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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5113693" data-attributes="member: 42582">Celebrim - I hope you don't object that I'm replying to multiple posts here, and also changing the sequence of your paragraphs a little.All this is true.Agreed.Agreed, and this is what is crucial to my contention.My point is, however, when you make the relevant other wield a scimitar, or have swarthy skin, or speak in a guttural language; when you deploy the notion of "rightful kingship" (a Christain European notion) as part of your mythological palette; etc - this is not an uninteresting feature of the story. And it can be a mark of racialised thinking. And I contend that thinking of this sort can be found in Tolkien - and I offer as my contrast the Earthsea trilogy.I agree. Hence, as you said earlier, we're not talking about allegories. But it can still matter what tropes, what devices, what allusions an author uses to make the points s/he wishes to make (whether or not those points are themselves points about cultural difference or identity).Responding to this is difficult in part because of forum rules - we're already pushing the limits of "no politics", and I don't want to go too far over the line of "no religion". But I'll do my best to not offend.I agree that LoTR ranks humility as the highest virtue. And I agree it ranks pride as a great sin - so that Saruman, Sauron, the Black Numenoreans etc are, in the end, greater examples of villainy then the mere orcs. I think that this is also demonstrated by the almost sympathetic treatment of the conversation between the orcs that Sam overhears while wearing the ring post-Shelob.On the other hand, read the book and ask yourself who would you rather be? Or know? Or be governed by? Denethor, or Shagrat? Although pride is the gravest sin, it is also compatible with living a fully human and flourishing life. Faramir may be more virtuous than Boromir, but Boromir's life is hardly a wasted one. He dies at peace with himself, reconciled to himself, and proud. Compare that to the life of an orc.In my view this is expressive of a complexity (perhaps a tension) that is evident in Catholic (and other Christian) moral and social thought, both medieval and contemporary, of reconciling human values with divine (redemptive) values. Saruman and Sauron are players in this game. The orcs don't even get a look in.Turning the focus back on to Tolkien in particular, the complexity of reconciling a commitment to human values (which include proper pride) and redemptive values (which repudiate pride in favour of humility) is also one that is evident in the romantic and post-romantic response to industrialism, which is a question of culture and value evidently dear to Tolkien's heart. On the one hand, industrialism is critiqued as elevating pride, and the pursuit of material control and success, above redemption and other spiritual concerns. On the other, industrialism is critiqued as making pride impossible for ordinary people, because they are transformed from yeoman and crafters to mere factors in the industrial processes of production. I'm not saying that these two critiques are inconsistent, but reconciling them is not a trivial intellectual matter.Thus, I think that it is no surprise that the treatment of pride vs humility in LoTR is a subtle matter, in which truly human protagonists have a part to play on both sides. But the orcs do not. The particular moral failing of which they are expressive - barbarity in the fullest sense - is not one that is imputed to any of these truly human protagonists. In my view, as I have said, this is not uninteresting when one also notices the way that orcs are characterised by reference to the various racialised tropes I've mentioned in earlier posts.This raises its own issues about sensible game design, but I'm not sure that it contributes in any further way to racialised thinking. The numbers of sub-races get so great, and their differences so unconnected to any points of human social contention, that I don't see any real compounding of the issue I'm concerned with.</blockquote>

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