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Interesting article, thanks for sharing. I've never come across Tolkien's opinions on other books/authors before so for me it's fascinating. The article frames

by n4r9 3y ago

Interesting article, thanks for sharing. I've never come across Tolkien's opinions on other books/authors before so for me it's fascinating. The article frames their differences as deontology vs consequentialism, but I think absolutism Vs relativism (or subjectivism) also had a part to play. It feels like Tolkien imagined that there is an overarching principle of goodness, and that practising goodness is reward in itself. OTOH Herbert imagined that good and evil are in the eye of the beholder, and that one's power to control ones environment and persuade other people is what counts in the end. I'm reminded of a similar rift that I recently discovered on HN, between CS Lewis and Stapledon (author of First and Last Men, and Starmaker). Lewis apparently regarded Starmaker as "devil-worship". This surprised me because there is no devil or indeed any religion in the novel. As best I can tell after a lengthy debate with other HN users, in Lewis's eyes it is devil-worship even to imagine a world bereft of absolute good and evil. Sometimes it feels like those with very strong faith inhabit a quite different world to me.

drbig 3y ago
Thanks for the opinion! I have Starmaker on the shelf, bought lifetimes ago and... never read. Likewise I have not read Herbert not Tolkien... And now I think I'll slot the Starmaker and then perhaps Dune for the upcoming summer balcony reading period. ...Which makes me point to the core point: there are those low-level notions that are pretty much mutually exclusive. I for one learned quickly that there is no "true good", and that there is no "true evil", either. Managing to get older my current perspective on this dichotomy is thus: 1) Perfect Good = you're with everyone and everything is perfect... But it's a static frame. Nothing can ever change - as the only change would be straying from the attained perfection! 2) Perfect Evil = and you're fully free to do whatever you want! And have the power to do so! But... you're fully and truly alone. And being the supreme evil of this multiverse you can't end yourself. As in, you can _obviously_, but then you... come back. And thus both ends of this coin are different but equivalent. Nothing of interest at the logical conclusions.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Perfect Good = you're with everyone and everything is perfect... But it's a static frame. Nothing can ever change - as the only change would be straying from the attained perfection! If it is indeed perfect why would it "have to change"? Just for the sake of it?
JackMorgan 3y ago
> Sometimes it feels like those with very strong faith inhabit a quite different world to me. Quite an understatement! I grew up in a hyper-religous secluded community overseas, and it was a huge perspective change to see what life is really like outside the bubble. Everyone around me seemed to truly believe that they were in a struggle against demonic powers for all that is true, good, and holy. We were constantly told if we stopped, the world would be plunged into a hellscape of wickedness and evil. Also that most other humans had literally allied with the devil and were actively trying to stop us. It's wild to write it out now, but that was just how it was. Teachers, parents, and other friends of mine all "knew" some humans were our active enemies, just like they "knew" that we were on the Right Side. Our side was "righteous". At 17 I moved to a major city in the US, I quickly realized how much of that was completely fabricated. People are all sometimes evil, just like they are sometimes wonderful, selfless, charitable, honest, and caring. I don't know a single person who has "allied with the devil to cast the world into darkness". Turns out that was just a terrifying fairy tale.
- philwelch 3y ago
