Tuesday, October 27, 2020
MYTHIC STORYTELLING AND CINEMA: Introduction
DEMOCRATIC ORCS: Tolkien's Critique of Democracies
DEMOCRATIC ORCS:
TOLKIEN'S CRITIQUE OF DEMOCRACIES
"Really? What can Tolkien tell us that is so important?"
Tolkien is best known for being the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but this is only the surface level of his achievements. He was also an excellent scholar and a profound thinker on many of the issues affecting the world to this day. Hence, I believe his insights to be immensely valuable, especially when the circumstances surrounding us at this moment are so turbulent and uncertain. So with all of that said, here are his words:
“I am not a 'democrat' only because 'humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power--and then we get and are getting slavery.”
Now, I realize that this quote might be rather confusing for some, let's unpack it a bit.
First of all, we must recall what the promises of democracy are. Democracy promises a state where all men are equally free and powerful, where power resides not in one Divinely-appointed ruler but rather in the "will of the people". It is the people who, supposedly, hold power in a democracy, and that is its main promise. Eat this fruit and you shall have the power to determine what laws, customs and order your society will follow.
But why? Why should pride lead us down the road of spiritual death? The answer to this objection is rather simple: because pride is the exaltation of the self over the exaltation of God. And that is a grave spiritual crime. God alone is worthy of all exaltation for He is King of all of us. But by engaging, we forget our rightful place as stewards and are snared into believing that we are actually our own petty little kings. We become egotists, and by extension, rebels of the Kingdom of God. That is why pride is so spiritually destructive. It makes us think we are gods when in fact we are not. Pride is the essence of the serpent's temptation at Eden: you shall be as gods.
Therefore, if democracy leads to pride and pride leads to spiritual sickness, it follows that democracy has a great tendency to makes us spiritually sick. But what exactly does this spiritual sickness constitute? That is an important question to ask because we can never forget what it means to be spiritually sick.
To be spiritually sick means that we are enslaved, enslaved specifically to sin. When we are spiritually sick, we are in such a state of depravity that we struggle to seek the True, the Good, and the Beautiful and are instead attracted more by the false, the evil, and the ugly. In other words, unless we receive the Grace of Absolution, we tend to go not towards virtue and order but instead towards sin and chaos. And this tendency is slavish precisely because it does not want us to seek something better. This sin at the core of our sickness is so despotic that it will not allow us to do anything except sin, and that is how it enslaves us.
Having said all this, it is not hard to see why Tolkien used the motif of the orc to describe the dynamics of democracy. Orcs are essentially beings who have been so spiritually corrupted that they have become minions to evil. The state of their deathly sick souls is made manifest in their horrid appearance and savage behavior. They are no longer free; they are slaves to their sin. And that is precisely what democracy does to the soul. It turns it into an orc. The pride of the illusion of power is so great that it corrupts the soul to the core, and leaves it as slavish to sin as the soul of an orc
So what are we to do about this? Should those of us who by the Wisdom of Divine Providence ended up living in democratic states avoid voting altogether? Should we proceed to overthrow our governments and install a monarchy in their stead? Or is there an alternative way to deal with politics in democratic states?
I believe there is indeed an alternative that does not involve violence, the overthrow of governments, or abandonment of politics altogether. And that solution is rather simple: remember who you are. That's it. We only have to remember that we are servants of our King, Christ the King, not kings in our own right. Therefore, when we go into the ballot box and cast our vote, we should cast it not with our interests in mind, but with God's Interests in mind. Whatever it is that Our Lord wants is what we shall vote for. His Laws should be our laws, His desires should be our desires, His Order should be our order. In short, the best antidote to the corrupting evils of democracy is to not allow its temptations of power and pride to go over our heads. We merely have to remind ourselves we are subjects of the Kingdom, not its kings.
That is the insight that Tolkien can bring us for this election season. To remember what the orcish dangers of the democratic system are and how we can best avoid it by always serving Christ.
Sunday, October 11, 2020
TOLKIEN, REALISM, AND MYTH
TOLKIEN, REALISM, AND MYTH
Introduction
One of the most common critiques against Tolkien's work is that it is "unrealistic". Critics of this kind will complain that Tolkien does not care for the use of subtlety when he portrays the reality of Good and evil in his work. Good characters will be fair, glimmering, brave, and noble, while evil characters will be crooked, ugly, dark, and wicked. In other words, there are no "gray areas", no moral ambiguity in the characters. And it is this lack of "grayness" that Tolkien's critics will take as "unrealistic" and proof that his work is nothing more than shallow tales of cheap fantasy.
