Slashdot Mirror
David Brin On LOTR
hprotagonist0 writes "Salon has posted an article by sci-fi author, scientist, and essayist David Brin (The two Uplift trilogies, The Transparent Society) with his thoughts about LotR. A technophillic optimist, he warns against waxing too Romantic about feudal, good vs. evil fantasy. Instead, he says, we should look ahead to the future. Thought-provoking."
Wasn't Tolkein banned? I've also heard to Russian police are cracking down on "geeks" meaning fantasy and scifi fanboys.
OK. Who do you think would win in a straight out fight? The troll from Harry Potter or the troll from LotR. My vote goes to the LotR troll, he was fast! The Harry Potter troll was dumb and slow, but he looked bigger. And how about between Dumbledore and Gandalf?
Well gee then I guess we shouldn't wax romantic about his fuedal/fascist world of uplift either eh?
Not knocking uplift, a great read, but come on!
The world he's built is just as deterministic and
ordered as LOTR if not more so.....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
WOOT WOOT
Is it really a fairy tale's obligation to address the wrongs in society, and to ensure that humanity continues its technological progress? Must a story really be "forward thinking" in order to have any redeeming values?
Ñ'
I'm a computer science nerd and fully admit it to anyone who asks, but I must say that I don't quite feel the same way about LOTR as I did about SW:ESB or SW:ROTJ.
1) They switched Darrens
Look closely and you'll notice the human member of their party is played by two different actors at different points of the movie (it takes a sharp eye to notice, but one of them has red hair, one black).
2) Violence
Give me one reason that story couldn't have been told without all the fighting.
3) I'll have to rent that one
The rushed-through story the screenwriter threw in as the first ten minutes of Fellowship of the Ring looked a lot more interesting than the movie we were forced to watch. Why didn't somebody make a movie off that instead?
4) Magic Mechanics
Experts on the occult say in order for a wizard to floorspin a fully-grown man like Gandalf, he'd need three magical staffs, not two.
5) Racism
Percentage of protagonists in Fellowship who are white: 100. Meanwhile the black antagonists and their black crow spies and their black glass seeing ball inhabit their black towers and perform black magic. Gosh, I wonder if there's some symbolism there?
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I certainly didn't have as many beefs with the Star Wars epics or even with the most recent Star Trek: Nemesis movie (the one where Data dies -- it's in most theaters now I believe).
I never got into those Magic: The Gathering cards either, so perhaps I just don't like the whole wizard genre of films and books.
Many times the dwarves lament the fact that they have lost their knowledge of how to make something or create a technology. It seems that their longing for the past is a longing to a return to technology.
This book influenced my thinking to such a large degree on privacy that it's hard to reconcile my thoughts with people who in any way want privacy. If you want a good thought provoking read then pick it up.
/.'ers read the book the Mikey & Timmy game would be senn for what it is. Two adolescents pontificating about things they cannot change.
If most
In fact, this leadership mechanism, as well as the (very human) desire to be able to identify to groups or characters that are 100% good, is probably the undercurrent to 99.9% of all novels.
I do have a couple of gripes:
Overall, interesting article. Not his best, though.
Just my US$ 0.02, of course...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
in many academic writings, so I don't see where Brin gets, ``Through doughty Frodo, noble Aragorn and the ethereal Galadriel, he proclaimed the paramount importance -- above nations and civilizations -- of the indomitable Romantic hero.''
Even Aragorn begins by seeming quite commonplace and ordinary and certainly the, ``Scouring of the Shire'' sequence (okay, we're into the next book, but...) argues for the necessity and virtue of the ordinary person doing what is right because it is right and theirs (and no one else's) to do.
At least he later says, ``All right, I read Tolkien's epic trilogy a bit unconventionally,''
I've never understood why people complain of royalty and their perquisites---certainly ``lese majeste'' was balanced by ``oblesse noblige''---far more appropriate than the riches of robber and merchant ``barons''. Should we argue for taking away the wealth of the Kennedys and Rockefellers as well? I find a family who traded power into a position of responsibility far more laudable than one which went for the root of all evil instead.
Tolkien is far more moral and complex than Brin makes him out to be and the ascension of royalty is far more complex than the black / white, good bad thing which he describes it as.
William
(who couldn't bring himself to read beyond the first page---moderate accordingly)
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I think David Brin is capitalizing on the popularity of the LoTR films to get his name in the news.
By going on about the social ramifications of such films in todays world...he's really just trying to get his name in the paper so people will buy his books.
With the way the media has twisted news reporting these days though, who can blame him? Talk shows and the like have taught us that one of the most affective ways to advertise is through the "news".
Now, who can tell me the one logical flaw here? Yes, you in the back? That's right - here's a sucker.
I was not even borth in the 1960. I was barely conscious in the 1970s - so I missed out on the whole "culture changing" event of those decades.
So for me, the LoTR movies is partly about telling a story (a rather good one in condensed format), as well as the friendship of watching the movies with those who "get it" (reasons why I'm seeing the movie tonight at 12:01 AM - not because I really want to see the movie that badly, but because I'll hang around with all of my friends and people who "get it").
Now, once all the hoopla is over, and a whole new generation is introduced to the fairy tale and wonder of Tolkien, then I'll have no problem with people looking to make their own things, or people inspired to mix and match the future with Tolkein's view.
I think Mr. Brin is right in some respects - new things are always a good idea, to look at both sides of the equation rather than just lumping "good vs evil" arguments. But I'd hardly call the new movies "backwards looking" - just retelling of a story for those old enough to remember it when it was fresh and new, and for a whole new generation for whom these stories are new to their minds and can experience it with their friends.
Like me.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Watching and reading LotR lets me relax from all these (evil and not) problems, prospects and inventions surrounding us everywhere.
When I want to ponder on social problems, I take a copy of '1984'. Mixing it with a fairy tale would spoil the value both.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
This guy did the same thing with Star Wars. He can be pursuasive, and his essays are fun to read, but I urge people not to be sucked in. His opposition to the good/evil dichotomy and benevolent monarchy smack of moral relativism and a devotion to the global superstate. The end of his reasoning is the destruction of the individual in favor of the collective. He's threatened by the notion of heroes, because heroism is essentially individualistic. Just another cardboard intellectual selling out our liberty.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
...is it just me, or is it a bit funny that a Sci-Fi author is convincing you to stop paying attention to Fantasy and instead think of Science? Can't help but think there's a bit of self-promotion there. =)
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
After 100 or so years of reckless optimism, we're finally starting to realize that the future can suck, even when great technology comes along. Compare the view that science fiction has of our future NOW to the view expressed in 1930, 1940, 1950.
One of the things I love most about Tolkien's work are the recurring themes of loss, of how the best has passed us by already, how everything degrades. I don't think one should fashion their worldview around that kind of pessimism, but the point is that after a century of reckless optimism that has spawned all manner of recklessly misused technology, maybe a little negativity will make us think twice about the consequences of our actions.
The future isn't the silver bullet it once was.
The theme at the end of the last book when they return to the shire covers the same ground - battle between rural idyll and mechanisation.
Just because tolkien has an axe to grind doesn't make it any less of a good story (plenty of other authers have also had underlying messages that they want to put over eg CS Lewis and Pullman's Nothern Lights. You can take it or leave it and just enjoy the yarn)
sci-fi author, scientist, and essayist David Brin (The two Uplift trilogies, The Transparent Society) with his thoughts about LotR. A technophillic optimist, he warns against waxing too Romantic about feudal, good vs. evil fantasy. Instead, he says, we should look ahead to the future.
Why shouldn't we be more Romantic about it? It's fantasy. It's, more to the point, a romantic fantasy (from a classical standpoint).
How about this: Swords, battles, Orcs, Legolas killing things, a couple of White Wizards, Kings, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and a great and terrible evil that must be destroyed at all costs.
Maybe we should, oh, I don't know, sit back and enjoy the films? Hello? Doesn't that just seem a little more reasonable? I mean, I love the stories, they are wonderful and they are timeless (including the Silmarillion, go read it if you haven't). Tolkien created a world to play in, and he gave that world to us. Lets play in it and enjoy it instead of overanalyzing it.
On a side note, I really hate it when people try to interpret works in absolutely ridiculous ways. I also hate it that they do it to books whose author has died. Then, the author can't say "No, that's not what I was saying at all. What were you smoking boy?"
1. Of course this is a backward-looking tale - it was modeled after ancient Scandinavian mythologies.
2. It's also about a world in transition, and the dawn of Man's dominance, so in that sense it is forward-looking.
3. Is anybody else sick to death of comparisons with Star Wars? Puh-lease...
4. And while we're at it, is anybode else EXTRA sick of drawn out analogies to the real geopolitical world of the 20th century? Too many bozos waste too much time trying to play matchup in a self-congratulatory exercise.
"let's see, Thorin Oakenshield's reestablishment of the Kingdom Under the Mountain is really a metaphor for the Palestinian's struggle against Israel..."
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Earth. Glory Season.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
There's actually a very good reason for this idea of putting The Rightful King on the throne.
In a medieval society, the absolute worst tyrant on the throne was still better for the common people than a war of succession. If you put the King's son on the throne, there's at least a reasonable chance of stability, but if the line of succession is unclear, you often end up with a long, bloody war.
WRT Brin, I think he worries too much. Sure, we like the trappings of royalty, but I think most people would start getting upset the moment some King declared that he was better than them. Monarchy is a product of the whole medieval world view, with a heirarchal view of society. We don't have that anymore. Today's royalty have exactly the same status as movie stars.
Canada still has the Queen of England as its official leader and this hasn't stopped it from being a democratic nation. Aside from appearing on TV a couple of times a year and visiting once in a while, the Monarchy has no real-world affect on us.
"Instead, he says, we should look ahead to the future. Thought-provoking."
Not that writing about the future is where his principle source of income comes from or anything... I'd suggest that too!
In Soviet Russia, you'd be shot for making fun of the Motherland like that...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
you suck, i got my tickets for 6:30 tomorrow, if i had a car i prolly woulda got tonights midnight showing, sigh.
I enjoy reading Brin's stuff (including his Otherness comp book - had some interesting ideas), but this article is really disappointing. He's just grabbed something that happens to be popular and launched off on some diatribe of his own, occasionally weaving in bits of LOTR stuff to help remind us that we are, in fact, still reading an article related to LOTR and not listening to a soapbox commentary.
His devil's advocate attempts at looking at things from Sauron's view were quite weak IMO. It more or less ignores what is most important in determining if Sauron was evil: his actions. I know, I know, it's just a thought expirement but it just wasn't very convincing to me.
I love many of his books, but IMO, in this case David Brin is just looking for some excuse to get an essay published! If the story read 'article by David Brin on Salon' I still would've went and had a look - no need to try and cash in in LOTR mania at the expense of weakening your position!
Tell me it's not true! WTF is the world coming to when there are Star Trek spoilers in a review of LOTR?
Ho hum...just another snooty modern intellectual (there's the NEW aristocracy, at least in their own minds) pooh-poohing a good vs. evil dichotomy in favor of moral relativism.
Yawn.
This post generated by FPyBot 0.0
You'd better called it seventh post bot...
If it's a choice between David Brin and Joseph Campbell, Campbell wins.
Not to break it to you Einstein, but democracy was invented in ancient Greece. That's not a couple of hundred years, it's a couple of thousand years... just about as old as christianity itself.
Timidly at first, guilds and townsfolk rallied together and lent their support to kings, thereby easing oppression by local lords.
Does he actually have proof of this, or is he using the LoTR as a template? It kind of reminds me of an essay I wrote (in my ignorant arrogance) about the beginnings of speech among Men when I was in high school.
Temblors began splitting a chasm between Romantics and Enlightenment pragmatists. The alliance that had been so formidable against feudalism began turning against itself. Trenches soon aligned along the most obvious fault line, down the middle -- between future and past.
In this conflict, J.R.R. Tolkien stood firmly for the past[...]
This fits the very plot of "Lord of the Rings," in which the good guys strive to preserve and restore as much as they can of an older, graceful and "natural" hierarchy, against the disturbing
See. This guy hasn't read the Silmarillion probably. The older state of affairs is that Elves and Men were born on a paradisiac earth, and there was no Evil. When evil came, heirlooms, and kingships became saught after. Before that, the peoples of Middle Earth dwelt in little pockets and were peaceful. Then with the evil of Morgoth (Sauron's master of old), ambitious Elves were made to become kings and want to rule all of Middle-Earth... And the reason for that is because Morgoth himself wanted to rule the earth, and the easiest way to achieve that was by having his enemies do the grunt work for him before hand...
I could go on for pages about this... but I won't. Anyone interested can just read the Silmarillion.
All in all though, I'm very irritated by this author. It seems to me he's the typical Hollywoodist he criticizes in his own essay: trying to attract attention by shock value.
Fuck it...
It would be great to be forward looking and excited about what techonology can do for the world, but all I see is petty warmongers, and a fear driven society too scared to make intellegent choices, using technology to distance people from each other, be it bombs, or toys that preclude any use of the imagination.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of hopeful people! When fear(of terrorists, government, future) is no longer dominating people, perhaps we can get something done.
But maybe that's the point.
1) They switched Darrens Look closely and you'll notice the human member of their party is played by two different actors at different points of the movie (it takes a sharp eye to notice, but one of them has red hair, one black).
You're thinking about Bewitched, not LoTR. Nobody cared then, either.
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
we're going back, Back to the Future! (now available on DVD for the first time).
Obviously. Isn't this the same anti-privacy libertarian crackpot who also bitched out Star Wars for being "proto-fascist" or some such tripe? Whatever. IMOHO Brin is just another B-list Sciffy writer with wacky ideas, no different than L. Ron Hubbard. Not interested.
Did you read his sequel novel to Asimov's Foundation series? Benford and Bears' were great. They wrote somewhat "in the spirit" of Asimov.
Brins, on the other hand, is so crappy it's hard to find in stores. In his commentary he makes all these insipid, arrogant, and wrong comments about technical flaws in the stories which he then awkwardly tries to solve. What an arrogant knob.
Everything else I've read that he's written is just as idiotic and arrogant.
David Brin seems to spend more time picking apart other, more popular, sci-fi then he does writing his own.
Or, at least the media spends more time talking about David Brin talking about other, more popular sci fi then they do talking about him writing. And as we all know, the amount of time the media spends talking about something is directly proportional to frequency of the occurrence, and absolutely nothing else.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Just look at how people felt about Princess Diana. No democratically elected public servant was ever so adored.
Way to forget the utter deification of Kennedy.
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
I believe someone posted an article from Brin, like this, before Star Wars Episode 1 was released damning it for worshipping the ubermensch over the real people. IE, the only ones worth mentioning are the people who've got nothing mentionable about them. I've never read any of David Brin's books, but I don't imagine I'd be all that interesting. A bunch of forgettable cogs in the wheel of society each having hardly any impact on the world as events overtake everyone? Ah, how enthralling. And I need to pay $5.99 for the paperback version of this startling insight into the completely bloody obvious?
Tolkien stated many a time that his books were not meant to be taken as social commentary on the present (at least, his present). People who insist otherwise are probably the same kids of people who believe that "no means yes". Of course the times, and his experiences in the trenches of WWI influenced his writing, but influenced by != commentary upon.
isn't this the intellectual level of the average US american???
We good, them evil (notice the babytalk...)
Grtz.
Culture pundits are pissed that a 60 year old book now dominates our popular coconsciousness. (sarcasm alert) The movie even had (canyoubelieveit) the gall to be faithful to the book. No creative license was taken to make it 21st century hip!
Consider the rings. Those man-made wonders are deemed cursed, damning anyone who dares to use them, especially those nine normal humans who tried to rise up, using tools to equalize and then usurp the rightful powers of their betters -- the High Elves*.
The Rings were forged by Sauron - neither Elf nor Man. He is just a Maiar. A god-like spirit. And he's Morgoth's (the source of evil on Middle Earth) first Lieutenant.
The nine Ringwraiths [...] can be looked upon as cautionary figures, conveying the universal lesson that "power corrupts."
On that much we can all agree. But I think there's more to the Ringwraiths. To me, they distill the classical Greek notion of hubris [...] -- the idea that pain and damnation await any mortal whose ambition aims too high. Don't try putting on the trappings or emblems or powers that rightfully belong to your betters
The rings don't belong to anyone but Sauron himself. Hence even the Elven rings are under the rule of the One ring. That's the WHOLE FUCKING POINT: ANYONE who aspired to great Power in middle earth is subjected to the Evil that Morgoth/Sauron brought forth.
