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May 22, 2025
Harold Adams Innis (1894-1952) and the Founding of Media Ecology Studies (REVIEW ESSAY)
By Thomas Farrell
The Canadian Harold Adams Innis (1894-1952) was an intellectual giant at the University of Toronto. He is a founder of media ecology studies, as Edward A. Comor's new 2025 book titled W. T. Easterbrook: Harold Innis's Final Course (Peter Lang) makes clear.
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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) May 9, 2025: I envision the present wide-ranging and, at times, deeply personal 12,456-word OEN article as a follow up to my wide-ranging and, at times, deeply personal 12,900-word OEN article titled "Thomas J. Farrell's Further Reflections on His Life and Work" (dated May 2, 2025), in which I mention the gorgeous American porn star Cory Chase by name 117 times. In the present 12,456-word OEN article, I mention the gorgeous Cory Chase by name 99 times - still 18 fewer times than in my 12,900-word OEN article dated May 2, 2025.
In addition to being a follow up to my earlier 12,900-word OEN article, I envision the present OEN article as a grand synthesis of some of my other OEN articles in which I also criticize the tragic anti-body heritage of Christianity as well. In the present OEN article, I also further contextualize my criticisms of the tragic anti-body heritage of Christianity in the broad cultural context of our Western cultural history in terms of media ecology - which I have written about frequently in some of my other OEN articles about 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.
You see, over all 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 OEN article, 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 OEN article.
In addition, in the present OEN article, 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.
If you listen with your heart to what I say in the present OEN article, you will hear me singing about my love not only for the gorgeous 44-year-old American porn star Cory Chase, but also for the now-deceased media ecologists Walter Ong (1912-2003), Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), and Harold Adams Innis (1894-1952) and for the now-deceased the Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) and for the now-deceased American Jungian psychotherapist and psychological theorist Robert Moore (1942-2016).
Even though I once again sing my praises of the gorgeous 44-year-old American porn star Cory Chase already has millions of fans who enjoy watching her perform in her various porn videos that are available to view free on the internet. Even though I once again in the present OEN article call her to the attention of OEN readers, I do so primarily to express my enthusiasm for her gorgeous body and her wonderful performances - but not necessarily to win more fans for her work among OEN readers. (In the present OEN article, the word "porn" appears 136 times.)
However, I would very much like to win over more OEN readers of the present OEN article as fans of media ecology.
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 Canaidan university on the model of English universities.
In 1951, McLuhan published his first book: The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (sic) (Vanguard Press). In any event, McLuhan heard that Innis had put his 1951 book on the reading list in one of his courses at the University of Toronto. And McLuhan was duly impressed with this and decided to become acquainted with Innis. 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) (University of Toronto Press, 1962) and (2) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (sic) (McGraw-Hill, 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, 2(2), pp. 79-85. The word "Christen" in the title of Ong's 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 (New American Library Signet Books, 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, Harver 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 (Harvard University Press, 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 (Gingko Press, 2006).
Now, Ong reviewed McLuhan's 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy glowingly in the Jesuit-sponsored magazine America, 107(24) (September 15, 192), pp. 743 and 747. Ong's review is reprinted in An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Hampton Press, 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 (Peter Lang, 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 about him:
Click Here Innis FRSC (November,theory%2C and Canadian economic history.
Further information about Easterbrook is available in the following two online sources:
Further information about Comor is available at his website: Click Here
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 OEN readers are liberals and progressives, and here I am writing the present review essay about Comor's new 2025 book for liberal and progressive OEN readers. So I owe you a word of explanation about how I am proceeding in the present OEN article.
Over my years of contributing 670 OEN articles, starting in October 2009, I have introduced OEN 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 OEN 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 OEN review essay 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 "Thomas J. Farrell's Further Reflections on His Life and Work" (dated May 2, 2025; viewed 521 times as of May 8, 2025), in which I mention the gorgeous American porn star Cory Chase by name 117 times:
Yes, I love Cory Chase's gorgeous body, and I also love her energetic performances in her many heterosexual porn videos that are available free on the internet and in her many DVDs. Of the Cory Chase DVDs that I own, I love watching her perform energetically in them on the big-screen television in the living room of my home in Duluth, Minnesota - the bigger image, the better to see her gorgeous body. In all of Cory Chase's porn videos, the camera work on her gorgeous body is always extraordinary.
