
Cormac McCarthy Explains the Unconscious - klenwell
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/cormac-mccarthy-explains-the-unconscious
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vikingcaffiene
McCarthy's novel "Blood Meridian" [1] is one of my all time favorite novels
and continues to be a source of inspiration. Its almost biblical in its prose
and unrelating in its pace and violence. I even wrote a song based off it
(shameless plug) [2]. The villain of the story, Judge Holden is up there with
the Joker for me in sheer evil. I would love to see a movie adaptation of it
although I doubt it will ever happen. Too bloody. Too violent. I highly
recommend it if you aren't easily put off by its dark tone.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Meridian-Evening-Redness-
West/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Meridian-Evening-Redness-
West/dp/0679728759)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45jPip11_j8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45jPip11_j8)

~~~
archagon
I love the snippets of prose I've seen from Blood Meridian and The Road, but I
am reluctant to read them, even though they're well on their way to becoming
classics of the English language. My impression is that the books are
saturated in darkness with very little light shining through. The violence and
horror will stick in my thoughts long after I put my books down. There are
certainly books and movies I regret ingesting for imagery that they've
embedded in the back of my mind.

Did you get that feeling reading these books?

~~~
roymurdock
The way I read it, McCarthy makes it painstakingly clear that destruction is a
necessary catalyst for creation. He treats violence honestly and respectfully,
but he does like to write about some pretty dire scenarios (massacre of
Mexicans/Indians, post-apocalyptic scavenging).

McCarthy expands on this theme slightly in a rare interview: _McCarthy likes
the scientists at the Institute for a simple reason: The stuff they explore,
like his writing, cuts to the bone.

“If it doesn’t concern life and death,” he says, “it’s not interesting.”_ [0]

If you're looking for lighter (but still excellent) storytelling on similar
Western/survival themes I'd suggest the Border Trilogy [1] by McCarthy. My
high school English teacher had us read these instead of Blood Meridian (his
favorite book of all time) because they're much less violent. You won't get
the full experience, though, as some of McCarthy's characters are genius
because of their depravity, violence, and seemingly chaotic natures.

[0] [http://www.davidkushner.com/article/cormac-mccarthys-
apocaly...](http://www.davidkushner.com/article/cormac-mccarthys-apocalypse/)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Border-Trilogy-Crossing-Everymans-
Lib...](https://www.amazon.com/Border-Trilogy-Crossing-Everymans-
Library/dp/0375407936)

~~~
tnorthcutt
+1 for the Border Trilogy; it's very well done, and very... engrossing, I
suppose is a good way of putting it.

~~~
RandyRanderson
I'm a huge fan of CM however I found the BT and it's obsession on horses
almost indecent. I would recommend BM, The Road and No Country ... in that
order.

I really don't see what ppl like about the BT.

------
JackFr
Worth reading simply for the quality of McCarthy's writing. And that he can
write about language and the mind without mentioning fMRI's, 'the part of the
brain that ___' and 'emerging neuroscience'.

~~~
metaphorm
I found it wonderful that McCarthy has avoided conflating the brain with the
mind. I get very frustrated trying to read through the literature on this
subject (a passion of mine, was my career track before I dropped out of
academia and learned how to program) and seeing the cult of the brain taking
over. McCarthy is not so encumbered with materialist scientism. He is willing
and able to discuss the mind in all its ethereal glory.

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cypherpunks01
The only Cormac McCarthy novel I've read is Suttree and it's incredible.
Apparently it's semi-autobiographical, and it reads like a Huckleberry Finn
outcast/hobo/dark alternate reality and extremely funny and sad the entire way
through. It's entirely gripping and so very well-written. I read it
voraciously a few summers back after a trusted friend's recommendation.

------
thisisforyou
It need not be stated that McCarthy's work is some of the most powerful and
well crafted fiction of the twentieth century, but this article came off as a
little strange and underdone. He has a few insights, but he jumps between
ideas without connecting them and doesn't provide much backing for his
arguments. The conclusion too is terribly weak: McCarthy presents his central
idea (that the unconscious isn't used to language so it speaks in symbols), he
mentioned it to someone he respects, the listener responded favorably, case
closed. Really? Its a fresh viewpoint but there seems like so much more to
explore here, so many more questions raised by the conclusion than those
addressed. For once his art of omission has worked against him.

~~~
nabla9
> McCarthy came up with his idea (that the unconscious isn't used to language
> so it speaks in symbols)

I tought this was Carl Jung's idea.

~~~
thisisforyou
Good point.

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singham
> “Why is the unconscious so loathe to speak to us? Why the images, metaphors,
> pictures? Why the dreams, for that matter.” [from the article]

This is true for majority of us. But for some people, unconscious doesn't even
use images. E.g. Aphantasia.

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-
it-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-
be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/)

What would Cormac say about this? Say if human evolution would have picked up
the "Aphantasia" gene to spread then Cormac's main question the "Kekule
problem" would dissolve or won't arise.

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ktRolster
This McCarthy quote from the (linked-to) essay caught my eye:

 _How the unconscious goes about its work is not so much poorly understood as
not understood at all. It is an area pretty much ignored by the artificial
intelligence studies, which seem mostly devoted to analytics and to the
question of whether the brain is like a computer. They have decided that it’s
not_

Is that true? Who has decided the brain is not like a computer? That is news
to me.

