I wonder if you might have seen this essay by David Brin...
Now ponder something that comes through even the party-line demonization of a crushed enemy—this clear-cut and undeniable fact: Sauron’s army was the one that included every species and race on Middle Earth, including all the despised colors of humanity, and all the lower classes.
Hmm. Did they all leave their homes and march to war thinking, “Oh, goody, let’s go serve an evil Dark Lord”?
Or might they instead have thought they were the “good guys,” with a justifiable grievance worth fighting for, rebelling against an ancient, rigid, pyramid-shaped, feudal hierarchy topped by invader-alien elfs and their Numenorean-colonialist human lackeys?
Picture, for a moment, Sauron the Eternal Rebel, relentlessly maligned by the victors of the War of the Ring—the royalists who control the bards and scribes (and moviemakers). Sauron, champion of the common Middle Earthling! Vanquished but still revered by the innumerable poor and oppressed who sit in their squalid huts, wary of the royal secret police with their magical spy-eyes, yet continuing to whisper stories, secretly dreaming and hoping that someday he will return … bringing more rings.
My guess would be that Mordor is a totalitarian communist state, formed on promises of empowerment of the People, and then turned into a horrible labor camp with collective farms by lake Nurnen and armies of expendable mooks kept in line by harsh superiors (think Commissars), along with heavy racist and nationalistic propaganda so they hate their enemies more than they hate their own rulers. Remember the communist revolution that happened in the Shire while our heroes were out destroying the One Ring? It started out as a ham-fisted attempt at social justice, and before long people were disappearing for being enemies of the state. Imagine that, but on a larger scale, and many times worse, and festering for generations.
The orcs (et al) don’t have to be inherently evil for Sauronland to be an evil nation.
When Brin (via RH) invoked his article on Overcoming Bias, Brian Moore (and Eliezer) invoked Jacqueline Carey’s “Sundering.” I’m surprised that Carey didn’t show up in the acknowledgements. Brin & Carey are mentioned in another (ex-)OB thread.
Nick Perumov wrote a huge fan-sequel to LOTR in exactly this vein. In the end the new rebel leader (who started out pretty good and gathered races with legitimate grievances) zbecuf vagb n zbafgre orpnhfr ur’q hfrq gur anmthyf’ yrsgbire evatf gb tnva fgeratgu, naq hcba ernyvmvat gung ur fheeraqref gb gur cebgntbavfg gb trg xvyyrq.
EDIT: rot13′d the spoilers. Which doesn’t mean I recommend reading the book!
Please edit this to rot13 the spoilers. You don’t say: “X wrote a wonderful story and here’s the ending”, just “X wrote a wonderful story and here’s the link”.
I think Sauron did enough explicitly evil stuff to make himself the bad guy. Tricking the Numenorians into destroying themselves out of spite is pretty hard to justify.
There’s also the fact that orcs don’t have free will. They were created from tortured elves and mindraped into obedience. The fact that Sauron was willing to use them as canon fodder rather than trying to find a way to reverse what Melkor did to them speaks worlds about his moral virtue.
Finally, the rings. Using mind control to turn foreign leaders into your obedient thralls, consoling them with the promise that they will be able to crush others under their heel as you crushed them. Real nice of Sauron.
Middle Earth was a flawed world filled with the same evils and injustices as our own, but Sauron was almost definitely the worst thing in it. I’ll give David Brin some credit, though, as Tolkien did a pretty bad job of explaining the situation in Lord of the Rings. You have to read the Silmarilion (or, as in my case, talk to another guy who has read the Silmarilion, as I lacked the patience to wade through another gazillion pages of archaic English) to understand what’s going on, which is a major failing of LotR.
They were created from tortured elves and mindraped into obedience.
Did you learn this from an unbiased source?
Finally, the rings. Using mind control to turn foreign leaders into your obedient thralls, consoling them with the promise that they will be able to crush others under their heel as you crushed them. Real nice of Sauron.
Suppose you’re the prime minister of a parliamentary republic, and the neighboring country is ruled by hereditary nobility that mostly hate each other, and wars between the barons ruin a lot of the land and kill a lot of the peasants. You, being a genius engineer, have figured out a way to control people, but it requires they wear the device for an extended period of time, the effects are obvious, and they can take it off before the process is complete if they feel like it.
This hereditary nobility situation is obviously not going to fix itself- and you figure that the easiest way to fix it is to corrupt all the nobility, playing on their hatred of each other to get them to wear the devices long enough for them to work, and then have them give you power in a bloodless coup. As a bonus, you now have fanatically loyal assassins / spec ops forces, and an eternity of servitude seems like a fitting punishment for their misconduct as rulers.
