[Lush]

Eurytus, you have taken the words out of my mouth (sort of) and I demand reimbursement. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

I am studying Victorian literature this semester, and beneath the facade of virtue and nobility Victorian society seemed to espouse there lay a teeming pit of every kind of sexual, psychological and religious perversion.

Furthermore, the papal authority preached "virtue," while the popes took on mistresses and surrounded themselves with jewels and gold (Schism, anyone?)

Freakin' JFK was the paragon of the noble spirit of American character, and he treated women *** very badly *** <--- BW's edit

The Golden Age, if there ever was one, could not have possibly been contained within the plane that human beings have occupied since the dawn of history. I largely view it as something more metaphysical, and not bound to any particular time-frame.

What I'm trying to get at (perhaps not too eloquently) is that the values that Tolkien espouses do not clash with the modern age (though his style might, at least for some...but then again people all over the world still read Chaucer, so perhaps that point is largely moot).

And Philip Pullman's attitude toward the work has, once again, little to do with where Western society stands in terms of its morals and ethics today.

The fact that Pullman was able to articulate his viewpoint in the first place is more related to current attitudes and styles (imagine His Dark Materials being published in the afore-mentioned Victorian times!), but not the viewpoint itself.

Yesterday's sin is today's sin in a new package, and it should be arriving dressed up in some creative variation on our doorstep tomorrow (though there are signs in the Bible that say that things will get worse before they get better, I do not view the growth of sin in the world to be a linear progression that would allow us to accurately state that yesterday was better than today).

Basically, if it seems to us that society values pleasure over character today, it may be because society has become a little bit more honest with itself.

As in: We all suck. Huzzah.

Furthermore, Helen I find that the pursuit of truth and virtue should go hand-in-hand with the pursuit of happiness, because a person that is truly happy is also both truthful and virtuous (as in, the people that chase drugs and sex and violence for a nebuluous version of "happiness" are, in fact, quite miserable folk, as I know firsthand). And I think we can see that in Tolkien.

But as I said before, Tolkien really wasn't big in exploring the human psyche and its pursuits.

His strengths lay elsewhere.

[ November 14, 2003: Message edited by: The Barrow-Wight ]