When I characterize Cory Chase's performances as energetic, I mean that she expends great energy in her bodily movements - but I also intend to suggest that her freedom of bodily movement if impressive. Figuratively speaking, Cory's gorgeous body is all in, in each performance. She is in excellent physical condition, and her leg muscles are very strong - which she regularly shows in video after video when she squats astride the guy she is f*cking and vigorously bounces up and down vigorously with his co*k in her p*ssy. Cory Chase's gorgeous body is well toned. She is a talented sexual athlete whose agile and nimble sexual athleticism always makes her look like she is actively participating in whatever she is doing at any given moment - even when her p*ssy is being pumped by the guy's co*k in it. See stepmom Cory perform in the long dream sequence with stepson Rico and his dad in the movie To Die For (2024), for example.
Cory Chase is a seasoned sexual performer. Simply stated, Cory Chase is not a passive participant, but an active sexual performer. Good girl, Cory! Keep up the good work, Cory!
Now, in the present wide-ranging and, at times, deeply personal review essay, I once again discuss the gorgeous porn star Cory Chase as well as my relevant previous OEN articles about porn and also my previous OEN articles about the tragic anti-body heritage of Christianity. Once again, I basically agree with the axiom that American politics is downstream from American culture, and I see porn that is available free on the internet and in DVDs as part of American culture today.
In the present OEN article, I dwell on porn videos that are available free on the internet. Wikipedia has an entry of "Internet pornography" which gives us a sense of the extent to which porn is available on the internet:
However, for my purposes in the present essay, I am interested in more than just the extent to which porn is available on the internet. Granted, what interests me about porn being available free on the internet is not just the extent to which it is viewed, but the extent to which it is influencing American culture and the sexual practices of Americans - not just the sexual practice of masturbation in accompaniment to watching porn on the intent. For example, when young boys and men of all ages watch exhibitionistic women get double penetrated and appear to enjoy being double penetrated, do those young boys and men of all ages then try to get the lady friends to engage in double penetration? Similarly, when young boys and men of all ages watch exhibitionistic women perform in gangbangs and seem to enjoy themselves, do those young boys and men of all ages then try to get their lady friends to engage in gangbangs?
And what about American women who watch heterosexual porn that is available free on the internet? Do those American women who watch exhibitionistic women engage in anal sex and/or double penetration and/or gangbangs, do those American women then engage is those forms of sex in their own sex lives?
Let me now re-frame those questions in terms of the tragic anti-body heritage of Christianity in American culture.
Since the widespread availability of heterosexual porn videos available free on the internet, have American men and women engaged more frequently than ever before in anal sex and/or double penetration sex and/or gangbang sex - or has the tragic anti-body heritage of Christianity in American culture prevented American men and women from engaging in these forms of heterosexual activity?
Now, I want to make an observation here about American politics today. Today in American politics, we find conservatives who articulately object to porn and even introduce legislation at the state level trying to restrict access to porn. In the practical order of American politics today, we do find certain elected American politicians in state legislatures who vote against certain legislative proposals made by conservatives. Yes, to be sure, votes against particular legislative proposals at the state level made by conservatives does indeed occur today. But it strikes me that there is a bit of a political catch involved here. While conservatives at the state level may make particular legislative proposals against porn, they can more generally see themselves connected with other American conservative who are also opposed to porn. But it strikes me that there is a political imbalance here in the sense that there do not appear to be any liberal or progressive American politicians on the national scene today who are known for speaking in favor or porn that is available free of the internet and in DVDs. Sadly, defending porn publicly is far too tricky to do for most liberal and progressive American politicians to undertake doing it. Defending porn publicly is still far too tricky because the tragic anti-body heritage is still far too strong in American culture today.
Consequently, I see my various OEN articles in favor of heterosexual porn that is available free on the internet and in DVDs as cutting-edge advocacy on my part. Good boy, Tom! Keep up the good work, Tom!
Ah, but I do not believe that my advocacy in favor of heterosexual porn that is available free on the internet and in DVDs is sufficient advocacy of heterosexual porn to make a big impact today on American politics or on American culture - regardless of how many OEN readers may read my various OEN articles. But advocacy in favor of heterosexual porn needs to begin somewhere, and so I hope that my advocacy in favor of heterosexual porn in my various OEN articles about porn will soon become part of greater public advocacy nationally in favor of heterosexual porn. (Because I am familiar only with heterosexual porn that is available free on the internet and in DVDs, I write in favor only of heterosexual porn; I leave it to other writers to write in favor of homosexual porn that is available free on the internet and in DVDs.)
