In "The Passenger" and "Stella Maris," Cormac started taking shots at people's intelligence! In this video, I discuss the progression of this mindset throughout his career!
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@adampearson15418 ай бұрын
I always wondered what Cormac might think of me if we ever met and now I know.
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
Lol, he would feel the same way about me!
@enriccoc77948 ай бұрын
I just started reading "Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman and even though it was written in the 50's it is eerily prescient to problems of today. He talks about how our culture is designed to suppress and pacify men, and I think it sort of connects to why there seem to be more "dumb people" as well. I think it's easy to look down at people for being dumb but the majority of the blame is on society for pushing a culture that devalues intelligence
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
100% -- Feel like the culture has won that war. Most men are not only dumb now but have also lost their bravery! And yeah, there is no reason to rag on individuals because this is a structural problem.
@jamescareyyatesIII8 ай бұрын
We have more *smart* people than ever in recorded history. So why do smart people make shitty culture? Because dumb people don't control anything and don't make culture.
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
@jamescareyyateselll - Also true!
@neoman18583 ай бұрын
Very popular in my circles in the 60s.
@Bilboswaggins20778 ай бұрын
I have a disability called dyscalculia that basically prevents me from doing any advanced math so it kinda stung when McCarthy argued someone who doesn’t engage with mathematics will never understand reality. I think he’s right in that I’m probably going to be limited in getting a picture of the world; but mathematics is just one picture I’ll never have and maybe that’s okay. There’s still literature, philosophy, religion, history, psychology, psychiatry, and all other forms of the humanities waiting for anyone who can barely do division
@willthomson35617 ай бұрын
I have dyscalculia too. What McCarthy said has always been an insecurity of mine, lol
@neoman18583 ай бұрын
That is the most abstract expression of our experience of the world. Very practical, language of science. Can get you to the moon. Only one experience of the world.
@bathcat37598 ай бұрын
I am so glad you started talking about Spengler. He’s incredible. I would highly recommend checking out my unofficial mentor John David Ebert’s lecture series on Spengler. An incredibly erudite figure and anyone can learn a ton from his lectures
My favorite thing from Spengler was what he said about the number of children not having children. He basically explained that once it is a matter of pro and con, it's all over. The people who know that Brawndo has what plants crave will continue to reproduce.
@ashroskell4 ай бұрын
McCarthy has contempt for a certain type of stupidity. If you look at his depiction of Glanton in Blood Meridian, we see a first rate, “warrior,” cunning and clever at killing, but we also conclude, objectively, that Glanton is wilfully ignorant, intolerant and generally pretty thick at any and all other aspects of life. And we never need the narration, or another character to tell us that. But, there are other characters in his novels that McCarthy is clearly down on. But it’s not universal ignorance that he despises, even then. It’s wilful ignorance that seems to raise his hackles. Those who think they know it all, or don’t need to learn anything are dangerous, especially in authority, and his contempt shows there, especially in those last two books. Consider how sympathetic his depiction of the mother in Outer Dark is? She is not a bright person, by any metric. But her depths, her spirit and meaning are writ large. That’s clearly not contempt, not punching down.
@TH3F4LC0Nx8 ай бұрын
I think Cormac gravitated towards the scientists because their intelligence was very hands-on with the world; science works to understand reality, which I feel is what Cormac wanted to do most. The scientists weren't pretentious, whereas the writers were. McCarthy didn't seem to care much for hollow intellectualism, which is what much of the literati is comprised of. Which is one reason why he was such an anomaly in his field. I think he criticized Jung because even though Jung had some interesting ideas, at the end of the day much of what he postulated is unfalsifiable and kinda blurs the line between science and mysticism. And even though Alicia calls The Decline of the West nonsense in Stella Maris, I really got the vibe from that interview that McCarthy really did put at least some stock in it; I feel like he probably just didn't wanna openly endorse it because I think Spengler nowadays gets associated with certain more extreme political stances. Some of Sheddan's comments in The Passenger about "the celerity with which every aberrancy is embraced" seem to be a veiled critique of certain trends in modern culture. I dunno; McCarthy was a bright guy who lived through various eras and witnessed a lot. I can only imagine towards the end there he probably felt out of place. XD
@enriccoc77948 ай бұрын
also I really like when you talk about your experiences being a teacher so keep doing that!
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
Will do!
@ExpatRiot798 ай бұрын
I feel he probably knew of the curse of being smart. Maybe that's why he liked to hang out with the other "reasonable fellows" at SFI.
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
Yes!
