“The Shire at this time had hardly any ‘government.’ Families for the most part managed their own affairs. … The Thain was the master of the Shire-moot, and captain of the Shire-muster and the Hobbitry-in-arms, but as a muster and moot were only held in times of emergency, which no longer occurred, the Thainship had ceased to be more than a nominal dignity.”
Sounds like night-watch libertarianism that had declined to something even more minimal. Which ironically was easily run over by a smooth-talking old man with a broken staff and a pretty small bunch of ruffians. You had one job.
I think at that point all he had was smooth talking.
Like if we could imagine a president who tried to regain his power by usurping, failed and lost all his power, and then somehow is allowed to try again. Aren’t we glad LOTR is just fantasy, that’d be horrible.
I would argue Gandalf uses not smooth talking, but fast talking. He does whatever he wants before the hobbits have even mustered up the indignation to say no. That’s what happens at the beginning of the Hobbit. The book says most of the respectable hobbits hated Gandalf and only the children and the adventurous liked him, and nobody respected the adventurous hobbits all too much, Bagginses and their wealth not withstanding.
Hobbiton is definitely capitalist or feudalist in some idealised fantasy manner. Samwise is employed as Frodo’s gardener because Bilbo’s dragon treasure made the Bagginses rich.
Tolkien was a wonderful man personally, but he struggled at thinking outside of the paradigms he knew, which were based on catholicism. Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally christian story in a lot of subtle ways that have had negative ramifications on the entire genre of fantasy in the decades since. I will say that Tolkien believed in the selfless, loving christianity that Jesus was talking about, and that’s pretty good, but it’s not perfect. It leads to blindnesses like the fact that the only governments present in Middle Earth are feudalism (hobbits, men, elves), theocracy (orcs), and just literally being one with nature (ents). Jesus may have said to give a poor man the cloak off your back, but by the 20th century those ideas had been filtered through Rome’s horrible point of view and England’s worse one. The possibility space for what a devout christian can conceptualise had been reduced, even when reading the words directly from the bible.
Anyway if you’re curious about the more significant problems with Tolkien’s worldbuilding, the big one is the racial controversy surrounding orcs that arose when people started moving an explicitly christian myth into realist settings, and to a lesser extent there’s the “fallen empire” trope that I just find really annoying in everything except Halo and Warframe (this is because both of those games state that the fallen empire sucked and were destroyed by their own hubris, which is just so juicy. Those games are antifascist as fuck).
I don’t know that I’d call Halo anti-fascist lol, but otherwise this a great breakdown of Tolkien’s mindset while creating Middle Earth that hits the important elements without getting lost in the weeds, like trying to figure out whatever the fuck Tolkien thinks “anarcho monarchism” actually is and how, exactly, it’s different, much less better, than an absolute monarchy.
The core thesis of Halo is “if soldiers were allowed to do whatever they want, they’d destroy the world”. Halo 1, Chief wants to fire the ring and Cortana stops him. Halo 2, Arby wants to genocide the humans and everyone says that’s a bad idea and then he gets genocided. Halo 3, Hood wants to do a heroic last stand on earth and everyone says that’s a bad idea. Halo ODST, stop killing huragok they’re slaves. Halo Reach, stop going down in a blaze of glory and carry cortana. Halo 4, stop putting your giant phallic ship before earth. Also the whole reason for the human covenant war is that Truth lied and started a genocide to avoid admitting that humans are gods.
Every single game is about soldiers and politicians making bad decisions based on violence, hate, and pride until a scientist or a smart person stops them and explains what’s actually going on.
And then a literal Ubermensch saves the galaxy, again, mostly with violence.
I get what you mean, but I think that message might be getting lost if that was the intention. Plus all those smart people still work for space fascists in the first place.
Heck, reminding myself of the details of the UEG/UNSC I’m looking at a Reddit thread right now were some poor kid asked if they had a shadow fascist government and all the comments are assuring him no, a military junta is in fact very cool and based, so even if the writers intended that poor kid’s questioning to be the goal of the Halo narrative, um, mission failed.
The Master Chief has massive psychological trauma from being a child soldier. That trauma has always been a central part of his arc, and whether the covenant’s invasion justifies Halsey’s actions in retrospect has always been a central question of the universe. The reason Halsey is kind of a Nazi is that she’s implanted with a Geas by the librarian to follow in the footsteps of the Forerunners, and the forerunners sucked. Halo is concerned with big philosophical questions, and I like those questions, and none of the answers to those questions say fascism is okay.
