Angry Hill Troll, you state that the good vs bad distinction cannot help people if they cannot fight the evil. I disagree. Even if resistance is not possible at a point in time, hell, even if resistance is never possible, people will always benefit morally and psychologically from being able to tell the right path from the wrong path.
It is a matter of slavery of body versus a slavery of mind. Under Sauron, the people would have been slaves, endured torture and witnessed evil deeds which they were powerless to prevent. But, knowing evil for what it was, nothing could have prevented them from choosing to be good themselves and hoping and planning an escape from slavery, which would have eventually happened (even distancing ourselves from the fairy-tale happy-ending; historically and biologically all things evolve / fall apart. That makes hope a very adaptive feeling). But what would have happened if Gandalf had enslaved your mind with his great wisdom and sugar-coated yet turned to evil by the Ring intentions? Indeed,
1984 is a very good example of what would have happened, so are other utopic worlds, that show the consequence of dictatorship born out of good intentions, like Huxley's
Brave new world and Bradbury's
Fahrenheit 421. Some elect few would have realized something was wrong, and maybe envision a resistance, but the rest would have lived a life of slavery and evil without knowing it.
Quote:
|
I think this quote underscores the importance of free will to Tolkien personally
|
Indeed - as is illustrated in this other quote here (from Letters):
Quote:
|
the Shadow will arise again in a sense (as is clearly foretold by Gandalf, but never again (unless it be before the great End) will an evil daemon be incarnate as a physical enemy; he will direct Men and all the complications of half-evils, and defective-goods, and the twilights of doubt as to sides,such situations as he most loves (you can see them already arising in the War of the Ring, which is by no means so clear cut an issue as some critics have averred): those will be and are our more difficult fate.
|
<font size=1 color=339966>[ 10:11 AM December 18, 2003: Message edited by: Evisse the Blue ]