@wilburleft7 ай бұрын
Just finished The Passenger. Thought it was great. Looking forward to SM. Really like reading CM. Suttree was sort of a trudge for me, but we’ll worth it. Got half way through BM about 10-15 years ago but left it on the plane and never finished. Will reread and finish. I don’t see uneducated people as dumb. Maybe that’s not what’s implied, but I wanted to say that. I think people who don’t take responsibility for their own feelings or situations and take it out on others are dumb. Many less educated people are very smart about navigating life’s challenges and relationships and finding some joy. I admire that. Thanks for the video!
@WriteConscious7 ай бұрын
Have fun with Stella Maris!
@captainaomaruvomexekutivko49198 ай бұрын
great video as usual
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
Thanks!
@AJPzaworld8 ай бұрын
I am not a smart fellow, just a man of relative intelligence who got far in a system that thrives in my expertise and abilities in the folly of pursuits assigned and contained. And even I have, in the past, grown weary of the idle populaces with lackluster intelligences… and soon realized why such a perspective is inherently ignorant to hold. I get the urge to dislike, or even outright hate people who are considered less intelligent than you are; I did, for a time, find it unfair that people idolized and celebrated and rewarded people with a lesser constitution for menial pursuits. But men are born for games, and what must be understood is that a man wrought with intellect and mental anguish is a bore, dreary, and tiresome, and as is often pointed out, intelligent people make the worst decisions. That disconnect from emotions at times, from the primal realities, it leads to the most bizarre train of logic to venture from, it leads to someone who can’t really think in the primal sense of being and function on a disinterred Id. Basically, truly smart people with a functioning EQ and IQ, can be fun to hang around with, because they tend to realize intelligence renders the cynic frugal within you. Cioran, Camus, Wittgenstein, McCarthy, Freud, guys like this have a personality outside of their mental pursuits. I’ve dated women who were outright dumb, and women who were intelligent beyond reason, and the former embraced and lived a grand life, gave me to a hook to sink into the earth; the latter left me astounded, aroused, and horrified in three consecutive seconds, but could be an absolute wall of stone (and enabled the worst aspect of both sides, a twin flame, a kindred spirit like no other). Instead of being “disgusted” by people not being as “smart” as I, I just sort of realize idiots view things from a lens I cannot, they know things I cannot, and they are not less for that-because I’m an idiot and know nothing. They can teach me and I them. But let’s not skid around the gravel: people are getting dumber. Societal issue, with an individual solution present.
@ExpatRiot798 ай бұрын
not sure we are getting dumber, but we can now broadcast our shenanigans to the world and sometimes they go viral
@TheItFactorMMA8 ай бұрын
Fantastic video!
@asamcdaniel51674 ай бұрын
Appreciate you.
@WriteConscious4 ай бұрын
Right back at you Daniel!
@michaelarturo61193 ай бұрын
It's called adaptability, people who can not bend to others but expect others to bend to them, are the "dumb People" among us.
@Grisscoat7 ай бұрын
Wow. What an uncharitable take on an important author who, so far as I can see, is both humble and modest.
@WriteConscious7 ай бұрын
Lol, you haven't read enough of him. He slams "dumb" people in multiple books. Was just rereading Stella Maris today and found new stuff he didn't put in here.
@Grisscoat7 ай бұрын
@@WriteConscious Are you saying the character of Alicia slams dumb people or Cormac McCarthy?
@fireball438 ай бұрын
Can you ever do a video on what you disliked about the Coen’s No Country For Old Men. I remember in that video you did with a professor that both of you weren’t too into it. Would be great to get more on that.
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
Good idea! Going to be doing videos on all his adaptions soon.
@alane.navarrete48458 ай бұрын
Is that Anti-Oedipus I see in the back? Maybe in the near future a video discussing schizophrenia & desire and how it might relate to Alice’s desire and its origin.
@flynnjaman8 ай бұрын
Second this
@WriteConscious7 ай бұрын
Soon!
@GM-fg3biАй бұрын
Ironic that most of the you tube viewers (and general population) are incapable of understanding the concepts in this video.
@goodyeoman45347 ай бұрын
These are his characters, not him.
@WriteConscious7 ай бұрын
In Stella Maris, Cormac is clearly speaking through Alicia. There is little to no variation in opinion between the two.
@jtrealfunny6 ай бұрын
People are smart and dumb in all sorts of ways and lots of people are brilliant in certain kinds of intelligence and very lacking in other kinds of intelligence. I understand and appreciate the hatred of the stupidity to which we are all subject. I live in a rural place and lots of 'dumb' seeming neighbors have great knowledge and sensitivity for all sorts of things that are important in their lives.
@HoratioTalbot771_a16 күн бұрын
Dumb people are the best .