Does Hobbiton have any sort of government that I’m forgetting about or otherwise unaware of? I’ve always thought of it as an anarchists paradise
Sounds like night-watch libertarianism that had declined to something even more minimal. Which ironically was easily run over by a smooth-talking old man with a broken staff and a pretty small bunch of ruffians. You had one job.
Smooth talking old man that is secretly a god.
Angel, not God.
Yeah but he had fireworks though
I think at that point all he had was smooth talking.
Like if we could imagine a president who tried to regain his power by usurping, failed and lost all his power, and then somehow is allowed to try again. Aren’t we glad LOTR is just fantasy, that’d be horrible.
I would argue Gandalf uses not smooth talking, but fast talking. He does whatever he wants before the hobbits have even mustered up the indignation to say no. That’s what happens at the beginning of the Hobbit. The book says most of the respectable hobbits hated Gandalf and only the children and the adventurous liked him, and nobody respected the adventurous hobbits all too much, Bagginses and their wealth not withstanding.
Pretty sure the person you’re responding to is referring to Saruman infiltrating the Shire at the end of the series, not Gandalf.
Hobbiton is definitely capitalist or feudalist in some idealised fantasy manner. Samwise is employed as Frodo’s gardener because Bilbo’s dragon treasure made the Bagginses rich.
Tolkien was a wonderful man personally, but he struggled at thinking outside of the paradigms he knew, which were based on catholicism. Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally christian story in a lot of subtle ways that have had negative ramifications on the entire genre of fantasy in the decades since. I will say that Tolkien believed in the selfless, loving christianity that Jesus was talking about, and that’s pretty good, but it’s not perfect. It leads to blindnesses like the fact that the only governments present in Middle Earth are feudalism (hobbits, men, elves), theocracy (orcs), and just literally being one with nature (ents). Jesus may have said to give a poor man the cloak off your back, but by the 20th century those ideas had been filtered through Rome’s horrible point of view and England’s worse one. The possibility space for what a devout christian can conceptualise had been reduced, even when reading the words directly from the bible.
Anyway if you’re curious about the more significant problems with Tolkien’s worldbuilding, the big one is the racial controversy surrounding orcs that arose when people started moving an explicitly christian myth into realist settings, and to a lesser extent there’s the “fallen empire” trope that I just find really annoying in everything except Halo and Warframe (this is because both of those games state that the fallen empire sucked and were destroyed by their own hubris, which is just so juicy. Those games are antifascist as fuck).
I don’t know that I’d call Halo anti-fascist lol, but otherwise this a great breakdown of Tolkien’s mindset while creating Middle Earth that hits the important elements without getting lost in the weeds, like trying to figure out whatever the fuck Tolkien thinks “anarcho monarchism” actually is and how, exactly, it’s different, much less better, than an absolute monarchy.
The core thesis of Halo is “if soldiers were allowed to do whatever they want, they’d destroy the world”. Halo 1, Chief wants to fire the ring and Cortana stops him. Halo 2, Arby wants to genocide the humans and everyone says that’s a bad idea and then he gets genocided. Halo 3, Hood wants to do a heroic last stand on earth and everyone says that’s a bad idea. Halo ODST, stop killing huragok they’re slaves. Halo Reach, stop going down in a blaze of glory and carry cortana. Halo 4, stop putting your giant phallic ship before earth. Also the whole reason for the human covenant war is that Truth lied and started a genocide to avoid admitting that humans are gods.
Every single game is about soldiers and politicians making bad decisions based on violence, hate, and pride until a scientist or a smart person stops them and explains what’s actually going on.
And then a literal Ubermensch saves the galaxy, again, mostly with violence.
I get what you mean, but I think that message might be getting lost if that was the intention. Plus all those smart people still work for space fascists in the first place.
Heck, reminding myself of the details of the UEG/UNSC I’m looking at a Reddit thread right now were some poor kid asked if they had a shadow fascist government and all the comments are assuring him no, a military junta is in fact very cool and based, so even if the writers intended that poor kid’s questioning to be the goal of the Halo narrative, um, mission failed.
The Master Chief has massive psychological trauma from being a child soldier. That trauma has always been a central part of his arc, and whether the covenant’s invasion justifies Halsey’s actions in retrospect has always been a central question of the universe. The reason Halsey is kind of a Nazi is that she’s implanted with a Geas by the librarian to follow in the footsteps of the Forerunners, and the forerunners sucked. Halo is concerned with big philosophical questions, and I like those questions, and none of the answers to those questions say fascism is okay.