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."

Comments

Re:Frodo often seen as ``everyman''

[WillAdams]

My paternal great-grandfather only went to soldier in the Civil War because the Union seemed likely to attempt to destroy the bridge by which he shipped good from his farm to market. His farm was worked by himself, his sons and sharecroppers, most of whom were free blacks---I was fortunate when I was growing up to've lived next to the son of one of those sharecroppers, and at his side I learned the measure of a furlong (a furrow's length, the distance a horse can plow before it grows tired) and how to plant by the moon and a lot of other things which he'd learned from my grandfather who'd also been a sharecropper on my great-grandfather's farm.

People don't remember that Gen. Robert E. Lee personally cared for his family's last servant on his deathbed, nor that after his surrender, in Richmond while attending church, when a black gentleman went down from the coloured loft to pray at the altar after a service, Gen. Lee joined him, which should have (but sadly didn't) set the tone for the antebellum south.

Like I said, history and its attendant issues are far more complex than most people trouble to think about.

For those who're curious about the Old South and the ``recent unpleasantness'' as my Great-Aunt Annie-Mae called it, look up Fra. Ryan Abrams' poetry, esp. ``The Conquered Banner.''

William

Re:Frodo often seen as ``everyman''

[Ultraken]

You might want to check this article by Walter E. Williams, then: What Led to the Civil War?

A relevant excerpt:

History books have misled today's Americans to believe the war was fought to free slaves. Statements from the time suggest otherwise. In President Lincoln's first inaugural address, he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so." During the war, in an 1862 letter to the New York Daily Tribune editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln said, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery." A recent article by Baltimore's Loyola College Professor Thomas DiLorenzo titled "The Great Centralizer," in The Independent Review (Fall 1998) cites quotation after quotation of similar northern sentiment about slavery.

States were supposed to have the constitutional right to secede from the union, meant as a check against unlimited Federal power. The somewhat-misnamed Civil War put an end to that once and for all.