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William Cloud Hicklin · 09-07-2007, 08:37 AM

Brin's criticisms are of a piece with China Mieville's, and not too distant from Philip Pullman's. What all three have in common is adherence to some form of secular materialism: Mieville is a doctrinaire Socialist, Pullman a militant atheist, Brin a technolator. Not really mindsets prepared to find Tolkien's philosophy appealing!

Brin tries to make two arguments here. The first is a complaint that Tolkien doesn't share his worship of 'progress', technology always carrying us onward and upward. Well, that's true. Tolkien's youth was seared by the first War of the Machines; he was there when a generation of young Europeans were immolated in a mechanical Moloch. Why should a Somme veteran see 'progress' in the Maxim guns, the quick-firing howitzers, the phosgene gas? For that matter, why should a contemporary man, doctorate or not, have such confidence that there's nothing wrong with mass deforestation and the pouring of poisons into the air and water?

But the sillier argument, one shared by Mieville and many other leftists, is the political one. Please pay attention, Trots: Tolkien wasn't writing a political book (and didn't buy the 'all art is political' bromide). He's not arguing political theory nor advocating monarchy as a form of government: it's simply a datum of a faux-medieval world. It's not as if the Captains of the West were wickedly crushing some Sauronian Autonomous Workers' Collective! Mordor is of course a monarchy as well- but an utterly tyrannous, totalitarian monarchy, where the Ruler is also the God. Indeed not unlike the regimes contemporary with LR constructed in the name of the 'workers.'

If there is any political dimension at all to the Lord of the Rings it's the very basic contradistinction between coercion and slavery, and freedom maintained under a light and enlightened hand. It's noteworthy how egalitarian the Western rulers are- any Rider can speak his mind to Theoden, for example. For all Brin's (and others') rantings about 'hierarchy' and 'tugging the forelock,' there isn't in fact any of this in Tolkien- these are the critics' projections. For Tolkien, that government governs best which governs least; isn't the Shire effectively an anarchy?

After all there's nothing sacred about democracy, "the worst form of government ever devised, except for all the others" according to Churchill. It's merely a pragmatic prophylactic against the rise of a Caligula or a Stalin. Plato's philosopher-kings would be great, if they existed. If there were some absolute guarantee of monarchy permanently in the hands of the likes of a Trajan (or an Aragorn) we should jump on it. It's not as if our prized universal franchise has a very good track record for picking illustrious rulers!

What Tolkien really was on about, of course, was the dual evils of Pride and Power. Power, "the making of the Will instantly effective:" whether by 'magic', force, or enslavement; and the concomitant of that Pride which hold's one's Will superior to the desires or good of others. Tolkien's heroes are defined by their *reluctance* to exercise power (this hardly needs rehearsal). And Pride ineluctably goes before a fall- the "snootiest" races, as Brin calls them, are responsible for the Kinslaying, the Rings of Power, and the Breaking of the World. Truly some of Tolkiens' peoples are gifted- but when they forget that their abilities are indeed gifts, to be used for the common benefit (like Sam's box of earth) then the consequences are dire. Gandalf never forgets that he is a Steward, the 'servant of the servants of Eru' in a formulation Tolkien would have known. Denethor forgets what Stewardship means, and in his pride chooses to exercise the last element of power remaining to him- filicide and suicide.

It may be that some of the attacks on Tolkien from the Left (I'm thinking here of Mieville, not necessarily Brin) is that they alraedy have imbibed a fair dose of Sarumanism. "Knowledge, Rule, Order," in time we can control the power, and override the weakminded fools who don't relise it's for their own good.... Shippey is quite right in identifying Saruman's speech as a politician's doublespeak (a word coined by Orwell at the same time Tolkien was finishing the Lord of the Rings).

09-07-2007, 08:37 AM	#2
William Cloud Hicklin Loremaster of Annúminas Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 2,330	Brin's criticisms are of a piece with China Mieville's, and not too distant from Philip Pullman's. What all three have in common is adherence to some form of secular materialism: Mieville is a doctrinaire Socialist, Pullman a militant atheist, Brin a technolator. Not really mindsets prepared to find Tolkien's philosophy appealing! Brin tries to make two arguments here. The first is a complaint that Tolkien doesn't share his worship of 'progress', technology always carrying us onward and upward. Well, that's true. Tolkien's youth was seared by the first War of the Machines; he was there when a generation of young Europeans were immolated in a mechanical Moloch. Why should a Somme veteran see 'progress' in the Maxim guns, the quick-firing howitzers, the phosgene gas? For that matter, why should a contemporary man, doctorate or not, have such confidence that there's nothing wrong with mass deforestation and the pouring of poisons into the air and water? But the sillier argument, one shared by Mieville and many other leftists, is the political one. Please pay attention, Trots: Tolkien wasn't writing a political book (and didn't buy the 'all art is political' bromide). He's not arguing political theory nor advocating monarchy as a form of government: it's simply a datum of a faux-medieval world. It's not as if the Captains of the West were wickedly crushing some Sauronian Autonomous Workers' Collective! Mordor is of course a monarchy as well- but an utterly tyrannous, totalitarian monarchy, where the Ruler is also the God. Indeed not unlike the regimes contemporary with LR constructed in the name of the 'workers.' If there is any political dimension at all to the Lord of the Rings it's the very basic contradistinction between coercion and slavery, and freedom maintained under a light and enlightened hand. It's noteworthy how egalitarian the Western rulers are- any Rider can speak his mind to Theoden, for example. For all Brin's (and others') rantings about 'hierarchy' and 'tugging the forelock,' there isn't in fact any of this in Tolkien- these are the critics' projections. For Tolkien, that government governs best which governs least; isn't the Shire effectively an anarchy? After all there's nothing sacred about democracy, "the worst form of government ever devised, except for all the others" according to Churchill. It's merely a pragmatic prophylactic against the rise of a Caligula or a Stalin. Plato's philosopher-kings would be great, if they existed. If there were some absolute guarantee of monarchy permanently in the hands of the likes of a Trajan (or an Aragorn) we should jump on it. It's not as if our prized universal franchise has a very good track record for picking illustrious rulers! What Tolkien really was on about, of course, was the dual evils of Pride and Power. Power, "the making of the Will instantly effective:" whether by 'magic', force, or enslavement; and the concomitant of that Pride which hold's one's Will superior to the desires or good of others. Tolkien's heroes are defined by their reluctance to exercise power (this hardly needs rehearsal). And Pride ineluctably goes before a fall- the "snootiest" races, as Brin calls them, are responsible for the Kinslaying, the Rings of Power, and the Breaking of the World. Truly some of Tolkiens' peoples are gifted- but when they forget that their abilities are indeed gifts, to be used for the common benefit (like Sam's box of earth) then the consequences are dire. Gandalf never forgets that he is a Steward, the 'servant of the servants of Eru' in a formulation Tolkien would have known. Denethor forgets what Stewardship means, and in his pride chooses to exercise the last element of power remaining to him- filicide and suicide. It may be that some of the attacks on Tolkien from the Left (I'm thinking here of Mieville, not necessarily Brin) is that they alraedy have imbibed a fair dose of Sarumanism. "Knowledge, Rule, Order," in time we can control the power, and override the weakminded fools who don't relise it's for their own good.... Shippey is quite right in identifying Saruman's speech as a politician's doublespeak (a word coined by Orwell at the same time Tolkien was finishing the Lord of the Rings). __________________ The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.