Thomas Farrell
University of Minnesota Duluth
Abstract: In my wide-ranging and, at times, deeply personal 7,950-word “Probe: Edward A. Comor’s 2025 Book W. T. Easterbrook: Harold Innis’s Final Course, and Walter J. Ong’s Thought,” I first succinctly highlight the pertinent work of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter Jackson Ong, Jr. (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) of Saint Louis University, the Jesuit university in the City of St. Louis, Missouri (USA), where, over the years, I took five courses from Father Ong. In addition, I succinctly highlight the life and work of the Canadian scholar Harold Adams Innis (1894-1952; Ph.D. in economics, University of Chicago, 1940) of the University of Toronto, who, along with the Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980; Ph. In English, Cambridge University, 1943), is the co-found of the Toronto School of Media Ecology. Edward A. Comor’s edited 2025 book W. T. Easterbrook: Harold Innis’s Final Course is the focal point of my discussion of Harold Innis in the present “Probe” essay.
I envision the present wide-ranging and, at times, deeply personal “Probe: Edward A. Comor’s 2025 Book W. T. Easterbrook: Harold Innis’s Final course, and Walter J. Ong’s Thought” as a follow up to my earlier 12,900-word OEN article Further Reflections on His Life and Work” (dated May 2, 2025; viewed 1,357 times as of June 26, 2025). However, I also envision the present “Probe” essay as a grand synthesis of the media ecology work of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering American media ecology theorist Walter Jackson Ong, Jr. (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) of Saint Louis University, the Jesuit university in the City of St. Louis, Missouri – where, over the years, I took five courses from Father Ong. (A link to my OEN article dated May 2, 2025, can be found in the “References” at the end of the present “Probe” essay.)
Over the years of my writing and publishing about Ong’s media ecology work, I have felt like a man on a prophetic mission. Consequently, in the present “Probe” essay, as I construct my grand synthesis here, I also feel like a man on a prophetic mission to call your attention to certain things that I think are importance for you to know about and for you to notice in your life.
Whew! That’s a wide-ranging agenda for one “Probe” essay.
If you listen with your heart to what I am saying in the present “Probe” essay, you will hear me singing my praises of Walter Ong’s media ecology work, of Marshall McLuhan’s media ecology work, and of Harold Innis’s media ecology work.
In addition, in the present “Probe” essay, I say goodbye to the Argentine Pope Francis (1936-2025), the first Jesuit pope, and hello to the new American Pope Leo XIV (born Robert Prevost in Chicago, Illinois, on September 14, 1955), who was elected the new pope of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church on May 8, 2025. That’s a wide-ranging agenda. Let’s get started.
The pioneering Canadian media ecology theorist Harold Adams Innis (1894-1952; Ph.D. in economics, University of Chicago, 1940) was an intellectual giant at the University of Toronto, when the pioneering Canadian media ecology theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980; Ph.D. in English, Cambridge University, 1943) joined the English faculty of St. Mike’s, the Catholic college, at the University of Toronto – a Canadian university on the model of English universities.
In 1951, McLuhan published his first book: The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (sic). McLuhan claimed that he heard that Innis had put his 1951 book on the reading list in one of his courses at the University of Toronto and that he (McLuhan) was duly impressed with this and decided to become acquainted with Innis.
But Comor documents that McLuhan’s claims are demonstrably debatable. Comor notes that Easterbrook, McLuhan’s lifelong friend, introduced McLuhan to Innis in 1948 (Comor, 2025, p. xviii, note 28). Innis was Easterbrook’s Ph.D. supervisor. Comor also points out that McLuhan “may have first read Innis’s work in 1936” (Comor, p. xxxi, note 67). In addition, Comor turned up new evidence that Easterbrook introduced McLuhan’s 1951 book The Mechanical Bride to Innis’s course, likely after Innis’s death (Comor, p. 93, note 177). In any event, McLuhan and Innis did become acquainted with one another before Innis died in 1952.
Now, McLuhan’s 1951 book The Mechanical Bride did not foreshadow McLuhan’s two important books in the 1960s that helped establish the scholarly field of media ecology studies: (1) The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (sic) (1962) and (2) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (sic) (1964).
Those two books catapulted Marshall McLuhan to unprecedented fame for an academic – and to enormous controversy. To this day, McLuhan is still the most widely known academic in the Western world.
Now, from Paris, Father Ong dispatched a review-article of his former teacher Marshall McLuhan’s new 1951 book The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (sic) titled “The Mechanical Bride: Christen The Folklore of Industrial Man” to Social Order (Saint Louis University). The word “Christen” in the title of Ong’s 1952 review-article is Ong’s editorializing – but editorializing in a way that he apparently felt that the Catholic convert McLuhan would not object to.
