[HN Gopher] On Tolkien and Orwell
___________________________________________________________________
On Tolkien and Orwell
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 139 points
Date : 2022-03-21 08:04 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.darcymoore.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.darcymoore.net)
| tuvi13 wrote:
| Two literary giants standing on the shoulders of other giants
| looking far into the future and seeing how history might repeat
| itself over and over again.
| adamc wrote:
| The weaknesses of leaders are human weaknesses. Look at Putin.
| tdumitrescu wrote:
| For those interested in the subject, the latest Dave Eggers novel
| (_The Every_) is a really entertaining take on it. Starts out as
| amusing Silicon Valley satire about the absurdity of the tech
| giants, and gets very 1984 by the end.
| akomtu wrote:
| To put it short, Orwell described a society where Sauron had won.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| Some would argue, that he wasn't wrong...
| pjc50 wrote:
| It (and Animal Farm) were depictions of Stalinism from the
| inside - historical fiction rather than science fiction.
| zaarn wrote:
| Not really? 1984 was more written in reaction to the
| british intelligence appartus harassing him rather than
| Stalin, Orwell was quite a devout communist and that
| brought down the hammer of the british intelligence
| organisations on him, trying to censor him and make his
| life difficult. It isn't really a historical fiction of
| stalinism and more of living as a communist under the red
| scare in the western world.
| pjc50 wrote:
| While it's true that British intelligence were interested
| in him, he handed them a list voluntarily:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list
|
| He was a _democratic socialist_ , which put him strongly
| against actually existing capital-C Communism which was
| totalitarian and Stalinist. The "memory hole" bit is
| clearly based on how Trotsky was edited out of the
| official history, for example. This article cites
| opposition to Lysenkoism as a direct influence, as well:
| https://lithub.com/orwells-notes-on-1984-mapping-the-
| inspira...
| thisNeeds2BeSad wrote:
| zaarn wrote:
| Voluntarily handing over lists didn't seem to change
| much. And I don't believe one part of the story aligning
| with Trotsky quite erases that this story much more
| closely aligns with the treatment of Orwell at the hands
| of british authorities rather than Stalin's communism.
|
| For the "democratic socialist" part I would point out
| that Orwell sympathized with Anarchists in the Spanish
| revolution at minimum.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| 1984 was meant as a warning, but used as a manual.
| verisimi wrote:
| Yes.
|
| 1984 and Brave New World - written by old Etonians and
| Oxbridge students (Blair and Huxley) - were imaginative
| works that were about setting goals for the ruling elite. A
| visionary guide for the governance administrators and an
| (unheeded) warning for the rest of us.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Matrix too.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I think it can also be seen as a survival manual for
| someone who finds themself inside such a system already.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I consider it a memetic inoculation - certain things,
| like newspeak and erasing the past, just stand out as
| warning signs when one has read 1984 when otherwise one
| just thinks, "that's kinda weird".
| arethuza wrote:
| Not a very effective survival manual - by the end of the
| book Winston Smith has been broken and will soon be
| executed.
| gidorah wrote:
| Yeah, but Big Brother loves him!
|
| Always has done, always will.
| bell-cot wrote:
| "survival manual" is perhaps not quite the right
| phrase...but watching someone else's failed attempts at a
| task can be very instructive.
| arethuza wrote:
| Perhaps 1984 was itself written by the Thought Police to
| demonstrate the futility of rebelling against Big
| Brother....
| n4r9 wrote:
| The atmosphere I remember from 1984 was one of futility.
| The state had locked down sufficiently that individual
| rebellion of any sort was infeasible. Am I
| misremembering?
| KineticLensman wrote:
| That's what I remember. The state itself has the
| rebellion, such as it is, totally under control, like
| everything else.
| agumonkey wrote:
| A cautionary tale.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| I think some of the comparisons are a bit superficial. E.g. the
| all-seeing eye of Sauron and the panopticon gaze of Big Brother.
| The supplied quotes actually show that one failed (Sauron didn't
| perceive Frodo until it was too late) while Big Brother's
| succeeded. In fact there are several places in the LoTR where
| Sauron is definitely not all-seeing, and fails to see what is
| going on, notably with respect to the heirs of Isildur, the
| locations of the Elven rings, the betrayal of Saruman, and
| others.
