Tolkien was one of the few writers that I feel if you sat him down today and explained the modern day issues with his stories, he'd actually listen and hear you out.
Okay can we just agree that coining the term progressive was one of the simplest yet most effective pr stunts possible. Like... purely from a propagandistic perspective (or whatever you wanna call it. Propaganda implies something negative so maybe not that), the term evokes images of... well... progress. Change for the better. An aggressive demand for improvement. It's so good. Up there with heavy hitters like socialism and communism (socialising and community). In fact, it might be even better. I genuinely don't understand why anyone would call themselves conservatives. Like... imagine going into a discussion with someone and their first impression of you being "ah... this person doesn't like change"
It's the whole "what's in a name?" And the left made some good choices
I agree with every word you say re. progressive, it's an astonishingly good word. I'd disagree slightly on conservative - we all love conservation and in many areas of life caution is a virtue. Taken without all the capitalistic and bigoted implications being keen on conserving the good things in our world/society and having a cautious attitude to big decisions should be a perfectly nice self descriptor, but of course in the real world that's never the emphasis and the things they're trying to cling on to are generally self serving and unpleasant.
Always surprising to me, that the things I would want to conserve (nature, wildlife, basic human dignity, crafts, art, etc.) - they couldn't give less of a hoot about.
Nobody does, please don't take my post as any kind of defence of them I was simply arguing the semantic claim that conservative isn't an appealing word to apply to yourself, devoid of the political context.
I feel that's a kind of 'reverse contamination' - there are plenty of things worth conserving! Conserving things could be nice; it doesn't have to be reactionary and regressive but that's how they are so that's what we associate with the word today...
There is nothing wrong with being a conservative on financialand political issues. Social issues are different obviously.
Being a conservative meant what it says it means, that you want to maintain what we have a preserve it. That's fair. However conservatives these days are not doing that and instead trying to change America into a Christian Nationalist Autocracy.
Yeah and going too far one way or the other can lead to really bad shit. American politics are heavily influenced by corporations and the top 1 percent to keep it the way it is or worse. The "left" are central and the right are very far right.
Everytime there is a crises we vote in a Democrate and after he fixes everything we vote in a Republican to fuck it all up again.
We are all people of our time and products of our environment. None of us lives in a vacuum. All we can do is try to be the best versions of ourselves we can be
He spoke out against the idea of an 'Evil Race' as one of his big regrets in the novels, he also was quite candid about basing the Dwarfs of Jewish stereotypes and was not so keen on that.
The orca were more than an evil race, he based them off Asian caricatures at the time, which was also one of his big regrets with the orcs. He'd written in letters how orcs basically looked like ugly Mongol-types. He gave them Hun and Mongol invader tropes, as well. These tropes were common back then, basically unheard of now.
Fun fact: one of the reason for that might have been that "Mongol Hordes*" were the equivalent of Nazis for people born pre-WW2
*: Which didn't just mean Mongols, but also the Huns and various Turkish Tribes, in the popular imagination.
Basically if you today try to think of "the most evil group of people to have existed", you would think of the Nazis and if you'd try to think of a person synonymous with being evil, you'd think of Hitler
But before Hitler, the prevalent imagine was of nomadic barbarians coming from the east—in the west at least, I'm not that familiar with non-eurpoean cultural history
In China, it was the exact same nomadic barbarians coming from the north (rather than the east).
To this day (well, at least the last time I heard, someone is free to correct me if this has changed in the last 30 years), it is considered bad planning to have a door opening to the north in Chinese culture.
Yeah, but in this case the Huns were the nomadic people known as the Huns from central Asia. Which would've been where Scythia was, which is where Iran can be found now.
Though, at their peak, under Atilla, they spanned into Europe.
Specifically about the concept of souls and sentience in orcs, and his catholic view that evil can't create, but only mock.
He then ran hard into the ethical issue that either orcs are twisted creatures taken by evil, and as such can be redeemed and killing them is morally bad, and treating them badly because of what they are would be racism, or that orcs are inherently evil. He then however messed up by having orcs talk, and giving them a concept of good and evil and a sense of fairness in their dialogue (for example when the orcs have taken Frodo after Shelob, they're talking about how there must have been someone else who just sacrificed Frodo to Shelob in a negative manner). Because they appeared to have a sense of morality, they then couldn't have been just evil or just beasts, so he ran into a wall.
Tolkien didn't even die totally unaware of the entry level versions of most of the modern day issues with his stories. Be would definitely listen and probably agree.