Ong’s 1952 review article was subsequently reprinted but re-titled in the book McLuhan Hot and Cool: A Critical Symposium with a Rebuttal by McLuhan, edited by Gerald Emanuel Stearn (1969, pp. 92-101).
For three years, Father Ong was based at a Jesuit residence in Paris, from which he travelled to libraries on the Continent tracking down volumes by the French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr Peter Ramus (1515-1572) and his followers and his critics as part of his massive research for his Harvard doctoral dissertation. In 1958, Harvard University Press published Ong’s massively researched doctoral dissertation in two volumes: (1) Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason; and (2) Ramus and Talon Inventory, a briefly annotated bibliographic listing of the 750 or so volumes that Ong tracked down in various libraries in the British Isles and in Continental Europe by Ramus and his followers and his critics. Now, Ramus and Talon Inventory features the dedication: “For/ Herbert Marshall McLuhan/ who started all this” (meaning that young McLuhan had started young Ong’s interest in Peter Ramus and the history of the formal study of logic when young McLuhan called young Ong’s attention to Harvard’s Perry Miller’s 1939 book The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939; for specific page references to Ramus, see the “Index,” p. 528).
McLuhan’s 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation about the history of the verbal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, also known as dialectic, was published posthumously, unrevised but with an editorial apparatus as The Classical Trivium: The Place of Thomas Nashe [1567-1601] in the Learning of His Time, edited by W. Terrence Gordon (2006).
Now, Ong reviewed McLuhan’s 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy glowingly in the Jesuit-sponsored magazine America (September 15, 1962). Ong’s review is reprinted in An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry, edited by Paul A. Soukup (2002, pp. 307-308).
Now, in 1952, W. T. (William Thomas) Easterbrook (1907-1985), Innis’s former student and present colleague, in 1952, at the University of Toronto, taught the mortally ill Innis’s signature course for undergraduates for him.
In the new 2025 book titled W. T. Easterbrook: Harold Innis’s Final Course (2025), Edward A. Comor (born in 1962; Ph.D. in political science, York University, 1995) of the University of Western Ontario provides us with an edited version of Innis’s last course as Easterbrook taught it and with a helpful long scholarly “Introduction” to his edited edition of Easterbrook’s text of Innis’s course (pp. xi-lvi).
Further information about Innis is available in the Wikipedia entry “Harold Innis.”
Further information about Easterbrook is available in the following two online sources (no dates) listed in the “References” at the end of the present “Probe” essay.
Further information about Comor is available at his website that is listed in the “References” at the end of the present “Probe” essay.
Now, Comor’s new 2025 book W. T. Easterbrook: Harold Innis’s Final Course is published in the Understanding Media Ecology book series under the general editorship of Lance Strate of Fordham University.
Now, at first blush, even the title of Comor’s new 2025 book suggests that it is a book for media ecology scholars – not a book for the generally educated reader – and certainly not a political book designed for liberal and progressive readers. But New Explorations readers are liberals and progressives, and here I am writing the present “Probe” essay about Comor’s new 2025 book for liberal and progressive New Explorations readers. So I owe you a word of explanation about how I am proceeding in the present “Probe” essay.
Over my years of contributing 679 OEN articles, starting in October 2009, I have introduced New Explorations readers to the work of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter Jackson Ong, Jr. (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) of Saint Louis University, the Jesuit university in the City of St. Louis, Missouri – where over the years I took five courses from him, mentioned above.
In short, Ong is a media ecologist, and so I am. Even so, why might liberal and progressive New Explorations readers be interested in Ong’s media ecology account of our contemporary secondary oral culture? To answer this key question, I invoke here the key axiom that American politics is downstream from American culture. In plain English, the changes being wrought in American culture since, say, 1960 in American culture are the result of what Ong refers to as our secondary oral culture that is brought to us by communications media that accentuate sound (e.g., television, telephone, radio, movies with soundtracks, videos with soundtracks such as DVDs, tape-recording devices, CDs, podcasts, and the like).
Ah, but all of this is somewhat general, and American politics is understandably animated by more particular cultural concerns. Thus, when I write about Ong’s work in my OEN articles, I try to bring Ong’s thought to bear on a certain political issue of the day. Well, good for me. Good boy, Tom!
Now, in part, the present “Probe” essay is primarily about Comor’s new 2025 book in media ecology is also a follow up to my last wide-ranging and, at times, deeply personal 12,900-word OEN article “Further Reflections on His Life and Work” (dated May 2, 2025; viewed 1,357 times as of June 26, 2025), mentioned above.