|
| And while I accept some of the academic similarities between
| Tolkien and Orwell, their own life trajectories were radically
| different. Tolkien's experienced the horror of WW1 but apart from
| that lived comfortably in domestic happiness (once he was able to
| marry his childhood sweetheart) in academia. Orwell had a much
| wider array of experiences including Imperial administration in
| Burma, civil war in Spain and extreme personal poverty. He was a
| prolific writer on social and political issues, while Tolkien,
| bless him, was deep down the rabbit hole of Middle Earth (as
| demonstrated by his writings and letters).
|
| I like and admire both authors.
| gumby wrote:
| I agree: it's more reasonable to consider them as two poles of
| an English literary tradition, both espousing the cause of the
| "doughty Englishman" (also expressed by Shakespeare's
| references to the commoners accompanying Henry V), but with
| Orwell despairing of their state. and Tolkien celebrating it.
|
| Another contemporary whom I associate with that Weltanschauung
| is T. H. White, though his perspective, IMHO, is more High
| Tory.
| humanrebar wrote:
| > ...the all-seeing eye of Sauron and the panopticon gaze of
| Big Brother...
|
| There's actually a depth in the comparison and contrast there.
| The man of faith saw hope in the limits of evil people. In
| particular, lack of perspective and hubris can bring down even
| tyrants. And there is a Creator to give confidence that
| coincidence and divine plans can be the same thing.
|
| There are different flavors of atheism, but many atheists see
| governments as being the most powerful agents in existence, so
| an evil, competent, and observant government is quite
| terrifying indeed. There's no particular reason to hope that a
| person can ever escape or defeat that kind of monster.
| notahacker wrote:
| That feels like even more of a stretch. If anything, you
| could argue that Sauron, who ruled for entire "ages" and
| whose immortal power was destroyed by the happy accident of
| another eternally corrupted individual stumbling into a chasm
| was considerably _less_ limited than the dictatorships
| composed of mortal individuals Orwell wrote about (and
| actually personally involved himself in fighting against).
| Orwell was optimistic enough to counterpoint the end of 1984
| with an appendix which obliquely referred to the dictatorship
| and Newspeak as in the past, strongly implying it failed
| within a generation or so and was regarded as a historical
| curiosity; Tolkien 's appendices and followup work suggested
| its near-immortal evil had enjoyed absolute power over
| generations of humans and orcs
| humanrebar wrote:
| In Tolkien mythology, Sauron was powerful and long lived
| but even his power isn't all that impressive to someone who
| believes in the Abrahamic God. He could not suffer a defeat
| like Sauron, does not miss details, and has no need for
| armies or siege weapons.
|
| It's common to question a Creator who waits generations to
| remove evil persons from the picture, though at some point
| we're having an argument about deism by proxy and straying
| from critical analysis as such. It's enough for me that the
| different ideas and perspectives infused different works.
|
| I like your point about Orwellian optimism. At an
| historical scale, possibly Orwell was an optimist. I think
| he was still a pessimist on the scale of individuals,
| however, in a way that Tolkien didn't seem to be.
| arethuza wrote:
| There wasn't really a "panopticon gaze of Big Brother" - only
| the Outer Party were heavily monitored as these were the only
| people who could be a threat to the Inner Party.
|
| Edit: About ~13% of the population:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oli...
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > There wasn't really a "panopticon gaze of Big Brother" -
| only the Outer Party were heavily monitored as these were the
| only people who could be a threat to the Inner Party.
|
| Okay, it might not have been a total panopticon (my poor
| wording), but Big Brother seems not to have had the massive
| blind-spots that Sauron did.
| adamc wrote:
| In fiction, perhaps. But I think Tolkien was closer to the
| mark. In practice, it is very difficult to know everything,
| even if the information is available, because of the
| limitations on our attention and imagination. Tolkien
| clearly describes that as a limitation of Sauron, and I
| think it remains a limitation, even today, even when all
| the facts are available.
| vmh1928 wrote:
| Perhaps Orwell couldn't envision the technological capability
| that would allow monitoring of the entire population. Plus he
| hadn't seen the soft revolutions that occurred in the former
| Soviet Block, driven by masses of common people. In the 40's,
| with the exception of Germany and Italy, authoritarian
| regimes were seemingly invincible.
| qiskit wrote:
| > He was a prolific writer on social and political issues,
| while Tolkien, bless him, was deep down the rabbit hole of
| Middle Earth (as demonstrated by his writings and letters).
