The Curiously Literal Mind

There is a phenomenon that I had probably been subliminally aware of for some time, but which only became obvious to me last year, when for some reason I was reading a newsgroup discussion of my blog.

I forget why I was reading this exchange, which consisted of skeptics trashing my opinions with their customary savoir-faire, but I do remember that at one point one of the contributors made a detour to discuss a brief, humorous item I had posted about the space shuttle.

At the time, the shuttle was set to lift off after a long period of retooling. There was a lot of worry that the system was not safe, and much concern about the upcoming mission. In this context, the Drudge Report posted a shot of the shuttle on its launch pad with a couple of vultures roosting on a tree in the foreground.

I thought the shot was mordantly funny, so I reposted it, saying something like "This can't be good" and "I wouldn't go up in that thing for a million bucks."

Now, the guy on the message board who brought up this item was utterly baffled by it. What was it supposed to mean? he wanted to know. What was I trying to say? Did I think that the vultures were going to somehow eat the space shuttle? Didn't I realize that vultures are commonly found in marshlands, and Cape Canaveral is built on formerly swampy soil?

This, my friends, was my first overt recognition of the phenomenon I now know as the CLM - the Curiously Literal Mind.

For most of us, the space shuttle photo is mot mystifying, but quite easily understood - which is why Drudge posted it in the first place. We have seen cartoons of vultures roosting in a tree, and we understand the symbolism. Where vultures roost, doom is not far away. Animated cartoons, political cartoons, and even farcical live-action films make regular use of this device. It is a cliché, readily apprehended even by the mind of a child.

But not by the Curiously Literal Mind.

The Curiously Literal Mind does not seem to be able to grasp the symbolic shorthand that the rest of us take for granted. It also does not seem capable of reacting spontaneously. Every input of new data - every sense perception - has to be subjected to intellectual analysis before it can be registered.

I once took a taped lecture course (it was one of Leonard Peikoff's lectures on Ayn Rand's philosophy - back in the day when I thought Rand was a great philosopher). The lectures were boring, so I doodled a lot. One of the other people taking the course noticed my doodles, in which I was practicing George Bridgman's techniques for rendering human anatomy. He was (unduly) impressed, and remarked that he could never just sit down and draw something. He would have to plot out the coordinates on his computer and then transfer them to paper and then connect the dots ... or something like that.

The Curiously Literal Mind can't just pick up a pencil and draw.

Then there is the world of entertainment. Entertainment always requires the "willing suspension of disbelief," as some clever person once said. People don't really sing to each other the way they do in musicals and operas, or dance in the streets as they do in ballet. Human beings don't normally strike artful poses in dramatic situations, except in the paintings of the Great Masters. Thunder and lightning don't strike on cue, unless Lear is raging at the storm or Dr. Frankenstein is revivifying his patchwork creation. Real-life private eyes aren't as witty as Philip Marlowe or as cerebral as Sherlock Holmes. There are conventions in entertainment, and we all know about them.

All of us, that is, save those with a Curiously Literal Mind.

I just read a discussion of the TV show 24, which returns to the air for its sixth season tomorrow (Sunday). Some of the discussants strongly disliked the show. Why? Well, because it's just so unrealistic. Jack Bauer's cell phone always works and never runs out of battery power ... the computer techniques used by the techies are bogus ... everything happens in or around Los Angeles ... there's always exactly 24 hours to save the day ...

Here's one comment:

I spent some quality time in the intelligence field, for a branch of the military and did an awful lot of standing, waiting and filling out paperwork.

No one even remotely sexy ever had to be saved, the President was just another worthless politician, (Bush Sr.) and I never noticed any running clock gimmicks anywhere I could see them.

Yeah, the show's no good because in real life Bauer would be standing, waiting, and filling out paperwork. What a great entertainment concept! We could call it DMV.

Not surprisingly, many of these people boast that they watch no TV, or almost no TV, or they only watch educational TV. I think they are telling the truth. But it's not because their intellectual standards are so high. It's because the Curiously Literal Mind cannot suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy entertainment.

Naturally, the CLM converts this liability into an asset, insisting that anyone who can suspend disbelief, react spontaneously, or grasp symbolism is childish, naive, gullible, moronic, etc.

What accounts for the Curiously Literal Mind? I suspect that it is a hyperdevelopment of the left (logical) hemisphere of the brain, with a corresponding underdevelopment of the right (intuitive) hemisphere. Overly left-brain-dominant people tend to be severely analytical, emotionally stunted, socially maladroit, reflexively judgmental, and intellectually rigid.

