Cormac McCarthy on Why Literature is Dead
Vložit
- čas přidán 20. 06. 2024
- Cormac McCarthy believed that science was much more important than literature. I will provide clips and passages from McCarthy exploring this idea in this video. We will then deep dive into the big questions about ethics in science, the decline of the humanities, and how humans 10,000 years from now will view Shakespeare!
✨Join the Cormac McCarthy Course Here! ✨(Ten hour Orchard Keeper Course Inside)
cormacmccarthy.substack.com/
💥 Cormac McCarthy T-Shirts - shirtlore.com
⚠️ Cormac McCarthy Instagram Content - / writeconscious
I often hear how ‘useless’ the humanities are from people who consider themselves as ‘practical’ and ‘realistic.’ If you ask these people the right questions you will see they hold many value judgments and philosophical ideas which have no scientific or practical validity whatsoever. Also, if you explain to them that there may be better arguments for alternative value judgments, they tend to get very angry. I’ve noticed, for a topic that “doesn’t matter,” it sure upsets a lot of people. But people are waking up to the fact that scientific materialism is a woefully inadequate worldview that doesn’t incorporate or explain the full spectrum of human experience. As Pascal once said “do you love someone scientifically?” We bring as much to reality as it imposes on us. It is our responsibility to create meaning from experiences which aren’t reducible to scientific analysis. This isn’t a flight from reality. It’s what it means to be human. We impose value, create meaning. It’s why the Bible says we are made in the image of God.
Beautiful comment. Agree and thank you!
It's ironic cause now science is pointing back in the direct of idealism; it's the mind that makes reality. So this reddit atheist materialist attitude is gonna die off when people start realizing it doesn't answer anything fundamental about human nature or reality
Once you're famous and old enough, everything is 'dead'. Cinema is dead, literature is dead, cooking is dead, video games are dead, comedy is dead, the internet is dead, the dead are dead.
"The only good thing about getting old is dying" Cormac
Lolololol
When you lose all interest in every aspect of life, then you are dead or ready to be.
You’re dead right buddy
Werner Herzog's perspective on the difference between facts and truth comes to mind. In general, science is more focused on the factual aspects of what amounts to an accountant's view of the world, while art and literature are more interested in the human aspects of truth which involve an ecstasy of illumination. Both aspects shape the world we live in, and in a strictly logical sense (especially given McCarthy's pessimistic assessments), it's easy to assert that the facts will remain even if our humanity erodes and our species goes into extinction. However, to discount the essence of what it means to us to live as human beings, even in our biased and often delusional ways would be to negate those aspects of reality which allow us to transcend the dull norms of fact-based existence and live in ways which no other animal or machine seems capable of even convincingly replicating or simulating.
The integration of facts and truth, and the skill of determining when to abandon one for the other might be considered the essence of wisdom. But, if it ever becomes possible to reduce wisdom to an algorithm of objective optimization, doing so would essentially negate the essence of our humanity and render any human aspects of our consciousness as counterproductive and inefficient.
My fear has never been for a decline in humanity's ability to gather facts, but a decline in our ability to act in accordance with our greater capacity for wisdom with respect to those truths which do not translate into simple scientific and mathematical forms. For instance, the very concept of justice in human terms does not reduce itself into any universal concept of something that "is" or exists in some purely definable way, but remains within our aspirations as an abstract ideal of some elusive "ought" which we strive to elevate the essence of our very souls towards like moths circling unto the higher light of greater suns.
With all that rather ineloquently stated, my sense is that Cormac tailored his writing to focus more on the human aspects of truth with respect to the facts as he knew them, and shifted his perspective in interviews to focus more on the facts with respect to truth. I would speculate that the reason for this shift had to do with considerations of what approach would best suit the audience at a given time and complement those things he'd already expressed in various ways previously. I could easily be wrong, but I've always had a sense that McCarthy was one of those artists who was always building on what he'd already done and trying to get closer to those things which forever elude us all.
Hope someone finds something illuminating in all this rambling, or is wise enough to ignore it outright. Love the channel, and hope you continue to put out interesting videos like these.
Well said
Very well said. Your writing flows very smoothly.
Love these vids especially the Mccarthy and blood meridian content! As an aspiring writer who is looking to be published soon I greatly appreciate the work here. Happy new year!
It may be a perennial human trait to say something is dead when losing interest in it. If literature is storytelling, then no, literature is not dead and will never die. Humans will always tell stories, even though the form and format will change.
McCarthy was also particularly bleak and doomsaying, so consider the source...
Agreed!