|
| Tolkien was a social/political writer and lord of the rings was
| a social/politic text. One of the central themes of LoTR
| revolved around the central social/political question of the
| fate of the british empire in the first half of the 20th
| century. Namely that as transportation improved, it wouldn't be
| just the colonizers striving outward, but the colonized
| striving in and overruning the idyllic and white shire. The
| ring stood for the british empire - something that was attained
| that conferred immense power to its holder but also corrupted
| the holder and drew "monsters" to the holder. It is no secret
| that tolkien based his "dark and swarthy" monsters on the
| colonized blacks, indians, chinese, etc. It could be read as a
| call to relinquish the "ring" ( aka british empire ) in order
| to save "the shire" lest it be overrun by blacks, indians,
| chinese, etc. It also touched upon nature, environment,
| religion, etc, but the central theme was the uncomfortable
| socio-political racial issues of the british empire. To say
| tolkien was only about Middle Earth is like saying Melville was
| only about whales. You are missing a lot if you think Tolkien
| and LoTR didn't delve into social and political issues. It was
| primarily about social and political issues of that day.
|
| > I like and admire both authors.
|
| Both are great writers though Tolkien is a bit overrated. If
| you want to read a genuinely great book, read Moby Dick. When I
| was a teenager, I hated moby dick and loved LoTR. After all,
| who cares about baleen and whale anatomy? But as you grow older
| and wiser it flips. Moby Dick gains in esteem and LoTR reads
| like childish fantasy in comparison. It's like Star Wars and
| Dune. In 200 years, nobody is going to care about LoTR or Star
| Wars. People will still read Moby Dick and Dune.
| DonaldPShimoda wrote:
| > If you want to read a genuinely great book, read Moby Dick.
|
| I am curious as to what are the universally agreed-upon
| criteria that denote a "genuinely great book". Please, do
| share them so I might eschew such lowly trash as _The Lord of
| the Rings_ and never again waste my time on frivolous
| pursuits purely for the desire to -- dare I say? -- _enjoy_
| my free time.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > extreme personal poverty
|
| Always by choice. He did live in poverty but his family was
| always there if he decided to call on them and his education
| and class position meant that there were crappy jobs available
| for the asking, like being a tutor.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "> extreme personal poverty
|
| Always by choice. "
|
| Allmost no one chooses extreme personal poverty. But some
| like Orwell, choose their own (idealistic) way, over giving
| in to the other way, even if it means poverty.
|
| I would argue, he would/could not have written 1984 or animal
| farm, if he would have choosen the shallow, but comfortable
| life, that his class would have allowed for.
| nindalf wrote:
| You're mistaken. Orwells choice to live as a homeless
| person was entirely about collecting material. He
| eventually wrote the book _Down and Out in Paris and
| London_ based on his experiences.
|
| I respect the man, I respect his work, I even respect that
| he did the research first hand instead of relying on second
| hand accounts. But at any point he wanted he could go to
| his home or to his friends and family, get a hot meal and a
| bath. That was not an option for actual homeless people.
|
| When he was down and out in Paris, he could rely on his
| aunt for financial support. When he was down and out in
| London he could write to his parents for money. Which he
| actually did. And they sent him money.
|
| > Allmost no one chooses extreme personal poverty.
|
| So let's be clear - he experienced poverty only so he could
| write a book, not because he was truly destitute. Almost no
| one chooses that, but he did.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Allright, if so I am misstaken. I guess I have to read a
| bit further on his personal life.
| dghf wrote:
| From chapter 25 of _Down and Out in Paris London:_
|
| As soon as we were inside the spike [homeless shelter] and
| had been lined up for the search, the Tramp Major called my
| name. He was a stiff, soldierly man of forty, not looking the
| bully he had been represented, but with an old soldier's
| gruffness. He said sharply:
|
| 'Which of you is Blank?' (I forget what name I had given.)
|
| 'Me, sir.'
|
| 'So you are a journalist?'
|
| 'Yes, sir,' I said, quaking. A few questions would betray the
| fact that I had been lying, which might mean prison. But the
| Tramp Major only looked me up and down and said:
|
| 'Then you are a gentleman?'
|
| 'I suppose so.'
