Submitted by the_action t3_yzcilv in books
So I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Merdian at the moment. I'm at the part in the book where there's a lot of violence, and a couple of pages after this great quote and then speech by judge Holden:
"Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent. [...] The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him 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'm doing a Ph.D. and at face value, I find the quote weirdly inspiring. There is this violent and unrelenting world and a way to make sense of it and a way to take charge of your own fate in it is just to find out more about it. However, what makes me uncertain is that the guy who says that (judge Holden) is not exactly the nice "Carl Sagan"-type. Other posters here in this subreddit have described Holden as a demigod, planted on earth to seed violence and death. Maybe this quote above is a criticism of science. Just think about the atomic bomb: you try to make sense of the world by writing some stuff in your notebook, just like the judge does, and at the end of the day you evaporate thousands of people in an instant, something even the Glanton gang would find repulsive.
I'm torn. What do you think about it?