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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28348 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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Yes, we are basically hobbits, content to live in nice towns with little in the way of crime and no real desire to seek power over others.

I remember reading Lord of the Rings growing up and thinking the Shire sounded like paradise. I'm not exactly surprised to find people who don't think so exist -- I knew this, there are people who like the city --, but finding that there are people who think of the Shire as an example of a bad thing is a little funny.

I live across a river from the hospital I was born in, five miles from the house I grew up in (well, one of them, anyway -- we moved a lot when I was young, but always in the same county. My father chased the housing bubble upwards), and, while the old rural character of the place is mostly gone and paved over by suburbia, enough of it is left that I love it here and have no desire to ever leave. I've married a girl I met in college, most of my immediate family lives within a 45 minutes drive, and I pretty consciously chase stable, salaried employment that provides dependable income and doesn't ask too much as far as travel or flexibility.

The funny thing is that I'm actually from an area of the country that is otherwise very much like the 'coastal elitopia' the guy found out he prefers, just far enough out on (what used to be) the edges of the suburbs that you can still see the shimmer of the rural past in the ponds and the creeks. The small towns are still small (even if they're expensive and trendy and surrounded by miles of SFH neighborhoods), the parks are still pristine (even if the bike trails are getting more defined and nature outside those parks is disappearing, at least in this part of the county), and the job market is healthy enough that I don't think I'll ever even have to leave (even if my wife wants to move to Europe someday -- we both want something like Bavaria, which is pretty much exactly like here but with less tract housing and better beer).

Lord of the Rings growing up and thinking the Shire sounded like paradise.

Really? Even if you ignore Aman completely I would say Rivendell and its environs were more of a paradise than the Shire ever could be.

Depends what you want. Rivendell was a refuge, and a temporary one; now it has faded with the passing of the Rings. The description in the appendices of Arwen coming to Lothlorien after Aragorn's death is heart-breaking, because it says so much with so little: she came to the silent land and dwelt there alone under the fading trees, since both Galadriel and Celeborn had left, until winter came and she laid herself to rest on the green mound while the mallorn leaves were falling.

If you're looking for 'paradise' in this world, then the Shire is the nearest you will get.

Rivendell is temporary only from a terribly alien worldview - it has lasted thousands of years. That is, of course, insufficient from the perspective of an Elf, but should satisfy any mortal human.

The Shire, of course, is clearly idealised by Tolkien, but anyone who thinks it to be paradise is wrong. Tolkien himself clearly grasped the drawbacks of such a society - petty, parochial, ignorant, and dependent on the goodwill of greater civilizations.

Rivendell is a redoubt, it's a place of refuge because it's hidden away, not easily accessible, and Elrond can control who gets there. It's been sheltering the shattered line of the Northern kings since Arnor was destroyed, and it's filled with war survivor Elves from the last time Sauron kicked off and the time before that when Melkor was the Big Bad.

And all this depends on the power of one of the Three Rings to maintain that air of timelessness. Which is precarious, as we see with the destruction of the One Ring. Even with that, though, the age of Men is coming and the fate of the Elves is fading if they remain (until, in Tolkien's very oldest original mythos, they dwindle down into the 'fairies' of our/Victorian day) or to pass overseas and leave behind all that they tried to build in Middle-earth.

And even Rivendell is not immune to the depredations of the outer world, see the fate of Celebrian.

It's not a place for mortals, apart from a time where they need shelter and healing, or are coming to the end of their journey through life.

Tolkien's presentation of Minas Tirith is similarly idealised, but nobody writes about Tolkien as a promoter of classical (or any other) principles of urban planning. Tolkien clearly did have an idealised view of a traditional English rural life which was being rendered obsolete by industrialisation, but when he tries to put it on the page he falls into the classical historical-nostalgist trap of writing out the reality of peasant life. The only working-class hobbits we see are the two Gamgees (and we don't see much of the old Gaffer), who enjoyed the favour of their aristocratic patron. If I use race as a metaphor to explain the English class system to Americans*, this is like writing the Antebellum South from the perspective of three planters and a house slave, which is what Gone With the Wind does, and is widely panned for in the current year.

In the world we live in, the dominant demographic trend of the last 250 years (in England - it is more recent in other places) is people voluntarily and knowingly moving from the Shire to Minas Tirith for a better life.

In so far as the Shire is paradise, it is because it (for reasons not explained) remains rightly-governed and unaffected by the rising Dark despite Arnor falling around it. (Rivendell and Lorien are similar, although the reasons that they are unaffected are more obvious) The implication of the appendices is that once Aragorn (and his heir Eldarion) consolidated the Reunited Kingdom, the whole Kingdom enjoyed this level of peace and prosperity.

* Something I feel entirely justified in doing given that the traditional English class system is fundamentally about oppression of the indigenous population by Norman settler-colonialists.

I think if you're likening Gaffer Gamgee and Sam to house slaves, you're wading into deep waters. That is completely not the parallel, even if we take the view that this is about the landed gentry. Think more the idealised image of the 'old family retainer' rather than 'chattel slave of a different race'.

Though I think, given your analysis of Norman colonialism, you are somewhat tongue-in-cheek about this whole topic.

Yeah, there's that, too. We are not Elves and we cannot have their life. We are Men and the fading of the world of Elves leaves us to build our own paradises.

There's a chapter in Anna Karenina where Levin, the lovesick landowner and sometime friend of Anna's brother, returns to his estate after trying and failing to win the heart of Kitty, a young woman who is still too caught up in the thrills of court life to take him seriously. While there, there is a scene where he assists his tenants with harvesting the grain, spending most of a day just working side by side with them. Tolstoy describes this experience like next to nothing else he describes in the whole book, lauding it in a way that almost feels utopian. You can feel Tolstoy's agrarianism shine right through.

I've never found the idea that paradise involves no work very convincing.

Reminds me of Alexander Pope:

Happy the man, whose wish and care 
A few paternal acres bound, 
Content to breathe his native air, 
     In his own ground. 

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, 
Whose flocks supply him with attire, 
Whose trees in summer yield him shade, 
     In winter fire. 

Blest, who can unconcernedly find 
Hours, days, and years slide soft away, 
In health of body, peace of mind, 
     Quiet by day, 

Sound sleep by night; study and ease, 
Together mixed; sweet recreation; 
And innocence, which most does please, 
     With meditation. 

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; 
Thus unlamented let me die; 
Steal from the world, and not a stone 
     Tell where I lie.

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