|
| He gave me another long look. 'Well, that's bloody bad luck,
| guv'nor,' he said; 'bloody bad luck that is.' And thereafter
| he treated me with unfair favouritism, and even with a kind
| of deference. He did not search me, and in the bathroom he
| actually gave me a clean towel to myself -- an unheard-of
| luxury. So powerful is the word 'gentleman' in an old
| soldier's ear.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I am no Tolkien scholar, but my layman's take is that Sauron
| failed to see the ring because he was so blinded by the lust
| for power that could only conceive of actions taken by his
| powerful enemies to claim more power. He (nor Gollum) could not
| imagine someone willingly giving that power away.
|
| That said, neither author imagined surveillance on the level
| that we have today with AI "watchers."
| telchar wrote:
| In AI terms, you could think of Frodo as an adversarial
| example, specifically chosen to exploit a known bias in the
| watcher's model.
| bigtex88 wrote:
| This is pretty much correct. Sauron kept most of his gaze
| upon Aragorn and Gandalf and their movements, as he would
| have suspected one of the two of them would most likely be
| carrying the ring.
|
| As you said, Sauron expected his enemies to act as he acts,
| and he would never have thought to give the ring to a
| creature as lowly as a Hobbit.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> he would never have thought to give the ring to a
| creature as lowly as a Hobbit._
|
| Actually, it is explicitly said (by Gandalf, in Book III,
| Chapter 5) that Sauron knows the Ring was borne by a
| hobbit. What Sauron is not clear about is _why_ a hobbit
| has it or what the Fellowship 's destination is. According
| to Gandalf, he assumes they are going to Minas Tirith, and
| that once there some more powerful person will take the
| Ring and use it. In other words, he doesn't expect a hobbit
| to _keep_ the Ring, much less to be taking it to Mount Doom
| to be destroyed.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I think both fit very well within the trope that Leo Marx when
| talking about American literature called the _Machine in the
| Garden_ [1] myth. It's a sort of story in which authors long for
| pastoral, naturalistic settings that are small scale and
| untouched by machinery, and so forth.
|
| This is both found in Orwell's democratic Socialism as well as in
| Tokien's idealized Christian community that is Hobbingen. Orwell
| of course literally attacks Stalinism and I always interpreted
| Tolkien's work as doing the same thing, not entirely sure how
| else to interpret Saruman industrializing the Shire, even though
| he of course always denied these parallels.
|
| Personally I never really could stand this kind of literature for
| a lot of the reasons Asimov talks about in his review of 1984[2].
| It's parochial, technophobic, stereotypically English with its
| snobbish attitude towards literature, ink quills, pipes and so on
| and paranoid about anything that seems like popular mass culture
| or too large or organized in scal or in any other way related to
| modernity.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_in_the_Garden
|
| [2]http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm
| x3iv130f wrote:
| It is worth being said that Isaac Asimov was a very passionate
| reader of Lord of the Rings and similarly Asimov's science-
| fiction works were one of the very few modern works Tolkien
| enjoyed reading in his old age.
| ppsreejith wrote:
| Update: I stand corrected, see comments below. He served with the
| communist POUM and sympathised with the anarchists.
|
| > Orwell was serving with a Marxist militia in the fight against
| fascism, in Spain
|
| Orwell actually fought on the side of the anarchists and their
| side was (later) betrayed by the communists as he mentions in the
| book: "Homage to Catalonia"
|
| Some Quotes:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7293191-philosophically-com...
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7663572-the-fat-russian-age...
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7455290-it-is-impossible-to...
| dghf wrote:
| He sympathised with the anarchists, and in retrospect wished
| he'd joined them, but the group he joined -- POUM -- were
| Marxist rather than anarchist, though not Marxist-
| Leninist/Stalinist (what most people would probably mean by
| Communist). The group is sometimes described as Trotskyite, but
| I believe it had already broken with Trotsky by the time Orwell
| joined.
|
| But its members were indeed the target of a purge by the
| Stalinists and their allies in the Republican government.
|
| So Orwell was one of the few authors, possibly the only author,
| to have been shot by Fascists and nearly shot by Stalinists,
| which probably explains in part the burning distaste for both
| ideologies evident in _1984._
| nfin wrote:
| Don't know enough to tell, just (genuinely) asking:
|
| Is it not possibly to join a group, but actually leaning a
| bit in (also or partially) another direction (knowing that
| with our human flaws not one direction might be the only
| possible solution, or a mix or balance might be necessary).
|
| Only partially related: I am for example part of several
| groups (ok, admittely not as deep Orwell in this example)
| just so I can understand better all sides of a topic. To
| better understand a side and interact with the people of that
| group, I sometimes do not contradict everything I don't agree
| with, but try to ask the right questions at the right moment.