Now, taking various hints from Ong, I have written about our contemporary secondary oral culture today in my essay “Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today” in the well-organized anthology Media, Consciousness, and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong’s Thought, edited by Bruce E. Gronbeck, Paul A. Soukup (1991, pp. 194-209).
Now, if you believe in truth in advertising, as I do, then you should love the “advertisements” for Comor’s new 2025 book in the two blurbs about it on the back cover from (1) Ron Deibert of the University of Toronto and (2) Michael Stamm of Michigan State University. In Deibert’s blurb, he says the following: “Edward Comor’s book is like a time machine that takes us on a trip to the 1950s-era University of Toronto and to the final days of the late, great Harold Innis. It provides an intimate and detailed window into the research and teaching of a scholar widely considered to be a pioneer in the field of media ecology. This book is highly recommended and an essential read for all those interested in the history of communications technology.”
In Stamm’s blurb, he says the following: “Before his untimely death in 1952, Harold Innis wrote some of the most important works in communications studies in north America. In addition to his published scholarship, Innis presented his ideas to undergraduates at the University of Toronto through a course that his former PhD student Tom Easterbrook took over when his health failed. By assembling and contextualizing course materials and by drawing from conversations between Innis and Easterbrook during the preceding summer, Edward Comor gives scholars a fascinating window into Innis’s pedagogical approach, his end-of-life concerns, as well as what for Innis remained unfinished. Through Comor’s extensive introduction and the publication of Easterbrook’s lectures for the course, readers also will gain understanding as to how Innis communicated his ideas and how he was interpreted by students – both those in the class and Easterbrook.”
Now, both Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan are mentioned in the two following histories of the University of Toronto:
- Martin L. Friedland’s The University of Toronto: A History (2002; Innis: pp. 256, 257, 258, 294, 297, 302, 306, 318, 321, 330, 350, 414, 415-419, 432, 436, 449, 475, 487, 490, 493, and 568; and McLuhan: pp. 418, 484-487, 493, 535, 567, and 675).
- John G. Slater’s Minerva’s Aviary: Philosophy at Toronto: 1843-2003 (2005; Innis: pp. 274, and 327-330; and McLuhan: p. 568).
Incidentally, when I was in the Jesuits (1979-1987), I did my theological studies at the Jesuit theologate at the University of Toronto. In any event, both McLuhan and Ong were part of the intellectual ferment of the 1960s that accompanied the social ferment of the 1960s.
The social ferment of the 1960s included the black civil rights movement spearheaded by the Reverend D. Martin Luther King, Jr.
For Roman Catholics such as McLuhan and Ong, the social ferment of the 1960s included the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) in the Roman Catholic Church – which brought to an end the use of Latin in the Mass in in the official documents of the church, in favor of the use of the local vernacular language in the Mass. Vatican II also brought to an end the practice of Catholics abstaining from meat on Fridays.
For further information about the Second Vatican Council, see The Oxford Handbook of Vatican II, edited by Catherin E. Clifford and Massimo Faggioli (2023). In the United States, the social ferment also included the anti-war demonstrations of certain Americans who were opposed to the Vietnam War.
Now, McLuhan published two widely read books in the early 1960s: (1) The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (sic) (1962); and (2) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (sic) (1963).
In The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan referred to Ong’s various publications about the French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr Peter Ramus (1515-1572) (For specific pages references to Ong’s various publications about Ramus and Ramist logic, see the “Bibliographic Index” [pp. 286-287]).
Even though Ong published a generous review of McLuhan’s 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy, Ong nowhere cites any publications by McLuhan as significant for the development of his own thought in any of his books or articles. In McLuhan’s “Bibliographic Index” in his The Gutenberg Galaxy (p. 284), he also lists four books by Harold Innis, with ten specific page references to them (1) Empire and communication (1950); (2) Essays in Canadian Economic History (1956); (3) The Bias of communication (1951); and (4) The Fur Trade in Canada (1930).
Now, whenever I read a new book, I usually first look for ways in which the new book discusses certain things that I already know. With this purpose in mind, I usually first look over the table of contents, However, when I looked over the table of contents of this new 2025 book, which I will detail momentarily, I found that the items in the contents were far too specific and specialized in ways that did not permit me to relate the items in the contents to certain things that I already know.