Ah, but how does my writing in favor of heterosexual porn that is available free on the internet and in DVDs relate to my more general discussions of media ecology and of Ong's account of our contemporary secondary oral culture? To spell out the obvious first, porn that is available free on the internet emerged in our contemporary secondary oral culture. Porn videos that are available free on the internet feature a mute feature. However, when I watch porn that is available free on the internet, I do not use the mute feature because I want to hear everything in the heterosexual porn video - in short, I do not simply watch an exhibitionistic man's body coming together with an exhibitionistic woman's body as they have sex with one another for our viewing pleasure. Yes, our viewing pleasure at watching the exhibitionist man and the exhibitionistic woman have sex with one another is of paramount importance in heterosexual porn videos. But the soundtrack further enlivens of viewing pleasure of watching them interact with one another and have sex with one another. Consequently, I see the soundtracks of porn videos that are available free on the internet as well attuned to our contemporary secondary oral culture.
In any event, the prolific porn star Cory Chase (born on February 25, 1981) has been prolific in making many, many mom-son porn videos over the years. In fantasy skits of many of her mom-son porn videos, her real-life husband Luke Longly (born on July 23, 1974) plays the role of her lucky son who get to f*ck his desirable mom. In many other of Cory Chase's many, many mom-son porn videos, Alex Adams (born on January 10, 1986, plays the role of the lucky son who gets to f*ck his desirable mom. So if you were to watch Cory Chase's many mom-son porn videos with either Luke Longly or Alex Adams playing the role of her lucky son who gets to f*ck his desirable mom with the mute feature on the video turned on, you would not understand that the male in the video is playing the role of the son of the gorgeous Cory Chase.
In addition to featuring the relationship of the role of the male actor to Cory's role as the mom, the soundtrack of each of her many, many mom-son porn videos also captures Cory's words to her son as she seduces and fucks him, but also Cory's happy sighs and moans as she enjoys f*cking by her son.
Incidentally, can you imagine what it must be like for her husband Luke Longly go out in public with his popular porn star wife Cory Chase in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where they live and record many of her porn videos in their mansion there? Even if the gorgeous Cory were not provocatively dressed going out in public, she is a porn star celebrity, and her fans in Fort Lauderdale would recognize her. Even if her fans in Fort Lauderdale who recognized her in public did not say or do anything to acknowledge that they recognized her as the popular porn star celebrity that she is, still going out in public with a celebrity in Fort Lauderdale might be a bit daunting for her porn star husband to have to experience regularly as part of their married life together as a couple.
Now, beyond the obvious measure of the millions of views of some of Cory Chase's porn videos that are available free on the internet, I would suggest another way to get a sense of just how popular the gorgeous Cory Chase is today would be to search for these various combinations of terms: (1) Cory Chase + mom-son pics"; (2) Cory Chase + ass pics" (she has a gorgeous ass); (3) Cory Chase + legs pics" (she has gorgeous thighs); (4) Cory Chase + pics of anal sex"; (5) "Cory Chase + pics of cumshots"; (6) Cory Chase + pics of double penetration"; (7) "Cory Chase + pics of gangbangs"; (8) Cory Chase + POV pics"; (9) Cory Chase + lingerie pics"; and (1) "Cory Chase + blowjob pics."
You will quickly discover that pics of Cory Chase for each of these nine headings are readily available to the website Porn Pics:
No other porn star featured at Porn Pics has such a great variety of pics of her as Cory Chase does of her performances and of her gorgeous body.
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, Thomas J. Farrell, and Paul A. Soukup (Sage Publications, 1991, pp. 194-209).
Finally, I should also say here explicitly that in the wide-ranging review essay, I says nothing new about Trump or the Trump administration. In my wide-ranging and, at times, deeply personal 28,800-word 665th OEN article "Fareed Zakarian and Ezra Klein of President Trump's Foreign Policy" (dated March 24, 2025; viewed 1,793 times), in which I mention the now-retired American porn star Mandy Flores by name 250 times, I discuss President Trump's foreign policy extensively - and in the present OEN review essay, I do mention my March 24, 2025, OEN article here, but without saying anything new here about Trump's foreign policy"
Now, in addition, in certain other OEN articles of mine, I have described Trump and his many male MAGA supporters as misogynists who by virtue of their misogyny are not yet psychologically ready to experience the liberation of endogamous kinship libido "married within" their psyches to their early childhood image of their own moms (or mother-figures). However, in the present wide-ranging review essay, I once again discuss the liberation of endogamous kinship libido "married within" the psyches of men to their early childhood image of their own moms (or mother-figures).