“Suppose you’re the prime minister of a parliamentary republic, and the neighboring country is ruled by hereditary nobility that mostly hate each other, and wars between the barons ruin a lot of the land and kill a lot of the peasants. You, being a genius engineer, have figured out a way to control people, but it requires they wear the device for an extended period of time, the effects are obvious, and they can take it off before the process is complete if they feel like it.”
Except that’s exactly what Sauron DIDN’T do. Mordor was not a parliamentary republic; more like a military dictatorship with semi-mindless orc drones enforcing Sauron’s commands over his human subjects. The monarchs who were given the rings—however just or unjust their rule might have been, and however flawed the notion of monarchy as a political system—were lied to about what the rings did, and the rings’ effects were very subtle at first.
Its also worth noting that the human kings didn’t become any kinder or more democratic in their sensibilities once they fell under Sauron’s influence. The Witch King was still a king, and a much more murderous one than he was in life. Unleashing barrow-wrights on a partially civilian population, torturing Gollum for information, and stabbing an innocent (if possibly misguided) hobbit when he didn’t have to are all things that the Witch King did in person.
“This hereditary nobility situation is obviously not going to fix itself- and you figure that the easiest way to fix it is to corrupt all the nobility, playing on their hatred of each other to get them to wear the devices long enough for them to work, and then have them give you power in a bloodless coup. As a bonus, you now have fanatically loyal assassins / spec ops forces, and an eternity of servitude seems like a fitting punishment for their misconduct as rulers.”
In other words, the only way to improve the world is to become just as bad as the people currently running it? The best solution to dictatorships is to make slaves of your own, and for all eternity no less?
I think you’re going out of your way to defend Brin’s essay rather than actually using your own moral judgement. You can easily say that the “good guys” in Lord of the Rings weren’t all that good, but Sauron was very obviously worse.
Right, and Brin’s premise is that Tolkien is a biased source.
In other words, the only way to improve the world is to become just as bad as the people currently running it? The best solution to dictatorships is to make slaves of your own, and for all eternity no less?
If those slaves were the dictators of the old era? Seems suitably karmic.
I think you’re going out of your way to defend Brin’s essay rather than actually using your own moral judgement.
“My own moral judgment” is a tricky thing in this situation, as it depends on which situation we’re describing.
If I have first-hand experience of the events of LotR, and everything is as Tolkien describes it, then yeah, it’s pretty obvious that Sauron is the bad guy.
If I have third-hand experience of the events of LotR, think that at most 90% of the description is accurate, and I think that the philosophies of the modern day are present in the LotR world, then it seems plausible that Sauron is the good guy, for the reasons Brin describes.
You might be interested in The Sword of Good, if you haven’t read it. [edit] It looks like you commented there today, but I’ll leave the recommendation here for any spectators to the conversation.
That is amusing, and what I get for jumping into conversations from the Recent Comments link and not thinking to check where the conversation is happening. I’m tempted to edit it out, but might as well leave it for posterity.
I wonder if you might have seen this essay by David Brin...
My guess would be that Mordor is a totalitarian communist state, formed on promises of empowerment of the People, and then turned into a horrible labor camp with collective farms by lake Nurnen and armies of expendable mooks kept in line by harsh superiors (think Commissars), along with heavy racist and nationalistic propaganda so they hate their enemies more than they hate their own rulers. Remember the communist revolution that happened in the Shire while our heroes were out destroying the One Ring? It started out as a ham-fisted attempt at social justice, and before long people were disappearing for being enemies of the state. Imagine that, but on a larger scale, and many times worse, and festering for generations.
The orcs (et al) don’t have to be inherently evil for Sauronland to be an evil nation.
Right! I forgot this. Will add to acknowledgments.
When Brin (via RH) invoked his article on Overcoming Bias, Brian Moore (and Eliezer) invoked Jacqueline Carey’s “Sundering.” I’m surprised that Carey didn’t show up in the acknowledgements. Brin & Carey are mentioned in another (ex-)OB thread.
Carey’s book is even more powerful but it sends a totally different message—the idea that both sides have their reasons.
Nick Perumov wrote a huge fan-sequel to LOTR in exactly this vein. In the end the new rebel leader (who started out pretty good and gathered races with legitimate grievances) zbecuf vagb n zbafgre orpnhfr ur’q hfrq gur anmthyf’ yrsgbire evatf gb tnva fgeratgu, naq hcba ernyvmvat gung ur fheeraqref gb gur cebgntbavfg gb trg xvyyrq.
EDIT: rot13′d the spoilers. Which doesn’t mean I recommend reading the book!
Please edit this to rot13 the spoilers. You don’t say: “X wrote a wonderful story and here’s the ending”, just “X wrote a wonderful story and here’s the link”.
Where can I read this?
