← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust
Thread ID: 4072 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2002-12-18
2002-12-18 05:19 | User Profile
J.R.R. Tolkien -- enemy of progress salon.com
J.R.R. Tolkien -- enemy of progress "The Lord of the Rings" is lovingly crafted, seductive -- and profoundly backward-looking. Why not look at things through the Dark Lord's eye for a change?
By David Brin
Dec. 17, 2002 | Want to forget about terrorism and all those distracting rumors of war? Need to ignore the economy for a while? Got the holiday blues? Our culture has a sure-fire cure -- the traditional spate of post-Thanksgiving movies.
This year, despite a clamor over the latest Harry Potter film, much of the attention is going to another fantasy called "The Two Towers" -- Part 2 in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Will it succeed in distracting us for a while, conveying audiences to a world more beautiful and stirring than humdrum modern life?
Naturally, I enjoyed the "Lord of the Rings" (LOTR) trilogy as a kid, during its first big boom in the 1960s. I mean, what was there not to like? As William Goldman said about another great fantasy, "The Princess Bride," it has "Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad Men. Good Men. Beautifulest Ladies. Spiders. Dragons. Eagles. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Magic. Chases. Escapes. Miracles."
In 1997, voters in a BBC poll named "The Lord of the Rings" the greatest book of the 20th century. In 1999, Amazon.com customers chose it as the greatest book of the millennium.
Of course there is much more to this work than mere fantasy escapism. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his epic -- including its prequel, "The Hobbit" -- during the dark middle decades of the 20th century, a time when modernity appeared to have failed in one spectacle of technologically amplified bloodshed after another.
LOTR clearly reflected this era. Only, in contrast to the real world, Tolkien's portrayal of "good" resisting a darkly threatening "evil" offered something sadly lacking in the real struggles against Nazi or Communist tyrannies -- a role for individual champions. His elves and hobbits and über-human warriors performed the same role that Lancelot and Merlin and Odysseus did in older fables, and that superheroes still do in comic books. Through doughty Frodo, noble Aragorn and the ethereal Galadriel, he proclaimed the paramount importance -- above nations and civilizations -- of the indomitable Romantic hero.
All right, I read Tolkien's epic trilogy a bit unconventionally, starting with "The Two Towers" and backfilling as I went along. Likewise, I may be a bit off-kilter in liking, best of all, the unofficial companion volume to LOTR -- perhaps the funniest work penned in English -- the Harvard Lampoon's 1968 parody, titled "Bored of the Rings."
Nonetheless, I deem Tolkien's trilogy to be one of the finest works of literary universe-building ever, with a lovingly textured internal consistency that's excelled only by J.R.R.T.'s penchant for crafting "lost" dialects. Long before there was a Klingon Language Institute, expert aficionados -- amateurs in the classic sense of the word -- were busy translating Shakespeare and the Bible into High Elvish, Dwarvish and other Tolkien-generated tongues.
And yes, LOTR opened the door to a vast popular eruption of heroic fantasy. With exacting devotion to Tolkien's masterly architecture, his followers scrupulously copied the rhythms, ambience and formulas that worked so well.
Indeed, the popularity of this formula is deeply thought-provoking. Millions of people who live in a time of genuine miracles -- in which the great-grandchildren of illiterate peasants may routinely fly through the sky, roam the Internet, view far-off worlds and elect their own leaders -- slip into delighted wonder at the notion of a wizard hitchhiking a ride from an eagle. Many even find themselves yearning for a society of towering lords and loyal, kowtowing vassals.
Wouldn't life seem richer, finer if we still had kings? If the guardians of wisdom kept their wonders locked up in high wizard towers, instead of rushing onto PBS the way our unseemly "scientists" do today? Weren't miracles more exciting when they were doled out by a precious few, instead of being commercialized, bottled and marketed to the masses for $1.95?
Didn't we stop going to the moon because it had become boring?
Just look at how people felt about Princess Diana. No democratically elected public servant was ever so adored. Democracy doesn't have the pomp, the majesty, the sense of being above accountability. One of the paramount promoters of the fantasy-mythic tradition, George Lucas, expressed it this way:
"There's a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There's a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled."
This yearning makes sense if you remember that arbitrary lords and chiefs did rule us for 99.44 percent of human existence. It's only been 200 years or so -- an eye blink -- that "scientific enlightenment" began waging its rebellion against the nearly universal pattern called feudalism, a hierarchic system that ruled our ancestors in every culture that developed both metallurgy and agriculture. Wherever human beings acquired both plows and swords, gangs of large men picked up the latter and took other men's women and wheat. (Sexist language is meaningfully accurate here; those cultures had no word for "sexism," it was simply assumed.)