Now, if you believe in truth in advertising, as I do, then 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:
(1) Martin L. Friedland's The University of Toronto: A History (University of Toronto Press, 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).
(2) John G. Slater's Minerva's Aviary: Philosophy at Toronto: 1843-2003 (University of Toronto Press, 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 (Oxford University Press, 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) (University of Toronto Press, 1962); and (2) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (sic) (McGraw-Hill, 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, he also lists four books by Innis, with ten specific page references to them.
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 (Peter Lang, 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. Some 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 (Oxford University Press, 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 (University of Toronto Press, 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 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 (Hampton Press, 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 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 Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Hampton Press, 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 (University of Toronto Press, 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 (Farrell, 2000, pp. 229-287) as follows (in alphabetical order):
Carey, J. W. (1965). Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. Antioch Review, 27, pp. 5-39.
Creighton, D. (1957). Harold Adams Innis: Portrait of a scholar. University of Toronto Press.
Havelock, E. A. (1982). Harold A. Innis: A memoir [pp. 13-43; "Preface" by Marshall McLuhan (pp. 9-10)]. Harold Innis Foundation.
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, 7, pp. 201-208.
McLuhan, M. (1953). The later Innis. Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communications, Serial number 1, pp. 117-127.
The short-lived print journal Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communications was co-edited by M. McLuhan and T. Carpenter of the University of Toronto in the 1950s. Today, Robert Logan of the University of Toronto edits the online journal New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication that is named in honor of the 1950s print journal. Yes, the title of the print journal included the word "Communications" (with an "s), but the tile of the online journal features the word "Communication" (no "s"). But you get the idea that the online journal is named to honor the print journal.
In any event, Ong published an essay titled "Space and Intellect in Renaissance Symbolism" in Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communications, issue 4 (February 1955): pp. 95-100. Subsequently, Ong expanded that essay and published the expanded version as "System, Space, and Intellect in Renaissance Symbolism" in the journal Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance (Geneva), volume 18 (May 1956): pp. 222-239. Subsequently, Ong reprinted the May 1956 version in his 1962 book The Barbarian Within: And Other Fugitive Essays and Studies (Macmillan, pp. 68-87). Subsequently, it was reprinted in volume three of Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Scholars Press, 1995, pp. 9-27).
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 an annotation after the bibliographic entry on Havelock (1982), I say the following: "Harold Innis (1894-1952), who received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, was a remarkably prolific and rightly famous faculty member at the University of Toronto (some of his books are listed below). Havelock a faculty member at Victoria College at the University of Toronto from 1929 to 1947. After he had become familiar with Harvard's Milman Parry's work on oral composition (see Milman Parry, The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry, edited by Adam Parry [Oxford University Press, 1971]), Havelock delivered some public lectures at the University of Toronto on oral composition in the 1940s, which Innis evidently attended (Havelock 1986a, p. 17). In the "Introduction" to Havelock's memoir, Marshall McLuhan, who joined the faculty of the University of Toronto in 1946, states that 'my own acquaintance with Innis began when I heard that he had put my book The Mechanical Bride [Vanguard Press, 1951] on his course reading list' (p. 10). McLuhan then read Innis's book The Bias of Communication [University of Toronto Press, 1951]" (Farrell, 2000, pp. 245-246).
Now, in addition, in one of my lengthy notes in the "Notes" in my book (Farrell, 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)" (Farrell, 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 (Yale University Press, 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 (University of Toronto Press, 1951);
(2) Changing Concepts of Time (University of Toronto Press, 1952);
(3) Empire and Communications (Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 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, 31(3), pp. 129-135. It is reprinted in volume one of Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Scholars Press, 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 (Cambridge Universite Press, 1934) (Comor, "Index," 2025, 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 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; 1,012 views):
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; 1,130 views):
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.
Now, as for psychological transformation in other persons today, I do discuss a certain form of significant psychological transformation that men of a certain age today can experience in some of my other recent OEN articles in connection with using mom-son porn videos that are available free on the internet to find a fantasy mom to adopt in their own personal imaginative lives to help them experience the liberation of endogamous kinship libido "married within" their psyches to the early childhood image of their own moms (or mother-figures).
