[ SECRET POST #3993 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3993 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 57 secrets from Secret Submission Post #572.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[erinptah]

This is the first time I've seen LOTR described as "conservative." Where's that coming from?

I mean, it says war is bad (but women should be able to serve in the military), protecting the environment is good, people struggling with trauma and addiction deserve sympathy, hoarding wealth is bad (even, ultimately, for the hoarder), and part of the role of a leader is to provide your people with healthcare. Conservatives, at least where I live, are people who disagree with all of that.

[(Anonymous)]

It's very conservative but in a sense that is largely different from what that means in 2017 (especially in the US but also elsewhere). It's fundamentally written from an agrarian, Anglo-Catholic, mythologizing, backwards-looking, Merrie Old England point of view. It reproduces a whole bunch of ideas about the proper social order and legitimacy and class relationships and kingship and all of those things that are basically conservative. Again, none of that actually lines up with issues-based politics right now, but it's still part of an extremely coherent and specific social conservative tradition.

The locus classicus for this argument is probably Michael Moorcock's Epic Pooh, so that might be worth reading if you want to see a more developed version of the argument. I definitely don't agree with everything he says but it's an interesting position and there's a lot of validity to it.

[tree_and_leaf]

Roman, not Anglo-Catholic. I am an Anglo-Catholic, so I'd love to claim Tolkien, but his mother's conversion to Roman Catholicism and his very very Roman Catholic upbringing and practice as an adult were extremely important to his identity and to the way he lived his life and understood his art.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd say it's conservative, as opposed to progressive, which is slightly different in several important ways to conservative v. liberal.

LotR is big on maintaining the status quo. Progress, which at the time the books were written were symbolised by industrialism and new technology to the average person, is either inherently evil, like Saruman's forge, or easily turned to evil, like the palantirs, or attract evil to them, like the dwarves' mines. Going back to the old ways, following the paths of kings and heroes that can trace their lineage back to allegorical God, upholding the traditions passed down through generations -- this is how things are set back to rights.

That's old school Conservatism. There's still some of that hiding in the bones of the more moderate branches of modern conservatism, but in the US and much of Europe (and probably elsewhere, but I've got no experience there), the conservative movement has ironically left its roots far behind and been hijacked by extremists.

[erinptah]

Okay, so these two comments make sense of why the word "conservative" is used, but less sense of why OP is embarrassed about it. Even if you don't side with the underlying philosophy, a lot of the results end up being solid. (There's literal tree-hugging! Hard to argue with.)

And it's not like the books have a neat divide between evil progress and good tradition. The One Ring is incredibly old, and that doesn't stop it from being the most evil object in the series. One of the major critical heroic moments only happens because Eowyn defied her traditionally-mandated gender role. Our heroes are trying to restore power and authority to Aragorn, and, at the same time, to obliterate the traditional power and authority of Sauron.

I mean, it would be pretty cool if the worldbuilding took the next leap forward and had a democratic revolution and Aragorn got elected instead of installed, but at least there's a sense that you can't just follow any traditional authority. Some of them are worthy, some aren't.

(I'm willing to take some of this as trappings of the genre, too. It doesn't need to mean real life has semi-divine kings walking around, any more than we have actual dragons.)

[(Anonymous)]

quick things

1) You're right to point out that it's not as simple as "tradition good, progress bad". Absolutely. It's quite a bit more complicated than that. But when you get into the details, a lot of it is still pretty aligned with a conservative worldview. For instance, yes, there's all kinds of things about virtuous kingship and legitimate authority and ordination with Aragorn, but that's still coming from a fundamentally conservative point of view with regards to authority and politics. It's a fairly comfortable fit. Just being able to distinguish between good and evil is not the same as having a critical point of view towards tradition generally.

2) Tolkien wrote the things he did on purpose. The reason that Aragorn doesn't get elected is because Tolkien didn't want to write that, and wouldn't have written that. It's absolutely not the case that this was an inevitable step forward that Tolkien was just unable to see because of the times, or something like that. He wrote the thing he wanted to write based on how he saw the world. (and just to clarify one thing that I don't mean - I wouldn't go so far as to say that Lord of the Rings is a direct guide to Tolkien's political views by any means. it's certainly not the case that he's literally calling for some kind of Jacobite revolution. rather, it's more that Tolkien's worldview is more comfortable thinking in terms of kingship than in terms of democracy)

3) presumably, the reason that OP finds it embarrassing is that they fundamentally disagree with the worldview in question. And it's one that's really deeply infused into Tolkien's work. I can see what they mean.

[erinptah]

Just being able to distinguish between good and evil is not the same as having a critical point of view towards tradition generally.

I'm not sure I see the difference between "being able to distinguish that some traditions are not good" and "having a critical point of view toward tradition".

Unless you're saying that the only traditions the characters could distinguish from "good" were "capital-E Evil"? And I'm not sure that's true, given Eowyn.

...you make it sound like I'm faulting Tolkien for writing a fantasy story about magical royalty, and I'm not. Fantasy magical democracies are a cool idea in general, is my point, not something a person has to write in order to prove they're a modern progressive.

And I'd actually forgotten what hyarrowen mentions, that the support of the people is at least included in Tolkien's vision of magical fantasy kingship.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure I see the difference between "being able to distinguish that some traditions are not good" and "having a critical point of view toward tradition".

On the one hand, believing that - while some specific traditions are evil - tradition on the whole is broadly good and important, and things that happened in the distant past can provide a legitimate authority and legitimacy and justification for things that are happening in the present day.

On the other hand, believing that traditions have to be able to justify themselves in contemporary terms - that things aren't justified simply because of tradition and the past and history.

...you make it sound like I'm faulting Tolkien for writing a fantasy story about magical royalty, and I'm not. Fantasy magical democracies are a cool idea in general, is my point, not something a person has to write in order to prove they're a modern progressive.

My point is that Tolkien wasn't a modern progressive, and that this is the fundamental underlying reason that his work does not sound like something written by a modern progressive.

And I'd actually forgotten what [personal profile] hyarrowen mentions, that the support of the people is at least included in Tolkien's vision of magical fantasy kingship.

I can see where that's coming from, but I don't think that after-the-fact acclamation of a monarch is really something that we should consider an example of "election" in the modern democratic sense. It's not as though, had the people not acclaimed him, they would have said "oh, hey, hang on, never mind, we're going to take back that crown now."

I hope this doesn't come across as harsh, I really don't mean it to be and I don't want to be critical of you at all. I don't even really want to be critical of Tolkien at all. I don't really think it's a bad thing. It's just part of the man and his work.

[erinptah]

It's not about being harsh, it's just, you keep phrasing things like you're disputing something I said even when you're not making points I've disagreed with =/

[hyarrowen]

But Aragorn was elected, in a way.

'Shall he be king and enter into the City and dwell there?'

And all the host and all the people cried yea with one voice.

Which is election - in the Anglo-Saxon, and the Hamlet sense. Not a step forward, but a step back to an older way of doing things.