As a result, I next looked over the “Index” in this new 2025 book (pp. 151-173). The certain items in the “Index” proved to include many items that I could indeed relate to certain other things that I already know. In Comor’s “Index,” I found an entry on Walter Ong (p 165). As you might expect, I then promptly turned to page xvn15 to see what Comor had to say about Ong. On page xv, Comor briefly discusses what is known as the Toronto School of media ecology. Comor says, “This ‘school’ – which began in earnest just one year after Innis’s death [in 1952] thanks to the efforts of [Marshall] McLuhan and Edmund Carpenter – played a significant role in what would become media ecology.” Comor’s accompanying footnote is to Lance Strate’s book Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition (2017). In a footnote number 15 on page xv, Comor says, “In addition to Innis and McLuhan [the Toronto School of Media Ecology] includes others who taught at that university {the University of Toronto], such as Eric Havelock and Edmund Carpenter. Others not at Toronto but associated with it include McLuhan’s former student, Walter Ong.”
Of course, at the time when young Walter Ong was a graduate student of young Marshall McLuhan’s at Saint Louis University, neither one of them was thinking or writing about media ecology. Ong and McLuhan stayed in touch with one another over the years by exchanging letters with one another periodically. A selection of McLuhan’s letters to Ong over the years are reprinted in Letters of Marshall McLuhan, selected and edited by Matie Molinaro, Corinne McLuhan, and William Toye (1987).
I gather that whenever Father Ong’s business took him to Toronto, he would visit with Marshall and Corinne McLuhan and their children. Father Ong’s business took him to the University of Toronto in 1981 to deliver the Alexander Lectures. Ong’s 1981 Alexander Lectures were subsequently published as Hopkins, the Self, and God (1986). As we might expect, Ong situates Hopkins in the larger cultural media ecology context of the history of orality and literacy in our Western cultural history.
Now, I mention here my way of proceeding to look over this new 2025 book to say that you might want to look over the “Index” in this new 2025 as your way of proceeding to get a sense of what all is discussed in it. Now, a word is now in order here about me and my admittedly limited knowledge of Harold Innis.
My award-winning book Walter Ong’s Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication in the Hampton Press Communication Series Media Ecology under supervisory editor Lance Strate of Fordham University (2000) received the Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology, conferred by the Media Ecology Association on June 15, 2001.
In my award-winning book, I discuss Marshal McLuhan extensively, because the young Canadian taught English at Saint Louis University for several years (1937-1944) when the young Walter Ong was sent to Saint Louis University as part of his lengthy Jesuit formation to study philosophy and English there. Young Ong took at least one course from young McLuhan, and then young McLuhan served as the director of Ong’s Master’s thesis on sprung rhythm in the posthumously published poetry of the Victorian Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889).
Ong’s 1941 Master’s thesis under McLuhan was published in 1949, slightly revised, as “Sprung Rhythm and the Life of English Poetry.” The slightly revised 1949 version of Ong’s essay was reprinted in An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry, edited by Paul A. Soukup (2002, pp. 111-174).
However, for a cogent critique of and correction of Ong’s account of Hopkins’ sprung rhythm, see James I. Wimsatt’s Hopkins’s Poetics of Speech Sound: Sprung Rhythm, Lettering, Inscape (2006).
However, some of my research about McLuhan took me into researching later years in life when he taught English at St. Mike’s at the University of Toronto – at a time when Harold Innis was an intellectual giant at the University of Toronto. Consequently, I had to learn something about Harold Innis.
My research on Harold Innis at the time led me to list my research results in the “Bibliography” on my book as follows (in alphabetical order):
Carey, J. W. (1965). Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. Antioch Review.
Creighton, D. (1957). Harold Adams Innis: Portrait of a scholar.
Havelock, E. A. (1982). Harold A. Innis: A memoir.
Havelock, E. A. (1986). After words: A post script [A transcribed interview conducted by C. J. Swearingen]. Pre/Text: An Inter-Disciplinary Journal of Rhetoric.
McLuhan, M. (1953). The later Innis.
Now, in Comor’s “Index” in his new 2025 book (pp. 151-173), I find listings for each of these four authors, with specific page references to Comor’s “Introduction” (pp. xi-lvi). Now, in addition, in one of my lengthy notes in the “Notes” in my book (2000, pp. 197-228), I say the following: “In a 30-page memoir of Harold Adams Innis, whose Empire and Communications (1950) and The Bias of Communication (1951) impressed Marshall McLuhan (1953, 1962), Havelock comments of the role of technology rather explicitly, because technology was a strong focus in Innis’s work:
‘As [Innis] reviews the varieties of material means by which men [sic] communicate, and the economic effects that various means produce, communication itself becomes the master of men [sic], not their servant. But latent in this analysis, never far below the surface, one detects the recurrent notion, or belief, that it is not technology but content that is important.