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 OEN article - 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 XII (????) 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 (T&T Clark, 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 the present OEN article, as in some of my recent OEN articles, I have discussed how men of a certain age can use mom-son porn videos that are available free on the internet to adopt a fantasy mom to help them experience the liberation of endogamous kinship libido "married within" their psyches to their early childhood image of their own moms (or mother-figures) in their psyches. I have briefly mentioned here both Mandy Flores and Cory Chase as fantasy moms in my life. In the case of both of them, I have also briefly indicated how old each of them is compared to my own Mom's age at a certain time in my life. ( My own Mom was born in 1918.)
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.
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 (Inner City book, 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 (Routledge, 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.
Ah, but do I see the gorgeous porn star Cory Chase as embodying dynamic calm in her performances in her various porn videos?
Yes, I do see the gorgeous porn star Cory Chase as embodying dynamic calm in her various performances, including, of course, her various performances in her many, many mom-son porn videos that are available free on the internet and in her many mom-son DVDs.
Let me be clear about what I am saying about the gorgeous porn star Cory Chase here. Based oh her dynamic calm of all of her performances, I am here crediting her dynamic calm as manifesting that she is accessing the optimal and positive form of the Queen archetype of maturity in her psyche.
However, I have no basis for also crediting Cory Chase with also accessing the optimal and positive form of the King archetype of maturity in her psyche - because I do not know her and her life well enough to do so. I hasten to add here that I also have no basis for saying that Cory Chase is mainlining (Moore's term) either "shadow" form of the King archetype of maturity in her psyche (i.e., I do not know her well enough to make such an interpretation about her) - because I do not know her and her life well enough to do so.
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 (Methuen, 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, 11(3&4), (2012), pp. 255-272.
Now, in my various OEN article 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).
In any event, I have discussed porn, especially the ubiquitous mom-son porn videos that are available free on the internet in various OEN articles (I know, I know, mom-son porn videos are also popular in DVDs):
"Texas' War on Porn, and Robert Moore's Theory of the Archetypes of Maturity" (dated December 6, 2024; viewed 816 times):
"On Interpreting the Ubiquitous Mom-Son-Porn 0n the Internet" (dated December 19, 2024; viewed 1,354 times):
"Some Personal Reflections About Porn" (dated January 2, 2025; viewed 1282 times):
"Some Further Reflections about Cory Chase and about Donald Trump" (dated January 10, 2025; viewed 660 times)"
"Some Deeply Personal Reflections About My Life, and About Certain Porn stars" (dated January 29, 2025; viewed 868 times):
"Philip Shenon on the Last Seven Popes" (dated March 11, 2025):
"Fareed Zakaria and Ezra Klein on President Trump's Foreign Policy" (dated March 24, 2025; viewed 1,793 times; in which I mention the now-retired 36-year-old porn star Mandy Flores [born on March 19, 1989] by name 250 times):
Now, when my own mom (born in September 1918) turned 36 years old in September 1954, I was 10 years old, and I had not yet experienced puberty.
"Thomas J. Farrell's Encore on the Tragic Anti-Body Heritage of Christianity" (dated April 29, 2025; viewed 680 times as of May 8, 2025):
"Thomas J. Farrell's Further Reflections on His Life and Work" (dated May 2, 2025; viewed 464 times, as of the time of this writing; in which I mention the prolific energetic gorgeous 44-year-old porn star Cory Chase [born on February 25, 1981] by name 117 times):
Now, when my own Mom (born in September 1918) turned 44 years old in September 1962, I was 18 years old, and I had by then experienced puberty. I started college in September 1962 at Rockhurst College (now Rockhurst University), the Jesuit college in Kansas City, Missouri.
Now, I today obviously like to discuss 44-year-old Cory Chase's gorgeous body and her energetic performances (1) in her many, many mom-son porn videos, (2) in her many anal sex porn videos, (3) in her many double penetration porn videos and (4) in her many energetic gangbang porn videos. In short, I am a Coy Chase fan; I love her gorgeous body, and I also love watching her perform so energetically in her various heterosexual porn videos and DVDs. Even though Cory Chase has been so prolific in making porn videos, I should also note here that she has also made many girl-girl porn videos as well.
However, my general impression is that the gorgeous Cory Chase is most famous with her fans because of her many, many mom-son porn videos. My general impression is that the gorgeous Cory Chase is extremely popular with young boys. No doubt the gorgeous 40-something Cory Chase herself publicly cultivates the view of herself as a MILF (= "mother I'd like to f*ck"), thereby appealing primarily to young boys.