They then proceeded to announce rules and "traditions" ensuring that their sons would inherit everything.
Putting aside cultural superficialities, on every continent society quickly shaped itself into a pyramid with a few well-armed bullies at the top -- accompanied by some fast-talking guys with painted faces or spangled cloaks, who curried favor by weaving stories to explain why the bullies should remain on top.
Only something exceptional started happening. Bit by bit, the elements began taking shape for a new social and intellectual movement, one finally capable of challenging the alliance of warrior lords, priests, bards and secretive magicians.
Timidly at first, guilds and townsfolk rallied together and lent their support to kings, thereby easing oppression by local lords. Long before Aristotle became a tool of the establishment, his rediscovery during the High Middle Ages offered some relief from dour anti-intellectualism. Then Renaissance humanism offered a philosophical basis for valuing the individual human being as worthy in its own right. The Reformation freed sanctity and morality from control by a narrow, self-chosen club; it also legitimized self-betterment through hard work in this world, not the next. Then Galileo and Newton showed that creation's clockwork can be understood, even appreciated in its elegance, not just endured.
Still, the entire notion of progress remained nebulous and ill-formed. Society's essential pyramidal shape remained intact till a full suite of elements and tools were finally in place for a true revolution -- one so fundamental, coming with such heady, empowering suddenness, that participants gave it a name filled with hubristic portent: Enlightenment.
The word wasn't ill-chosen, for it bespoke illuminating a path ahead -- which, in turn, implied the unprecedented notion that "forward" is a direction worth taking, instead of lamenting over a preferred past. Progress -- and boy, did we take to it. In two or three centuries our levels of education, health, liberation, tolerance and confident diversity have been momentously, utterly transformed.
The very shape of society changed from the once-universal pyramid toward a diamond configuration, wherein a comfortable and well-educated middle class actually outnumbers the poor. For the very first time. Anywhere.
We can argue endlessly about the accuracy and implications of this "diamond" analogy -- and its vast remaining imperfections -- but not over the fact that a profound shift has occurred, driven by a genuine scientific-technical-educational revolution.
Page 2: [url=http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/index1.html]http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/1...rin/index1.html[/url]
Page 3: [url=http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/index2.html]http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/1...rin/index2.html[/url]
Page 4: [url=http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/index2.html]http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/1...rin/index2.html[/url]
Page 1: url: [url=http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/index.html]http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/1...brin/index.html[/url]
I want to be an enemy of progress too! :P :P
2002-12-18 05:38 | User Profile
In two or three centuries our levels of education, health, liberation, tolerance and confident diversity have been momentously, utterly transformed.
My carefully-considered response: Shut up, jewboy, before I entreat Lord Sauron to turn you into a particularly hook-nosed Orc.
2002-12-18 05:52 | User Profile
Originally posted by Faust@Dec 18 2002, 05:19 **The very shape of society changed from the once-universal pyramid toward a diamond configuration, wherein a comfortable and well-educated middle class actually outnumbers the poor. For the very first time. Anywhere.
**
You bet NB... this whole piece is a laugh-riot!
Are the folks who write for salon.com so insular they think our society is not a pyramid and the poor are outnumbered? Get Brin a ticket to Detroit, quick.
2002-12-18 18:32 | User Profile
It's not wrong to be as ignorant of Medieval and Early Modern history has Brin is; the problem is smugly parading his ignorance as some sort of enlightenment.
2002-12-19 01:08 | User Profile
Originally posted by Hereward@Dec 18 2002, 12:32 It's not wrong to be as ignorant of Medieval and Early Modern history has Brin is; the problem is smugly parading his ignorance as some sort of enlightenment.
No Western nation has been socially or economically improved by non-White immigration.
No post-colonial non-White nation has attained the economic or social level enjoyed under White tutelage...
2002-12-19 22:51 | User Profile
I don't remember there being poor people in the LOTR. Tolkien was mostly silent about his characters' income potential, except for the Hobbits, which were all well to do in a small town sort of way. Brin simply betrays his Marxist roots. Everything is seen through the prizm of class conflict and tomorrow will be better than today which is a lot better than yesterday - as long as socialism continues its mechanical advance on mankind. If you think that maybe we've taken a wrong turn somewhere in modern times, like Tolkien, you're either crazy, evil or stupid.
If Brin is bad, then take a gander at what Liberal Arts professors think of Tolkien. They absolutely hate him.