Communication is not a matter of mere gadgetry, nor, on the other hand, is it an activity which is self-justifying, pursued only for its own sake, with no end beyond that. Accepting the premise, as I think he does, that the content still remains the fruit of human thought, which for Innis is the paramount reality. The importance of studying different technologies is that it reveals varying methods by which minds communicate with each other, in pursuit of given ends, some of which are more worthy than others, and the technologies of communication have some effect on the choices made. I am aware that is saying I go beyond anything Innis explicitly say. But as one reads him, one senses a note of humanism, a sense of values which, to be sure, he assumed could be compromised by technology, but which are not created by it’ (Havelock 1982a, p. 38)” (, 2000, pp. 200-201).
Finally, I should also note here that Ong refers to Innis twice and lists three of Innis’s books in the bibliography in his seminal 1967 book The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (pp. 7, 99, and 334), the expanded version of Ong’s 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University. In his bibliography, Ong lists the following three books by Innis:
(1) The Bias of Communication (1951);
(2) Changing Concepts of Time (1952);
(3) Empire and Communications (1950).
Now, after Marshall McLuhan died in 1980, in the summer of 1981, Ong published “McLuhan as Teacher: The Future is a Thing of the Past” in the Journal of Communication. It is reprinted in volume one of Ong’s Faith and Contexts, edited by Paul A. Soukup (1992, pp. 11-18).
Whew! For me, this brief review of my own research from more than twenty-five years ago now for my book has been a welcome trip down memory lane. But more to the point, my research from more than twenty-five years ago now shows you why I decided to write a review of Comor’s new 2025 book. Even so, I want to stress here that I am not an expert in Innis’s thought. But Comor is an expert in Innis’s thought.
In any event, my observations in the present review of Comor’s new 2025 book are based on my free associations that were prompted by certain prompts made by Comor in his long “Introduction” of Easterbrook’s account of Innis’s thought or by Innis’s thought as recounted and/or quoted by either Easterbrook — or by Comor.
Because I am not an expert on Innis’s thought or on Easterbrook’s thought or on Comor’s work, I offer my observations here to you as the reader of the present review for your consideration in great humility. Of course, you are free to consider my observations here and then dismiss them as not important to you as a media ecologist.
Now, in looking over Comor’s “Index,” I spotted a book title that, figuratively speaking, jumped off the page and got me to turn immediately to read about in in the text of Comor’s new 2025 book. In Comor’s “Index,” I learned that Lord Macmillan published a book titled Two Ways of Thinking (1934) (Comor, 2025, “Index,” p. 171; also, p. 163 – where I learned that I should see pp. 48 and 49 of text of Easterbrook’s account of Innis’s thought – pp. 48-51).
Wow! In recent months, I have been writing about the Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist Carl Gustav Jung’s chapter titled “Two Kinds of Thinking” in his book Symbols of Transformation, second edition, translated by R. F. C. Hull (1967) in various articles that I have published online at the website known as OEN (the acronym stands for OpEdNews; the website’s URL is https://www.opednes.com).
See, for example, my wide-ranging and somewhat lengthy OEN article titled “About J. R. R. Tolkien’s Fantasy Novel, The Lord of the Rings” (dated February 15, 2025; viewed ??? times as of June 26, 2025).
In addition, see my other OEN article titled “Some Reflections on the Work of C. G. Jung and Walter J. Ong” (dated December 28, 2024; viewed many times as of June 26, 2025).
Now, in my various OEN articles about Jung’s account of “Two Kinds of Thinking,” I have succinctly characterized Jung’s thought about the two kinds of thinking: (1) fantasy thinking involving image and associative thinking, on the one hand, and on the other, (2) directed thinking involving logic.
Now, I read Jung’s chapter titled “Two Kinds of Thinking” in his extensively revised and re-titled 1952 book titled Symbols of Transformation, second revised edition, translated by R. F. C. Hull (Princeton University Press, 1967, pp. 7-33). But Jung’s important chapter “Two Kinds of Thinking” in his extensively revised and re-titled 1953 book Symbols of Transformation was first published in Jung’s 1912 book in German that the American psychologist Beatrice M. Hinkle of Cornell University translated into English as Psychology of the Unconscious (Moffat, Yard, and Company, 1916; “Concerning the Two Kinds of Thinking,” pp. 3-41).
Now, I have no reason to suspect from Easterbrook’s account of Lord Hugh Pattison Macmillan’s 1934 book Two Ways of Thinking that Lord Macmillan was familiar with Jung’s chapter titled “Concerning the Two Kinds of Thinking” in Hinkle’s 1916 English translation of Jung’s 1912 book in German.