Nevertheless, even though I obviously enjoying discussing certain aspects of the gorgeous 44-year-old Cory Chase's body and her performances in her heterosexual porn videos, I want to dwell here for my present purposes on something she said more than seven years ago now in a published interview conducted by the American journalist Holly Kingstown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, titled "Twenty Questions with Porn Star Cory Chase" (dated July 31, 2017):
As part of Cory Chase's response to one question that Holly Kingstown asks her, she says, "The main reason you watch porn is to see that chemistry [between the porn performers] and allow us to make you feel you are there with us" (my boldface here and in my OEN article dated May 2, 2025).
In my OEN article, I then say, "Wow! I agree with that 100%. Yes, the psychodynamic of porn videos in relation to the porn viewers is to engage the fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking (in C. G. Jung's terminology) of the porn viewers."
In Cory Chase's published interview conducted by Holly Kingstown, Cory says that she did not date much in high school, but that she did hang out with the boys as just one of the guys. I see Cory's high school years of hanging out with the boys as just one of the guys as contributing to her chemistry with all the different guys who f*ck her in her many, many porn videos that are available free on the internet. Cory's chemistry as a married porn star with each guy who fucks is remarkable - and her chemistry as a married wife with Alex Adams is especially remarkable. Thus, we could say that Cory went from not dating boys much but hanging out with the boys as a high school girl to having the boys hang out with her in her holes as an insatiable married wife.
Yes, the insatiable married wife Cory Chase plays the insatiable stepmom Cory in the movie To Die For (2024).
Now, in my love of writing about Ong's media ecology thought, I have been insatiable. Thus, my own experience provides me with a basis for understanding the happily married wife Cory Chase's insatiable love for f*cking other guys - in addition to f*cking her husband. Moreover, just as I do not condemn myself for my insatiable love of writing about Ong's media ecology though, so too I do not condemn the happily married wife Cory Chase for f*cking guys in addition to f*cking her husband. As a matter of fact, to the contrary, I love -- and greatly admire - Cory Chase's energetic performances as the happily married insatiable wife who loves to f*ck guys in addition to her husband. For me, Cory Chase is the gold standard of porn stars - against which all other porn stars should be measured.
Now, I dare say that not many other American wives have had as many boys hang out with them in the respective holes.
Now, in the present OEN article, I am now following up on my previous OEN article dated May 2, 2025, by spelling out here the further psychodynamics of the porn viewers involved in the liberation of endogamous kinship libido "married within" their psyches to each of their early childhood image in their respective individual psyches of their own mom (or mother-figure) and of their own dad (or father-figure).
In the present OEN article, I am also explaining far more fully than I have in any of my previous OEN articles, how the psychodynamics of the liberation of endogamous kinship libido "married within" one's psyche can proceed with the help of watching certain porn videos that are available free on the internet with empathy and with one's identification with certain actors in the fantasy skits.
In short, in the present OEN article, I am explaining to English-speaking readers of the present article how they can proceed to use porn in their own private and personal lives to help them experience psychological rebirth and psychological transformation.
Yes, I am here indeed making truly big claims about the positive potential of heterosexual porn for the psychological good of the porn viewers.
Ah, but why am I indeed making truly big claims about the positive potential value of heterosexual porn for the psychological good of the porn viewers? I am indeed making these truly big claims here about the positive potential of heterosexual porn for the porn viewers because I believe the axiom that American politics is downstream from American culture. So if you want to change American politics, work on changing American culture.
As I see the situation, I see myself working toward changing American culture today be combatting the anti-body heritage of Christianity, on the one hand, and, on the other, by spelling out the potential positive value of heterosexual porn that is available free on the internet for the positive potential of psychological rebirth and psychological transformation of the porn users.
Because I am dwelling on the 40-something gorgeous porn star Cory Chase in the present OEN article, as I did in my 12,900-word OEN article dated May 2, 2025, in which I mention cory Chase by name 117 times, I also want to single out here for your attention Cory Chase's wonderful performances in the various sex scenes in her movie To Die For (released by MYLF; but without any credits to whoever wrote the movie's script or to whoever directed the movie starring Cory Chase or whoever worked on the camera crew - the camera work on Cory's gorgeous body is excellent). I think that credits should be listed for the writer and the director and the members of the camera crew.
In the movie To Die For (2024), Cory Chase plays a complicated woman who is sexually insatiable. In the movie, Cory plays the stepmom of Rico. In an early scene in the movie, stepmom Cory tells stepson Rico that even though she is only his stepmom, she loves him like a son, and moments later stepmom Cory and stepson Rico kiss one another passionately, and subsequently in the long dream sequence, stepmom Cory and stepson Rico and Rico's dad have sex with stepmom cory; but stepson and dad do not have anal sex with stepmom Cory, nor do they double penetrate stepmom Cory in their scene of having sex with stepmom Cory.