*Another point: the high elves were banished from 'valinor' the land of bliss because after Morgoth came, they tried to overtake the land for themselves, and in their arrogance, they were exiled.
Ugh... Fuck. I have to go punch a brick wall. This article is as stupid as the people who said the "Two Towers" were and allusion to WTC.
To quote rage against the machine:
WAKE UP
KNOW YOUR ENEMNY
you could be arrested for looking at something!
Mod down the above spoiler please
The conversion of Brin's "Postman" from book to movie was so putrid as to make Crichton's book "Jurassic Park" look like a literal translation. Brin's book is excellent, anyone into post-apocalyptic stuff should look at it.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Too much focusing on the future is almost as bad as too much focusing on the past. The focus should be on the story. We are writing our own stories now. If a vivid hypothetical look back on the never was helps us to realize that we should be doing something now worth looking back upon someday, that's good.
I, of course, am planning on going to the opening of the two towers dressed as an elf anyway.
And for those of you who haven't read it: the article is funny, which makes up for a lot. for example Brin writes: "Witness the most amazing accomplishment of NASA -- managing to turn the exploration of space into a huge snore."
annmariabell.com
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
Go read the article. Read the last page.
:)
*sigh*
OK, for those of you who still didn't read it, the point was to get you to examine the story from a different perspective, to get you to consider for a moment the possibility that the "good guys" were really the "bad guys." It's an exercise in not being such a MTV-loving couch-potato consumer who just takes everything at face value... "oooh shiny objects and hot women, must deactivate brain while watching movie." The article did NOT knock LOTR. Save your canned responses for whenever Micro$oft does anything.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
Since I've began reading sci-fi/fantasy-deemed books, one of the things I started to notice and like were the non-existence of those 100% evil things.
And it's a trap very difficult not to fall into. Look at his majesty Brin himself: into the uplift cycle, aren't those "galactics patrons" the fundamental evil, impersonating (but for a few exceptions) the real bad ones. Even Tolkien himslef, or Jordan (look at the Trollocs into "the wheel of time") did not escape that trap. They had to identify absolute villains.\And notice that, in opposition with Tolkien, Brin "bad" people are the one that do not want to change the traditions. So why is that salon article not so surprising ?
This whole "world dichotomification" of course appeals to our human nature, because it's so easy to blame everything that is going wrong on satan/sauron/beelzebub/...
But I like works like "Dune" or Leiber "Sword and Sorceries", because they do not try to split the world in two. The evil and good is coming from us, after all.
[Pruneau
I can't help but feel that he has totally missed the point. JRR Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, and Christianity was a very important influence on his philosophy. Good, evil, and humans living up to their ability or failing at the test is very relevant in terms of religion.
... of the indomitable Romantic hero"? He's just got no idea. Tell me who the hero of the Lord of the Rings is? I think Sam is as much the hero as anyone, and who would put him as their first choice?
He seems to be attacking the form rather than the underlying messages, and as has already been mentioned, it's a fairy story. There's just so many ways of looking at Tolkien's work that some of Brin's essay seems just petty. "The paramount importance
It's not a fairy tale. And it is relevent to all ages. The entire story is a metaphor for the internal (and possible social) struggle to resist the allure of unlimited power.
once again, a supposedly "enlightened" person has attempted to forge a connection between Tolkien's works and the modern world (both historically with regards to when it was written and socially with regards to our society now). crap, trash, drivel, and spit. Tolkien has said, both in print and on film, that his works in no way reflected to current events of his day and, that while it may seem related, they were in not not. his works were the outgrowth of a man concerned primarily with linguistics and the evolution of linguistics. combine that with a desire to give england a saga of it's own (to replace the history lost after the norman conquest) and you have his collective body of works. there it is...in a nut shell. the article is wrong some many times that i would have to get print it out and go over it with a pen to catch them all. and those errors concern factual items, motifs, genre, and imagery. i won't even begin to speak on the comparisons he tries to make. yet another attempt at dumbing down something wonderful to help the "masses" understand in better (read: incorrectly). never in my life have i written these letters, so here goes: RTFM! it's all there, volume after volume, his exact words and his son's words speaking by proxy. what an idiot.
Ok, so by labelling the above a troll you're saying that he DOESN'T write about the future nor is there a conflict of interest in making that comment? Oh yeah, he's above all that. He's a sci-fi author after all, and you obviously know him SO well.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
But I never said I wanted to live there. It's fantasy, it's escapism, it doesn't mean we're ignoring the rest of the world.
Oh, and for some people, this modern world isn't so hunky-dory.
LOTR is supposed to be part of a surrogate mythical history for England. I don't think writing history, whether real or imagined, makes one "an enemy of progress".
From a literary standpoint the popularity of the series is transcendent in the sense that it lives up to a number of 20th century literary traditions while at the same time maintaining a tradition of heroism which is something very few writers in the 20th century were able to do.
In fact the LOTR is probably the only great heroic epic of the 20th century that can even hold the label of being literature in any sense of the word.
The author's cynical betrayal of the book's ideas is tripe from the beginning. It was not about the big heroes like Aragorn and Gandalf really but how a common man (a hobbit) who wanted nothing more than escape the madness and return to his home had to face up to the evil growing in the world and do something about it. It played perfectly into the 20th century literary tradition of focusing on the common man.
Not only that but throughout the book there is the sense of times changing and the time of man coming of age. It is backward-looking in many ways but it does talk down to the reader and try to tell them the old days were the best or the change must be fought against tool-and-nail. No instead there is a sense of noble resignation that the old times cannot stand forever against the passage of time.
There is a need ( a 20th century need I might add ) to tear down all that is good and loved in the world and to deconstruct it and expose it as a lie even though it might be the truth. I matters not to the cynical, deconstructionist nature of the modern critics. This reviews in salon is just that. I hope in the coming century we realize that the failings of our icons make them more human and more admirable in their courage and do not keep hold the hollow tradition of ripping them down simply because we can.
____________________________________
ACK
annmariabell.com
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
Reading through the comments here, there are two themes: "I liked the LOTR, so back off" or "Brin's full of shit."
/. crowd is made up of Romantics.
/.'rs.
/. crowd to me. Hell, it sounds like me -- except I have been losing my snobbish elitism, but maybe I am just becoming a sheep.
/.'rs think in terms of rank, which makes them Romantics.
:-)
All of these comments have "proven" is that the
Guess what folks? Brin's absolutly right. Romanticism was Tolkien's worldview (by his own admission). Brin didn't create the terms, or this view of Tolkien. Its not even an insult. Its just a description of a perception. The problem is, it hits too close to home for many
From the article:
the Romantic elitism of many who share the same cause. Enlightenment's child -- suspicion of authority -- often comes paired with the quintessential romantic image: a smug loner who despises the masses. They get mixed together, even though they arise from different traditions. One way to tell them apart is to observe whether a character sneers only at power-abusers -- or at everybody: Is his or her ire aimed solely upward, toward some cruel elite, or downward too, despising fellow citizens and neighbors as clueless sheep?)
Sounds like the
But don't take my word for it, look around. How often do we see elitism, and disgust for the masses here? Lusers? RTFM? Everything on ESR's site?
So, its not surprising that the cynical comments should fly:
"Democracy was invented in ancient greece"
Yup, for male citizens of a certain age, and economic standing. Hardly egalitarian.
"Its just a fairy Tale"
All fairy tales are moral plays, this is a cop out.
"The world is going to hell in a hand cart"
Romantics always see the world this way, this is a tautology. The world has alway been improving, and always been getting worse. Its a matter of perspective.
I loved Brin's comments. And I love TLOTR. The two can be seen together, if you don't commit the classic Romanticist mistake of reserving your scathing critcism for everyone "out there" and instead turn that keen insight inward.
I have read all of Tolkien's works at one time or another, written papers, and taken classes on them, and can quote much of TLOTR from memory, so I am not really interested in how LOTR is not Romantic, it is, that's why I like it. Just because there are problems with that world view doesn't mean there isn't good in it too, or entertaining, but it is essentially fantastical, in a true feudal world, we wouldn't be lords, we would be serfs -- or at least you would be, I of course would be king.
Flame Flame!
We are agents of the free
I don't think the chimps or neo-dolphins would
put quite that happy face on it. Remember they
can't reproduce without a green or white card.
Also it is implied in the books that HUMANS are under the same sort of strictures. Particularly in Sundiver.
Indeed the irony I find in Brin's books is
the very survival of humanity is at stake,
Reproduction is tightly regulated, so much so
that it is The Nazi's view of eugenics distilled
to an even higher level of control, and yet
The human council sends explorers out
and they throw humanity into crisis after crisis
where the fate of humanity and ALL
its client races hangs in the balance EVERY time.
Now I don't know about you, but if I were a dolphin or chimp the above would PISS me off.
The biggest Irony is Brin rails against fuedalism in the LOTR and yet what is his STABLE, enummerably old, and highly organized galactic
society built upon? FUEDALISM. The supposedly Evil galactic society has brought stability and general peace to the entire universe
for hundreds of millions of years. I say we take his universe apart and look at it from the galactics point of view. Then see how he likes
it......
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
I'd read Brin's articles on Star Wars (available at Salon) before passing judgement. His take on Star Wars is far more negative than his take on LoTR. There he's angry.
With LoTR, Brin's having fun in the article while making a point. Much as he notes LoTR can only be taken so seriously, its obvious from his humor (especially the hilarious end with reviewing Sauron) that he's not taking himself 100% seriously either. He's tweaking people's noses and making them think.
Do I think Brin has a point? In general, yes. I've seen a lot of media taken far far too seriously - my favorite was seeing a person very seriously analyze the Star Wars universe and the Federation, and decide the Star Wars universe was more pleasant to live in. It was exactly like Brin's analyses - his choice was pure romanticism - and the assumption that in such a universe he'd be a hero, as opposed to say, Rebel cannon fodder or a Storm Trooper in Remedial Shooting Things Class.
There's only so seriously one can take any "classic" and all bear the stamp of the times and the author, and deeper interpretation needs to keep this in mind. Brin should too be a bit more aware himself, as I feel he misses various kinds of classic heros to focus on a few types.
Do I think LoTR is a classic? Yes, undoubtedly. It's an amazing effort from a man I can only christen a genius. But such men are products of time and place, and why their works are read is a stamp of the reader's time and place. Brin's just analyzing that.
In the end he suggests keeping things in context and their proper places. Not a bad piece of advice at all, even if you don't exactly agree with him.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Is there anything really wrong with wanting an escape? Where is the harm in losing yourself in an in-depth fantasy for a few hours, where things are simpler the enemies are clear and defined and there are definite heros you can cheer for? When Tolkien first released all three books as one collection he explains that he gets quite angry when his world is read into as a commentary of the times. People should take it for what it is an amazing story that leaves you cheering for the unlikely hero, the true and honorable king to be, and the wise wizard. I'm gonna go enjoy the hell out of the movie and lose myself for those three hours and when i get out of the movie it will not have solved the worlds problems but it'll entertain me.
My prediction is that in 20 or 30 years people will still be reading LotR, and perhaps watching the movies but nobody is going to rember or care about the works David Brin.
Now look at Harry Potter. The Harry Potter world is bureaucratic, not monarchistic. There's no "king of the magicians". The Minister of Magic is a bureaucrat, not a miracle-worker or a king. Dumbledore is subject to a Board of Governors. There's a royalist faction, in which the Malfoys are prominent, but it's out of power and in decline.
It is possible to write non-royalist fantasy.
Someone need a little free publicity?
STFU
Interesting article, although it drones on after a while...er, a short while that is.
First off, much of the writer's premises are totally fractured and broken. And the key, is in fact, the lowly Hobbit.
This is the "unexpected hero" the non-Hercules. The average individual. The proof of evilness is found in the Shire. The Shire, home to a race of simple and peace loving creatures who's home is destroyed by the evil of Sauron and his followers (Saruman).
In fact, if you were too look at anything of Tolkien's work in the LoTR and what it expresses it is the following: the goal, is contentment....to be content in our life is the greatest state of existence. However, at times one is called to do that which they do not necessarily want to do. And although the task is the farthest from our desire the truly noble individual is the one who endeavors to do that which needs to be done. Frodo was not seeking glory and fame. He was doing what needed to be done. His desire was not to be written as "Frodo the Hero" but rather to warm his feet by a fire in Baggs End. Samwise Gamgee was not a "hero" of bravery or strength or skill or cunning. No, he was a hero in faithfulness. A friend that stuck closer than a brother.
These were the heroes of Tolkein's realm. Not the famous Hercules, or mighty wizard. Rather, the humble and contrite spirit of the Hobbits.
When one understands this, one gains a greater understanding into the message of J.R.R. Tolkien!
Didn't some joker make an essay with exactly the same structure about the Star Wars Movies? I think I have seen it posted on /.
love is just extroverted narcissism
If there's a middle class anywhere in Middle Earth, it's the Hobbits. They have an elected Mayor, they have trades, they have commercial agriculture, they have capitalism.
Brin is pulling his usual self-promoting strategem of pushing his ideas by blathering endlessly about his supposedly "rational" analysis of someone else's ideas and characters. He doesn't present it as "this is my opinion", he presents it as "this is the way it *is*, your poor dumb troglodyte."
To me, the character of Sauron does not represent "technology" so much as the *corruption* of technology for nefarious purposes. He paints the Nazis as Romantics, but they were also technologists, as evidenced by the numerous missle programs, the death factories, and the use of blitzkrieg. In the same fashion, Sauron uses the tech of the rings in order to bring about total dominion. Brin always seems to argue that tech is neutral, if not "good", and that any use of it must therefore also be "good".
Ultimately, Brin presents a false choice: "choose technology in the way I want, or you are choosing romanticism." Bah. This is just as idiotic as thinking that there is "pure good" and "pure evil".
J.R.R. himself stated that LOTR has nothing to do with real-world events, and that he hated allegory. Yet we still get these pundits who try to link up his story to WWII, ect.
Just enjoy it for the story.
(who couldn't bring himself to read beyond the first page---moderate accordingly)
I'll reply instead. Brin is a thinker. He doesn't necessarily give away his entire idea in the first paragraph.
Do yourself a favour and read the rest. Then you can decide if there's merit in the point he's actually making, rather than what you think he's saying.
Unless you're too lazy.
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
Of course, the idea that anything can be greater than politics or exist outside of politics is offensive to those who worship the State. Worship of progress could be the worship of science, but it usually refers to an agenda that seeks to "scientifically" plan out a perfect human future. Of course, the "science" that these planners usually adopt is the most pernicious quackery, and reflects there own bigotries and hatreds. (This is why "scientifically" planned societies, like the Third Reich or Soviet Russia end up as charnel houses.)
So, while the rest of us enjoy a good fantasy story, let us all be thankful that those who gibber and rave against them are mere media critics and not our own personal Saurons and Sarumans...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Please, they do romanticize his fuedal/fascist world of eugenics. The best individuals are determined by a "council" based upon certain genetic criteria. God help the poor slob who doesn't fit the mold....
Yes the humans do go out exploring to verify
knowledge, but they have NO choice but to play by the galactic rules.
They sell the gorilla's into slavery to save their
skins. The use the selfsame fuedal rules to save themselves in the war against the bird people (sorry forget the races name at the moment) using
the protection of the library etc when it is convenient.
They cover up the mass extinctions caused by man
which in and of itself would doom humanity according to the galactic rules.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
This wonderful 3 volume set contains
* Commentary by Michael J. Fox, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale
* "Animated Anecdotes" - option to see over 150 facts and trivia notes while viewing
* Outtakes and bloopers
* Deleted scenes
* Interviews with the stars
* Original "Making of Back to the Future" featurette
* The Hoverboard test
* Interactive production archive
* Screen tests and more
* Widescreen anamorphic format
All this for the low price of $42.74. Buy your copy today.
And remember folks, if you want a milkshake, just ask Michael J. Fox to hold your glass of milk !
>The Rings were forged by Sauron....
You sure about that? I though Sauron 'Silver Tongue' tricked some elven smith into making the rings, then forged the One Ring to dominate them all.
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.
I mean, c'mon.
Tolkien wasn't trying to parallel anything. The Lord of the Rings wasn't an allegory for anything. Tolkien said this countless times, but wordy intellectuals still try to find meaning where there is none.
Yes, one result has been a lessened sense of confidence, a sadly stylish fatalism in an era of unprecedented goodness and competence.
Damn, I miss Katz.
He lost me when he said that democracy was invented 200 years ago.
I'm pretty sure it's a greek word.
1) I agree with David Brin when he asks you to "unleash your imagination a bit" and stretch the boundaries of a novel. See where the possibilities lie. Taking a story to places where it was never meant to go makes it more relevant to today's readers and shows insight on how we think of today's world.