Now, a word is also in order here about the title of Jung’s extensively revised and re-re-titled 1952 book Symbols of Transformation. You see, in it, Jung is primarily concerned with what he regarded as significant psychological transformation in a person.
Because the term transformation is not widely used, I want to say here that Walter Ong’s lengthy Jesuit formation, between the time when he entered the Jesuit novitiate in September 1939 and the time when he was ordained a Jesuit priest in June 1946, was designed precisely to produce in him in his life a significant psychological transformation. Lengthy Jesuit formation = psychological transformation over time.
Ah, but what about my own personal experience and my own personal psychological transformation? At the present time, as a result of the recent death of Pope Francis (1936-2025), about whom I wrote many OEN articles, am I now undergoing a further psychological transformation in my own life? Yes, I am. That is, I am presently undergoing more than the experience of grief that I would expect to undergo as a result of the pope’s death. However else I might describe what I am presently undergoing – besides grief – I am still too close to my own present experience to put my experience into further words. Yes, the words psychological transformation are undoubtedly very general words for me to use here in the present deeply personal “Probe” essay – which now further advances my other recent deeply personal OEN articles.
You see, because I was in the Jesuits (1979-1987), I took a special interest in the first Jesuit pope. I read books and articles about him, and I kept up with the news about his current actions and words. In a word, I became a Pope Francis fan. I fell in love with him. I identified with him as a late-in-life-for-me new father figure in my life.
In any event, Pope Francis is now deceased – as Father Ong also is. And on May 8, 2025, the cardinal-electors elected Cardinal Robert Prevost as the new Pope Leo XIV. Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903; pope 1878-1903) is famous for his encyclicals that started what is known as Catholic social teaching. Pope Francis’ widely read 2015 eco-encyclical is by far the most widely read encyclical in the tradition of Catholic social teaching. For further information about Catholic social teaching, see the lay English Catholic theologian Anna Rowlands’ book Toward a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times (2021).
I hope that the name Leo XIV signals that the new American pope is deeply committed to the tradition of Catholic social teaching. Now, starting in the fall semester of 1964, I fell in love with and had identified with the Jesuit Father Walter J. Ong and his media ecology work – a lifelong love affair that did not end with his death in 2003 and the profound experience of grief that his death brought into my life at that time. (My Dad was born in 1916. Father Ong was born in 1912. So Father Ong was about four years older than my Dad.)
Yes, in addition to having an early childhood image of our moms (or mother-figures) in our psyches, we also have an early childhood image of our dads (or father-figures) in our psyches. So, in addition to the liberation of endogamous kinship libido “married within” our psyches to our early childhood image of our moms (or mother-figures), we also need to experience the liberation of endogamous kinship libido “married within” our psyches to our early childhood image of our dads (or father-figures).
Evidently, with the death of Pope Francis, the time has now come in my life for me to experience the liberation of endogamous kinship libido “married within” my psyche to my early childhood image of my Dad in my psyche – and consequently the further psychological transformation of my adult life at the age of 81. Good luck with that, Tom!
To interpret these two significant late-in-life psychological movements, I turn to the work of the later Jungian psychotherapist and psychological theorist Robert Moore (1942-2016; Ph.D. in religion and psychology, University of Chicago, 1975) about the eight archetypes of maturity (four masculine archetypes of maturity and four feminine archetypes of maturity) and the accompanying two “shadow” forms of each of the eight archetypes of maturity in our psyches – giving each of us twenty-four spirits in our psyches to discern as we practice discernment of spirits in our psyches.
With Douglas Gillette as his co-author, Robert Moore published an informative series of four books about the four masculine archetypes in the male psyche in the early 1990s:
(1) The King Within: Accessing the King [Archetype] in the Male Psyche (1992a);
(2) The Warrior Within: Accessing the Knight [Archetype] in the Male Psyche (1992b);
(3) The Magician Within: Accessing the Shaman [Archetype] in the Male Psyche (1993a);
(4) The Lover Within: Accessing the Lover [Archetype] in the Male Psyche (1993).
But also see the important revised and expanded second edition of The King Within (2007).
In any event, I interpret the liberation of endogamous kinship libido “married within” our psyches to our early childhood image of our moms (or mother-figures) as accessing the optimal and positive form of the Queen archetype in our psyches.
Similarly, I interpret the liberation of endogamous kinship libido “married within” our psyches to our early childhood image of our dads (or father figures) as accessing the optimal and positive form of the King archetype in our psyches.