However, even though it is true that Tolkien is rather explicit when it comes to his portrayal of Good and evil, these critiques fail to see what Tolkien was intending to do when he portrayed morality in this way. Indeed, once one understands what Tolkien's intention was, his portrayal not only makes sense but it also makes more sense than all those so-called "realistic" portrayals, filled with gray ambiguities. Therefore, if one wishes to reply to these critiques, it is crucial that we first understand Tolkien's motives.
Tolkien's Intention
Unlike most writers of his time, when Tolkien wrote his work, he was not intending to craft a modern series of novels. Rather, what he was trying to do was to sub-create a mythology, a web of mythic tales.
Myth, by definition, is quite distinct from the modern novel. Not only is myth much more ancient, but it is also operating on an entirely different framework of reality. The modern novel often assumes that reality is just the sensible world. In other words, according to the framework of reality under which the modern novel operates, only what can be seen, heard, smelled, touched, or tasted is real. All else is either a lie or figment of our imagination. As a result, the novels of the 20th century have a strictly materialistic and often-times nihilistic view of reality. There is no truth, no goodness, no beauty, according to this view, because, after all, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are all part of a worldview that directly contradicts the materialistic nihilism of modernity. Myth, on the other hand, does recognize the existence of a world beyond the sensible: an invisible, spiritual, and metaphysical world where Truth, Goodness, and Beauty can and do exist. And it is this more integral view (the view that integrates both the visible and invisible sides of reality) that Myth takes as its framework. Hence, Myth and the modern novel are not only different but one could go as far as to say that they are irreconcilably opposed.
As such, when we say that Tolkien's intention was to write a mythic story, we must understand that he was working under a drastically distinct framework from the one that the modern novel takes as its own. This realization, logically, has significant implications in the portrayal of Good and evil. Since the mythic framework acknowledges the reality of the spiritual, it also recognizes the fact that the origin of moral evil is not ambiguous but rather very concrete and defined. Moral evil originates from a disordered act of the will to not conform to the Will of God. Evil, in other words, is an act of spiritual rebellion that ultimately ends in chaos. And since the spiritual inevitably affects the material, it does not take long before this invisible evil is embodied by a visible evil.
Myth vs. Modern Novel
All of this is incomprehensible to the modern novelist. The modern novelist, in his materialistic nihilism, cannot understand that evil is spiritual rebellion because he does not acknowledge any kind of metaphysical and spiritual order at all. For him, reality is already chaotic and meaningless, so when he is confronted with manifestly evil acts, he has no way to rationally recognize them as such. Hence, all he can do is to see things in a perpetual mist of confusion where nothing is ever good or evil.
But when we hold both of these views up for scrutiny, it is evident which one makes more sense. After all, only someone who has totally lost his mind can fall into the pitfall of denying the objective reality of Good and evil. It is right there for us to see. For example, the gulags of Soviet Russia are clear manifestations of a spiritual evil that has taken over the whole political system of a nation. Likewise, on a more personal scale, the visible brokenness of addicts and criminals is clearly a symptom of a much deeper spiritual sickness in the souls of those persons. There is no ambiguity when evil is so manifest. Even the most depressed nihilist will have to admit that there is something wrong in these situations, even if he has no way of explaining why that is. Therefore, it is evidently true that the invisible, moral reality soon takes its form in the visible reality, thus proving that the mythic worldview is the right one.
This is why Tolkien chose to portray Good and evil the way he did. He knew that the spiritual realm is very much real and that its effect would soon find an echo in the material world. Hence, when we see the evil creatures of his mythology as these terrifying and disgusting beings, what we are really seeing are the repercussions of a spiritual state of cursedness, beings that are spiritually dead. On the other hand, when we see the heroes of this mythic world and notice how beautiful and noble they look, we are witnessing the effects that an orderly spiritual state has. That is the reason why Tolkien seems to be explicit in his portrayal of Good and evil.
A More Real Portrayal
And to be honest, this portrayal is ultimately much more realistic than all the gray ambiguity that the modern novel is so fond of. After all, since the spiritual realm is a reality that we ought to contend with, it is absolutely reasonable to portray Good and evil in a way that the spiritual effects on matter are starkly manifested. Therefore, when one hears critiques of Tolkien's work as being "unrealistic", we should remember that the spiritual is more real than the material, and as such, the mythic is more real than the modern.
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