2) Taking a story where is was never meant to go and making pronouncements on its worldview is not just useless, it leads to wrong conclusions.
Tolkien was the greatest philologist (in case your not sure of the meaning, a scholar of languages, to save you the time of looking it up :-) ) and mythologist of his generation. He taught at Oxford. His treatise on Beowulf is the seminal analysis of the epic. From the very beginning, when he was starting to write the 'Lost Tales' of Middle Earth in the trenches of WWI, he was writing his own epic. For fun, much like e.e. cummings was writing breathtaking new poetry in WWII that had nothing to do with the war. His languages were based on Gothic, Old Norse, Old Finnish, Old Gaelic, etc. The Rohirrim are Vikings on horseback. The enemy as "swarthy and cruel" is straight from Old Finnish mythology, not a comment on race. Same goes for the place of women. If your writing stories based on old wordviews, you keep the worldviews. Otherwise, what's the point?
The Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis are fantasy based on his Christian worldview (especially The Last Battle). LOTR is a rewriting of North European culture with a little England thrown in. In the forward for LOTR, Tolkien specifically writes "As for any meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none." It's good to stretch the story and examine the world through the characters' eyes (or Sauron's Eye). Ignoring the author's explicit reasoning and purpose, however, means that your creating your own fantasy at story's expense.
Hmm, despite what many say, I think it's a pretty good article, really. Brin's trying more to provoke thought than advance a point.
... they weren't actually sentient, per se. Their apparent intelligence was largely an extension of Sauron's will; they lost it when he was destroyed.
But I don't think Brin gives Tolkien enough credit at all -- as far as sentient peoples in Sauron's service having been coerced into service or duped by Sauron's propaganda -- Tolkien actually proposes that possibility explicitly in the book.
For example, think of the scene (near the end of the Two Towers) where Sam encounters a fallen Easterling and starts thinking about his life and motivations.
Sam himself is a model of the non-aristocratic everyman-hero, and as Brin points out the most heroic figures in Tolkien always ally themselves with the common man, whatever their background.
As far as peoples allied with Mordor in the south, the implication was that once hostilities ended they were indeed offered peace and help in reconstruction. They were simply treated as human beings like everyone else; they were not inherently evil.
Orcs and related creatures were something of a different affair
The ringwraiths simply dissipated, as not only their individual wills but their very beings had been subsumed and essentially replaced by Sauron's own.
That is something I think Brin misses; the great evil of Sauron was that he would, in the end, permit no independent will or existence outside his own.
DNA just wants to be free...
Yes. As does Luke Skywalker. And the tricky bit is this: when you see someone who seems commonplace and ordinary but manages to do something beyond their ordinary means, you discover that they are a mythic hero. My god--just look at Aragorn! Is he a drunk in bar? Is he a guy with a good sword? Maybe a foot patrollman for the good guys? Hell no.
He's a slumming once-and-future-king.
In fact, everyone in the fellowship is a king, a leader, or a hero. Whatever happened to stout men with good skills? (Oh. That's what the bad guys use.) Frodo the everyman has mithril armor and is the godson of the richest man in the village.
Brin's making a good point.
Actually, the three elven rings were never touched by Sauron, but he knew how they were made because he deceitfully gained the favor of the elf who made them. This is how he was able to gain power over them with the one ring, not because he made them. This was also why the elves never succumbed to Sauron when he possesed the one ring. They perceived him when he put it on, formed the last alliance and Isuldur cut it from his hand. The nine men were forever poisened, the dwarves lost most of them or they were destroyed by dragon fire. Only the three and the one remained to the third age for the events of the Lord of the Rings.
I agree that Mr. Brin is an unqualified git; wholly unsuited to review Tolkien's mythology.
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
Great questions. I am tempted to answer in the affirmative, however... In doing so, I'm going to use some analogical reasonging here. Author's and automobile makers both do something similar: they invent. Now, I'd like to present an analogous inventor to Tolkein: Henry Ford. By the reasoning you've presented here, it may be possible to talk about an automobile by claiming, "Come on people. Its a HORSELESS CARRIAGE. An engrossing one, and rich with detail, functionality, and quality, but a horseless carraige non the less... Ford himself cautioned drivers not to drive an automobile to fast.'
Now, my thinking is that books and automobiles both don't do much if they are just laying around, immobile. The utility of these objects is when they are used, over time. Eyes scan words on pages over a finite amount of time, just as wheels roll on land over a finite amount of time. Just as an automobile has a 'forward momentum' about it, so does a book or a posting on Slashdot. (yes, I agree that one can put a car in 'reverse', but that doesn't mean one is backing up in time).
So, my thinking is that, because of the directionality of time, a fairy tale should address social comentary and ensure that humanity continues sometype of progress. I would go so far as to say that most all of the successful fairy tales have been based on social commentary, as the social commentary aspect is what allows us to understand the fairy tale. (For instance, imagine a fairy tale written about the molecular cohession between two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom in a water molecule. Without some type of social commentary and anthropomorphic structure to the story, the proposed fairy tale is alien and incomprehensible. At the very least, it would make for a dreadfully boring story.) So, my thinking is that a story or fairy tale should have social commentary and be forward thinking.
My claim and thesis is that social commentary and forward thinking may be inherent in the definition of a fairy tale. I would also go so far as to claim that the following are fairy tales, because they possess social commentary on the future of science:
"Blade Runner", "Rollerball", "Silent Running", "1984", "Fail-Safe", "The China Syndrome", "Terminator", "The Hot Zone", "Logan's Run", "The Postman", "Fahrenheit 451", "Neuromancer", "Count Zero", "Mona Lisa Overdrive", "Jurassic Park"
Note, that the utility of fairy tales is to allow an uninitiated person the opportunity follow, in other people's footsteps as it were, the predictive reasoning and forecasting of certain sequences of events. The decision making process is composed of four parts: Define the problem, define alternative solutions, forecast results of solutions, and & collapse possibilities by acting on a solution (this is reinterpreted to varying degrees by people, but is a pretty good model). Anyhow, fairy tales are used for giving messages of the sort, 'this kind of action is bad, because it leads to this kind of result'. Reference the Brothers Grimm for a plethora of such fabals, fairy tales, and stories.
In my thinking, LOTR succeeds in many areas, because it is an epic fairy tale, with epic consequences, and epic social commentary. As far as social commentary goes, I would have to agree with Mr. Brin's analysis of LOTR. He makes a very valid point that history is written by the victors, and I believe that there is a valid interpretation that LOTR is propoganda and marketing hype produced by the victors of the War of the Rings. Lastly, it just goes to show that LOTR is so interesting, because it has social commentary and allows us to forcast into the future, at very levels.
From the article:
While appearing on the web, not on Usenet, clearly this is a violation of Godwin's Law.
Sorry, Dave.
Mahnamahna!
Read the full length piece on David Brin's site.
Interesting. I've heard the technology analogies for years, of course, starting with Isaac Asimov's essay on TLOTR long ago, but the whole Democracy v. Feudalism thing is a new one on me. Likewise we hear lots about the two world wars and TLOTR, but I wonder if he was thinking about earlier upheavel. So, the rings are political power. Only three are given to the traditional nobles, the elves. More (was it five?) are given to the miners and smiths, the drawves. A whole boatload is given to the farmers and tradesmen (humans). So that's a total of 14 for the third estate v. only 3 for the second. But this diffusion of power, this weakening of the elves is what allows Napolean (Sauron) to grab total power when the time comes. Was Tolkein convinced that the beneficence of the first and second estates is all that protects us from dictatorship?
A couple of points:
There was kingship among the elves almost from the very beginning. Ingwe, Finwe, and Elwe were chosen by Orome to be the first the see the light of Aman and were afterwards chosen as kings.
Not all the elves rebelled, only the sons for Feanor and their followers did.
Also, only the Noldor were banished from Aman. The Vanyar and Teleri remained. And of the Noldor, only those that didn't repent the kinslaying and face judgement were banshed.
I like most of Brin's fiction. (At least the older stuff - the new Uplist trilogy, OTOH,...) But when he tries for social commentary, he simply disconnects from reality.
In this piece, he conflates science with democracy with progress with human rights in a grand "Enlightenment" of western culture. Rubbish!
It was slave-owning Athenians who invented democracy, long before the "Enlightenment", and slave-owning agrarian Americans who revived it. It was the undemocratic Soviets who put the first man into space. It was the Nazis (whom Brin labels as "Romantics"...that's the problem with bifuricating the world, you put Hitler in the same category as Thoreau) who developed jet aircraft and the rocket tech that launched the Space Age. It was the Confuscian, anti-individualist, cultures of the East (the same ones that first invented printing and gunpowder) that cheaply mass-produced transistorized electronics and surrounded us with computers.
Brin has the gall to accuse Tolkein of being some sort of cultural aristocrat, guilty of beleiving that his own culture was the best possible - then goes on to indulge, at length, in exactly the same sin.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I seem to recall Brin posting this same argument before.
A brief confirming search through Google Groups for "+David +Brin +Good +Evil" will show that he levels the same argument against "Wizards, Cool World, (anything Bakshi actually), Star Wars, and now LoTR".
the rise of pyramidal, hierarchical structures of social organization arose a (relatively) short while after the ascent of agriculture from the previous nomadic hunter-gatherer form of human existence. and along with it rose the rise of kings, chieftains, etc. this has only been for the past 6000 years, as evidenced by the rise of the great early civilizations across different parts of the world. mankind was free from these social structures for thousands of years before, and relatively free from the necessity of having to listen to other humans in their day-to-day existence. so i don't think that it was 99.4%, though six thousand years is a long time to build in the memes of tradition into the human psyche.
I couldn't disagree more with a lot of his commentary, but let's keep this shorter than this article and just focus on his "see through the eyes of Sauron" idea after a small excursion into romanticism
Brin claims that Tolkien is a romantic and basically promoted a "back to the past" attitude.
Morgoth, Sauron, Galadriel, Saruman, Gandalf... most of the key powers in his book are millenia older than the society they live in now.
Galadriel is more than 5000 years old, after all.
The war they have fought is gust as ancient and predates the First Age (Morgoth against the rest of the Valar). The struggle is not past-against-future ("Good Races" vs. Sauron) but future against past (Free development of the Good Races vs. the Old Evil).
My point? Well, LOTR is obviously an account written after the Ring War ended, long ago. Right? An account created by the victors.
The tales were written down much earlier (when you take the Simarillion and all the other books into account). And they all, different victors in different wars, independently of each other, wrote similar things.
Yes, I know, it's all Tolkien's work, but for his analogy to work, we need a "real scenario" where there clearly is none.
So how do we know that Sauron really did have red glowing eyes?
We know that because Sauron was a Maia (lesser demi-god) of Aule, the Smith. He was a fire-demon, remotely similar to the Balrog (which are also Maia of Aule). I don't have the Simarillion with me here, but I am reasonably sure that this is mentioned there.
I am reasonably sure that the eyes of a Balrog glow with his inner fire, so the leap of faith isn't too far... Furthermore, the eye is not red, but fiery, swathed in flames, whatever... Any that is entirely reasonable for a fire-demon.
Isn't some of that over-the-top description just the sort of thing that royal families used to promote, casting exaggerated aspersions on their vanquished foes and despoiling their monuments, reinforcing their own divine right to rule?
No, as explained above.
Yes, I'm having fun with words like "really" -- relating to a made-up story. But come along with me for a minute: Next time you reread LOTR, count the number of powerful beings who are vastly uglier than anybody with that kind of power would allow themselves to be. Why? How does being grotesquely ugly help you govern an empire?
Most of these beings were greated by Morgoth in mockery of the other races (Elves transformed into Orcs, etc.) and as Morgoth is only a Valar working alone, without the support of the others or the guiding hand of Illuvatar, his creations are bound to be less perfect (in the sense of beauty through symmetry).
Furthermore, he is very apt at destroying, not at building. and destruction is never pretty, I'd say.
As for ugliness helping you to rule... If you're truly powerful, beauty isn't important. Power is.
Then unleash your imagination a bit further.
Ask yourself: "How would Sauron have described the situation?"
And then: "What might 'really' have happened?"
Now ponder something that comes through even the party-line demonization of a crushed enemy -- this clear-cut and undeniable fact: Sauron's army was the one that included every species and race on Middle Earth, including all the despised colors of humanity, and all the lower classes.
Hmm. Did they all leave their homes and march to war thinking, "Oh, goody, let's go serve an evil Dark Lord"?
Or might they instead have thought they were the "good guys," with a justifiable grievance worth fighting for, rebelling against an ancient, rigid, pyramid-shaped, feudal hierarchy topped by invader-alien elfs and their Numenorean-colonialist human lackeys?
The humans he refers to, the humans from the East have no business in the realm of Gondor. They could have lived peacefully where they were, without being under any pressure from Gondor (or Rohan, or any other place around there).
Since Gondor's strength has been waning for a few centuries by the time of LOTR, it is reasonable to assume that no recent incursions into the lands of thr East have taken place either.
Tolkien describes, among other things, the pirates of [wherever] that work with Sauron's army now... doing nothing else than they did before... raper, pillage and plunder... does that sound like "serving an evil Dasrk Lord" or "being the good guys"?
Picture, for a moment, Sauron the Eternal Rebel, relentlessly maligned by the victors of the War of the Ring -- the royalists who control the bards and scribes (and moviemakers). Sauron, champion of the common Middle Earthling! Vanquished but still revered by the innumerable poor and oppressed who sit in their squalid huts, wary of the royal secret police with their magical spy-eyes, yet continuing to whisper stories, secretly dreaming and hoping that someday he will return ... bringing more rings.
Sounds good to me. Let's find proof for that. The One Ring has been made to control all other rings, to bind their purpose to the will of the wielder of the One Ring. Does that sounds like the Hero of the Masses tm? If he were to distribute the power, it would be different, but the Ring was not crafted for that purpose.
Brin's notion of the Nine as tragic figures for the idea of "power corrupts" goes along the same lines. This, too, is false. The Nine Rings were not made to corrupt but the connection to the One Ring brought about this fate. Without Sauron's intervention the Nine Kings of Men would not have become the anathema of life.
If that's going too far, here's a milder version. Those orcs and low elves and dwarves and dark-skinned or proletarian men who fought for the Ringlord were fooled by Sauron's propaganda.
Fair enough. Even that slight variation adds flavor to an already-great tale, making you pity Sauron's dupes a little, even though you still cheer as they're slaughtered down to the last private and orcoral.
Come on, folks, a little empathy!
This one is an interesting thought. The orcs (et al.) were duped into senseless slaughter and massacers for how many millenia? Never suspecting anything was amiss? Even Orcs are too intelligent for that. So, there must have been a strong incentive to not question Sauron's propaganda... like a secret police with their magical spy-eyes, which would make him no better than his rivals.
Instead of railing against "evil," try to understand it. That's always been the best way to defeat it.
This is what Saruman tries and he fails to do so. I do not know whether understanding evil might work for anyone else, but the "heros" of LOTR have seen an example of what Sauron can do, subverting their most powerful... I don't fault them for declining to try that stunt again.
Am I pulling your leg? You bet! I don't take speculations about fictional villains quite that seriously. ...?"
My real point is more general.
Don't just receive your adventures. Toy with them. Re-mold them in your mind. Keep asking "What if
It's how you get practice not just being a passive consumer, or critic, but a creative storyteller in your own right.
I have played RPGs for almost two decades now, in every world imaginable, every genre. The plain and simple truth about LOTR is that the amout of work you'd have to have going on behind the scenes to make his suggestion reality is staggering. It is completely unfeasible without a great deal more power, magic and technology than this setting provides. And unless he prevides me with more detailed ideas how this might work out, I don't buy it.
And remember this too: Enlightenment, science, democracy and equal opportunity are still the true rebels, reigning for just a few generations (and still imperfectly) in one or two corners of the Earth, after elite chiefs, romantic bards and magicians dominated our ancestors for maybe half a million years.
And..?
Sauron has not yet been proven a rebel, so where's the similarity?
So, all in all, I can't buy his suggestions and I truly wonder whether he's actually read the Simarillion (or the Lost Tales, or Tales from Middle Earth, ...)
Yes, actually, we should. Power should not be hereditary, and wealth is power. Inheritance taxes should be confiscatory above a certain level; millionaireship, say, should not be hereditary.
That is not "taking away" the power -- simply transferring it to a far more dangerous entity (the government).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Stop and think about this:
Brin's heroes are the very definition of fuedalism. ALL his heroes are the "Best of Breed"
The dolphins in sundiver, the chimps in uplift, etc. ONLY the best and brightest are allowed
off-planet and reproductive privledges.
