10 " In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard­headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reason­ ings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions." —A. N. Whitehead, "Adventures in Ideas." Our time is a time for crossing barriers, for erasing old categories—for probing around. When two seemingly disparate elements are imaginatively poised, put in apposition in new and unique ways, startling discoveries often result. Learning, the educational process, has long been associated only with the glum. We speak of the "serious" student. Our time presents a unique opportunity for learning by means of humor—a perceptive or incisive joke can be more meaning­ ful than platitudes lying between two covers. "The Medium is the Massage" is a look­around to see what's happening. It is a collide­oscope of interfaced situations. Students of media are persistently attacked as evaders, idly concentrating on means or processes rather than on "substance." The dramatic and rapid changes of "substance" elude these accusers. Survival is not possible if one approaches his environment, the social drama, with a fixed, un­ changeable point of view—the witless repetitive response to the unperceived.