In the revised and expanded second edition of Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s important book The King Within: Accessing the Kind [Archetype] in the Male Psyche (Exploration Press, 2006, pp. 53 and 70; orig. ed., 1992a), Moore and Gillette associate the optimal and positive form of the King archetype of maturity in the human psyche with dynamic calm – which surely sounds like a quality I would welcome.
On page 53 of The King Within, Moore and Gillette write of “the dynamic calm that is a hallmark of the King energy.” On page 70, Moore and Gillette say, “All pairs of psychologically dynamic opposites [i.e., all the “shadow” forms of the eight archetypes of maturity in the human psyche] are reconciled in the tranquil by dynamic Self at the psyche’s Center.” (The tranquil but dynamic Self at the psyche’s Center” is a conceptual construct that Moore and Gillete are here borrowing from Jung.)
For further information about Jung’s conceptualization of the archetype of the Self (capitalized), see (1) the entry on the Self in Daryl Sharp’s book Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms and Concepts (1991, pp.119-122) and (2) the entry on the Self in the book titled A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis by Andrew Samuels, Boni Shorter, and Fred Plaut (1986, pp. 135-137).
Extrapolating from Moore and Gillette’s associating dynamic calm with the optimal and positive form of the King archetype in the human psyche, I also associate dynamic claim with the optimal and positive form of the Queen archetype of maturity in the human psyche.
Now, if my two interpretations of liberation from endogamous kinship libido “married within” our psyches to our early childhood image of our mom (or mother-figure), on the one hand, and, on the other, of our own dad (or father-figure) are correct, your guess is as good as mine as to what exactly these two psychological transformations in my life will mean in the practical order of my life. Stay tuned for further developments.
In the meantime, I will just have to be patient and wait and see what unfolds now over time.
Now, as you might expect, in my various OEN articles in which I discuss Jung’s account of “The Two Ways of Thinking,” I align what Jung refers to as fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking with what Ong refers to as primary oral thought and expression (also known as primary orality, for short). In his account of orally based thought and expression in his 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (pp. 36-57).
I have discussed Ong’s 1982 account of characteristics of orally based thought and expression on my article “Walter Ong and Harold Bloom Can Help Us Understand the Hebrew Bible” in Explorations in Media Ecology (2012).
Now, in my various OEN articles in which I discuss Jung’s two kinds of thinking, fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking, on the one hand, and, on the other, directed thinking involving logic, I then also align what Jung refers to as directed thinking with what Ong refers to as literate alphabetic thought (known as literacy, for short).
Now, the time has come for me to discuss Comor’s helpful long scholarly “Introduction” in his new 2025 book (pp. xi-lvi). First, I will now provide an overview of Comor’s “Introduction” by giving the subtitles he uses in it to announce the major subsections in it:
“Innis’s foundational role and representations of Innis in media ecology” (boldface subheading) (pp. xiv-xxvi).
“Easterbrook’s relationship with Innis” (boldface subheading) (pp. xxvi-xxxi).
“Easterbrook on Innis after Innis’s death” (boldface subheading) (pp. xxxi-xxxvi).
“What Easterbrook taught in Innis 4b” (boldface subheading) (pp. xxxvi-xli-).
“(ii) November 18 – February 10” (italicized subheading) (pp. xli-xlvi).
“(iii) February 17 – March 21” (italicized subheading) (pp. xlvi-xlix).
“Course readings” (boldface subheading) (pp. xlixl).
“The contemporary significance of Easterbrook’s notes and Innis’s approach” (boldface subheading) (pp. li-lv).
“Notes on the presentation of Easterbrook’s lectures” (boldface subheading) (p. lvi).
Now, in Comor’s subsection “Innis’s foundational role and representations of Innis in media ecology,” he says, “John Watson, in his unparalleled biography, Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of Harold Innis [University of Toronto Press, 2006, p. 3] states that Innis’s work ‘represents the old testament of communications theory, which, when paired with Marshall McLuhan’s new testament, forms the “Toronto School” of communications’” (p. xv).
Well, if Innis’s work truly deserves the vaunted status that the Canadian Innis biographer John Watson claims that it does, then we should all be grateful to Edward A. Comor for editing W. T. Easterbrook: Harold Innis’s Final Course.
In Comor’s untitled first subsection in his long “Introduction” in his new 2025 book, he sums up the first subsection by saying, “In sum, Easterbrook’s notes for Innis 4b are a remarkable precis of Innis’s later research; one that includes concepts and concerns that have been widely referenced as pillars of communication studies and media ecology” (p. xiv).