I don’t advise you to, and anyway who’d translate a Russian fanfic into English and put it online?
Google Translate? Assuming there was a digital copy, anyways.
I think Sauron did enough explicitly evil stuff to make himself the bad guy. Tricking the Numenorians into destroying themselves out of spite is pretty hard to justify.
There’s also the fact that orcs don’t have free will. They were created from tortured elves and mindraped into obedience. The fact that Sauron was willing to use them as canon fodder rather than trying to find a way to reverse what Melkor did to them speaks worlds about his moral virtue.
Finally, the rings. Using mind control to turn foreign leaders into your obedient thralls, consoling them with the promise that they will be able to crush others under their heel as you crushed them. Real nice of Sauron.
Middle Earth was a flawed world filled with the same evils and injustices as our own, but Sauron was almost definitely the worst thing in it. I’ll give David Brin some credit, though, as Tolkien did a pretty bad job of explaining the situation in Lord of the Rings. You have to read the Silmarilion (or, as in my case, talk to another guy who has read the Silmarilion, as I lacked the patience to wade through another gazillion pages of archaic English) to understand what’s going on, which is a major failing of LotR.
Did you learn this from an unbiased source?
Suppose you’re the prime minister of a parliamentary republic, and the neighboring country is ruled by hereditary nobility that mostly hate each other, and wars between the barons ruin a lot of the land and kill a lot of the peasants. You, being a genius engineer, have figured out a way to control people, but it requires they wear the device for an extended period of time, the effects are obvious, and they can take it off before the process is complete if they feel like it.
This hereditary nobility situation is obviously not going to fix itself- and you figure that the easiest way to fix it is to corrupt all the nobility, playing on their hatred of each other to get them to wear the devices long enough for them to work, and then have them give you power in a bloodless coup. As a bonus, you now have fanatically loyal assassins / spec ops forces, and an eternity of servitude seems like a fitting punishment for their misconduct as rulers.
“Did you learn this from an unbiased source?”
I’m pretty sure it was in Tolkien’s notes.
“Suppose you’re the prime minister of a parliamentary republic, and the neighboring country is ruled by hereditary nobility that mostly hate each other, and wars between the barons ruin a lot of the land and kill a lot of the peasants. You, being a genius engineer, have figured out a way to control people, but it requires they wear the device for an extended period of time, the effects are obvious, and they can take it off before the process is complete if they feel like it.”
Except that’s exactly what Sauron DIDN’T do. Mordor was not a parliamentary republic; more like a military dictatorship with semi-mindless orc drones enforcing Sauron’s commands over his human subjects. The monarchs who were given the rings—however just or unjust their rule might have been, and however flawed the notion of monarchy as a political system—were lied to about what the rings did, and the rings’ effects were very subtle at first.
Its also worth noting that the human kings didn’t become any kinder or more democratic in their sensibilities once they fell under Sauron’s influence. The Witch King was still a king, and a much more murderous one than he was in life. Unleashing barrow-wrights on a partially civilian population, torturing Gollum for information, and stabbing an innocent (if possibly misguided) hobbit when he didn’t have to are all things that the Witch King did in person.
“This hereditary nobility situation is obviously not going to fix itself- and you figure that the easiest way to fix it is to corrupt all the nobility, playing on their hatred of each other to get them to wear the devices long enough for them to work, and then have them give you power in a bloodless coup. As a bonus, you now have fanatically loyal assassins / spec ops forces, and an eternity of servitude seems like a fitting punishment for their misconduct as rulers.”
In other words, the only way to improve the world is to become just as bad as the people currently running it? The best solution to dictatorships is to make slaves of your own, and for all eternity no less?
I think you’re going out of your way to defend Brin’s essay rather than actually using your own moral judgement. You can easily say that the “good guys” in Lord of the Rings weren’t all that good, but Sauron was very obviously worse.
Right, and Brin’s premise is that Tolkien is a biased source.
If those slaves were the dictators of the old era? Seems suitably karmic.
“My own moral judgment” is a tricky thing in this situation, as it depends on which situation we’re describing.
If I have first-hand experience of the events of LotR, and everything is as Tolkien describes it, then yeah, it’s pretty obvious that Sauron is the bad guy.
If I have third-hand experience of the events of LotR, think that at most 90% of the description is accurate, and I think that the philosophies of the modern day are present in the LotR world, then it seems plausible that Sauron is the good guy, for the reasons Brin describes.
You might be interested in The Sword of Good, if you haven’t read it. [edit] It looks like you commented there today, but I’ll leave the recommendation here for any spectators to the conversation.
Amusing because you linked to this very post.
That is amusing, and what I get for jumping into conversations from the Recent Comments link and not thinking to check where the conversation is happening. I’m tempted to edit it out, but might as well leave it for posterity.