his “most dangerous social operations” bring to mind the social operation of war. Clearly this is a social operation that doesn’t happen with full detachment as can be evidenced by the existence of PTSD in so many survivors of war. If McLuhan’s assumption that this fragmentation and aloofness decreases as electronic culture draws further into “involvement” with our actions, then this should bear out in the inability for soldiers to separate themselves from the violence they personify, the decreased inability to simply say “I had a job to do.” One could see this “involvement” going one of two ways 1. A soldier who has become personally involved in the carnage decides he/she cannot continue to make war. 2. A soldier who continues to make war either possesses the values (or lack thereof) that allow them to make the carnage of war or they must realign or work their values into “involvement”–to change their mind to reflect their choice. My suspicion is that the latter is actually the more prevalent. Involvement may not necessarily mean bringing your values into action, but turning actions into new values.