In many of Cory Chase's many, many mom-son porn videos that are available free on the internet, mom Cory often has sex not only with her son but also with the son's dad at the same time, and often son and dad double penetrate mom Cory. But in the movie To Die For, stepson Rico and his dad do not double penetrate stepmom Cory. However, much of the dialogue spoken by the dad in the movie is new and unique in Cory Chase's many, many mom-son porn videos that are available free on the internet. For example, the dad in the movie says that he just wants to watch his son Rico f*ck his stepmom Cory. In addition, the dad asks his wife Cory what it feels like to having her son f*ck her, and the dad also asks his son Rico what it feels like to f*ck his mom Cory.
However, in the movie To Die For, the insatiable stepmom Cory also has other sex scenes in the movie with a young man named Tony who works as her teaching assistant, and in the final long sex scene in the movie, Tony and Rico do double penetrate stepmom Cory. In all of Cory Chase's sex scenes in the movie, she is characteristically energetic in having sex with Rico, with Rico's dad, and with Ryan.
Thus, To Die For (2024) is a bit more complicated than Cory Chase's many, many other mom-son porn videos and DVDs. For the porn viewers who might want to adopt the gorgeous 40-something Cory Chase in the movie as their fantasy mom-substitute for their own real moms, Cory's stellar performance as the insatiable stepmom in To Die For would mean having an adopted fantasy mom who not only likes having sex with you, but also likes having sex with other young guys as well as having sex with you and another young guy at the same time and being double penetrated by you and the other young guy. In short, in the movie, the insatiable stepmom Cory is a gorgeous sex goddess who excels in having sex -- and a gorgeous nymphomaniac. And most young boys and men of all ages do not typically fantasize about an adopted fantasy mom-substitute who is an insatiable nymphomaniac.
Now, because the point that I want to establish by the listing of certain recent OEN articles of mine is that I have been dwelling on porn and on the tragic anti-body heritage of Christianity is all of the recent OEN articles of mine that I have listed here. But it now remains for me to mention my preceding OEN article in which I did not single out porn for discussion, but in which I did single out the tragic Roman Catholic moral vision of individual personal psychological and moral development: "Robert Moore on Optimal Human Psychological Development" (dated September 17, 2024; viewed 1,079 times):
In short, porn is designed to help porn viewers masturbate. But the Roman Catholic moral tradition teaches that masturbation is sinful - a no-no. As a result, because I am broadly supporting heterosexual porn that is available free on the internet, and thereby saying yes to heterosexual porn, I am also thereby saying yes to masturbation as a healthy practice not only for boys and men, but also for girls and women.
Ah, but why am I taking this position about masturbation as a healthy practice?
Remember that I dwell on mom-son porn videos. I apply Jung's account of what he refers to as fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking to offer my account of the psychodynamics of young boys and men of all ages, including myself of course, who view the fantasy skits in mom-son porn as involving what Jung refers to as fantasy thinking involving images of moms being fucked by their sons.
In addition, I use certain other chapters in Part Two (pp. 121-444) in Jung's extensively revised and re-titled 1952 book Symbols of Transformation, mentioned above, to interpret the appeal that mom-son porn videos have to young boys and men of all ages: Jung's Chapter III: "The Transformation of Libido" (pp. 142-170) and Chapter V: "Symbols of the Mother and of Rebirth" (pp. 207-273).
For the young boys and men of all ages who watch mom-son porn videos that are available free on the internet, the mom in each of them is a symbol of the viewer's own mom (or mother-figure).
For the young boys and men of all ages who are attracted to watching mom-son porn videos that are available free on the internet, those mom-son porn videos express the viewer's own desire for psychological rebirth.
Ah, but how does such psychological desire for individual personal rebirth occur from watching mom-son porn videos?
All of us, males and females alike, have an image from our early childhood of our own mom (or mother-figure) in our psyches. The image in our psyche from our early childhood of or own mom (or mother-figure) is, figuratively speaking, "married within" our psyche to libido (broadly conceived here as sexual energy).
Rebirth or psychological transformation occurs when we experience the liberation of endogamous kinship libido "married within" our psyches.
Ah, but how does watching mom-son porn videos that are available free on the internet supposedly facilitate the liberation of endogamous kinship libido "married within" each individual viewer's psyche?