  > I don't know a single person who has "allied with the devil to cast the world into darkness". Turns out that was just a terrifying fairy tale. It’s no fairy tale. There are people in this world who raise armies of child soldiers and engage in ritual cannibalism and human sacrifice. There are people who build concentration camps and gulags and torture the people imprisoned inside. There are serial killers and child sex traffickers. These people exist. In a modern Western society, we prefer to either live in denial about this or try and develop more sophisticated explanations for this kind of behavior, but there are centuries of intellectual development that needed to happen for us to get here. Most people throughout most of history made sense of the world through myth. If it helps, think of the devil as more of a metaphor. Though honestly, I think I would make a stronger statement than that. For instance, you can attribute some of this behavior to mental illness, but the concept of mental illness is also a metaphor with almost as many inherent flaws. And even framing these behaviors as mental illness doesn’t work in cases where these behaviors are completely normal to the societies in which they take place. Everyone agrees that Ed Gein was mentally ill because he lived in a culture where murdering women, wearing their skin, and dancing around wasn’t normal, but there have been cultures where human sacrifices with uncanny similarities in ritual have been completely normal. Psychologists and anthropologists have all kinds of theories and explanations for this sort of thing, but it’s not like they have it all figured out. We’re nowhere close to hard science when it comes to explaining this stuff. Besides, what is science anyway? It’s a set of models to help people make predictions. It’s not fundamental truth. F=ma is a lie that we tell children because unless you’re approaching the speed of light, it’s close enough to get you the right answers. And the psychologists were getting high on cocaine and making up wild theories about men wanting to fuck their mothers around the same time the physicists finally figured out that F=ma isn’t exactly right. It sounds like you grew up in a weird cult and I’m sympathetic to that, but it’s a mistake to overgeneralize that experience as an example of religious faith in general. There are a lot of religious beliefs that use a mythical framing to encapsulate essential truths about the human experience. Not only did we need that encoding to get where we are today, but in some cases I’m not even sure we’ve come up with any better explanations.
coldtea 3y ago
>As best I can tell after a lengthy debate with other HN users, in Lewis's eyes it is devil-worship even to imagine a world bereft of absolute good and evil. Imagine the consequences of such a world and you get his point. Our world might be objectively "bereft of absolute good and evil", but it's only tolerable to live because most people believe and act counter to that. And the evil of bad actors "sure of some badly defined absolute good", like the Nazis or the Inquisition, would be nothing compared to the evil of a world where everybody really believed and acted as if good and evil have no absolute and is up to them.
- n4r9 3y ago
  > Imagine the consequences of such a world and you get his point I don't get his point! Firstly, dreaming up a world system is a far cry from worshiping it. Secondly, I feel like striving towards the true nature of things is one of the few principles that really gives meaning to existence. Rejecting this in favour of superficial contentedness feels nihilistic in a Brave New World kinda way. > the evil of a world where everybody really believed and acted as if good and evil have no absolute What makes you so sure? In my experience it is societal norms and inbuilt consciences that tend to encourage good behaviour. I don't see why this would change as we evolve away from superstition as a species. For example, some sci fi authors such as Iain M Banks have imagined credible advanced societies where there is no supernatural thinking; and yet individual morality plus social pressures absolutely still work to promote social harmony.
bossyTeacher 3y ago
> Sometimes it feels like those with very strong faith inhabit a quite different world to me. It is not a feeling but a reality. They often live closed off from the outside world unless interaction is strictly needed. Look at the Vatican City, also look at the residential areas in the US where people have everything they need (education, entertainment, etc), also secluded communities in the middle of nowhere. You can find many examples. Worst is if you were born there and you don't know anything
- n4r9 3y ago
  I'm talking about people like JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis who I suspect absolutely did interact with the outside world.