@mattheww7978 ай бұрын
that less than nothing book on the shelf moving by itself 😯 0:37
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
Lmao. It fell over 1 minute after I finished!
@ThumpRat8 ай бұрын
@@WriteConscious it belongs on the floor!
@HeinrichDorfmann8 ай бұрын
guys I'm just gonna be upfront with honesty I've only read blood Meridian After hearing this quote from the passenger I think it would be a good weed if I get a chance I will read it About blood Meridian it's my opinion that the judge was the opposition to the boy/man You see the judge becomes more powerful when he surrounded by men who are dedicated to specific course but to those men who are cautious he has no power And I think that's the moral of the store you don't need to be completely dedicated to get a job done you don't need to over engineer your life
@johnloving94017 ай бұрын
Which means you've read the Great American Novel; hardly suggests a need to apologize. Still, read on...
@sjuvanet8 ай бұрын
I'm a haiku individual.
@AlexGordonMusic8 ай бұрын
High IQ individuals are generally more compassionate and self deprecating, I thought… In fact, isn’t it considered a good idea to be skeptical of those bragging about their IQs It’s one thing to know, but advertise?
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
Agreed! I used to teach at a high school that sent 50+ kids a year to Ivy League schools and the kids that bragged about their IQ's always had deep problems.
@maninironmask79258 ай бұрын
Interestingly, listening to many of McCarthy’s interviews; he might be very math and science smart but he doesn’t strike me as especially philosophically smart nor conceptually. Blood Meridian’s major statement is basically: “History is written by the victors.”
@maninironmask79257 ай бұрын
In retrospect, that is a great theme nonetheless.
@freeman4364 ай бұрын
I once had a moment with Cormac. It was on the set of Pretty Horses. He was sitting in the grass at a choke point through which everyone had to pass on the way to set. As I came upon him I paused and looked down. We locked eyes. I will never forget his dangerous blue eyes and that implacable face. I just stood there. He was observing me as I was him. Like two wild beasts who stumbled upon each other in some forest clearing. Neither of us said a word. And then I continued. I never saw him again. Maybe he was on the prop truck as you say.
@comanchewillkillyou3 ай бұрын
Lmfao.
@freeman4364 ай бұрын
I'm new to the channel. It took me a minute to catch the rhythm of your style. I appreciate your intellect and passion for the man. As well as your insights. I too hate being the smartest guy in the room. Which quite often I am. This is not ego. It is simply the truth. I've been living in the wilderness of southern Utah for the past five years. My closest friend a mastiff named, Billy. It has been a great privilege to live so close to nature in sublime solitude. Hunting game. Growing food. Harvesting medicinals. My time scheduled by the seasons. This period has been my 40 days in the desert. And now comes the moment to move on. Though I live 14 miles from the nearest human, those that are here are not that smart and are bathed in Mormon fundamentalism. It's stifling and incestuous and if one is from beyond such as I you are forever considered an outsider, a gentile, and you are fair game for all manner of deceit and pickings. Living by the eternal clock of the sun and the moon buffered by wind and snow the laws of nature become all there is. The forest is a binary place. The strong survive and the weak perish. And a man is allowed to live as a man were intended. It's not a place for feelings or sentimentality. I see nothing wrong with the idea of eugenics. Modern-day humans go out of their way to preserve and perpetuate the existence of the weak and the sick. The morally corrupt and the feeble-minded. The low-hanging fruit of humanity. And western society coddles the lazy and tells us to believe that all manner of behavior and predilections beyond how God and nature intended is to be celebrated and promoted. And look where it has gotten us. I would live where I do forever if not for the stupidity, the laziness and the religiosity. I'm going to have to leave soon to find that room where I am decidedly not the smartest guy. Again, thanks for the content. I just subbed. Upgrade your microphone. You can be difficult to hear. And you are worth paying attention to.
@Josh-et4ki8 ай бұрын
Is that Anti-Oedipus in the background? 👀
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
yeeeee. Will do a full book breakdown on it sometime in 2024
@spiker192326 күн бұрын
@@WriteConsciousdont forget
@TheGoodMD6 ай бұрын
11:37 😂
@watcherofthewest85977 ай бұрын
Being smart dont mean anything. Doing good works and living honestly, helping and healing people are all more important, imo...Cormac is probably not the guy you want to listen if looking for advice on living a fullfilled and devent exsistence
@qisbestletter25168 ай бұрын
Hey I know that guy
@deanodog36677 ай бұрын
Hence stoicism is a nonsense, both Nietzsche and bertrand russell regarded it as a sour grapes philosophy!
@QuietExplorations8 ай бұрын
It's funny.... I love McCarthy, but the way you speak about him here, he sounds insufferable, lol.
