What would the ring tempt you with?

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Just a wild suggestion: maybe Tolkien saw what tickled the intellectuals in Germany during the twenties and thirties and how "right" they were in calling for conservative and nationalistic values (which Tolkien shared) in comparison to the technologically driven capitalism of the US & GB at one hand and collectivism of the Soviet Union (which both Tolkien as well disliked) on the other hand?

If you mean what I think you mean, isn't it ironic that those intellectuals (some of them, at least - Gottfried Benn or Heidegger, e.g.) ended up falling for a regime that, beneath its veneer of conservative and nationalistic values, was just as technologically driven and collectivistic as the alternatives, not to mention presuming to style itself 'socialist' while actually protecting the interests of big capital as long as its owners weren't jewish?

Back on topic - what would the Ring tempt me with? For starters, I'd like to be able to travel to all the places on the world that I'd like to see, visit all the great museums and read all the books that never quite made it to the top of my reading list. I guess I'd probably need more than a single lifetime to do all this, so the artificial longevity that the Ring brings would come in quite handy.
As for bigger issues - I'd like to see the world saved, of course, but I think the Ring would have to work hard to convince me I've got the master plan how to go about it. I admit, however, that from time to time I have those fantasies about making some folk pay for their dirty work, as Sam Gamgee said to Galadriel. In those moods, I wouldn't mind a chance to put some of our politicians and big businessmen before a revolutionary tribunal and make them look down the barrels of a firing quad - just to give 'em a proper scare, of course; once they'd fouled their underwear, I'd be quite content to pardon them to some sentence of a more pedagogic purpose: like having to do some honest, useful work for a change, or subsisting on the income of a single mother on dole. Now that would be something the Ring could work with; and like Galadriel, I'm afraid I wouldn't stop with that.