They have these privledges by "divine right" through inheritence. The only time we read about
the lesser beings is the "probie" chimps, or dolphins, which are cast as evil for daring to want the same reproductive rights.....
Now if Brin were serious about the message, it would be the PROBIES who proved of value, not
the Uberchimps!
Sure the humans and their clients rail about the "injustice" of the system, but to the characters in the book it is more of an intellectual injustice because they have PASSED the test. You don't hear these upstanding examples fighting for the rights of the Probies. Quite the contrary. The probies are reviled, and portrayed as convenient villians blocking the progress of the race as a whole.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
It's a mythic story, delineating fundamental truths within each of us concerning good and evil.
:P
And what would those fundamental truths be, oh wise one?
Brin didn't miss the boat, he saw LOTR for what it was, dilineating fundamental lies about good and evil
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Hi all, I would like to thank David Brin for his insightful analysis of LOTR and StarWars. The real value he offers is encouraging people to think critically about the entertainment they consume. The goal isn't necessarilly to come to a single conclussion, but rather to have an interesting discussion and debate.
I will reply still though: the kingship of the noldor was much more of a 'head of the pack' concept they had when they woke in Middle Earth. Orome 'chose' the three kings to come to valinor to see... he didn't make them kings: their people already wanted them to be their kings - in effect, they were elected.
As for the different 'clans' being banished, yes you are right.
Ban the Two Towers now!
Two Towers Protest.org
Just say no to Osama Bin Tolkien!
cheers
front
Why should I have to? Its exactly as the original poster said, it isn't a social commentary its a fairy tale
Yeah, god forbid we should ever think about anything. Talking about a book couldn't possibly be enjoyable for its own sake
Later when Frodo is shown the future by the Lady of the Wood, the Dark Lord burns down people's houses and enslaves them.
Or, maybe she just showed him what she though would happen... or lied to him to get him to carry the ring to mt doom she was to scared and lazy to trasport herself.
Besides, if you buy consider Brin's hypothis that the book is a work of propaganda after the war was won, then of course it is going to portray him as a "bad" person.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There is still one thing to remember though: when the One ring is broken, the Elven rings lose their power as well. Which is quite symbolic of the fact that all the rings of Power were derived in a certain way from the original Evil the Morgoth brought to middle earth.
Last I checked that book was a straight chronology of actual events.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I got annoyed with this right from the first 2 pages of it... backwards thinking is bad? Assuming that in an earlier time, people were more in touch? Now more than ever, western civilization has plenty of bull$#it to keep us distracted from what is our lives. This distraction is somehow a good thing?
And the theory about how its bad to embrace storylines where a small % of beings are blessed with power, magic, or what have you..... I dont see how things are different at all. Replace magic with money, influence, whatever you like. Its still the same formula.
Finally, stop touting Star Wars as being on the same level in any way to LOTR...you're not even close.
You know, the ones who are just like the good 'normal' men except they are 'dark', and they do sauron's bidding.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
>>Brin
>>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
>pVoid
>Not to break it to you Einstein, but democracy was >invented in ancient Greece. That's not a couple of >hundred years, it's a couple of thousand years... >just about as old as christianity itself.
Well, while we're busy being irratated....
Many people have already pointed out Greek democracy was hardly the same thing that we have now. I'll point out that you've seriously missed the point:
Brin is saying that for 200 years some reasonable proportion of the world has lived in a democracy. The fact a few Greeks had something like it before the birth of Christ is irrelevant - it was almost forgotten and certainly never much practised in the next 2000 years or so. He didn't say it hadn't been INVENTED, only that it wasn't USED.
>>Timidly at first, guilds and townsfolk rallied >>together and lent their support to kings, thereby >>easing oppression by local lords.
>Does he actually have proof of this, or is he >using the LoTR as a template?
I'll refer you to the history of mainland Europe, in particular you might like to read about what's now Belgium for a start.
>This guy hasn't read the Silmarillion probably.
I have. And the first 10 volumes of the History of Middle Earth, including the poetry (eek!) There's some merit in what you say, but its much more complex.
> It seems to me he's the typical Hollywoodist he >criticizes in his own essay: trying to attract >attention by shock value.
Actually, he's a widely respected sci fi author. He's been writing on these themes for several years. If he's using shock value its to needle you into thinking about the ideas he presents. You can disagree, of course, but that seems to be his motive to me.
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
The simple fact of the matter is that Tolkien could write cicles around Brin. And did. I agree that LOTR is backwards and in fact racist (look at the dark southerners fighting for Sauron as opposed to the fair eleves and humans from the North). But Brin does display the fascist tendencies inherit in so much American Science fiction (which I would argue displays a fear of technology that we can't control, and fear of the uneducated barbarians hurting us with this technology. Note the luddite racism here), and also falls back on the tiresome SF notion that humans are just the shit compared to their stagnant and closed minded alien brethern in the skys. At least Tolkien was honest about what he was doing (and succeeded in), namely, writing a new mytholgy and epic based loosely on the norse/dark age mythology and language he so loved. So much SF is just the wanking of geeks trying to prove that they really didn't need to study the humanities. I definitly place "Physicist, commentor, etc" Brin in this category (and yes, I managed to get through two of his novels a long time ago). In his defense, he isn't as bad as Larry Niven.
C'mon, it's obvious that Brin is just upset that the movies made from his stories didn't make the kind of money that LOTR or Star Wars (another movie he's written rants on) did. I call it sour grapes because The Postman really was a fetid, steaming, pile of crap.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Brin is arguing against fantasy (high fantasy at least) as a whole because of the society it presents. It's a ridiculous statement, and his piece is rife with errors, as others have thoughtfully pointed out. But Brin takes the word fantasy as in "I have a fantasy of being a football player" and extends it to mean, in this context, that fans have the fantasy of this world existing, and/or replacing ou own. This is certainly fallacious thinking. The beauty of fantasy, as seen by a fan as an ideal situation, is that the fan is allowed to pretend that he/she is one of the heroes. The un-mentionable masses don't matter, it's not a wish to return to a world of monarchism. It's just the fantasy of being a hero, of being someone important.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
My one response to Brin's article would be that it is possible to take pleasure in archetypical fantasies like LotR without it indicating a regressive Romantic yearning. This is complex and his chief complaint is persuasive. But the idea he describes--the conservative tendency to idealize the past, to imagine that the present represents perhaps the worst of all worlds, a world where the forces of evil have conspired to makes one's life miserable--is not the only incredibly dangerous idea implied in fantasy. The other dangerous idea is the related fantasy of stark and immediately identifiable divisions and affiliations between Good and Evil. These two ideas which have a deep affinity for each other are, in my opinion, the chief intellectual facades (and I mean "intellectual" in the broadest sense) behind which the most common and yet most virulent human evil hides. Brin mentions that the Nazis were deeply Romantic, and he's right.
Still, though, I take pleasure--both emotional and intellectual--in the "Lord of the Rings", and I believe that I do so with no great danger to my soul. That's because I, in short, know better.
Art is not Reality; reality is Reality. Art's job is not to perfectly represent reality--past, future, or possible. Its job is to abstract essences of the human experience of reality in a way that is pleasurable or increases comprehension--or, hopefully, both. Thus, what the art means, what it is doing, may be quite unlike its superficial appearance. In particular, Brin fails to acknowledge that an essential element of narrative art is the identification the reader has with the piece's protagonists. And so even if we have Kings, Elven Lords and elite, ancient Wizards, nevertheless they are common because we are common. In them we are not so much imagining a world ordered where others, or even ourselves, are at the top of the pyramid--we are imagining the expression of the best within each of ourselves. In this way our great stories have always served both great powers, always at war--the proclamation of the divine right of Kings and the inevitability of xenophobia intertwined with the individualism, egalitarianism, and the hope that maybe, just maybe, a peasant boy will seize the sword from the stone. It could be me. Or you.
In truth I wonder if this paradoxical clash of ideals is not one of the driving forces of narrative motion. Just what is it we really want? The thing of it is that we don't quite know. That's what's interesting.
Tolkien himself rejected this notion many times during his lifetime. The story was not a cipher for WWII or the atom bomb. It was just a story. If Brin did something more than simply topical reading/viewing, he would know this.
Brin DIDN'T say that LOTR was an alagory for WWII. That's just something the poster threw in. Brin just said that Tolken was writing the books at a time when the 'failure' of the scientific enlightenment was aperant.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Professor Tolkein hated allegory! Check out this interview with him circa 1971
--
This sig is inoffensive.
I tend to feel that people embrace "The Lord of the Rings" because the classic good vs. evil battle is something most people don't get to encounter in real life. Brin actually undercuts his own point by drawing an analogy to Hitler. Of course we know Hitler was evil (and not the victim of propaganda) because of the overwhelming physical, historical, and documentary evidence. But we do not get the benefit of that evidence from a fictional work, so we are in some way forced to accept it as it is written.
Brin's entreaty to put ourselves in Sauron the Dark Lord's shoes is nonsense. The only "evidence" (if you can even call it that) of a fictional story is what the author provides. In some cases, authors will tell a story and give subtle clues that there is more to be seen than that which is closest to your face. "The Lord of the Rings" is not such a case. The form is that of a fairy tale, and in fairy tales (for the most part), what you see is truly what you get. Sauron is evil because Tolkien tells us so with just about every sentence devoted to his description or actions, and that is that.
Therefore we are reading a story of good vs. evil, and (hopefully) we rejoice in the triumph of the forces of good and despair at their setbacks. I find "The Lord of the Rings" a nice read because it allows me to escape a world of media which continually impresses upon us the opinion (cast as fact) that there's no good or evil in the world, just differing opinions. There is no doubt in my mind that evil does exist in this world. I have been unfortunate enough to have to confront it rather personally from time to time, so I can't be convinced otherwise. I think in the deepest corners of their hearts, most everyone is in some way preternaturally aware of this as well.
So Mr. Brin, please return to your fictional explorations of niggling scientific details, and leave our fairy tales alone. Our little ones have few enough simple good vs. evil tales as it is, without having them stomped on and deconstructed by your like.
Actually, this is one of the first times I've seen this kind of thought -- one that I had back in 1977 watching Star Wars: why did all the Stormtroopers have to die? Lucas helps the average viewer avoid caring for the cannon fodder required for the story by making them look all the same (faceless, matching drones). But if it was a real encounter you would know that there would be a real story behind each of those masks, people with families and histories and hopes and dreams and aspirations and fears which are probably not that different from those belonging to the Heroic Rebel (we know he's a good guy, we can see his face) gunning him down.
Hell, even Hitler probably loved his dog.
Back to Sauron, what really determines whether he is evil is not so much his actions, but the motivation behind those actions.
Humor me with another thought experiment. If I were to shoot you, most people would consider that evil. If I was to expand on things to say that I burst through your door without warning and shot you as you stood there, even more people would consider that evil. However, if I say that you were about to press the detonate button on a nuclear device (hidden beneith the obligatory orphanage on Christmas Eve), my actions suddenly seem less evil, and more heroic.
I didn't read Lord of the Rings -- I found the first book to be long, boring, and full of unneccesary sing-alongs, and after suffering through it I couldn't stomach the thought of two more books of similar length. So I don't know if Sauron's motives are ever explored in any detail (beyond the implied I'm evil therefore I do evil things seen thus far). However, it is the motivation behind the actions we see which makes one evil or not.
In any case, the real reason why all these Hero based stories are so popular is because everyone, deep down, wants to be the hero. We want to believe that when Evil rises, we will personally be the one to do Heroic Things and save the world and get the [girl/guy]. We want to believe we are Special. More realistically, when you see the text "and then millions died..." that's us. That's you and me and every other boob reading Slashdot. We ain't special, we make up the ranks. LotR is merely more escapist entertainment which helps us forget that for a little while.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
First the Star Wars universe, now the LOTR universe as well. I think David has a case of the preaching bug -- namely, against the remergence of an aristocracy in modern society.
Unfortunately, the battle is not going to be won on the particular themes of a hollywood production. All he will end up doing is annoying everyone to the point where they tune out.
Bah! Brin is out of his mind. Although he has a lot of good thoughts in that article, I think he has read too much into his analysis. In fact, he negates his own commentary at a few points by noting that Tolkien was the most critical of the "Romantic" portions of his world, i.e., the elves and their desire to keep the world as it is and not allow progress.
In fact, this is the whole point of the books! It may be regrettable that the elves have to journey across the sea and Middle-Earth loses a part of itself that it can never get back. But that is the price of progress. And according to Tolkien, it is *inevitable* that we move forward; that progress happens. We will keep tokens of that older time in our lives, so that we don't forget it, but we will still move forward.
Tolkien strives for the balance that we all wish for - between the romanticism of the past in the context of technological progress.
Examples:
1) Gimli keeps a lock of hair of Galadriel, in order to remember her beauty, with the plan to encase it in a construct of dwarvish metalworking. Nature in Technology.
2) Later in the story, Gimli shows his desire for progress as he laments the decay of Minis Tirith and the ability of dwarvish *technology* to bring it back to life. Again, technology will provide the solutions to the ills of the world.
3) Gimli's description of the Caves of Aglarond, where he comments on their beauty to Legolas. Legolas, being an elf (one of those romantics Brin so despises), laments that dwarves would ruin the beauty if they found out, but Gimli immediately scolds him, saying the no dwarf could ruin such beauty. They would use their technology to *improve* the natural beauty. Clearly, Gimli illustrates Tolkien's desire for the balance between nature and science, the romantic past vs. the technological future.
4) It is the elves who are leaving Middle Earth. If the stories were so full of Romanticism, the elves would have stayed and continued to affect the non-progress of Middle Earth.
5) Arwen, an elf, turns away from her birthright and chooses the path of mortality. That is Tolkien's clearest indication anywhere that the progress of men is desired more than the ways of the romantic elves.
6) When the party stays in Lothlorien, at the end Aragorn comments that time flows slowly in the land of the elves, but they must leave soon because events continue on the outside world. If they intend to fight evil, they must move forward. Again, the romantic elves are not the path to enlightenment and freedom.
7) Gandalf gives Aragorn a directive and a challenge at the end of the stories that it is now the time of men. Much that has been will now pass away, but that does not mean that Aragorn should neglect his future. He should hold in his thoughts and heart the beauty of the past and use it to guide his way as he makes progress into the future.
In my opinion, Brin is completely off the mark in his analysis of LotR. I think Tolkien had the essence of progress in his heart as he wrote the books. He laments that the beauty of the elves is fading, but knows that it was that same group who caused the sufferering in the world and it is best for them to leave and for the race of men to guide things toward a more prosperous future.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
"The Lord of the Rings," like C. S. Lewis's "Narnia" books and his "Ransom" trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet/Perelandra/That Hideous Strength) draw from similar sources. The two writers knew each other, borrowed ideas and themes from each other, and belonged to a group called "The Inklings."
Part of the shared vision is a Christian world view, more evident to the casual observer in Lewis's writing than Tolkien's. It's a politically conservative vision, too, and one in which military force is seen as the solution to problems--and given epic, heroic dimensions that few have seen in real wars since World War I.
Compare the scouring of the Shire to the passage in which a village is renovated/destroyed in the name of progress in "That Hideous Strength," and compare Tolkien's evil sorcerors to Lewis's evil scientists.
I happen to think LOTR may be the greatest work of literature written in my lifetime, by the way.
Nevertheless, Tolkien, Lewis, along with G. K Chesterton, W. B. Yeats, and other worthies are the sort of people W. S. Gilbert had in mind when the Mikado speaks of "that idiot who praises in enthusiastic tone/Every century but this and every country but his own."
The idea that the Middle Ages were better or happier or more spiritually healthy than the present is so alien to the American way of thinking that we can hardly recognize it when we see it.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I remember reading the Time article and being so angry at them making generalizations from 2 films: LoTR and Harry Potter. And then trying to imply that things like Medieval Times and Renaissance fairs are a recent phenomenon. They've ALWAYS been there.
I'm a BIG sci-fi/fantasy fan and honestly, claiming any distinction between the two is really stretching it.
There is a SMALL segment of sci-fi that tries to be grounded in reality and hard science, but most of sci-fi is also in the business of world-building that isn't based in reality either.
The strength of sci-fi and fantasy is not "looking to the future" or "looking in the past". It's creating a universe where you can place characters in situations that wouldn't come up normally.
There IS an element of escapism involved, but it's equally true of sci-fi or even plain normal adventure novels. It has NOTHING to do with the genre. Like any other genre, sci-fi and fantasy have shallow silly books, and deep quality books.