(Lest this sound unduly harsh, I should add that people whose right brain is overly dominant tend to be spacy, unreliable, credulous, indecisive, and emotionally unstable. The trick is finding balance between the two modes of thinking. I should also add that in my Ayn Rand days I was definitely in the left-brain camp myself.)

Luckily, the Curiously Literal Mind is an aberration. Most of us get the jokes without having to have them explained. Speaking of which ... did you hear the one about the vultures and the space shuttle?

Comments

[Marcel Cairo]

I have been quite aware of the tragic symptoms befalling those overdeveloped left-brainers for some time now. Working as a Creative Director inside the literal confines of corporate America, CLM is something you deal with on a daily basis. However, I never had a name for it. CLM is perfect. Thanks for adding to my lexicon of "annoying things with no official name" and giving me a great idea.

Everytime I confront a person suffering from CLM, I will give them a dollar to go away and take a hike. That way, during tax season, I can write it all off as charitable contributions to the CLM Athletic Fund.

[Bob Wallace]

Usually, the literal-minded have little or no sense of humor. That's when I first began to notice these strange people. Although, to them, I'm strange...because I'm not literal-minded.

[Art]

Is the curiously literal mind in any way related the "always right" guy that you talked about in a previous blog? I know several "always right guys" who raise their voices and get righteous if you question any of their cherished beliefs. I'm forbidden to talk about NDE's to my fundamentalist FIL. It's a forbidden topic. Only his version of the afterlife is allowed to be openly discussed.

[Michael Prescott]

>Is the curiously literal mind in any way related the "always right" guy that you talked about in a previous blog?

They're both left-hemisphere types, that's for sure.

[Bill Ingle]

Is it not common knowledge that CLM is merely a severe version of a society-wide (and very old) phenomena, in which "left-brain" tendencies are associated with the symbolical masculine? (Look at our primary religious myths and their archetypes! How many regularly attend services at the First Church of Dionysus these days?)

Alternatively, "right-brain" tendencies are associated with the symbolical feminine -- "intuition." (Yet this includes the psyche, utterly beyond the gender attributes of our physical selves.)

Thus we are trained from an early age to hold beliefs which reinforce and support a "masculine" egoic self; such beliefs are deep and include the erection of barriers of fear. We have grown "ego-bound;" some of us only glimpsing our wider (and less restricted) selves during dreams (and aren't dreams "intuitive" by their nature, and thus off-limit to the narrowest proponents of the symbolically masculine egoic consciousness?).

Anyone seeking to explore their own psyche and transcend these somewhat artifical circumstances must surmount these fears, these structures of belief.

I suggest this is exactly what is occurring now, on a wide scale.

This can make the present era seem both exciting and frightening -- a moment of great change!

Bill I.
Magnolia, MA
USA

[alanborky]

I suspect there's at least one other component involved in this matter, an emotional one which I call, "the willed suspension of comprehension", having long observed how both left and right brain types of all calibres, including myself, become prone to such 'literalness' as a way of avoiding taking in ANY information they sense might result in intellectual wavering or emotional pain.

[mrG]

I have observed another phenomenon one might call the Chronically Lateral Mind, the one that fills with the jumps-to-conclusions and paints over any and all missing bits in a presentation to fly off in flights of fantasy ... but without actually going anywhere useful.

Curiously, or maybe coincidentally, I find these are the same people who have to drop all and cancel living their real-life because "I gotta watch 24 Hours" or Big Brother or Lost or Dr Who or play another round of Grand Theft Auto or read another Greatest Ever Novel by X or any one (and usually a particular one) of a thousand impractical vicarious pre-frontal mirror-cell pseudo-experiences in lieu of stepping forth with the precious hours of reality they have been granted, and simply doing something anything real, tanglible, contructive ... and (usually by comparison) gratingly frustrating, fraught with rough edges, and boring.

Clearly this suggests a fundamental CLM/CLM tao, a fluid balancepoint begging the services of an enterprising young Kipling to coin us a memorable mnemonic to guide us as to when to side with which face of that coin.

[tengberg]

i just happened onto this site via toolband.com so i'm not really up to date about your past blogs and sort of just skimmed the article because i have to leave in a few. but i totally see what you mean about the curious literal mind, although i think you can interchange "critical" and "curious". the "expert", whether regarding music, movies, literature, cuts the subject apart claiming that that isn't how it would happen, or that isn't how that system actually works, etc. i think that somehow, with the advent of the internet possibly, everyone thinks they are an expert on everything. that, and everybody's a critic. my only beef with implausiblility in a film or a novel, is the failure of the characters or situations to follow the internal logic of that particular universe. i know that 10 guys with machine guns won't really miss one human target, but in the context of that world, they can.
and at the end of the day, it's only entertainment or observation.