by n4r9 3y ago

drbig 3y ago

Thanks for the opinion! I have Starmaker on the shelf, bought lifetimes ago and... never read. Likewise I have not read Herbert not Tolkien... And now I think I'll slot the Starmaker and then perhaps Dune for the upcoming summer balcony reading period. ...Which makes me point to the core point: there are those low-level notions that are pretty much mutually exclusive. I for one learned quickly that there is no "true good", and that there is no "true evil", either. Managing to get older my current perspective on this dichotomy is thus: 1) Perfect Good = you're with everyone and everything is perfect... But it's a static frame. Nothing can ever change - as the only change would be straying from the attained perfection! 2) Perfect Evil = and you're fully free to do whatever you want! And have the power to do so! But... you're fully and truly alone. And being the supreme evil of this multiverse you can't end yourself. As in, you can _obviously_, but then you... come back. And thus both ends of this coin are different but equivalent. Nothing of interest at the logical conclusions.

coldtea 3y ago
>Perfect Good = you're with everyone and everything is perfect... But it's a static frame. Nothing can ever change - as the only change would be straying from the attained perfection! If it is indeed perfect why would it "have to change"? Just for the sake of it?

JackMorgan 3y ago

> Sometimes it feels like those with very strong faith inhabit a quite different world to me. Quite an understatement! I grew up in a hyper-religous secluded community overseas, and it was a huge perspective change to see what life is really like outside the bubble. Everyone around me seemed to truly believe that they were in a struggle against demonic powers for all that is true, good, and holy. We were constantly told if we stopped, the world would be plunged into a hellscape of wickedness and evil. Also that most other humans had literally allied with the devil and were actively trying to stop us. It's wild to write it out now, but that was just how it was. Teachers, parents, and other friends of mine all "knew" some humans were our active enemies, just like they "knew" that we were on the Right Side. Our side was "righteous". At 17 I moved to a major city in the US, I quickly realized how much of that was completely fabricated. People are all sometimes evil, just like they are sometimes wonderful, selfless, charitable, honest, and caring. I don't know a single person who has "allied with the devil to cast the world into darkness". Turns out that was just a terrifying fairy tale.

philwelch 3y ago
> I don't know a single person who has "allied with the devil to cast the world into darkness". Turns out that was just a terrifying fairy tale. It’s no fairy tale. There are people in this world who raise armies of child soldiers and engage in ritual cannibalism and human sacrifice. There are people who build concentration camps and gulags and torture the people imprisoned inside. There are serial killers and child sex traffickers. These people exist. In a modern Western society, we prefer to either live in denial about this or try and develop more sophisticated explanations for this kind of behavior, but there are centuries of intellectual development that needed to happen for us to get here. Most people throughout most of history made sense of the world through myth. If it helps, think of the devil as more of a metaphor. Though honestly, I think I would make a stronger statement than that. For instance, you can attribute some of this behavior to mental illness, but the concept of mental illness is also a metaphor with almost as many inherent flaws. And even framing these behaviors as mental illness doesn’t work in cases where these behaviors are completely normal to the societies in which they take place. Everyone agrees that Ed Gein was mentally ill because he lived in a culture where murdering women, wearing their skin, and dancing around wasn’t normal, but there have been cultures where human sacrifices with uncanny similarities in ritual have been completely normal. Psychologists and anthropologists have all kinds of theories and explanations for this sort of thing, but it’s not like they have it all figured out. We’re nowhere close to hard science when it comes to explaining this stuff. Besides, what is science anyway? It’s a set of models to help people make predictions. It’s not fundamental truth. F=ma is a lie that we tell children because unless you’re approaching the speed of light, it’s close enough to get you the right answers. And the psychologists were getting high on cocaine and making up wild theories about men wanting to fuck their mothers around the same time the physicists finally figured out that F=ma isn’t exactly right. It sounds like you grew up in a weird cult and I’m sympathetic to that, but it’s a mistake to overgeneralize that experience as an example of religious faith in general. There are a lot of religious beliefs that use a mythical framing to encapsulate essential truths about the human experience. Not only did we need that encoding to get where we are today, but in some cases I’m not even sure we’ve come up with any better explanations.

coldtea 3y ago

>As best I can tell after a lengthy debate with other HN users, in Lewis's eyes it is devil-worship even to imagine a world bereft of absolute good and evil. Imagine the consequences of such a world and you get his point. Our world might be objectively "bereft of absolute good and evil", but it's only tolerable to live because most people believe and act counter to that. And the evil of bad actors "sure of some badly defined absolute good", like the Nazis or the Inquisition, would be nothing compared to the evil of a world where everybody really believed and acted as if good and evil have no absolute and is up to them.

n4r9 3y ago
> Imagine the consequences of such a world and you get his point I don't get his point! Firstly, dreaming up a world system is a far cry from worshiping it. Secondly, I feel like striving towards the true nature of things is one of the few principles that really gives meaning to existence. Rejecting this in favour of superficial contentedness feels nihilistic in a Brave New World kinda way. > the evil of a world where everybody really believed and acted as if good and evil have no absolute What makes you so sure? In my experience it is societal norms and inbuilt consciences that tend to encourage good behaviour. I don't see why this would change as we evolve away from superstition as a species. For example, some sci fi authors such as Iain M Banks have imagined credible advanced societies where there is no supernatural thinking; and yet individual morality plus social pressures absolutely still work to promote social harmony.

bossyTeacher 3y ago

> Sometimes it feels like those with very strong faith inhabit a quite different world to me. It is not a feeling but a reality. They often live closed off from the outside world unless interaction is strictly needed. Look at the Vatican City, also look at the residential areas in the US where people have everything they need (education, entertainment, etc), also secluded communities in the middle of nowhere. You can find many examples. Worst is if you were born there and you don't know anything

n4r9 3y ago
I'm talking about people like JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis who I suspect absolutely did interact with the outside world.