The tale of the ring is huge and covers many themes, but I can't imagine twisting a story as thouroughly as he did, even ententionally.
The central theme of The War of the Ring to me is that each person matters, any race, any sex, any size, any level of intellegence. Even characters that were failures their entire lives were able to find within themselves (at least) one shining moment to make their world a better place.
Are these ideas antiquated, belonging only in our past?
NO!
-Zaphod
Was he an elitist? Yes, of course he was. He was the product of his place and time. But as such, he was also a first-hand victim of technology. It's amazing to me that Brin misses entirely the impact of the First World War on Tolkien and his writing.
Tolkien fought at the Battle of the Somme, which was a slaughter of unprecidented scale. On the first day of the British attack, 20,000 men were mowed down by German machine guns - this coming after the British bombarded the German positions with hour after hour of relentless artillery. Tolkien lost two of his best friends to the war, and himself was sent home with trench foot.
Relentless belief in "progress" was a defining factor of the prewar period, and it took years of staggeringly innefective and grotesque fighting to convince most Europeans that progress wasn't all it had been made out to be. The men who fought the war and lived to tell the tale certainly harbored no illusions about it.
It's no wonder that Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings, a tale in which individual actions could make a difference. After seeing battlefields completely denuded of vegitation, turned to rotten, corpse-laden mud by machines of death, is it so surprising that he glorified the fields and trees and rivers? Perhaps the Dead Marshes aren't such a stretch when you've seen bodies littering the battlefield.
Tough to stay optimistic about the future when you've fought in one war that maimed you and killed your friends, and seen a second world conflagration that saw entire cities aflame and nations engulfed by mechanized armies.
Mr. Brin is right that we should look to the future. But in moving forward, let's not forget that there are things about the past that do bear preserving. Humanity, decency, individual responsibility, and mistrust of power seem like pretty damned useful concepts to me.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
And that's America. I mean, look at us, policing the world like it's our God-mandated duty (I'm sorry, I guess God stopped existing about 35 years ago) - man-mandated duty to extend the benefits of democracy to the rest of the saps still in a sludge pond of monarchism, feudalism, and backwoods ways. And don't even talk to us about Eastern civilizations!
The real problem with this world-view is it's negation of tradition and human passion. That's okay, strip away every familiar aspect of your government and society and convert to an eglaterian state where you will be better off. Except that most of the rest of the world has never known freedom like that. And it's like overfeeding a starving person or putting a frog into boiling water. That frog's gonna jump out!
The only reason our democracy, and before that our revolution, worked, was because we DIDN'T try to subvert everything. Look what we took from England: A House of Delegates, Checks and Balances (which really came to a head with Charles the I and II, which is where John Locke comes in with his Second Treatise), a stable economic foundation (land to ideas as currency), our Declaration of Independence, even the office of President of US! Truly, the Founding Fathers only changed what they needed.
With Brin, and with so many other people, the past seems to hold value only as a curiosity, there to point at, laugh at, and occasionally moralize about. The past only exists to tell us where we don't want to be. And that's just plain ridiculous.
As for Lord of the Rings, it's the classic Romance wrapped up inside an Enlightened story - look at the Fellowship, for God's sake. Have you ever seen a better melting pot? And while there are heroes and leaders (Romance), aren't they there for the good of the people (Enlightenment)? What about the Rings? Couldn't you easily make the case that they are simply ancient holdovers from a long-dead world, and their eradication would usher in an age of Peace, Reason, and "Enlightenment". Afterall, learning with the Numenoreans ceased when they were assaulted by the forces of Mordor.
My point is, I interpret LotR one way, Brin interprets it another. Is either valid? Is either right? I'd like to think I am right and he is wrong, or at least misguided. But that's just me.
Oh yeah, if he's all gung-ho about the future, why are his works, for which he is most famous, stories about a future gone horribly wrong?
I had to say that seeing the beating Brin is getting here.
Like many I was charmed by LOTR, but I agree with Brin to some extent. To put it simpley
"good vs. evil, comic-book syndrome is getting old".
I am not suggesting that the LOTR is anything other than one of the best pieces of fiction ever written, *but* there are basic themes that evaluate to the simple comic-book syndrome.
This formula has bothered me since I was a kid watching "transformers" and "gi joe", often times hoping that cobra commander or megatron would win.
I watched "moulin rouge" thinking that in the story within the story, the "evil" king should have got the girl. Should a man that has given his life to rule his country and thus have little experience at love be denied because of his sacrifices?
"titanic" showed a perfectly beautiful couple tormented by a crass, angry aristocrate. That movie made all the money that it did because we're prone to enjoy "formula" movies. This is not necessarily always a bad thing btw.
Why are all the bad guys ugly and the good guys beautiful?
Just for fun, take a closer look at the movies showing, and look for it. The "us vs. them", "beauty vs. ugly", "good vs. evil". Compare with movies that break that dwell less on this formula eg "Changing Lanes" http://us.imdb.com/Title?0264472
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
It's incredible that such obvious but hard-on-your-conscience truths have been actually voiced.
/.
And now, even echoed by
Must be some change in the air recently?
Most people I know are so blinded by the book's sheer grandeur that they miss its powerful racism and inequality message _entirely_. They even try to argue. "Hey, how can Frodo be racist! He's so cute! And Aragorn is so noble!" Oh my. People really must be FORCED to read such eye-opener essays as this one. I would nominate it a required reading in all high schools.
For example, are you aware that the "black language" of Mordor is in fact very similar to Turkic language? The author, being a linguist, could not be unaware of that. Well, how'd you like that - Turks have been conquering Europe for centures, let's now have a revenge by associating them with the Black Lord! This might be a "subconscious" thing, but it stinks nevertheless.
Interestingly, there's one culture that seems to be more resistant to the LOTR propaganda (probably because of the historical background). Namely, in Russia, even though there's a huge JRRT fandom (as everywhere), there's also a number of notable "sequels" written to present the same story from entirely different viewpoints. Not a history written by victors, but - as David Brin suggests - an attempt to figure out what might REALLY have happened in Middle-Earth. And these are not just "fan fiction," too. The books I'm speaking about are published in large numbers and are quite popular. Admittedly they are weaker than the original LOTR in terms of artistic beauty and complexity, but they compensate for that by their fresh insights and that powerful "wow, how could I be so blind!" feeling. Too bad they are not likely to ever be translated back to English. (We don't like to be disillusioned, do we?)
David Brin views us as progressing to a 'golden age" whereas Tolkien as a Christian sees humankind as corrupt, unable to save ourselves from ourselves, and needing outside help (i.e. God). I don't think Tolkien was trying to glorify the past, rather he in his underlying beliefs in this fantasy is trying to point out that there is no solution by our making (all the rings) to the corruption. In LOTR there is a sense of outside help, of providence, that guides the events on this knife edge to a good solution. (Frodo was meant to have the ring.) So there is hope, but it is not found in the rings.
and this is my review of LOTR: somebody please give me a movie deal for any of my books. Thx.
He makes several mistakes, like saying the nine rings were made by men.
But more annoying "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"
Uh, NO!
Homo Sapiens has been around for tens of thousands of years (my memory wants to say 180,000, but that's a guess so take it for what its worth).
However for most of our existence we lived either without society at all, or within an egalitarian society.
As humans, that too is part of our heritage, and I dare say I feel more romanticly inclined towards that than to bowing and scraping before some king.
"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 "
Yes we can, because your statement about the middle class is wrong. In the world, the LOWER class takes up most of the population, and in America, the middle class is shrinking into the upper and lower classes (eg DYING OUT).
Yes, Tolkein looked backwards with misty eyes, but, dammit, with ideas like having the smallest among us (hobbits) affect the most change, and bilbo's mercy ruling fate... Well, perhaps Tolkein wasn't all that elitist after-all.
It seems like Brin was just using LOTR to wax pseudo-intellectually about how good society is in comparison to a variouse other periods of time. It was barely even tied to the books/movie. Just mindless blah blah blah
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
The final page of the article summaries some important problems with modern pop culture, the real target of Brin's article I suspect.
It also pulls together Brin's admitedly wordy argument ( at least compared to the average slashdot story )
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
The Rockefeller's made all their money from Standard Oil in the first part of this century. The Kennedys made their money from smuggling booze during prohibition. Nether of them are truly 'old money'.
The true old money people in this nation do nothing but hoard it.
On the other hand, look at someone like Gates. Mostly new money, but he's doing more for the world then the lot of vanderbilts combined.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
He seems to assume that if we can only know as much about those who control us as they know about us, we'll have equal power of them. But he completely neglects the effects of wealth and power on being able to actually do anything useful with that information.
He also fails to adequately address a number of issues. Specifically:
Brin assumes that the technology is its own motive force - that any possible niche that a technology might be used for, it will be used for. Unfortunately, he does this in the face of historical evidence. There are a lot of technologies that have not seen adoption by the general public - and some of these are due to legislation and policies that simply make the technology too expensive to be worthwhile.
So read the book again.. but this time, try doing it with a critical eye.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Brin seems to be missing the point about History vs Future.
We follow history in order to learn from our mistakes,
and we examine future scenarios to avoid repeating those mistakes.
Most history looks rosy? We viewed life thru rose-colored glasses.
Most future essays are bleak? We still think it will be easy.
Anyway...
f = fopen("Lord_of_the_Rings");
while (<f>)
{
s/Sauron/Microsoft/g;
s/Saruman/Intel/g;
s/Wormtongue/DMCA/g;
s/Gollum/Palladium/g;
s/Gandalf/Stallman/g;
s/Aragorn/Tux/g;
s/Frodo/You/g;
s/the One ring/your preciousss Linux b0x/g;
print;
};
fclose(f);
And his articles in Salon about them are interesting. As he says in the article, "It's how you get practice not just being a passive consumer, or critic, but a creative storyteller in your own right." I agree in large part with some of his discussion of Star Wars: there are many interesting directions Lucas could have taken with the story, none of which he did. Thus, Episodes I and II are tepid. Brin is spot-on about Tolkien's romantic longings. Tolkien wrote about a world in decline, where beauty was passing out of the world. That's the topic of the Silmarillion, and the Lord of the Rings just forms the last chapter in that saga. It's also hard to argue against the idea that the Lord of the Rings shows racist tendencies. However, Brin misses some of the points. Sauron is evil because he chose to follow Melkor/Morgoth in the the beginning of the world. Melkor/Morgoth was evil because he aimed to corrupt Illuvatar's design. The parallel is to (certain forms of) Christian morality. Evil is ugly because its exterior form mimics its interior darkness. Melkor was once the fairest of the Valar, but his evil ate away at that and he became menacing, not beautiful. Sauron wore a fair form before the fall of Numenor, but in its destruction he lost his ability to assume it. Gandalf and Saruman are powerful, not because of some secret knowledge they have, but because they are Maiar. Their powers are limited, which is why they can't destroy Sauron outright (Sauron was also once a Maiar, note), but flow from their nature. This idea might be undemocratic. However, in Tolkien's world, it's a fact: neither the Maiar nor the humans can do anything to change it. Democracy can't alter inherent inequality. As Brin notes, Tolkien's "heroes" aren't always heroic. The Elves, in particular, have a checkered past (e.g., the Kinslaying) and they show little willingness to fight in The War of the Ring. Many of the wizards, Maiar sent to help Middle-Earth against Sauron, either turn (Saruman) or forsake their duties; Gandalf alone holds steadfast. The Numenorean kings, from whose line Aragorn descends, ended up bringing destruction upon themselves. In Tolkien's world, everyone is subject to the forces of decay and corruption. I agree in some respects with Brin's criticism of Star Wars. However, Tolkien's work has far greater internal consistency. Taken in itself, it works, but it is an expression of Romanticism, many of whose ideals don't apply to our real world. Thus, many of the lessons you might take from Tolkien's work don't apply either.
And he completely ignores the fact that Tolkien was adamant about the fact that his story was neither a picture of the real world nor allegorical in any sense.
Goodness sake man! He was a linguist who made up a language and an excellent story behind it.
Trolling is saying something you don' belive for the sole purpose of enraging others. Writing something provocative and intresting, and timing it so that it gets a lot of exposure and revinue is not trolling.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Tolkien began writing The Book of Lost Tales, while in the trenches on the Western Front in World War I. In four years, that war killed almost all his friends -- by the time he was twenty-six. When Tolkien wrote of finding corpses in the mud of the Dead Marshes, he was drawing on his own experience.
If he was unimpressed with Modern War as well as with Modernity, can one blame him? Of course Tolkien sympathized with someone who "wanted nothing more than escape the madness and return to his home and do something about it." He lived in a world in which the Heroes of Western Civilization (the politicians, the generals) caused senseless ruin and suffering. He wrote of a world in which 'doing something about it' was possible because the alternative would be so horrible.
Calling Brin a cynical, deconstructionist critic requires a gross misunderstanding of his message. In the Principal Speaker's address that he gave at PhilCon in 1991, he spoke of the continuing possibility of making a difference -- by pursuing science or engineering, by encouraging sane policy on the part of government, by caring.
If you tear Brin down for 'cynically' attacking Tolkien, you are the cynical one. Please get out of the way of those of us who are still dedicated to changes for the better, and consider whether the cynical attack is too easy and too comfortable
After 100 or so years of reckless optimism, we're finally starting to realize that the future can suck, even when great technology comes along. Compare the view that science fiction has of our future NOW to the view expressed in 1930, 1940, 1950.
People have always known the future could suck. In fact, 'the world is getting worse' has been a predominant theme in human writing as long as there has been human writing. But you know what? The world keeps getting better, not worse.
I'm not saying we should bound heedlessly into the future without any planning, but it's stupid to say that technology and progress are bad things.
For almost every person earth, the world is a better place today then it was 100 years ago.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
this guy is way off base. tolkein wrote the lord of the rings because he thought that the british people did not have a good mythology, compared to other cultures. so he decided to write one. it has nothing to do with being forward looking or backward looking. it is about mythology. why on earth would he have written about democracy for a time (1000 CE about) that didn't have democracy. and anyway, no one goes to any medieval fantasy movie and actually wants to live in the past.
and what story that actually makes it to the mainstream is not about good and evil? every story has something to do with negative and positive forces in conflict.
another thing is that just because something is futuristic, doesn't mean it is forward looking and vice versa.
his diana comment is a load of crap. people didn't like her because she was royalty. people liked her because she seemed like a genuine and nice person and she was using her priveliged position to bring positive change to the world (eg landmine treaties and what not). they also liked her because she seemed like she had been shafted by the royals, she didn't fit in. when she was alive the popularity of the royals was way down. his argument about people wanting to be ruled is a load of crap.
Tolkien as racist: Talk about a tale of multi-racial harmony. We've got two humans, a dwarf, an elf, and three hobbits. The story focuses on the non-humans primarily and the failings of the humans when they're even considered. Two of three story threads in The Two Towers deals with the hobbits. Or maybe he sees them as little white people?
100% Good/Evil: This is clearly not the case. Boromir, for example, exhibits a good character who falls to evil because of weakness. He is not condemned for his weakness and his memory as someone who believed in good is upheld. Aragorn is haunted by his legacy of failure. Gollum constantly battles between his corrupted nature and his desire for redemption. There are plenty of "neutral" types in the LOTR that are either enlisted for their best interest (Ents) or who simply help with what they can and send the party on their way (Tom Bombadil - not in the movie). Good and evil have a place in the fantasy and real world.
Aristocracy vs. the common man: The hero of this tale is not a king or prince, he is an inconsequential little man, with human failings, who rises to the occasion. Luke Skywalker is a pre-destined son of aristocracy. Frodo Baggins is a curious hobbit from the outskirts of the realm - a nobody.
Enlightenment vs. Romanticism: Is Tolkien anti-technology and development, harking back to times when people respected their betters? Hardly. Every kingdom and leader in LOTR is compromised and fallen in some way. The dwarven kingdom, shown in Moria, is gone and corrupted. The elves are on the decline and are leaving Middle-Earth. The humans have joined the wrong side, are unduly influenced by evil, or are simply uninterested in solving the worlds problems. This is not a story that romanticizes royalty and the upper class and puts down technology, it's simply a story of how someone regular folks can perservere and overcome great evil.
--g
Feudalism is a logical consequence of agriculture, but agriculture only goes back about 15,000 years. Human existence goes back something like 100,000 years, and during most of that time, we were hunter-gatherers. Brin's percentage should be 14.44.
The lives of hunter-gatherers were actually pretty sweet. A big farm demands constant work from everybody and you end up with dreary work ethics. Hunting and gathering leave a lot of free time, so you paint the insides of caves, play tunes on primitive instruments, and loaf.
