Intermission: Why The Judge

This afternoon I was fucking around at work and rather than finish writing the second half of my "history", I did a search on awesome quotes from Cormac McCarthy's great book Blood Meridian. For those who never of Cormac McCarthy, he's the guy who wrote No Country for Old Men. And, if you've seen that movie and thought that hit man Chigrah was a badass, he's got NOTHING on The Judge from Blood Meridian. I'll give you my PUA book review in 2 sentences. Basically The Judge is this complete AMOG who takes a renege troop of soldiers into the unsettled West (the book takes place in the mid-nineteenth century) to massacre and scalp Mexicans and Native Americans (I didn't claim this book was PC). While it's easily the most graphically violent book I've ever read (there are images from that book still etched into my brain that haunt me at night), there are also these beautifully philosophical scenes where The Judge (who's this absurd demonic intellectual) makes these striking observations on the nature of man and violence. I don't think I need to hit you over the head for you to see how the two quotes I selected fit well into the whole PUA paradigm. Anyway, I'd highly recommend that book even as PUA literature (Cormac McCarthy is probably the greatest living American writer...this book will be a classic 100 years from now). Enjoy these two quotes:

Toadvine sat with his boots crossed before the fire. No man can acquaint himself with everthing on this earth, he said.

The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstitiion will drag hiim down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

I dont see what that has to do with catchin birds.

The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I'd have them all in zoos.

That would be a hell of a zoo.

The judge smiled. Yes, he said. Even so.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, p. 199

The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black.

The judge smiled, his face shining with grease. What right man would have it any other way? he said.

The good book does indeed count war an evil, said Irving. Yet there's many a bloody tale of war inside it.

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.

He turned to Brown, from whom he'd heard some whispered slur or demurrer. Ah Davy, he said. It's your own trade we honor here. Why not rather take a small bow. Let each acknowledge each.

My trade?

Certainly.

What is my trade?

War. War is your trade. Is it not?

And it aint yours?

Mine too. Very much so.

What about all them notebooks and bones and stuff?

All other trades are contained in that of war.

Is that why war endures?

No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.

That's your notion.

The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or tail of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.

Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man's hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man's worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangment of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justificaiton. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will whichh because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.

Brown studied the judge. You're crazy Holden. Crazy at last.

The judge smiled.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, p. 248-50