His proposition is that we use the media as growth factors to support the extension of human experience. Theweleit rereads McLuhan in his own way. Each new medium picks out a single function from the whole of human experience and magnifies it. This amputation opens up an entire field of new perceptions and possible metamorphoses, but at the same time anaesthetizes through sheer force. The media subject becomes so fascinated with the new devices' unlimited potential that it no longer notices the rest of the world.
Intoxication is an inevitable byproduct, with a hazardous as well as a happy side.
New media can cause an addiction in which the mediatist strives after an endless repetition of the same cycle of intoxication. This is a risk we have to take, Theweleit says, since it is only through media that humanity can grow. To him, growth is a prerequisite if we are to shape our own history instead of endlessly repeating past horrors. Over lunch, New York psychohistorian Lloyd deMause is questioned on the cycles of the Fantasy Wars. There is no end to it.