~~~
ppod
I love McCarthy's work but this is nonsense. Current AI work is all about the
relationship between differdntiable connectionist systems and
algorithmic/symbolic computation. AI researchers are well aware of the
parallels between this and subconscious/conscious human thought and things
like Kahnemann's system1 vs system2 thinking. "Is the brain like a computer"
is too ambiguous a question to take seriously.

His article is interesting in parts but really arrogant and not as novel or
anti-mainstream as he seems to think it is. It sounds like someone who spent a
long time chatting with physicists or biologists and no time reading research
in artificial intelligence, at least from the last decade.

------
mirimir
Well, I haven't read his Nautilus piece yet, but I think that I will like it.
I love his fiction. And it seems quite clear that consciousness is mainly just
an observer.

~~~
jjaredsimpson
I don't think it's quite clear at all. What distinguishes observer from
observed?

All experience is the working of consciousness. The feeling of subject-object
distinction is no more real than the distinction between hot-cold sensation.

~~~
mirimir
That voice in your head is the observer. It fancies being in control, but
that's mostly illusion. Effectiveness depends on getting it out of the way.

------
vinceguidry
The subconscious becomes way easier to understand once you meditate a bit on
the structure of the brain and do a little reading on the split-brain
condition.

The two hemispheres of the brain are connected by a neural superhighway called
the _corpus callosum_. If you cut the bundle, then the hemispheres can still
communicate, but the bandwidth is cut to a trickle. In this situation, the
hemispheres develop divergent personalities and they can often fight over
broader executive control of the organism.

With the bundle intact, the halves settle into roles, with the left brain
taking the conscious aspect. The right brain forms the unconscious.

~~~
azag0
Thanks for reminding me about the corpus callosotomy. I think I've read about
it at some point, and then it somehow merged with lobotomy in my mind,
although it's of course almost unrelated. Do you have a recommendation for
some good literature about the condition?

~~~
vinceguidry
I'd simply google split brain and start reading case studies. That's what I
did.

------
kordless
My unconsciousness has no choice but to speak to me, given I can't visualize.

------
simonh
>It may be that the influential persons imagine all mammals waiting for
language to appear. I dont know.

>Did it meet some need? No. The other five thousand plus mammals among us do
fine without it. But useful? Oh yes.

> There is no selection at work in the evolution of language because language
> is not a biological system and because there is only one of them

Organisms don't 'wait' for new traits to come along. They just come along and
if they are useful and benefit the organism, they propagate across the
population through successful reproduction. Evolved traits propagate
themselves precisely through being useful in helping the organism survive and
reproduce. McCarthy doesn't seem to understand the elementary process by which
natural selection functions.

>The invention of language was understood at once to be incredibly useful.
Again, it seems to have spread through the species almost instantaneously.

>For while it is fairly certain that art preceded language it probably didnt
precede it by much.

There is absolutely no evidence for any of this whatsoever. It's pure
supposition. How can he know language propagated so fast and arose so
suddenly? Some evolutionary biologists analyzing the physiology of early
hominids think there is evidence of physical adaptations for language as far
back as Homo Ergaster over a million years ago, but vocal language leaves no
archaeological evidence. There is just no way to know how long it took to
develop to modern forms and no reason to suppose that physical representation
in the form of art predates spoken language.

Edit: McCormack's premise seems to be that Language did not evolve from any
preceding capacity, including any preceding ability to communicate. We know
that modern primates other than humans communicate in very primitive pre-
linguistic ways, but McCormack specifically dismisses the idea that human
language is descended from or evolved from similar capabilities in our common
ancestors. This seems absurd to me on several grounds.

Our common primate ancestors did not have vocal cords or throat configurations
capable of modern speech, or anything close to it. McCormack even points this
out in the essay and highlights the fact that reconfiguring our throats for
speech is, independent of any advantage language gives us, a serious
disadvantage because it makes us more susceptible to choking. Yet then he goes
on to say that language gives us no evolutionary advantage because it’s ‘not a
biological system’. If it gives no evolutionary advantage, how does it
compensate for the increased risk of choking?

Speech-like non-verbal communication must have preceded physical adaptation in
order to make the adaptation advantageous, otherwise there would again have
been no compensating factor for the choking risk. So early forms of language-
like communication would necessarily have been non-verbal (by which I mean
involving gestures sounds like those made by some other modern primates but
not 'spoken'). This early communication was less efficient and advantageous
than spoken communication, otherwise physical adaptations for spoken
communication would not have increased fitness.

So it seems far more plausible that language-like communication originated as
more complex forms of gestures and sounds our common primate ancestors already
used and then evolved into a form dominated by spoken language in order to
increase it’s efficiency. After all, our ancestors going back millions of
years had complex physical culture including manufacturing composite
artefacts, creating and managing fire, processing and cooking food. All of
these would need to be taught somehow. Yet McCormack’s thesis is that this
teaching involved communications no more sophisticated than the basic
communications we see in other primates and other mammals today, until spoken
language somehow burst on to the scene fully formed 100k years ago.