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
Yeah, but I've heard from multiple people after 2007 when he got more fame from Oprah/No Country and divorced his wife he was occupying various bars around Santa Fe and picking up chicks lol. He also was known for hanging out with degenerates at pool halls and what not. So, it seems he would be chill to talk to if it wasn't about his writing!
@QuietExplorations8 ай бұрын
@@WriteConscious agreed! Which is why I think he may have not.thought as much about "who's smart and who's not" as the video posits. He did say in one of his more recent interviews that smart people are interesting, and I would agree. But I think he also showed that he frequently found the "riff-raff" just as fascinating. So many of his characters are just normal folks. You don't read about John Grady or Billy Parham reading theoretical physics, lol. Last piece about this: Cormac's friend, the same one you mention in this video, said Cormac was extremely loyal to his friends from all stages of his life. So, he was certainly a complex figure!
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
Exactly, that's what makes this channel fun and not fun at the same time. I sometimes do creative interpretation with these small tidbits of info we get. But, with another author like DFW, I have 100+ hours of interviews and a ton of non-fiction by him to figure out his general attitude on specific topics.
@Torgo-and-the-Lucifer-CatАй бұрын
Wait, did you say "nucular"? 😂
@WriteConsciousАй бұрын
George Bush taught me well
@Torgo-and-the-Lucifer-CatАй бұрын
@WriteConscious lol, so did Jimmy carter....no insult, just thought it funny, ❤️
@deanodog36677 ай бұрын
Was he a nihilist or an existentialist?
@WriteConscious7 ай бұрын
Neither by the end of his life. But, he was reading the existentialists a lot while writing Outer Dark and Child of God.
@deanodog36677 ай бұрын
Thank you
@bwebb908 ай бұрын
11:46 Yikes... I mean, talking literary analysis with non-literary enthusiasts, that's hardly a show of their low intelligence. If you don't want to read the room, use the beautiful storytelling skills you've learned, instead of enjoying this misplaced fact that you are above them. No wonder McCarthy sold me with his brutality, before it was smart, it was entertaining. If helping the masses is your interest, the masses won't be appreciative of your curse until you've interested them, sheer hierarchy defeats the purpose.
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
Lol, I think you missed the point
@annehechesliverdonation96248 ай бұрын
Triggered 💉
@bwebb908 ай бұрын
@@WriteConscious Thank you for replying, I luckily found your channel as soon as I finished BM, truly one of my favourite channels in this digital wasteland. I got the point, it's safer to combine high IQ and study with ego, than it is to combine ego without objective backing. The Socratic method is boring without follow-up as it kills the conversation, though this is no threat because people will only do that in defence of their intelligence, not because they had something interesting to say in the first place. Your intelligence is wasted if you use it as a given, hierarchy is warm blanket for people to stroke their egos while they complain that the lower won't accept their position. They're dumb, wth do you expect.
@bwebb908 ай бұрын
@@annehechesliverdonation9624 Mah mah, you hate dumb people cause you hate yourself, give yourself a break.
@WriteConscious8 ай бұрын
Thanks for the kind words and clarifying brotha! I also agree with your original sentiment now with the further context! Hoping to hit the masses eventually with the more entertaining style of this channel!
@JC_dk7 ай бұрын
Or high IQ people don’t have to tell other people that they have a high IQ 🤔
@WriteConscious7 ай бұрын
I assume you have a high iq lol
@ashroskell4 ай бұрын
P.S. Pronunciation matters. It is not egoistical to respectfully offer a correction of the way you say a word, especially someone’s name. Pretty sure that McCarthy, who understood the depth and power of words, would have agreed with that. There is no call for you to disrespect people for offering you a piece of information about which you were previously ignorant, demonstrably. So long as they do so politely, they are offering you something, for free. Why be so prideful in your response? And no, I was not one of them. I just didn’t like the way you treated those people in this video.
@georgegrubbs29667 ай бұрын
I think Cormac McCarthy was dumb.
@WriteConscious7 ай бұрын
lol
@comanchewillkillyou3 ай бұрын
Throw the sportsball in the toilet. Cormac was a man about pure focus and consistency. Fuck the distractions.
@WriteConscious3 ай бұрын
Lol. Cormac golfed all the time!
@comanchewillkillyou3 ай бұрын
@@WriteConscious Case in point. Watching sports mindlessly is different than playing golf...or tennis. I love playing tennis. I hate watching tennis on tv. The former requires focus and consistency. The latter requires retardation.
@EdWard-ie5wn8 ай бұрын
I genuinely get angry daily because I hate modern "culture " so much. And most normies just seem to be hollow mirrors that reflect this shitty zeitgeist at me constantly