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Originally Posted by Lyta_Underhill
An interesting way to phrase it, davem! I've heard this very thing applied to religious dogma and political systems as well. One could apply it to the written word in many forms--words are dangerous, but impotent if none read them or heed them. But once read, they cannot be forgotten. This is a vague corollary to Frodo's loss of innocence in his assumption of the Ring quest and appears to be backed by the law of Entropy, the original Fall of Man and many other human observations/history/literature, etc.
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I think the thing about the Ring is that you can never 'control' it - it is impossible to become 'Lord of the Ring'. You can only become its slave. You make yourself like Sauron & you will do what Sauron did & nothing other. The 'power' it offers is an illusion, because the Ring will never surrender its control. When your mind & its' are one it will work through you. Its like a gun offers you the power of life & death over others, but in order to have that power you have to make yourself into a murderer. The Ring does not offer one the chance to be an all powerful
good person. Like the Ringwraiths one must make oneself into what the Ring/Sauron wants in order to make use of the 'power' the Rings offer. That comes from within the individual, not outside them.
If you claim the Ring you become weaker, not stronger - the 'power' is a delusion. In the end you are 'neither living nor dead', merely a 'wraith', a means for the Ring to be operative in the world. So, in the end, it is still the Ring which is powerful. Hence, to reject the Ring, to leave it by the wayside, makes it impotent. The Ring, & the Ring alone, is 'Lord of the Ring'. Even Sauron himself was a 'victim' of his own creation. He could not exist if it did not & he could only use it in the way he designed it to work. Effectively, he enslaved himself.
I think this in part accounts for Frodo's feeling of failure at the end - he realised that all he had chosen at the end was 'slavery'.