| It sometimes feel a better use of time for both sides.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Social groups? Sure. Armed rebel groups in the middle of an
| insurgency? Disloyalty is .. less tolerated.
| nfin wrote:
| oh thanks! it was about being an active part of an armed
| rebel group? I see. I should have read better what it ws
| about.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Pay attention :)
|
| Orwell was in a roughly similar role to one of the
| idealistic Westerners going to fight in Ukraine today,
| except the anti-Fascist side was much more politically
| fragmented, less well armed, and ultimately lost, leaving
| Spain as officially Fascist until 1977.
| justcreatedlol wrote:
| If i remember correctly, Orwell joined POUM just because
| they were sending people to the front lines while the
| communist party was not at the time he arrived to Barcelona
| (don't remember the details, maybe they were recruiting for
| defending Barcelona or their militia had already departed),
| not out of ideology.
| dghf wrote:
| After some digging around on Wikipedia's page and in my
| copy of _Homage to Catalonia,_ it appears that:
|
| * Once he'd decided to go to Spain to fight, he
| approached the British Communist Party, who suggested he
| join the International Brigades, but he was unwilling to
| do that without seeing the situation in Spain for himself
| first.
|
| * He had friends in the Independent Labour Party, who
| gave him a letter of introduction for the ILP's man in
| Barcelona. Once there, he joined the POUM militia,
| because the POUM were affiliated with the ILP.
|
| * While on leave in Barcelona, he decided to leave the
| POUM, which was stationed on the comparatively quiet
| Aragon front, for the chance of fighting on the Madrid
| front. He would have preferred to join the Anarchists,
| but was unlikely to be sent to Madrid with them, so
| applied to join the Communist International Column
| instead. However, the May Days intervened, sparking the
| breakdown in relations between the Republican government
| and Communists on one hand, and the Anarchists, POUM, and
| other left-wing groups not aligned with Moscow on the
| other: so he returned to the Aragon front with the POUM
| until being shot and invalided out, and then fleeing
| Spain altogether just ahead of a Stalinist purge.
|
| So it would appear that the political differences between
| the various groups on the Republican side weren't, at
| least at first, that important to Orwell: making common
| cause against the Fascists was the priority.
| nsajko wrote:
| > So Orwell was one of the few authors, possibly the only
| author, to have been shot by Fascists and nearly shot by
| Stalinists
|
| That seems like a quite weird take, I would expect there
| would be more examples that are at least similar?
| marsven_422 wrote:
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| When coercion itself is viewed as the core problem, both
| ideologies are as repugnant as they come. This is what I've
| taken from Orwell's writing.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Sort of. He (and POUM) were more anarchist than Marxist. And
| found themselves under fire but the actual Marxists nearly as
| much as by Franco's forces.
| arethuza wrote:
| I thought POUM were communists, just not the Stalinist version
| of communism?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POUM
| thisNeeds2BeSad wrote:
| throwaway59553 wrote:
| billfruit wrote:
| Do we know what were Tolkiens thoughts on Empire, and its
| champions like Churchill? Who did Tolkien most likely vote for?
| Conservatives?
| x3iv130f wrote:
| "I know nothing about British or American imperialism in the
| Far East that does not fill me with regret and disgust..." -
| Tolkien - Letter 100
|
| "For I love England (not Great Britain and certainly not the
| British Commonwealth (grr!))." - Tolkien - Letter 50
|
| Tolkien hated anything based upon coercion or domination.
| Whether it was machines that tore up the land and forests or
| people that forced others into subservience.
| _0ffh wrote:
| As he developed more and more into an anarchist throughout his
| life, I suppose he was not a fan of Empire. But he was a stout
| catholic and somewhat conservative.
| kornhole wrote:
| When I rarely switch my GrapheneOS phone off airplane mode, I
| feel like Bilbo putting on the ring. The eye of Sauron is upon
| me.
| Maursault wrote:
| > detest French cooking
|
| > Tolkien bemoaned "the medieval take-over of the English
| language by Norman French".
|
| Unsure of Orwell's feelings, but Humphrey Carpenter wrote that
| Tolkien suffered from Gallophobia (the root is Gaul), a hatred of
| all things French.
| DonaldPShimoda wrote:
| Hence Bilbo living at _Bag End_ instead of a _cul-de-sac_!