Please bear in mind that nothing that I am now saying here necessarily occurs inevitably. I am here claiming only that watching mom-son porn videos that are available free on the internet can help the male viewer experience the liberation of endogamous kinship libido "married within" his psyche to his early childhood image of mis own mom (or mother-figure). For this to happen, the male viewer of mom-son porn must identify with the desirable mom in the fantasy skit and wish that she were his own mom and also identify with the son in the fantasy skit and wish that he is the son f*cking his mom in the video.
Now, in addition to mentioning the prolific energetic porn star Cory Chase 117 times in my OEN article dated May 2, 2025, I quote something she said in a published interview conducted by the American journalist
Now, having explained these alignments of Jung's thought with Ong's thought writ large repeatedly in my various OEN articles, I was delighted to find that I could make similar alignment in my own mind as I read about Easterbrook's account of Innis's thought on pages 48-51 of Comor's new 2025 book.
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). I wish that Comor had gone on to explain more fully how and when McLuhan manifests "his tendency reductionism."
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, the time has now come for me to give you the contents of Comor's new 2025 book:
"Acknowledgments (p. ix).
"Introduction" (pp. xi-lvi).
"Tom Easterbrook's Lecture Notes for Innis 4b (pp. 1-105).
"September 23, 1952: "How best to get at the work of Harold Innis?" (pp. 1-6).
"September 30, 1952: "Main subjects and reading" (pp. 7-10).
"October 7, 1952: "Innis's interests and methodology" (pp. 11-13).
October 14, 1952: "Why so much fuss about communications?" (pp. 14-24).
"October 21, 1952: "Receptivity to Innis" (pp. 25-27).
October 28, 1952: "Greece - Innis's ideal-type culture" (pp. 28-30).
"November 18, 1952: "The value of studying antiquity" (pp. 31-35).
November 25, 1952: "Innis's transition to the subject of communications" (pp. 36-40).
December 2, 1952: "Capacities involving Roman and common law" (pp. 41-45).
January 6, 1953: "Ways of thinking and developments in law" (pp. 46-51).
"January 20, 1953: "Conditions enabling the Byzantine empire" (pp. 52-55).
"January 27, 1953: "Byzantium: history of an ideal-type empire" (pp. 56-63).
"February 3, 1953: "Implications of media - Byzantium to the 20th century" (pp. 64-77).
"February 10, 1953: "A brief comment on Innis's methodology" (p. 78).
"February 17, 1953: "The press, time, economics, and Innis's unfinished paper" (pp. 79-102).
"Appendix 1: "Course documents" (103-110).
"Summer vacation reading list (no author, n.d.)" (p. 103).
"Fourth-rear reading list in Economic history (likely prepared by Harold Innis, 1950)" (p. 106).
"Reading list for Economics 4b (likely prepared by Harold Innis, 1951)" (p. 107).
"First essay topic (prepared by Harold Innis and Tom Easterbrook, 1952)" (p. 108).
"Final exam questions (prepared by Tom Easterbrook, 1953)" (p. 110).
"Appendix II: Innis's final paper: Harold Innis, 'The Decline in the Efficiency of Instruments Essential in Equilibrium' from the American Economic Review Vol. 43 No. 1 (1953), 16-22
"Appendix III: Tom Easterbrook, 'Harold Innis 1894-1952' from the American Economic Review Vol. 43 No. 1 (1953), 8-12
"Appendix IV: Tom Easterbrook, 'Innis and Economics' from The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science Vol. 19 No. 3 (1953), 291-303.
"Appendix V: Tom Easterbrook Interview, 21 November 1972" (pp. 139-150).
"Index" (pp. 151-173).
In conclusion, in the present OEN article, I have deeply contextualized my various recent OEN articles about the tragic anti-body heritage of Christianity and about porn, including two American porn stars I love and admire (Mandy Flores and Cory Chase), in the broad media ecology cultural account that I have developed over the years from Ong work in media ecology - and that I have also often discussed in my OEN articles over the years. In my somewhat extensive discussion of porn in the present OEN article (I use the term "porn" 127 times in the present essay), I have provided you with the titles of my other relevant OEN articles and links to each of them, if you want to follow up something I have said in the present OEN article.
In the present wide-ranging and, at times, deeply personal OEN article, I have succinctly highlighted Edward 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 scholar 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 scholar to read Comor's new 2025 book and benefit from reading it today.
Thank you for reading the present OEN article. God bless you in your ongoing psychological transformations and keep you in His/Her loving mercy.
Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.
On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:
Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview
Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview