I have curated this (i.e. sent it out on our mailing list to ~30k subscribers). Thank you very much for putting these quotes together. While his perspective on the world has some flaws, I have still found wisdom in Tolkien’s writings, which helped me find strength at one of the weakest points of my life.
I haven’t read all of the quotes, but here’s a few thoughts I jotted down while reading through.
Tolkien talks here of how one falls from being a neutral or good character in the story of the world, into being a bad or evil character, which I think is worthwhile to ruminate on.
He seems to be opposed to machines in general, which is too strong, but it helps me understand the Goddess of Cancer (although Scott thinks much more highly of the Goddess of Cancer than Tolkien did, and explicitly calls out Tolkien’s interpretation at the top of that post).
The section on language is interesting to me; I often spend a lot of time trying to speak in ways that feel true and meaningful to me, and avoiding using others’ language that feels crude and warped. This leads me to make peculiar choices of phrasings and responses. I think the culture here on LessWrong has a unique form of communication and use of language, and I think it is a good way of being in touch with reality. I think this is one of the reasons I think that something like this is worthwhile.
I think the Fall is not true historically, but I often struggle to ponder us as a world in the bad timeline, cut off from the world we were supposed to be in. This helps me visualize it; always desiring to be in a better world and struggling towards it in failure. “Exiled” from the good world, longing for it.
While all men must die and all civilizations must collapse, the end of all things is merely the counterpart of the beginning of all things. Creation, the birth of men, and the rise of civilizations are also great patterns and memorable events, both in myths and in history. However, the feeling does not respect symmetry, perhaps due to loss aversion and the peak-end rule, the Fall—and tragedy in general -carries a uniquely strong poetic resonance. Fatum represents the story’s inevitable conclusion. There is something epic in the Fall, something existential, even more than in the beginning of things. I believe there is something deeply rooted, hardwired, in most of us that makes this so. Perhaps it is tied to our consciousness of finitude and our fear of the future, of death. Even if it represents a traditional and biased interpretation of history, I cannot help but feel moved. Tolkien has an unmatched ability to evoke and magnify this feeling, especially in the Silmarillion and other unfinished works, I think naturally to The Fall of Valinor and the Fall of Gondolin among other things.
I have curated this (i.e. sent it out on our mailing list to ~30k subscribers). Thank you very much for putting these quotes together. While his perspective on the world has some flaws, I have still found wisdom in Tolkien’s writings, which helped me find strength at one of the weakest points of my life.
I also liked Owen CB’s post on AI, centralization, and the One Ring, which is a perspective on our situation I’ve found quite fruitful.
I haven’t read all of the quotes, but here’s a few thoughts I jotted down while reading through.
Tolkien talks here of how one falls from being a neutral or good character in the story of the world, into being a bad or evil character, which I think is worthwhile to ruminate on.
He seems to be opposed to machines in general, which is too strong, but it helps me understand the Goddess of Cancer (although Scott thinks much more highly of the Goddess of Cancer than Tolkien did, and explicitly calls out Tolkien’s interpretation at the top of that post).
The section on language is interesting to me; I often spend a lot of time trying to speak in ways that feel true and meaningful to me, and avoiding using others’ language that feels crude and warped. This leads me to make peculiar choices of phrasings and responses. I think the culture here on LessWrong has a unique form of communication and use of language, and I think it is a good way of being in touch with reality. I think this is one of the reasons I think that something like this is worthwhile.
I think the Fall is not true historically, but I often struggle to ponder us as a world in the bad timeline, cut off from the world we were supposed to be in. This helps me visualize it; always desiring to be in a better world and struggling towards it in failure. “Exiled” from the good world, longing for it.
“I think the Fall is not true historically”.
While all men must die and all civilizations must collapse, the end of all things is merely the counterpart of the beginning of all things. Creation, the birth of men, and the rise of civilizations are also great patterns and memorable events, both in myths and in history. However, the feeling does not respect symmetry, perhaps due to loss aversion and the peak-end rule, the Fall—and tragedy in general -carries a uniquely strong poetic resonance. Fatum represents the story’s inevitable conclusion. There is something epic in the Fall, something existential, even more than in the beginning of things. I believe there is something deeply rooted, hardwired, in most of us that makes this so. Perhaps it is tied to our consciousness of finitude and our fear of the future, of death. Even if it represents a traditional and biased interpretation of history, I cannot help but feel moved. Tolkien has an unmatched ability to evoke and magnify this feeling, especially in the Silmarillion and other unfinished works, I think naturally to The Fall of Valinor and the Fall of Gondolin among other things.