We really need a literature that revels in the glories of hunter-gatherer societies. The closest we have right now are "Quest for Fire" and "Clan of the Cave Bear". Hey you authors, get to work.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
(1) Baradur- Sauran
(2) Orthanac- Saruman
(3) Minas Tirth- Denathor
(4) Minas Morgual (Ithil)- The Nine Riders
I suspect the book means the first two; but much of tha action happens around the last two.
Read the Silmarillion. ;)
Watching the LOTR is like meandering into the middle of a battle and being handed a sword and told to fight(what exactly for, the moviegoer is left to wonder) It's only a small section of Tolkiens universe, and one that comes at the very end of it If you like to know more read the Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Lost Tales. Tolkien could even wrote some faeriely good 'romantic' stories (e.g., Beren and Luthien.)
It's not about mythic heroes saving the day. Frodo bears the ring into Mordor - very heroically. Sam helps him, becoming a Ring Bearer as well. Togather they both become darker, and Frodo takes wounds that will haunt him - forever.
In the end it is NOT the mythic hero Frodo, favored heir of the richest man in the village, with his mithril coat and magic sword, who saves the day.
In the end Evil is defeated by squabbling against itself - as the corrupted Gollum seizes the ring and ends up getting cooked.
Lets look at the Fellowship of the Ring - a gathering of mythic heroes all. A returned King, assorted adventurer-hobbits, a wizard with assorted elves, dwarves, and horses.
What happens to this Fellowship? Well...the leader is slaughtered (albeit to return - being Maia real death is tricky buisiness), there is blood and betrayal amongst them...and they are scattered to the four winds.
So now you have mythic heroes wandering the landscape... So what do they manage? They bring down Saruman... but that's bungled as he ends up corrupting the Shire.
These wandering heroes do manage other heroic feats - the dead rise, wormtongues are dewormed, and so forth. Of course what this amounts to is mostly the heroes gathering to defend Minas Tirith because the *real battle* is in Frodo and Sams hands.
Gandalf shows some of his power defending the city, but in the end it is a woman - female empowerment! - who dares to ignore the mythic prophecies and exert her will over presumed Fate - who takes down the Witch King. That's a powerful message - one can transform oneself form an unimportant marginzalized bystander by telling the mythic "truth" to stuff it and then *making it so*.
Now, by the time Frodo is at the end game he isn't really that bright and shining heir of the richest man in the village anymore. He's become a simple soldier - marching to what he believes will be his death, sick, disheartened, and motivated by his duty to do what must be done.
At the end of the books, when Frodo passes into the West, he's not that much different. He's haunted by what he has done, he has wounds that will not heal, and much of the light in his own heart has guttered out. He's a fairly realistic war vet, not a idolized shining hero - even while Strider has become the archetypal Rightful King. Note: Strider, Mr. Mythic Hero from beginning to end, doesn't do all that much in the grand scheme of things - he secures his kingdom but does not save the world.
There is a message here - that if one is determined enough fighting the unbeatable immortal darkness one might win - but the cost will be high and being on the right side is no guarentee.
Frodo is rewarded for his toils with immortality in the West, as a wounded and darkened man. Think carefully about being that, in a land of shining Gods and happy bright elves - many of whom have never left paradise - he's going to be one of the very few with inescapable darkness. Forever.
That's *not* the end of a mythic hero, that's the end of a soldier, returning home to try to build a normal life after experiencing direst horror.
Mythic Hero Boy -> becomes ordinary soldier -> Saves World -> pays realistic price for the rest of his days.
In July O7, I got a mac pro. There's no punchline. Just endless joy and wonder.
I remember I posted a method of doing that with Bitwise XORs and such, and that pretty much started ALGORITHM WAR 3 (!!! ;)
Did you miss 1 and 2?
But yes there is an art to technology, and not JUST having a beautiful tool (like a well made katana)- forget the aesthetics, sometimes the mechanism that the tool exploits and the product of the tool is whats beautiful.
For example- have you ever seen a picture of Shockley's first transistor? It was an UGLY melding of germanium and wires and, UGH! But the fact that it use a current and the intrisic physics of a semiconductor (specifically the valence and conduction band for electrons) as a 'gate' or an amplifier, was beautiful.
Another example (and one I've used 3,000 on slashdot) the Roland TB-303. Designed to be a "bass guitar synthesizer" it sucked. But when you twiddled the knobs and programmed it in way that it was never intended, it made these sweet, noodly bleeps and blops, and has inspired its own genre of electronic music (ACID) and legions of fans.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
If you actually read the article you will read in several different places where Brin stated outright that he wanted people to think about the story. Based on the discussion here I would say that most of you have done so, and at length.
The fact most of you also vented plenty of vitriol at Brin in the process is entirely beside the point; from what I know of the man he would consider that a success as well.
Now, as for the balance of posters that didn't think... Well, do they ever?
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
and that's the real problem with his article, whether you agree or disagree with his philosophical viewpoint.
First of all, the heroes of the story are clearly Frodo and Sam, and Tolkien explicitly portrays hobbits as "the commoners" of the story. Brin manages to completely ignore this.
> Did they all leave their homes and march to war
> thinking, "Oh, goody, let's go serve an evil
> Dark Lord"?
Tolkien explicitly states that the Easterlings were deceived and used by Sauron. There is no suggestion that they are inherently evil. Aragorn makes peace with the Easterling survivors after Sauron is destroyed. All the rants about how Tolkien considers the Easterlings subhuman are nonsense. You only have to read the scene where Sam discovers the dead Easterling to see this.
> count the number of powerful beings who are
> vastly uglier than anybody with that kind of
> power would allow themselves to be.
Brin needs to read the Silmarillion to see how Sauron made himself appear beautiful for hundreds of years in order to seduce the Numenoreans, and was afterwards cursed by the Valar and forced to appear ugly forever after.
> Consider the rings. Those man-made wonders are
> deemed cursed, damning anyone who dares to use
> them, especially those nine normal humans who
> tried to rise up, using tools to equalize and
> then usurp the rightful powers of their betters
> -- the High Elves.
This is nearly the exact opposite of what Tolkien describes. The rings were not made by men. They were made by Elves and Sauron and given to men in friendship.
Furthermore Tolkien repeatedly emphasises that the evil of the rings influenced by Sauron, especially the One Ring, can corrupt anyone. The whole point of the story --- the key to the plot --- is that his "everyman" characters, the hobbits, are the *least* corruptible. Brin seems to have missed that point completely. Or maybe he just ignored it because it didn't serve his agenda.
OK, so Sauron may really have been a misrepresented progressive, and the Empire was an (albeit ruthless) meritocracy replacing an overbearing and incompetent theocracy. But these are only sideshows to the greatest story of injustice and legerdemaine in any form of media: the repression of the thriving mutant population by the aristocratic Thundercats.
In the very first episode the Thundercats admit that mutant technology is superior to their own, indicating a higher degree of development and effective organisation in mutant society. What's the Thundercats' response? Trade? Cultural exchanges? Nope, genocidal war. Which the Thundercats are dumb enough to lose, and are forced to flee. It's only when Lion-o and his inbred chums manage to strand themselves on a technologically backward rock, isolating the mutants from their technology, that they begin to stand a chance of avoiding the extinction that they deserve (although 7 males and one female don't exactly constitute a breeding population).
And how exactly did the mutants get to be mutants in the first place? Where did the mutagenic chemicals that warped their bodies come from? Working in the Thundercat uranium mines no doubt, or in the Thundercats' poppy field getting sprayed by toxic pesticides. If the Thundercats have a culture old enough to recognise that the mutants are mutants then it's pretty clear that they are the ones whose industrialisation and explotation created the environment for the mutations to develop.
And what about that Sword of Omens that Lion-o wields to effect his oppression? How can that blatant penis metaphor be allowed near our childrens' delicate developing minds? It basically conditions our children to believe that an erection is the correct response to interpersonal conflict!
I respectfully submit that there are much bigger fish to fry in the arts than Sauron's democratic revolt against the anti-progressive elven gerontocracy or the Emperor's motivational techniques in a galaxy so vast that only grand gestures are visible. The injustice of the Thundercats must end!
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
I have often toyed with writting my own storys that have been swirling around in my head since i was young. One of the things I have always thought about was having at least one book in the series told entirely from the perspective of the "bad guy"...its a very interesting notion to look at the role reversal. Does anyone really think of themseleves as the bad guy? Does he/she wake up in the morning and say, "Ok, Yawn...ahhh, time to go be Evil..." I don't thnk so, it think the traditional "good guy" to this person is the "bad guy" whom he/she has some grivence against. This is often the same way I have looked at the Star Wars saga (Well before EP1, and the large round of "maybe the Rebels are really the bad ones, perhaps the Empire has the right idea", talk that has come about recently.
Yes, The Epire took a particularly nasty path to power and did some not so nice things to get there, but in general the galaxy seems pretty stable in general at the beginning of EP4, as compared to the relative disaster that it seems in EP1,2. In anycase I had never thought of LOTRs from this reversed prespective before, and had always looked at the evil doers as just that and Frodo et al. as those just trying to stop the evil doer from reaching his goals. Perhaps I had a more child like look at LOTR all along because I first read it when I was still quite young, so its always been a childs tale in my minds eye. Since the story was completely written before my birth, I read the whole thing and left it at that. Stars Wars has been a growing tale my whole life however so with the continuing development of the story I have been able to absorb more and contemplate the ideas more.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
"The chief power... was the prevention or slowing of decay... the preservation of what is desired or loved... also they enhanced the natural powers of a possessor... rendering invisible the material body, and making things of the invisible world visible."
A buddy of mine pointed out that the chief way the rings seemed to work was by creating/enhancing telepathy in the wearer. The Ringwraiths, aside from any physical, martial prowess, acted by destroying the morale of their opposition. See, e.g., Boromir's report of the 'strange fear' that had descended upon their forces, or the depression and gloom when the Ringwraiths are above as the troops march to confront Sauron's troops at the gate.
Fits with Galadriel's talk of having "to train your will to the domination of others". Rivendell and Lothlorien are nice places to be because their rulers, who wear Rings, project the desire to be nice onto those within range. I'll have to look and see if it's actually clear that Elrond used the ring to cause the flood or not.
Even the invisibility effect can almost be interpreted as a desire on the part of Bilbo and Frodo to not be seen, which the Ring projects. Of course, being untrained in its use, their new, uncontrolled telepathy makes them highly visible to Sauron. One of the chief threats that the One Ring would pose in Sauron's hands would be revealing to him the thoughts and deeds of the wearers of the Three Rings... again, telepathy.
Obviously, it's not telepathy alone; unless life extension is a side-effect of amplifying someone's 'mental power'. But the ability of the Ring to tempt people, and twist them to be like Sauron, makes sense in that context, too. Perhaps it has an imprint of his personality, and aligns the wearer to it over time, like how steel in a strong magnetic field can be magnetized.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I think David Brin is just living in the Past (early 1900s USA, the so-called "Progressive Era"), and is pining for a Star Trekkian Utopia.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Fuck off you boogery bastard.
that you are actually intelligent? fuck you .. I bet you dont know shit
Fuck 'im. He's wrong anyway. The story isn't black and white. Saruman was good, but was corrupted and turned to evil.
Fuck you.;) The story is black and white. There is no such thing as good and evil in the real world. Any story with good and evil is black and white.
Tolkien based most of the Good and Evil stuff on the mythology of Catholic Christians. Melkor was his Lucifer (you know, the one intelligent angel who gave Jesus the finger and thought for himself) and Sauron was a smaller variant of the same theme.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
...finals week is over, dude. You can turn off the academicspeak.
"The older state of affairs is that Elves and Men were born on a paradisiac earth, and there was no Evil"
Actually, evil was introduced from the first, with Morgoth putting forth his own themes in discord with those of Illuvatar. Indeed, Tolkien was making the point that in all things there exists the potential for good and evil, a common theme in religious works.
The Rings were forged by Sauron
No, the rings, with the exception of the one ring, were forged by the elf-smiths of Eregion. Under Sauron's tutelage.
Another point: the high elves were banished from 'valinor' the land of bliss because after Morgoth came, they tried to overtake the land for themselves, and in their arrogance, they were exiled
Wrong again, the Noldor (a subset of the high elves) exiled themselves by their oath and the slaying of their own kin. Their disobedience was in following Morgoth to Middle-earth, not an attempt to "overtake" Valinor.
A technophillic optimist, he warns against waxing too Romantic about feudal, good vs. evil fantasy. Instead, he says, we should look ahead to the future."
He makes money off of writing about the future. Small wonder he tells people to ignore the alternatives and look to the future.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Does this has anything to do with actual facts, like the Osama Bin Laden Quest For Revenge (or USA Quest for Revenge of the Revenge of Osama, or...), or Mr. Bush trying by any means a war against Iraq? I wonder...
Doesn't anybody just fscking read for pure pleasure anymore? Why do we have to stray toward a more politically correct version of a story or a myth? Instead of sounding uneducated with blabs of curse words, let me offer this. This story was a release and a tale. It is entertaining, and helps take the mind away from everything. Sometimes when people read/write they want to fall in love with a different world, leave the old behind-in a sense it's like a drug that takes you to that other place of no worries, childlike imagination of innocence and enjoyment. Or, it might be an intriguing mystery, full of dreadful dangerous deception dictating drastic demoralizing dilemmas daunting dreams damming deeds. But still a break away from this place we call reality. So with all of my ranting and ignorance to the authors real issues; go watch some more movies you insensitive clod! You can have your e-pinoins and I can have mine, so bugger-off.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Brin (screaming at Hollywood):
Pay no attention to the hobbits & trolls!
The spaceship flying dolphins are will take the people where they want to go!!!
(Don't get me wrong, I like Brin's work... it's good fun -- just like Tolkein's work is.)
----
#SickNotWeak
I thought it was shallow and self-congratulating.
Tolkien *hated* the idea that his stories would be considered analogues for Nazi Germany, Imperial England, or anything else. He just wanted to write something epic that England could call its own.
Brin falls into his own traps more often than not. Perhaps thats dramatic irony (or intentional irony, even), but for my part I think Brin is writing about LOTR not because it's something that he's really got anything to say about, but rather because it opens this week and he needs to sell an article.
The beauty of Tolkien's writing shares a commonality with Shakespeare's -- in simply writing the situation and giving characters human depth to explore, the characters neatly side-step the issue of allegory. Instead, it is the *reader* who gives meaning to the work, and provides analogies based on their own experiences.
That's why both works are timeless. They aren't pointing at any one particular time and saying "THIS is what the world was thinking about THAT." They are rather written in such as way as to force you to pay attention and think about what's going on. Analogue is a tool that the reader brings in to understand with, not one which the writers depend on and beat like a dead horse.
The best books are the ones where you can fill in the blanks and see you staring back at yourself -- and everyone sees something different. LOTR is no exception, and I'd say it's actually at the forefront.
GMFTatsujin
From the Salon article:
"The Two Towers" -- Part 2 in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy
For the record...
When Tolkien wrote LoTR, it was ONE book, not a trilogy. It was broken into three VOLUMES, not three stories, because of its size.
You seem to be the one spewing shit, and don't know anything about Brins artical, or this history of the rings... a history that Brin whent over in greater detail then you did
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If you didn't read the article, I'll sum it up for you.
Past=Bad/Present=Good/Future=Bright
Oh yeah, and "The Nazis were archetypal Romantics."
"Me mule wouldn't work in the mud. So I had to put seventeen bullets in 'er!" - Willy
Those that oppose Fantasy fail to see a simple fact: it's fantasy. It's not meant to be real. You're not meant to dissect it, you're not ment to say how absolute evil (or good) doesn't exist and most of all you're not meant to diss things you don't understand. My mum always told me "If you don't have anything nice to say then SHUT THE FUCK UP" (and then she'd slap me). I agree with her.
It's fairly obvious, people that dislike fantasy lack a decent imagination.
Hmm, I always thought the LoTR was about Evil cannot prevail when Good decides to do something about it. Or actually quote it:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
ATTRIBUTION:
Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Irish philosopher, statesman. Attributed.
Sauron gains power because good is doing nothing most of the time. It always seemed to me that Tolkein had written a really long and cool book to explain that quote.
Witness the most amazing accomplishment of NASA -- managing to turn the exploration of space into a huge snore.
Brin's heroes are the very definition of fuedalism. ALL his heroes are the "Best of Breed"
u dalism.html):
The dolphins in sundiver, the chimps in uplift, etc. ONLY the best and brightest are allowed
off-planet and reproductive privledges.