That videographer who filmed Mr Krauss interviewing Mr McCarthy did perhaps the worst job anyone has ever done at filming an interview. I'm not a stickler for perfect exposure, but WOW! Perhaps the worst videography in the history of world. Every competent videographer in the world would have gladly done that for free. Who hired the idiot?
Agreed!
Mainländer called it the “will-to-death” when it came to our spiritual and active pursuit of definition against the inevitable fate of death and entropy. We seek to understand everything against Death’s crawl, seek to break free and become as something grander, our own individual divine essence, and that is what makes science both a grand and very harrowing pursuit. When We Cease to Understand the World explains that quite beautifully, the line between madnesses and intelligence. War enthralls us, death commands us, and fear makes of us grander things
Basically: we’re all going to die, synecdoche.
Good storytelling is as fundamental to science as it is to literature.
--
I thought this was an excellent video. I recently have been introduced to Martin Buber's idea of an I-Thou and an I-it relationship. I think these two ways of interacting with the world are very relevant to your video. Another thought I had was the following. It probably has a few holes in the logic, but whatever.
1) The scientific method is necessarily a reductive method.
2) A person who uses only a reductive method to understand and interact in the world sees everything as mere objects.
3) The value of a mere object comes from its use only and is not intrinsic to the object itself.
4) Therefore, the scientific worldview sees people as mere objects that have no intrinsic value.
I guess the question is, are we alright with everyone seeing each other as mere objects. I'm not, the idea makes me super uncomfortable. I think I'll keep reading the Hobbit to my kids in the mean time.
Great thoughts! Don't worry about holes in logic. Only logic bros who see you as an object care about them lol
This is another thing McCarthy said that makes me think he was always taking the piss when answering these questions, acting the curmudgeon and the contrarian. He was writing literature basically up until the moment his heart stopped. He knew he was never going to see much return on The Passenger and Stella Maris but he dedicated his final years to those works. These are not the actions of a man who views literature as a lesser pursuit!
Krauss is fairly obtuse about running Shakespeare against the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
The former (largely a single human being, even if minor parts of the plays were added later by others, and even if you hold S wasn't S) created the greatest art corpus in the history of the world, in terms of humanity understanding itself.
QM and Relativity are beautiful and deep and extraordinary, but they do not compete with Hamlet or Lear.
I remember this faddish argument in philosophy thru the 1980s at the university. Philosophy was killed then by science too. Then a philosopher came along and said something interesting.
it's back!
Krauss seems to not get The Passenger or Stella Maris. He’s always so smug. And McCarthy in the interview is obviously very tired and very ill and not in the mood to argue much with Krauss but does what he can.
Yes!
I adore Stella Maris.
I found Alicia beautifully alluring, interesting, and tragic. I don’t know that most who read have the patience to understand the depth of CM’s writing in his final work. She has a level of intelligence that is more of a curse than a blessing.
It took 13 billion years for us to realize it’s 13 billion years old
Interesting. I pretty sure literature is a human emotion. As long as humans exist there will be art and literature. If we "have science after everything else is gone," that means humans will be no more, and the thing doing the science will be our A.I. descendants.
Science is not a thing, it is a process. An argument, I think, can be made in his books that science is a religious act, or has some proximity to God. For example, the sextant in The Road could be a holy artifact, similar to paper with the equations. **looking for connection** In The Passenger the sister is deified, just as the boy is deified in The Road.
Great insight and great quote from Stella Maris!
Great video. Absolutely nail on the head for STEM nerds. I also Appreciated the breakdown of the false binary between the Humanities and Science
@@donjindra You people have just made things worse. Has constant internet access, advanced military/ surveillance tech, data harvesting socials, etc done anything to alleviate people's suffering, loneliness, and inadequate material conditions? No, we're on the brink of self annihilation. We tried to change the world before we fully understood it.
Science is more important than literature. No doubt. But you cant have science without language, which is the 1st technology that leads to everything else. So language established our communal, cooperative life. Then after centuries of kings and priests building their authority on specialized language systems and spells language becomes increasingly specialized and sophisticated, say in the enlightenment period with newton. This specialized language splits off and becomes science, of physics and economics and alchemy/chemistry. But Im not gonna listen to some geezer like Cormac tell me i shud readSCIENTIFIC AMERICAN in my time after work and b4 bed instead of DR NO by percieval everett! Science vs The Novel is a bullshit argument. Sure, classic sci fi from heinlein to start wars is pretty stupid once you realize it take years to get to mars. But it dont mean i shud stop reading top shelf fiction cuz non-polluting energy is really really important to mankinds future whereas another PORTRAIT OF A LADY is only really morally deep and intellectually invigorating. Fuck Cormac.
