[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

these Kings may have 'divine rights' but they are very modern too in that they also have 'divine responsibilities'

There's nothing modern about that idea. That the king and his senior subjects have responsibilities towards those below them is one of the underpinning concepts of feudal society. People owe allegiance and loyalty upwards, but also owe protection, patronage, good governance and charity to those below them. I think that Sir Guillaume made that point in one of his posts on the other thread, along with an interesting one about the feudal system being in operation in modern corporations. In medieval England, the system was underpinned by the idea that the king received his position Dei gratia, 'by the grace of God'. Thus the true peak of the feudal pyramid is not the king, or even the Pope, but God, the appointer and master of all kings. The ideal of our system nowadays is that each person rises by virtue of their merits to the position they deserve, and this is about as true to life as was the old feudal model. The difference is one of accountability: the feudal model officially makes someone accountable only upwards, but it is as fallacious to think that this means a lack of responsibility as it is to assume that those who are nominally accountable downwards always feel a sense of responsibility towards those they govern. God is far more terrifying an authority than the electorate, particularly when excommunication could be used to justify mass rebellion.

The above model, with God at the top, does not work for David Brin because he does not believe in God. He sees priests as apologists for an absolutist system, existing only to justify the presence and power of the governing class. But during the Middle Ages, belief in God was not restricted to Brin's uneducated and oppressed masses, but was shared by the lords who governed them. Hell was just as real a threat to them as electoral defeat is to our modern politicians, as numerous bequests of land and moneys to the Church demonstrate. Brin simply follows Karl Marx in assuming that nobody has ever really believed in religion, but that many have promoted it simply to reinforce their own positions. That the same could be said of democracy does not appear to have occurred to him, nor that in societies which nominally follow Marxist doctrine, the abolition of religion has not brought an end to the exploitation of ideals, nor even the indoctrination of the people. If the aim of scientific progress has been to put an end to the cynical manipulation of ideology, then it has been a signal failure, since even in today's democratically governed and meritocratically minded Britain, our guiding ideals are twisted to sell us particular policies. Unlike David Brin, I don't see that changing in the future: there will always be something to gain by duping and exploiting one's fellow man. If anything, there is even less moral discouragement from doing this now than there once was, since we believe the myth that people rise to the station they deserve, and we no longer believe that all our actions must be accounted for. The only commandment in a capitalist democracy is 'thou shalt not be found out'.

This is not to say that medieval societies were better than ours, but they were certainly no worse. There has always been some measure of governmental accountability, even under kings; just as the presence of a democracy doesn't guarantee that everyone's voice will be heard. David Brin's mistake is to think that fairness and democracy, scientific progress and freedom from religious persecution are all bound up in one golden system, which we can follow into a better tomorrow. This is not and never has been the case: whereas people were once locked up and tortured on suspicion of heresy, which imperilled the souls and spiritual security of their fellow citizens, now they are so treated on suspicion of threatening their bodies and their democratic freedom through terrorism. Just as the Church once handed its enemies over to the civil authorities for execution, now our democracies farm out torture to their foreign allies. Every society gets something wrong, and usually its greatest evils and achievements both stem from its most devoutly held beliefs.

As was pointed out in the older thread, though, this has little if anything to do with Tolkien, because he was not a political author. Even if we assume that he intended us to overthrow Parliament and establish a system like the ones he portrayed, we would be far from absolutism or feudalism: the model king, Aragorn, begins his reign by public acclamation, having proved himself not just by defending the realm, but more significantly by healing the sick. The society with which Tolkien most often identifies himself, the Shire, has both hereditary and elected officials, but neither group does much actual governing. Theoden is a king in the Anglo-Saxon heroic mould, very similar to Hrothgar. He is a law-giver, like Alfred, Athelstan and Edgar the Peacable, rewarding loyalty rather than obedience and punishing treachery; and he defends his people by military leadership. More importantly, before making decisions he seeks the advice of a limited witan, or gathering of the wise, just as did the Anglo-Saxon kings. The only ruler opposed to Sauron who appears to seek no opinion but his own is Denethor, who is not a king at all, and the only outright despot in the whole of LR is Sauron, whom Brin would make into some sort of hero.

I don't have time to go into much more than that, but I did want to point out that medieval societies were not dictatorships. Some of the powers wielded by governments today would have been unheard of in the tenth century, and probably hotly contested. Tolkien's kings rule by consent and with a light hand. If Tolkien meant any political message to be derived from their systems it is that a good government is fair, open and responsive to advice and criticism, and no more regulatory than absolutely necessary. However, some people are more concerned with outward appearances and terminology than spirit and substance, and to those people a president means freedom and a sovereign means oppression; they see no need to look any deeper.