What you are describing is a Meritocracy, not feudalism. The characteristics of feudalism are (from http://www.ku.edu/kansas/medieval/108/lectures/fe
1) Feudalism is a decentralized organization that arises when central authority cannot perform its functions and when it cannot prevent the rise of local powers.
2) In a feudal society, civil and military powers at the local level are assumed by great landowners or other people of similar wealth and prestige.
3) These local leaders and their retinues begin to form a warrior class distinct from the people of their territory.
4) The distinction between private rights and public authority disappears, and local control tends to become a personal and even hereditary matter.
5) The feudal leaders often take over responsibility for the economic security of their territories, and dictate how resources are to be used, while at the same time establishing monopolies over some activities. This strengthens their presence at the local level and also makes their possessions even more valuable.
6) The feudal aristocracies are usually organized on the basis of private agreements, contracts between individuals
Well, almost. The Nine Rings of Mortal Men were there. They were worn by the nine dark riders who persued Frodo and Co out of the Shire. Yes, The nine men were forever poisened, but they are there, and they will be seen again in The "Return of the King".
As an aside, I would like to know more about what happened to the Dwarven rings. All the elf and human rings remain. you'd think the Dwarfs could keep track of at least a few of theirs.
Also, I'm rather dissapointed in the protrayal of the Dwarves in the movie. I thought they deserved somewhat equal status with the other races, but the movie seemed to use Gimli as comic relief, and not take him seriously enough. Disappointing.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
wow, Im from a greek, maybe I should be pissed because they didnt have a token greek guy? Or maybe a mexican american should be offended because there werent any mexicans, or italian, or asian etc...
that damn racist tolkien..jackson forgot to cast orlando jones as the comic relief in his movie.
schmuck
On the 4th page (obrant about splitting up stories into 'pages' when browsers are designed to be able to scroll), Brin makes the following observation:
Now ponder something that comes through even the party-line demonization of a crushed enemy -- this clear-cut and undeniable fact: Sauron's army was the one that included every species and race on Middle Earth, including all the despised colors of humanity, and all the lower classes.
Unfortunately (for him), he's dead wrong. I don't have my Tolkien handy to check the reference, but I distinctly remember reading that in the battle of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men at the end of the Second Age, it explicitly states that every race and type of creature on Middle-Earth was divided in that battle, with the sole exception of the Elves which were the only beings to entirely be on one side, the side of Good.
So much for that theory of his. (*boom*)
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Thought provoking. Lichen thinks the sun is thought provoking, too.
missed the last point
let's see, Thorin Oakenshield's reestablishment of the Kingdom Under the Mountain is really a metaphor for the Palestinian's struggle against Israel..."
that should pretty much say it all. if not thats why that dude appears only on salon. no other clowns are going to take him seriously... I hope.
is that you analyze WAY too much like that brim guy or brin or whatever the fuck that posers name is.
Sorry, if you say that the Lampoon 'Bored of the Rings' is "perhaps the funniest work penned in English" you clearly haven't read enough to be critiquing literature.
It does have it's moments, to be sure, but funniest ever?
in the context of "was he as bad as he really was" and answers that we know so because we live in a democracy in which holocaust deniers are easily proved wrong.
I'd agree that Hitler was a monster. But Brin is ignoring the real re-writing of history that went on: Western "democracies" like the USA supported Hitler and his defence of Capitalism against Communism until he started to threaten the balance of world power. Even after Hitler was defeated the USA offered sanction and material reward to the capitalists, scientists and torturers that were an integral part of Nazi Germany. Hitler didn't do it without help. Germany didn't do it without help. Some of you are familiar with Operation Paperclip's importation of rocket scientists (who among more innocent pursuits, such as developing Weapons of Mass Destruction, supervised high-G experiments on prisoners), but don't necessarily know that this extended to the amnesty and recruitment of members of the SS that were knowlegeable about Communist resistance. This was continued in Italy with the support of Mafia and fascisti.
So, the question for Mr.Brin is more accurately is "did they use the Ring?". Did they do evil to achieve good? Did they bomb innocent Afghanistanis and starve over 500,000 Iraqi children to do a greater good?
Mr.Brin is the hopeless Romantic, but unlike Tolkein he's not writing a fantasy, he's rewriting history.
books and dead authors means your not buying his latest release. While I liked Brin's uplift books, LOTR ranks a wee bit higher in my estimation. So then does Nivens' Ringworld, Asimovs' Foundation, and Herberts' Dune.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
And so it was with great trepidation that I absorbed Brin's commentary of LOTR. My personal favorite fiction of all time, LOTR was a sacred gem that I desperately hoped wasn't going to be exposed to be in actuality a plastic ornament. But I was willing to chance my world view (so to speak) on the strength of Brin's previously insightful commentary.
Alas, it appears that Brin is merely trying to impress us with the Size of His Intellect.
The very first thing he does is mock our culture's habit of escapism. This is hypocritical in the same way that leftie Hollywood actors wail about the scourge of guns on our streets, yet use them excessively in movies to enrich themselves. Brin's medium, science fiction, is just as much escapist as any fantasy story.
I don't buy Brin's position at all about Tolkien's elitism. The heros of the story are Hobbits, which are basically modeled after working class Brits.
Aragorn, who we can think of as representing the future, was a humble, reluctant, introspective royal, who, through his strength of character had caused, among other things, an Immortal elf to give up her Elevated spiritual stature. Sounds like just the kind of guy we'd like to have running the show!
What about those snotty aloof elves like Elrond and Galadriel? Well, their origins place them somewhat higher on the spiritual scale than Men, and they have been around an awful long time. Don't you think that you'd be a little disdainful at having to deal with men who had only perhaps one percent of your life experience?
There are some things to dislike about Tolkien's writings, such as his seemingly endless obsession with elvish heritage, but they can be forgiven in light of the sheer size of universe J.R.R. has created for us.
Whatever Brin was trying to do with his thought experiment about Sauron, I didn't get it. Yep, Sauron is 100%, irreversably, evil. Our culture is not going to collapse under its own weight if we don't pause a moment to look at the world from Sauron's point of view. It hasn't been made clear from the movie, nor really from the LOTR trilogy, where Sauron comes from. You have to go to The Silmarillion to discover that Sauron is NOT the biggest, baddest guy that ever lived, it was what is essentially a fallen angel named Morgoth, who corrupted many of the lesser spirits before even Middle Earth really manifested. Sauron is a mere leutenant to Morgoth, who has his own history of trying to ruin all creation.
Which brings us to what Sauron's motivation is. One would think that ruling Middle Earth is the objective... nope. Sauron, like his idol, wants to utterly destroy creation and put a new one in its place.
That's really the definition of '100% evil,' and is to me plenty of justification for not feeling sorry for slaughtered orcs. There's no bargaining with the empire of Sauron, no 'dialogue', no 'power-sharing' arrangements.
The biggest impression I got from Brin's article was that he'd just love to drown Tolkien's romantic epic in mud, but knows he can't. So he mutters around the work like a resentful janitor in DaVinci's workshop.
I don't read the Lord of the Rings trillogy as backwards thinking at all, in fact one of it's central points is that some progress is worth self-destruction for.
The people in power in the Third Age, the elves and wizards and such, made a right botch of things, with Sauron's rise to power being the most visible representation of the errors of the third age, but the behaviour of Saruman, and even Elrond and Galadriel are also symptoms of the same sickness.
The more progressive minded of the Third Age elite (eg. Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel) realize that they've made such a botch of things that, in order to fix things (oust Sauron, and other troublemakers), they need to destroy the base of their own power. Basically, in order for the world to be livable, they need to commit political suicide. They accept this, and do so, both by destroying the magical core of their power (the ring), and by amassing a huge army around an independant man who has a vested interest in ending the Third Age (Aragorn).
The story, far from glorifying the past, condemns it, and reaffirms the point that sometimes radical change is necessary; even to the point of self-inflicted pain.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
But I don't *want* to 'examine the story from a different perspective'. I spend most of my waking hours 'analyzing' things...
I think one of the best things in being a grown-up is the ability
to live and enjoy a state of compexity and self-contradiction.
I went to see HP, and enjoyed it "like a child". I later discussed
it with my g.f. , and enjoyed it "like a grown-up", discussing the movie
in a similar vein to Mr Brin (though not as professionaly
The world is complex, and people are complex too. Enjoy fiction and fantasy this way today, another tommorow.
(In fact that's why I think one should read/view good art several times)
Working for necessity's mother.
Brin's mendacity is an argument for the ultimate vanity of any attempt to civilize man.
Seastead this.
Except for the Trolls, we respond as if we are peers of the realm, reasonably addressing senior peer Brin. We are all so rational, well mannered, and domestic in our newfound democracy -- like a convention of kings. We have come so far. Imagine the things we can compare -- the past verses the present, feudal versus democratic, enlightenment versus darkness, education versus ignorance. It is as if we've already made rent this month.
What on Earth are you talking about? Why do you so easily project your experience on other people? Do you know that you are completely brainwashed by a strategic presentation of history? Do you know that nothing about society has ever changed -- except the words we use? Do you know that YOU are the bad guys?
I guess we shall have to wait for a while though (maybe until the LOTR comes out of copyright).
See my journal, I write things there
Selective breeeding, divine right, whatever.
Both are based upon the presumption that your lineage is superior to anothers.
And no the reproductive rights in his book were determined by a council who got to choose
the criteria for desirability. Not the individuals.
Whether you call it fuedalism, eliteism, meritocracy etc. They are ALL based upon the
same core principal. I.E. some are more fit to rule than others. While this may be a true statement, this is what Brin knocks LOTR for, and then his books use the same idea cloaked in
a veil of science as justification.
As to your point about the probies. I totally disagree with you.
In the book, probies are sufferred to live at societies whim. They live under constant watch,
do menial jobs, and are denied what we take for granted as basic rights. I ask you, how would you behave in a similar circumstance?
Would you care to EARN the right to reproduce?
How about the ability to speak freeely?
Should you have to earn the right to live based
upon an arbitrary set of criteria?
Indeed we can see that the criteria are very arbitrary in his books. How you ask? When
the Avian's make a deal with the probationary chimp to test for the next level of uplift,
they are willing to give him reproductive rights, in return for naming them as protectors.
Brin's world is an ultrafascist dystopia.
Again, I like his books, my point is to turn the critical eye back upon his work.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
And I must say that some one is wordy and waxing philisophical today. That was a long one to get across some simple points.
- Democratic human history is short and unromantic.
- People like romanticism because it is simple, Good(TM) versus Evil(TM)
- Enjoy works of fantasy as works of fantasy.
- Don't confuse the two when trying to be a hero.
- Liv Tyler is one hot elf. I think that was in there some where.
It is not a meritocracy. Ask Jojo the chimp who
while he can understand spoken language cannot talk with the use of the speaking machine.
Jojo is enourmously helpful, and could rightly be called a hero in the novel.
Problem is Jojoes DNA does not measure up to uberchimp version 6.66 result? no little Jojoes....
In a meritocracy, even the handicapped could have a place provided they can get the job done, and done well. In Brin's world, sorry it's all in your genes.....
Thus although some may fall from grace, the presumption and thus the opportunity, wealth, power and prestige go to the offspring of the
"Superior" Lineage.
My point about fuedalism is, the individuals in Brins novels are essentially from Noble families. Indeed the Blue card families are even eager to have a Green card join them. It has nothing to do with love or freedom or mutual interest. It has only to do with merging their line into a superior one.
Brin takes the most important act of being an individual able to make choices about existence, and turns it into a business transaction.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Although I am no Tolkien expert, I would surmise that since the nine became wraiths (neither living nor dead) that the rings they wore went with them into the shadow world and are therefore unremovable from their 'bodies'. So I guess technically they were 'there' but for all practical purposes they play no role in the story other than how the nine became wraiths.
As for the dwarven rings, I remember reading somewhere that when Sauron was a rising power, the orcs drove many of them out of their mountain homes and in the process, some were lost (melted by dragon fire, IIRC). Of those that weren't lost, they were probably dropped into one of the mountain cracks like we see in Moria. Whether I am correct or not, I know that Gandalf seemed to dismiss the idea that they were of any use during the events of LOTR.
On an interesting and somewhat connected sidenote, the three were originally possessed by Galadriel, Elrond and the shipwright (Cirdain?). We learn from Tolkien that the shipwright gave the fire ring (Narnya?) to Gandalf to aid him in his fight against Sauron. Frodo perceived Galadriel's ring when the fellowship was in Lothlorien (because he possessed the one ring). Why did he not perceive Elrond's when in Rivendell or Gandalf's during the march south? Clearly I need to revisit the Encyclopedia of Arda again!
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
I dunno, but to me LOTR was about how the big
lofty heroes do battle so the real life can go
on without them. Hobbits present a rather
idealistic version of anarchy as they don't
even have real government with enforcement
powers. Ents seem to have a democracy. Tom
Bombadil is an individualist extraordinnaire.
Dwarves seem to have an oligopoly but they are
far from the romantic ideal. All those mighty
elves go away when battle is done, ditto for
Mordor folks. The king begins his reign by giving
free territory to his allies. Did I mention those
wild men who also seem to have anarchy as a mode
of governance. Indeed, even the counsil of Elrond
is not mandated but happens by chance. Basically
the big heroes do have a fate to follow but page
after page you read about how they long for quiet
times when they can relax and smoke a joint.
I read LOTR as romanticism turned on its head.
It is also not clear to me where Brin gets the
idea that Mordor had all races represented.
In fact Tolkien seems to set it up like a computer
game so for every beast on one side you have a
matching beast on the other. I do not recall
dwarves serving Sauron, nor hobbits, ents, elves.
Basically, I agree with Brin's social analysis
but using LOTR as a base seems strained at best.
1st point
:
:
:
LOTR
Did the elves or the men offer to sell the hobbits into slavery if Sauron would just go away?
No they fought against impossible odds choosing death rather than submission.
Brin's novels
Earth sells gorilla's into 100,000 years of slavery to ensure an alliance and their survival.
2nd point
Let's flip Brins premise for LOTR around and look at his books from the galactics perspective. Yes he tries to paint galactic society as flawed, but look at the facts
They have a fuedal basis for their galactic government which has kept a general peace throughout the universe for hundreds of millions of years. They have strict rules protecting species from extinction, giving all life a chance. Those races which fail to become civilized are destroyed, including their PATRON races. This society obviously works, and works well else it would not have stayed viable over hundreds of millions of years. So how flawed can it really be?
Does it lack vitality? Certainly. But does it accomplish its primary purpose? I would have to say yes, it keeps interstellar war to a minimum,
protects native life, and promotes the GENERAL welfare of all.
Indeed as you said the Galactic Society is not evil, merely a fuedal system, and in his story the aliens can not yet comfortably class where humanity belongs in the scheme of things.
Yet humanity is willing to compromise its moral beliefs in order to stay alive. I would have to say that selling an entire race into servitude
regardless of circumstance must be classed as an evil act. Wouldn't you?
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Brin doesn't say much about Gandalf, but Gandalf is more like a scientist than anything. His abilities and influence are based on his knowledge. The title he uses to refer to himself and those like himself is "the wise". In other words, they distinguish themselves by their knowledge, not heredity or titles.
Another point: Sauron and his armies are evil because they are the aggressors. I don't believe that anyone attacked Sauron or his armies before they attacked Middle Earth.
Best,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
The Nazi's were not capitalists. The 'z' in Nazi stands for socialist. It their verision of socialism, the government worked with the heads of industry instead of shooting them in the head like the Russians did, but it amounted to the same thing.
In other words - "If you don't like it, read something else." The point is not whether he "likes it". Brin claims that our culture is swinging towards fedual-romanticism and that the popularity of LOTR is a symptom.
OK, I know way too much about this:
The Seven Were devoured by dragons or gathered to Sauron himself.
The Nine Sauron Keeps as a way to keep control of the Ring Wraiths. Probably to keep them from being too powerful as well.
Galndalf recounts a bit of this when explaining to Frodo what the Ring is, after Bilbo's sudden departure.
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
The correct plural of "beef" is "beeves."
Please, they do romanticize his fuedal/fascist world of eugenics. The best individuals are determined by a "council" based upon certain genetic criteria. God help the poor slob who doesn't fit the mold....
And the system is oft criticized too! It for instance was shown as keeping people down and an utter failure in Sundiver. I'm not really sure how that is feudal, facist by a stretch, but in any case, it's not romanticized, but instead, criticized.
Yes the humans do go out exploring to verify
knowledge, but they have NO choice but to play by the galactic rules.