In a lot of ways science is just another industry and people are just there to get their paycheck and it's what they chose to major in in college. Don't tell me "science is more important" and start rattling off about Wittgenstein and the atomic bomb. Writers are nutty though. I love you Cormac.
I've never read Cormac McCarthy. He's one of the modern novelists I've yet to get to. I must say, however, that this video did not inspire me to hop on Amazon and order his books. The wizened little gnome on the sofa (not Krauss, the other gnome) says nothing at all profound in this clip. And Krauss's statements border on ludicrous. What does this mean: "The results of science silence poetry for a thousand years"? Poetry and science have entirely different aims, and entirely different ways of achieving those aims. One is not in conflict with the other. When a physicist says to a novelist, "You've said that science is more interesting than literature," and the novelist says "Yes," one's only response should be, "Great. Go work on science and leave the literature to someone else." I'm having a hard time trying to even understand what Krauss is getting at. Some of the things he says are -- well, let's just say they're unintentionally funny: "I'm a huge fan of Shakespeare, don't get me wrong; but it's hard to think that it competes ultimately with the edifice of the standard model of particle physics." LMAO That's because Shakespeare doesn't compete with physics, ultimately or otherwise. [I'm sorry, Write Conscious, I found nothing profound in your video, and quite a bit in it that makes little sense.]
No worries Jeff. Lots of other good authors.
@@guyburgwin5675 I love Capote. Have you read "The Muses Are Heard"? That's my favorite of his books. But I reject your analogy. I'm not going to not read McCarthy because of this video; I just found what he and Krauss said to be absurd. Maybe McCarthy was just humoring Krauss? I found his interview of Woody Allen really unenlightening. He should stick to physics.
How dense are you? They are referring to beauty... DUHHHH!!!!
Throughout history art (poetry, plays, paintings, etc) has been maybe the main source of profundity and beauty for people to meditate on and appreciate but now science is starting to rival or even surpass art in that respect and that is what is being argued. That's what you don't understand, Jeff
@@JeffRebornNowYou are such a hipster. That book is not your favorite Capote book.. Obviously In cold blood is his best book.
McCarthy reading Spengler is based. For anyone who hasn’t read or looked into him he’s a interesting thinker and seems to be returning very much into the zeitgeist.
Burroughs got all the Beats into Spengler, if it meant anything.
I think McCarthy is just being grumpy here . Look at the amount of audiobook channels on CZcams. You may not be reading per se… yet we are actually going back to the most ancient form of story telling- sitting in the dark and listening to a voice delivering a story- also take note of the most popular type of content- Cosmic Horror, Lovecraft et al. Everyone now at least has an idea who or what Cthulhu is . My point is that everything is cyclical, to borrow a worn phrase, Time is a flat Circle. Storytelling will never die, the method of the stories’ transfer from source to receiver may change. Science fiction fulfils a purpose. This is a great time to be a listener, simply have an idea or book pop into your head and it’s here-We just pick our own genre. Look at the amount of people who have listened to the Blood Meridian audiobook on CZcams or…The Man in the High Castle…or The Wasteland…or M. R. James…or Stephen King . Often people watch a film, read comments as to how the book is better- The Shining is a great example- and they go straight to CZcams. Listening to a voice narration for story telling is the oldest yet ironically presently the most popular method of brain pictures caused by structural word- play
Get an sm-58 and put a pop filter on it. Compress your voice or limiter it down 10 db and we can all hear you better. Good content, bad audio. You need a producer.
thanks for the tips!
Good tips. Audio sounds busy and overwhelms the microphone leading to strained listening and loss of message. Which is unfortunate, because the message and channel are very good. Think of Cormac and Hemingway who both mastered the art of the unspoken word, less is more, and letting the reader complete the thought or sentence. Bring that to the audio or podcast world and you will have something great, IMHO.
A Different World S4 Ep. 16 "A Word In Edgewise"
?
@@WriteConscious It dealt with the importance of art in our lives.
In the earliest days of humankind, religion, song, story, art and epistemology were all one. Now religion is in retreat, pushed into a corner by science and reason. Art and music have been transformed. Each of these things, once united as one practice, have spiralled off on divergent trajectories. Yet, we still make sense of our world through stories and narrative. Even a science project begins with an hypothesis which is only a scientist imagining a particular narrative.
Bullshit
lol
who cares what McCarthy things.
Not you!
You..clearly !!