Depends on the source. I've been doing nogi BJJ (not on the comp team: I am old, we train hard but not competition hard) about ten years or so.
People training technique will grey out pretty much routinely as they talk through things with their partners and work strategies for techniques.
People go out now and then, usually on purpose with folks who understand when it happens.
The BJJ community is mature at this point. There are folks on comp teams basically having fights every day. I suspect when those people go out, you are right. Damage is done and it accumulates.
I suspect when folks like me and my training partners go out, there is no trauma to speak of.
What is the net of this lifestyle? I don't know; I've had no major injuries (requiring surgery or major downtime-- popping the cartilage in your rib working top control drills will take fucking forever to heal tho), I've learned a lot, made good friends, and have only this life to spend as I see fit, so I can only anecdata.
But the understanding in our world is this: trauma is traumatic (and sometimes causes loss of consciousness, sometimes not), but not all loss of consciousness is traumatic.
It's funny you mention it; I have a friend who writes books who had trouble with McCarthy and I recently mentioned this same criticism. I suggested ATPH to her and this same character came to mind as a decent piece of work on that subject.
I will say this about the passage tho: McCarthy writes a small narrative which does seem to explain her choices and character as it affects John Grady. It's convincing, and she's a good character, but even there she's something of a set piece.
I don't think so; preserving goodness and decency comes at little personal cost to most of us, but McCarthy's effort in the book is at its core a depiction of these things surviving even the apocalypse, and at an incredible cost.
That fire they carry is not extinguished even in a world where all systems and pretenses at civilization have been ruined. It finds the wider flame, and decent folks to tend it.
It is one of the more optimistic works he's done, not despite the setting, but because.
I think McCarthy is one of the greatest American writers, but I will say my two main gripes with him are his tendency to drift over the line into overwrought (sometimes the biblical language is incredibly powerful, sometimes not), and his utter inability to write women.
He did ok with Alicia in his last couple books, but even there he flounders some. "If I had a baby I wouldn't care about reality"? Hmm, ok?
"His face was all covered in girljuice"? C'mon bud.
I can't think of a single character in the book for whom nihilism is their defining trait, and certainly not the primary characters. The effort to preserve goodness in the world only really matters when it's hard, when it comes at cost. The book turns that up to 11, but that is why it is hopeful.
If you want to read McCarthy doing nihilism, maybe try the sunset limited.
"You give up the world line by line. Stoically. And then one day you realize that your courage is farcical. It doesn't mean anything. You've become an accomplice in your own annihilation and there is nothing you can do about it. Everything you do closes a door somewhere ahead of you. And finally there is only one door left."
The point is that everyone is doomed (even if you imagine we can survive the civilization-murdering tools we've cobbled up, we can't outrun physics), but that even at our most vulnerable, since the book occurs during a period directly after Armageddon, it is possible for some goodness in us to persist.
I don't want to spoil, but the optimism isn't for the characters, it's for we the reader, and the species.
The thimble of fire joins the wider flame. Goodness survives even there, and even then.
I hope, at least, you managed to watch the films before you had an opinion on them. Tarantino's, I mean.
The Road is not a violent or pessimistic book, tho there is violence and pessimism in it. Don't confuse the set and the setting.
Why write about, 'the worst among us'? Some art (and Cormac tottered over the line between wrought and overwrought plenty) is about finding meaning in the margins, in the edge cases. The statistical noise at the outerbands of anything might make it an impossible endeavor for meaning-making, but that's why art. You try anyway. Some writers are skilled enough to make the mundane sing and that's great, but McCarthy obviously didn't seem to care for that approach.
I think I can see why Child of God put you off enough for the thoughts of others to prevent any further effort, but I'd suggest you give him another go.
I'd save blood meridian for later tho; If you don't get too distracted by the setting of the road, it's a perfectly optimistic book.
As the poet said, something in us does not erode (free pun!)
"A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it."
People training technique will grey out pretty much routinely as they talk through things with their partners and work strategies for techniques.
People go out now and then, usually on purpose with folks who understand when it happens.
The BJJ community is mature at this point. There are folks on comp teams basically having fights every day. I suspect when those people go out, you are right. Damage is done and it accumulates.
I suspect when folks like me and my training partners go out, there is no trauma to speak of.
What is the net of this lifestyle? I don't know; I've had no major injuries (requiring surgery or major downtime-- popping the cartilage in your rib working top control drills will take fucking forever to heal tho), I've learned a lot, made good friends, and have only this life to spend as I see fit, so I can only anecdata.
But the understanding in our world is this: trauma is traumatic (and sometimes causes loss of consciousness, sometimes not), but not all loss of consciousness is traumatic.