In footnote 13 in Comor’s subsection “Innis’s foundational role and representation of Innis in media ecology,” Comor says, “Indeed, McLuhan conceded that his [1962] book Gutenberg Galaxy, constituted ‘a footnote of explanation’ to Innis’s research, as it was Innis who first ‘hit upon the process of change as implicit in the forms of media technology.” Comor cites page 62 of McLuhan’s 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy as the source of this quotation from McLuhan.
Subsequently, in the same subsection, Comor says that “a book on Easterbrook’s comprehension of Innis is long overdue. Indeed, the lecture transcripts transcribed for this volume constitute more than Easterbrook’s intimate introduction to Innis’s thinking as they also clarify aspects of his contributions that have since been obscured or ignored” (p. xvi).
Subsequently, in the same subsection, Comor also says, “Here it should be noted that despite McLuhan’s influence, media ecology involves a range of perspectives, some of which resonate more with Innis’s dialectics than McLuhan’s tendency toward reductionism” (p. xxi). In the next paragraph, and also in note 37 on the same page, Comor goes on to explain more fully how and when McLuhan manifests “his tendency reductionism” regarding Innis’s thought. In addition, Comor further discusses elaborates McLuhan’s reductionist tendency regarding Innis’s thought in his reference to Buxton on p, xviii, note 30 and Carey on p. xxii, note 39.
Now, in Comor’s subsection “What Easterbrook taught in Innis 4b,” Comor says, “Easterbrook organized the course through consultations with Innis, the use of reading list, and Innis’s past essay and exam questions” (p. xxxvi).
Now, next up, I succinctly highlight Easterbrook’s fifteen subsections in Comor’s long chapter titled “Tom Easterbrook’s Lecture Notes for Innis 4b” in his new 2025 book (pp. 3-102). I have tried to read each of Easterbrook’s fifteen subsections as an attentive student listening to him lecture about Innis’s thought. I said above that if you listen with your heart to what I am saying in the present “Probe” essay, you will hear me singing my praises of Walter Ong’s media ecology work, of Marshall McLuhan’s media ecology work, and of Harold Innis’s media ecology work. Well, as I read Easterbrook’s fifteen subsections in Comor’s new 2025 book, I listened with my heart to Easterbrook singing his praises of Innis’s thought in subsection after subsection.
Now, the most efficient way for me to provide you with an overview of Easterbrook’s text is to tell you his subsections:
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “September 23, 1952: ‘How best to get at the work of Harold Innis?’” covers pp. 1-6.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “September 30, 1952: ‘Main subjects and reading’” covers pp. 7-10.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “October 7, 1952: ‘Innis’s interests and methodology’” covers pp. 11-13.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “October 14, 1952: ‘Why so much fuss about communications?’” covers pp. 14-24.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “October 21, 1952: ‘Receptivity to Innis’” covers pp. 25-27.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “October 28, 1952: ‘Greece – Innis’s ideal-type culture’” covers pp. 28-30.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “November 18, 1952: ‘The value of studying antiquity’” covers pp. 31-35.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “November 25, 1952: ‘Innis’s transition to the subject of communications’” covers pp. 36-40.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “December 2, 1952: ‘Capacities involving Roman and common law’” covers pp. 41-45.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “January 6, 1953: ‘Ways of thinking and developments in law’” covers pp. 46-51.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “January 20, 1953: ‘Conditions enabling the Byzantine empire’” covers pp. 52-55.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “January 27, 1953: ‘Byzantium: history of an ideal-type empire’” covers pp. 56-63.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “February 3, 1953: ‘Implications of media – Byzantium to the 20th century’” covers pp. 64-77.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “February 10, 1953: ‘A brief comment on Innis’s methodology’” covers p. 78.
Easterbrook’s subsection titled “February 17, 1953: ‘The press, time, economics, and Innis’s unfinished paper’” covers pp. 79-102.
Finally, for another new 2025 book about Harold Adams Innis, see Tom Cooper’s 668-page book Wisdom Weavers: The Lives and Thought of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan (Connected Editions). However, Cooper’s new 2025 book does not have an “Index.” But Comor’s new 2025 book does have an “Index” (pp. 151-173).
In conclusion, in the present wide-ranging “Probe” essay, I have succinctly highlighted Edward A. Comor’s new 2025 book W. T. Easterbrook: Harold Innis’s Final Course. In the 1950s, Innis published three important books that helped define the emerging field of studies known as media ecology. But you do not have to be a media ecology specialist to read Innis’s three important books of the 1950s and benefit from reading them today. Similarly, you do not have to be a media ecology specialist to read Comor’s new 2025 book and benefit from reading it today.
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