| lvxferre wrote:
| They might have different ideas, but they're still the product of
| the same time and culture. They're bound to have similar world
| views.
| DonaldPShimoda wrote:
| > Tolkien [...] published The Hobbit - a quaint novel for
| children with _dwarfish_ miners [...]
|
| It is certainly a minor point, but Tolkien was adamant about
| using "dwarves" instead of "dwarfs" and "dwarvish" instead of
| "dwarfish" whenever writing about Durin's folk. I find this
| especially important considering the author of this article later
| writes:
|
| > Orwell's brand of democratic Socialism (he always capitalised
| the "s") [...]
|
| If the author is willing to capitalize "Socialism" because of
| Orwell's preference, then I think it is not unreasonable to ask
| that they also use the adjective "dwarvish" when referring to the
| dwarves of Tolkien's writings.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Each pair of two random people will have things in common and
| points where they are different.
|
| This article failed to make a point, to tell us why similarities
| and differences between the two might be interesting.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Another theme that they share is the dangers of technology. The
| telescreens of _1984_ and the _palantiri_ of _Lord of the Rings_
| have a lot in common - both are subject to manipulation that can
| require a great deal of will to see through.
| javajosh wrote:
| This is covered in the essay, as the author notes that both men
| are, if not techno-phobic, then certainly not techno-philic.
| It's not just the Palantiri either, it's also Sauruman.
| Treebeard explains to Merry and Pippin:
|
| _> "[Saruman] is plotting to become a Power. He has a mind of
| metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things,
| except as far as they serve him for the moment" (Tolkien)_
|
| The phrase "a mind of metal and wheels" has always stuck with
| me as a pejorative; this is in contrast with modern phrases
| like, "He's a machine!" said in a positive way. The mind of
| metal and wheels is transactional, utilitarian, devoid of
| sentiment. It would be more like a natural process than a
| person, if not for ego.
| mellavora wrote:
| > The mind of metal and wheels is transactional, utilitarian,
| devoid of sentiment. It would be more like a natural process
| than a person
|
| I basically like where you are going with this, but wonder
| why you then say that a transactional/utilitarian process is
| like a natural process?
|
| Nature as Tolkien seemed to understand it would be anything
| but transactional and utilitarian.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> why you then say that a transactional/utilitarian
| process is like a natural process?_
|
| Because it's impersonal. There's no _chooser_ , it's like
| the planets zooming around the sun. It is a clockwork that
| we can understand, but not affect. It doesn't know or care
| about us - we happen to live on one of the cogs, but the
| planetary machine would function smoothly with or without
| any life on the 3rd planet.
|
| Capitalism is much like this. Institutions of a certain
| size can be like this. Being stuck in a machine is the
| context of "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg [0]. It is also the
| subtext of the remarkable "Blame!" anime, a drama that
| takes place among humans and robots that live as vermin in
| an automated city that takes little notice of them [1]. Or
| a more traditional treatment, with a very powerful Mech
| civilization dominating humans in Benford's Great Sky
| Rivier [2].
|
| 0 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl
|
| 1 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6574146/
|
| 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sky_River_(novel)
| deckiedan wrote:
| For me 'a mind of metal and wheels' was more the desire for
| control, conformance, and imposed will, rather than the
| engagement and interaction-with required for working with
| natural processes, trees, flowers, etc - where you can't
| force things to happen a specific way, you have to work
| _with_ them...
| munch117 wrote:
| > "genuine belief in equality and democracy"
|
| Wtf? LOTR is deeply authoritarian. Sam is constantly praised for
| his subservience to his master. Rulers are only proper rulers if
| they come from the correct bloodline - the bloodline of other
| rulers before them.
|
| I love Tolkien for basically inventing the fantasy genre. But
| please don't try to paint him as some kind of admirable political
| thinker.
| Lio wrote:
| Haha that's so true. I always loved the way they send it up in
| Monty Python's Holy Grail.
|
| There's more than a few current "leaders" that could learn from
| it:
|
| King Arthur: I am your king.
|
| Peasant Woman: Well, I didn't vote for you.
|
| King Arthur: You don't vote for kings.
|
| Peasant Woman: Well, how'd you become king, then?
|
| [Angelic music plays... ]
|
| King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest
| shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the
| water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to
| carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.
|
| Dennis the Peasant: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds
| distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
| Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses,
| not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
|
| Arthur: Be quiet!
|
| Dennis the Peasant: You can't expect to wield supreme power
| just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
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