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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   26813 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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Another poster brought up LOTRad being relatively low brow compared to PM work. But your post reminds me of enduring truth JRRT embedded in LOTR: most of the time, knowing what is the just thing to do isn’t complicated. Instead, choosing to do good even when you know you are likely to fail is the important thing.

People often scorn LOTR because it lacks moral complexity (somewhat unfair criticism). But in reality, the simple truth of “do good even when it might cost you or you might not succeed” is in reality a powerful antidote to the “problem obsessed but no solution” attitude you identify in PM work. And sometimes, that good results in restoring the kingdom.

People often scorn LOTR because it lacks moral complexity (somewhat unfair criticism).

Which is what Rings of Power tried to do with their family man Orc (to great mockery). So what happens to our morally complex, it's a grey area, family guy Orc? Happily (to all appearances) engages in the siege of Eregion where priceless cultural artefacts are destroyed, literally engages in back-stabbing of (the new) Adar (the triggering incident apparently being "Daddy doesn't love me?") and ends up getting murderated himself in about five seconds by Sauron for daring to be "but what about all the Orc footsoldiers you are sending out as cannon fodder?" which, ironically, was the reason he initially switched loyalties from Adar to Sauron.

So much for moral complexity.

And from the selected letters, notes from 1956:

Of course in ‘real life’ causes are not clear cut – if only because human tyrants are seldom utterly corrupted into pure manifestations of evil will. As far as I can judge some seem to have been so corrupt, but even they must rule subjects only part of whom are equally corrupt, while many still need to have ‘good motives’, real or feigned, presented to them. As we see today.

Still there are clear cases: e.g. acts of sheer cruel aggression, in which therefore right is from the beginning wholly on one side, whatever evil the resentful suffering of evil may eventually generate in members of the right side. There are also conflicts about important things or ideas. In such cases I am more impressed by the extreme importance of being on the right side, than I am disturbed by the revelation of the jungle of confused motives, private purposes, and individual actions (noble or base) in which the right and the wrong in actual human conflicts are commonly involved. If the conflict really is about things properly called right and wrong, or good and evil, then the rightness or goodness of one side is not proved or established by the claims of either side; it must depend on values and beliefs above and independent of the particular conflict. A judge must assign right and wrong according to principles which he holds valid in all cases. That being so, the right will remain an inalienable possession of the right side and Justify its cause throughout.

(I speak of causes, not of individuals. Of course to a judge whose moral ideas have a religious or philosophical basis, or indeed to anyone not blinded by partisan fanaticism, the rightness of the cause will not justify the actions of its supporters, as individuals, that are morally wicked. But though ‘propaganda’ may seize on them as proofs that their cause was not in fact ‘right’, that is not valid. The aggressors are themselves primarily to blame for the evil deeds that proceed from their original violation of justice and the passions that their own wickedness must naturally (by their standards) have been expected to arouse. They at any rate have no right to demand that their victims when assaulted should not demand an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth.)

Similarly, good actions by those on the wrong side will not justify their cause. There may be deeds on the wrong side of heroic courage, or some of a higher moral level: deeds of mercy and forbearance. A judge may accord them honour and rejoice to see how some men can rise above the hate and anger of a conflict; even as he may deplore the evil deeds on the right side and be grieved to see how hatred once provoked can drag them down. But this will not alter his judgement as to which side was in the right, nor his assignment of the primary blame for all the evil that followed to the other side.

...In The Lord of the Rings the conflict is not basically about ‘freedom’, though that is naturally involved. It is about God, and His sole right to divine honour. The Eldar and the Númenóreans believed in The One, the true God, and held worship of any other person an abomination. Sauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants; if he had been victorious he would have demanded divine honour from all rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world. So even if in desperation ‘the West’ had bred or hired hordes of orcs and had cruelly ravaged the lands of other Men as allies of Sauron, or merely to prevent them from aiding him, their Cause would have remained indefeasibly right. As does the Cause of those who oppose now the State-God and Marshal This or That as its High Priest, even if it is true (as it unfortunately is) that many of their deeds are wrong, even if it were true (as it is not) that the inhabitants of ‘The West’, except for a minority of wealthy bosses, live in fear and squalor, while the worshippers of the State-God live in peace and abundance and in mutual esteem and trust.

That last - the 'good' side do bad things, but those bad things do not take away from the rightness of their position - probably would be a leetle too morally complex for the critics!

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