Right, they have no _choice_. They are forced down by the corrupt and stagnant feudal elite. And they do get around it to! Dolphins and Chims may show protocol around othe senior races, but are just as likely to be insulting a human at any other time., What about the illegal uplift station for gorillas? Their completely unorthodox approach to everything--humans HAVE to play along with the rules to a degree as you say, but it rankles and burns, and shows the inefficiencies of the system.
They sell the gorilla's into slavery to save their
skins. The use the selfsame fuedal rules to save themselves in the war against the bird people (sorry forget the races name at the moment) using
the protection of the library etc when it is convenient.
They didn't sell the gorillas. The gorillas CHOSE the Thennanin (sp?) in the Uplift ceremony. Despite however boring and dull and traditionalist, they are good with client species.
They cover up the mass extinctions caused by man which in and of itself would doom humanity according to the galactic rules.
Not sure I see the correlation here? Sure, they hid past evidence and old shames..feudal or facist though?
The humans, chimps and dolphins are ALL
spectacular specimens to use your phrase.
Only those coming from the approved genetic lines get the opportunity to go into space.
As for the success of his society, according to his own words that society has existed for HUNDREDS of millions of years. Is it vital? No.
does it work? Yes. Therefore it is a success.
And no humanity is NOT the exception. They are perfectly willing to work in collusion with what they see as an evil system to ensure their own survival. This is the same argument the death camp guards used. "I was only following orders I did not wish to be killed."
The humans in his stories either suffer from moral relativism, or do not really care about the
"freedom" they complain about since it is the chimps and dolphins which find themselves on the short end of the stick.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
The gorillas "choice" is a convenient out.
To say that they as individuals could choose slavery for their entire species is as valid as the argument Britain gave against America rebelling. Or to say that some Africans "chose" slavery and thus all their descendants must be slaves.
There is ALWAYS a choice. We as beings can do ANYTHING we wish including fight for our principals.
I would be much more interested to see what would happen if the shoe were on the other foot. Say the galactics thought that Chimps should be OUR patrons. Somehow I don't think we'd be as peacefull and copacetic with that situation.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
I thought Brin's article was excellent. Most of the negative comments take issue with his interpretation of LOTR, but don't address his thesis. Because of this I suspect a lot of the slashflames being directed his way come from reflexive anger at his use of a beloved fantasy as a negative example. A few thoughts in support of his thesis...
Anybody seen these movies lately?
A lone wolf detective is placed on probation for violation of department procedure by his cowardly rule-bound desk-jockey politician superiors. Nevertheless, he attempts to infiltrate a building being held by group of Eurotrash super-terrorists. He interferes with an official SWAT rescue attempt and ends up killing both himself and hundreds of innocents.
A planet-killing asteroid is hurtling toward earth. The U.S. government's solution is to rush a team of rag-tag rejects from the undersea oil drilling business through astronaut training and shoot them into space, planning to destroy the asteroid with a nuclear explosion. One accidentally hits the wrong button en route, resulting in explosive decompression of their space shuttle and the destruction of humanity.
An FBI agent obsessed with his sister's disappearance violates agency procedures and the law to infiltrate a factory he thinks is secretly manufacturing a 'black oil' virus to spearhead an alien conquest of the planet. He succeeds in submerging ten blocks of Vancouver in crude oil and spends the rest of his life in a mental institution. The FBI pays billions in damages.
Didn't think so. But don't they sound more realistic than Die Hard, Armageddon, or the X-Files?
Go hang out at your local Renaissance Fair or Society for Creative Anachronism meeting. Note the lack of people pretending to be plague victims. The dearths of women fantasizing about dying in childbirth at age sixteen. The complete absence of people playing peasants being slaughtered by the thousand over minor points of religious doctrine. What you'll find is a bunch of sysadmins (mostly) indulging their fantasies of living in an age of chivalry that never actually existed.
People in general, and geeks in particular, like to think of themselves as lone geniuses. Statistics says most of us aren't. The vast majority of us are not and will never get to be heroes in the Homer/Campbell/Tolkien/Lucas sense. We aren't Luke Skywalker. We're Trash Compacter Operators (4th Class Probationary) who joined up to pay for school and get the hell off Tatooine.
So who's to say there's anything wrong with a little indulgence in fantasy? It's harmless, right?
Well, yes and no. SCA and LOTR fan clubs never hurt anybody. But the ideas of the Romantic movement Brin speaks of are some pretty widespread memes. And they influence the way we think to a greater degree than we like to admit. How much of the mass media presentation of (American) elections is shaped by a desire to present them as epic struggles between two heroes? Why did people buy in to the visionary genius leaders of various dot coms who were going to revolutionize the world (or at least the way it bought pet food) and make some mad bucks besides? Those 25-year-old CEOs didn't bid their stocks up by themselves.
Brin's point is that Romantic ideals when applied in the real world lead to awful results. That these fantasies speak to all of us, but that their simple solutions should not be applied to a world of complicated problems. And he is dead-on right.
Boy oh boy that article was an epic read.
Anyone else feel like playing a game of Sid Meier's Civilization?
LOL. I love how you show that Tolkien has already rebutted every part of Brin's argument, in spite of being dead before Brin wrote it.
Good work!
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
Only the one ring was forged by Sauron. The rest were simply made under his influence (by elves), and three which someone mentioned above were never touched by him at all.
Also, you're pretty angry over what's basically an opinion piece by someone you've apparently never heard of (a quite good sci-fi author and probably better equipped for analysis than you). In fact, a lot of people seem to have gotten pretty angry over this article. Maybe you (and the other angry people) should relax a little bit instead of taking lotr so seriously. People are reacting like Brin has insulted their religion.
7m east coast time (sorry it just came on...)
Page to Screen
The Lord of the Rings
60 min.
The adaptation of 2001's "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" is studied, using interviews and clips. (VCR Plus+ 178982)
Rating: TV-PG
Category: Documentary
Release Year: 2002
Silly Rabbit: tricks are for kids.
A fine example of intellectual masturbation. After the 5th paragraph or so, Brin forgets himself and descends into his own fantasy alternate history.
Question: Who is Brin critical of?
... Isn't Brin just doing the old demagogue trick of painting the subject one color (often red) and then critizing the paintwork? At least, his reading of Tolkien differs from mine. Sure, Tolkien laments the loss of his precious Old World but, to me at least, he does accept the change as natural and unavoidable. Tolkien is not a counter-revolutionary, he is a critic.
I agree with much, maybe even most, of what Brin says about Romatics and Enlightment.
Not really sure if it is all that relevant to Tolkien.
Quite bravely, the more biting parts of Brin's critique are not directed towards Tolkien, but towards the common man of today. In this I am 100% with him.
-- Flam,
a much too zealous Tolkien fanatic
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
I admire David Brin's writings but this time he got it wrong.
First of all, Tolkien is not so much anti-progress as he is anti-the-wrong-kind-of-progress, if you take my meaning. Most of all, he was concerned with the world progressing in a positive way, rather than a negative way.
The Elves are a tragic people. They know they must leave the world that they love, and in the trilogy itself this overshadows all their actions. They are aloof because they realize that if they 'fix things' then they will be a crutch to mortals. They realize instead that Humans, Halflings, and Dwarves must learn to deal with problems on their own. In point of fact the last War of the Ring was fought and won by the "last alliance of Elves and Humans". This time around, the mortal people of Middle-Earth will have to fight for themselves and not turn to their 'betters' to protect them.
I don't really know what Tolkien's real-life political views were, but clearly his most idealized way of life in his writings was neither the pyramidal form of rigid feudal hierarchies, nor the diamond shape of middle-class democracy, but rather the pastoral, flat shape of the Shire's society, where the Hobbits lived in a virtual vacuum of politics or class distinction.
The Nazgûl are *not* tragic. If you read their backstory, they are precisely the type of cruel, feudal men that Brin is opposed to. All of them are former kings of men, practicing the very hierarchical elitism that Brin hates, all of them wicked and power-hungry even before being seduced by Sauron. It is their downfall and demonization that most clearly demonstrates that Tolkien is not a lover of feudalism for its own sake, but rather a lover of a fair and just way of life, of the world getting progressively better for the majority of its inhabitants.
And finally, the overarching conflict in the LoTR is *not* the absolute good vs. absolute evil of the fellowship or Sauron, but rather man vs. himself. Specifically, Frodo's internal struggle against the temptation of the Ring. The Ring is the ultimate temptation, and victory comes when Frodo (with a little help from Gollum) is able to cast the Ring into the fires of Orodruin, thus proving that his reason is able to triumph over his base desires. It is this struggle, reason over passion, that is the heart of the story. The war is almost wholly irrelevant - or at best a distraction to the true struggle.
Well, there are two things we can say to refute that: 1) The mirror reflected all the horrible images that frodo was seeing in his own mind, because of all the discussion going on about the ring itself by gandalf and the elves and such.
2) That was just a lie anyway, as the mirror was simply a way for galadriel to communicate and she just told another lie about the mirror so that frodo would do what she wanted him to, namely help destroy the one right and restore stasis to middle earth.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I never got over them switching Darrens in Bewitched. Tell me it's not true!
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
In soviet russia, darrens switch movies
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
The trick to all of this is that, since LotR is such a detailed story, describing complex events involving a variety of characters, all of whom receive a certain amount of "fleshing out", there is no single over-riding message that can be derived from it.
;-), while others argue that the focus is rather more on the hobbits and their experiences with and influences on the larger world outside the shire. To some it's a tale of ordinary folk in extrordinary circumstances, to others, a look at the concept of destiny and coming to terms with one's place in the world (a la the Heir of Elendil sub-plot).
;-)
The real beauty of LotR is that, with all of the complexity, the tale will mean different things to different people. Some argue that it's a tale about the Rings of Power and the end of the Third Age of Middle Earth (silly them for assuming the titles were accurate
Where things get very interesting is that, like any good legend, there are lessons that can be gleaned from it, based on the interactions of these various elements (For example, what happens when Aragorn, unwilling to face the position that life tries to force on him, encounters Frodo who, in asking for and receiving Aragorn's help, puts him in the very position of leadership he's been trying so hard to avoid?). Many of the characters in this story seem to have their own full lives, with hopes and dreams, rather than filling a role in a more formulaic structure, so all one must do is find a character that one identifies with (or wishes to identify with) and observe the effects various other characters and events have on one's "hero" to get an impression of (Tolkien's view) of that character's nature.
In essence, the story's complexity allows a reader to derive any lesson they like from it, which (IMO, at least) is the hallmark of a good legend, and the reason people respond so well to this tale.
In his article, Brin has taken the lesson he derived from this tale (which, seemingly, is a very negative one), and put it forth for the public to digest, which is not anything of which he should be ashamed. Where he falls down, I feel, is that he makes it seem that this is the *only* lesson to be learned from LotR which, as I alluded to before, is not the case.
I think that people should give due consideration to his views, but remember: Don't believe everything you read.
This has been...My 2cp worth.
What he was criticizing was Tolkein's philosophy, which shone through when writing the stories. Tolkein was anti-industry, and that bias came through in his work in a very obvious way. Tolkein was entitled to his opinion, and that's no reason for the rest of us not to enjoy his books, Brin is just warning us against picking up the same bias as Tolkein through his work.
Brin advises that we should think about the things we read, and it's good advice. If you read things without thinking about your reaction to them there's always a chance that some of the preconceptions will sneak into your mind. That's one of the reasons why racism and prejudice is so hard to eliminate, because constant exposure can affect us without our conscious minds realizing it.
I read both science fiction and fantasy, and i think about what i read. If i was given the choice between being a common Joe in a high-tech 22nd century, or a King or hero in the 13th century or in an alternate magical world, i'd pick the 22nd century with no thought at all. That doesn't mean i can't enjoy the fantasy books though.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Calling the scientific worldview "soul-less," he joined ... Henry James and many European-trained philosophers in spurning the modern emphasis on pragmatic experimentation, production, universal literacy,
Silly Brin, Henry's brother William defined pragmatism. They were both on the same page; both very much believed in the soul. Whether or not you do, it's not incompatible with pragmatism.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
What you pointed out is in fact an argument _in favor_ of the meritocracy hypothesis. Even though Jojo's genetics aren't good enough to be passed on, he is still an accepted and valued member of society. In a real feudalism he would be relegated to the lowest tier of society or euthanized.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Are you seriously suggesting that Billy Zane is ugly?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
Black leader of Cloud City, not only a smuggler, but an untrustworth asshole who betrays his friend. Is there symbolism there?
Wasn't Lando Calrissian included because of criticisms of Episode IV being too white-only?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
What's embarassing is that the parent company that this guy works for also owns the STUDIO (New Line) putting out the film. (as of Tue 8:14 pm PST.. in case the review gets "updated")
Oy Vey!
that you are actually intelligent? fuck you .. I bet you dont know shit
put your money where your mouth is, tosser.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Two glaring errors:
1: USA saying that it practices Freedom and Democracy
The US never clamed to be a complete democracy. It was always was intended to be a democratic republic. The point that the Founding Fathers were trying to make is that the average shmub watching "Worlds Scariest Police Chases 3" shouldn't be able to make many choices about monatary policy. Hopefully they can choose someone smarter then them to figure the complicated things out. And the US is free, relative to most of the world. You can stand on the street and say "George W Bush? More like George W Shrub!" all day long, and the CIA will not come for you. Try doing that in China, or Soviet Russia, or Nazi Germany, or Saudi Arabia...
2:Private industrial and commercial concerns were not seized and redistributed to the people. That's what socialists believe in.
Socialism: Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy(emphasis mine)
The Nazis were socialists because they siezed control of pretty much the entire industrial output of Germany. They intended to keep that control indefinatly. After they had acquired sufficient land and slaves, their stated intention was to turn Germany into a paradise for the Aryan German workers. The fact that they didn't shoot the people running things, unlike the Russians, just means that they were a little bit smarter about some things then the reds. One of the huge mistakes that the Russians made is that they killed all the leaders of the army and industry shortly before the war. Amazingly, it turns out running a factory or a division is a difficult task that takes skills you can't learn at "Uncle Joe's Communist Summer Camp". But make no mistake, if the CEO of BMW said "I don't feel like making tanks any more, I want to go back to cars", he'd dissappear quickly.
Yes, the world could be a better place if people
had to earn the right to reproduce. But here's the rub:
Someone has to create the criteria....
How do you choose the criteria, and how can you trust them to choose the right criteria?
Also, what may be the right criteria in one circumstance, (say non-violence) may suddenly become counter productive (say an alien invasion? just as a lark) or better yet a natural resistance to a new disease....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
I accept the notion of evil. I don't accept the notions of Evil or Good.
Malevolent? Cool. Malicious? Sure. Contrary? No problems. Helpful? Yay. Beneficent? Shagadelic. Kind? No worries, mate.
Good? No. Evil? No. Moral? No. Immoral? No. Virtuous? No. Sinful? No.
I don't know what you mean by strawman unless it has something to do with the one in Oz.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
On the other hand, it does irk me that it got re-edited to become "Episode 4 - A New Hope" and you just can't find the original, even if you mainly just want to look at the differences. (... these aren't the videotape versions you're looking for ...)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
No, he's talking about optimism like "On The Beach"....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'll rant about your position on the War Between The States separately. Meanwhile, thanks for the pointer to the Confederate Constitution - I'd never seen it. Williams also doesn't mention that most of the Bill of Rights is moved into the body of the Constitution, added to whatever section is appropriate. There are a few other places that "negro slavery" is mentioned, but that's not really surprising, given that the secession was largely about slavery, not economics, but dwelling on it would weaken Williams's main points, as well as being pretty obvious.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
We probably haven't been "human" for much more than a million years (maybe 3-4 if you stretch the definitions a bit), and if your term "human history" actually means history rather than existence, history's probably about 40-50,000 years (Australian Aborigines' oral histories), or if you don't like those, 35,000 years for cave paintings in France.
On the other hand, one major branch of agriculture is herding, as opposed to planting, and sometimes gangs of thugs would be happy to steal your women and goats or cows instead of your women and your wheat
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Imagine if Brin were to do a couple more Uplift trilogies without getting enough new ideas in between. Doing literary criticism or whatever in between novels is a well-established tradition.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
hey, it's pedantry, but it's good pendantry :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
inscribed in the Principality of the Mists, West Kingdom, this Third Day of Christmas, Anno Societatis XXXVII
Eh, what was that? Watery tarts distributing swords are a *perfectly* *fine* way to establish a government. Certainly as representative as stuffing ballot boxes....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Life is a biochemical reaction to the stimulus of the surrounding
environment in a stable ecosphere, while a bowl of cherries is a
round container filled with little red fruits on sticks.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...