revisiting Tolkien’s . 1

Revisiting Tolkien’s world. Part 1. Reflections on some quotes from the start of The Fellowship of the Ring movie adaptation. [The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien]

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one ring to rule them all

…but the power of the ring could not be undone…
Whatever we do about it, whatever good the intention is, however excellent the effort is, it is not for us humans to be able to vanquish evil. Evil is part of the present, it is here, and for all those who will be born in the world that is just the continuation to ours, to the now, evil is there, too. But there is a capability that can vanquish this phenomenon and together with its coming to pass is the manifestation of humility in all of us. We all will be humbled that there is a Something beyond ourselves that could accomplish what our best efforts and intentions cannot.

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…the ring has a will of its own…
Evil is a thriving phenomenon. It feeds on the will to power and it finds ways to manifest itself. When one sees evil one shouldn’t be surprised, because all things where we are now have a potential to evil.

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…some things that should not have been forgotten were lost …history became legend, legend became myth…
Man did not just suddenly become smart because of the Enlightenment. Man has always been smart. He has always been highly intelligent, highly sensitive highly intuitive. There were things that he had already ascertained but which the subsequent generations would relegate to something “bygone”, hence obsolete, hence inapplicable, hence just stuff that stories are made of. Just myth and legend. Like the reverence for integral-man/soul and the numinous. What we overlook is the fact that scientists operate on the basis of theories and conjectures. Scientists have to start with faith. We are all standing on “nothing”, we are suspended on almost empty space, near vacuum, and are held in place by forces that are not obvious to our senses. We are contained within a sphere wherein we could thrive as if by “magic”. Only a minute part of the phenomenon of our existence has become describable to us, and in our exclusive terms at that, yet our discussions delude us into believing that we are now capable of talking about everything there is. Of course our scientific estimations have always come back to us as sound, precise, reliable, but that’s only applicable within the sphere we move and operate. We talk of clusters of galaxies when the actual space we have physically reached is only the boundaries of our single puny star system, only one of the gazillion that we project there is. Our existence is as ephemeral as the woodland faeries of lore.

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…for the hearts of men are easily corrupted…
What more can I say to this? I can simply agree.

nine rings for the kings of men . Introducing: the 9 who become the Nazgul, ring wraiths, slaves to the evil will & are neither living nor dead

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…nine rings were gifted to the race of men who above all else desire power…
My first reaction has to be on the term race. I have read somewhere that this term is now deemed invalid for the fact that there are no genetic bases for classifying the Homo sapiens sapiens into subcategories in which outer manifestations are skin and hair color. There are no notable differences in the genetic make-up of one race of humans from another, and so this way of categorizing does not make sense, unless we insist that the white-skinned is better than the brown-skinned, that the lanky-bodied are better than the bulky-bodied, that blondes are better than jet-blacks. If we insist on putting subcategories in this manner then we might as well call these as distinct species, which brings in the next point: in what sense can we say that one species of a plant is “better” than the next? In what sense do we speak of inferiority vis-a-vis superiority? Can we honestly say, even, that a child who has Down Syndrome “inferior” to a child who has not? Hence, the talk of race among humans is an uninformed discussion, invalid.

a Milky Way representation, from i.space.com. The Sun, situated at the periphery, is not distinctive, and is just one of the 200+ billion stars comprising this galaxy.

❤ “men who above all else desire power” — if it were not so then there wouldn’t be so much resources wasted on election campaigns 😛 … there wouldn’t be so much hoopla over show business, over the fashion industry, over lifestyle management, over the science for packaging, over the small and big things that affect mostly the “small ones” in the society, those who cannot afford yearly vacations, those who are hurt by the heavy taxes on almost anything, those who are blamed of having succumbed to the tiresomeness of the daily city grind, those whom society disgusts for not having enough will power to keep on a “prosperous” way of life… Modern society thrives on aggression, it favors the aggressive, and it shames those who wish to just have enough to live by. We hoard as if nothing will rot. We acquire as if we can use these all up. But we only create a disastrous imbalance. Our demand to have more deprives many, at the other side of the globe, at the side of the world invisible to us, hidden behind sweat shops and fancy talks of wage raises. Does earth, by attracting more space materials to itself and thus making it more massive, add to the security of its orbiting around the sun? Does the sun have to do anything so that it remains secured within the outer rim of the Milky Way? Does the Milky Way have to do something so that it does not get thrown off from its local cluster of galaxies?

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…for within these rings were bound the strength and will to govern each race but they were all of them deceived…
The capability to move things, events, people is a hallucinogen that amplifies our narcissistic tendencies. That’s why Gandalf, Galadriel, and Aragorn are simply awesome characters. They are aware of how the ring can corrupt them by working through their good intentions for all residents of Middle-Earth. This awareness has humbled them and has led them to choose the supporting role to Frodo and the hobbits — the simple folks who, as Bilbo comprehensively describes his kin, are reputed to foremost love food but actually hold peace and quiet closest to their heart.