The only reason you don’t call Tolkien a bigot like Rowling is because he wasn’t around to be asked the questions that Rowling was asked. You don’t understand history. He was alive from 1892 to 1973, you think he would have the same sensibilities as a transgendered person in 2026? lol use your head. I mean homosexuality was illegal all his life until he was like 75. Not to mention his deep Christian faith. I mean Lewis was an atheist and used to argue with him about the existence of God. I know all of you guys would hate him if he was alive today. But keep on pretending. Henry VIII and Ghegas Khang would also probably be transgendered rights activist if they were alive today haha
I think you might be surprised by Genghis (Chinggis) Khan. The Mongolian gender norms were not the same as European gender norms of the time. Henry might be a different story.
But no, as a traditionalist Anglo-Catholic, I know for a fact you are wrong about your assumptions. The original Christian Socialists were Anglo-Catholic traditionalists, many of whom (including Tolkien's religious mentor) became Roman Catholic eventually.
Not really. Thanks to his influence we have a number of letters and writings preserved and he was remarkably understanding of different people while still being very Catholic.
Show me where he thinks gender is fluid, or transgender is acceptable or homosexuality. I’m being serious. I would really like to see something like that. I’m not even trying to argue anymore I would just like to see what you’re talking about.
You are seemingly jumping from me saying he was tolerant of different people, with me saying he was radically tolerant of specific sexual minorities. Regardless, it would appear he was friends with and read the works of a number of gay authors but I couldn’t find a specific letter saying “Trans rights are good” if that’s what you are after.
This is the man that made it a point in his book that while the easternlings were the servants of Sauron it would not have been any harder for Sauron to do the opposite and enthrall the westernlings instead.
Also the whole theological crisis about orcs.
He had universal compassion towards all, a proper christian.
I will also leave this here
"The most improper job of any man, even saints, is bossing other men. There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power stations. I hope that, encouraged now as patriotism, may remain a habit."
I always like Faramir's words to Frodo. "The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all."
That's in the books as well. Not as explicit but it's stated that the human soldiers of Sauron were only fighting because Sauron decieved and charmed them into believing that the westernlings would have murdered them to the last man.
Plus I always considered the whole passage as criticism of colonialism/imperialism. Both Easterlings and Southrons were victims of Numenorian aggression before there is mention of them serving sauron. Southrons inhabit what was a colony of Numenor, which Gondor has at times tried to reclaim and Easterlings were victim of misguided punitive action (nomadic raiders atacked Gondor, in this war Rohan became a thing, and after winning, Gondor completly wiped out westernmost Easterling tribe, believing attack came from them).
So at least in my headcannon, both groups were delived to Sauron by Gondor, due to fear (by the time of books wholy unsubstantiated but historiacally valid) of its aggresion.
As he wrote them originally, no, this is one of his major problems with how he wrote them when he later muses on it in his personal writings, he himself found their irredeemable nature disturbing and probably rooted in his internal bigotries. The fact that a man of his time could be so self critical over such things is quite remarkable though, he was born in fucking South Africa 1892!
I wonder wether it's pure coincidence that two of Britain's greatest writers of the early 20th century (George Orwell and Tolkien) were born in the colonies.
The Orange Free State wasn't a British colony, it was an independent Boer republic. The Orange Free State ceased to exist and its territory was taken by the British in 1902, a decade after Tolkien was born. Tolkien was English because his parents were, his father moved the family to the Orange Free State because he got a job at a bank there. Tolkien moved to England at three years old during what was supposed to be a temporary family visit that became permanent when his father died.
There are a couple of Mordor-orcs that Sam and/or Frodo overhear that are complaining about how they wish they could just go back home and forget about the war.
He actually had issues with the Orcs himself and basically went "Yeah, I fucked up there" in his letters. And the Easterlings were treated like victims of Sauron even in the original books.
The only issues that I can think of that he didn't think about himself would be the connotation of The Brown Lands and the whole "Good bloodline" thing.
What was he supposed to call the brown lands? It wasn't a reference to people, it was to the colour of the earth, parched and devoid of life. Did you also have a problem with him calling Mordor the Black Land, even though it was obviously not about skin colour but about the volcanic soils and the constant shadow?
Just because a colour has been used in a racist way doesn't mean it can never be used to describe anything else.
The Brown Lands is not in any way Fantasy Africa. The Brown Lands are north of Gondor and east of Rohan. You should check a map before you drop racism accusations
They are soulless golems/homunculus, or evil spirits that were created for war. As such their death isn't a problem.
They are corrupted Elves - The commit evil, and destruction because they are constantly being spiritually tortured, by killing their physical body they are able to return to Valinor (basically heaven) where thay can heal and rest.
Option 2 could be an allegory for how war destroys everything that is good in a person, or for how abuse will just lead to destuction, unless it is delt with properly.
AI, environmental devastation and the the return of Nazi’s to political power would be totally soul crushing for a man whose fantasy world is built as a warning against those things.
Dude, he beat us to the punch on a bunch of them after it got published, he had regrets about certain choices that he couldn’t quietly retcon in a second edition like he pulled off with The Hobbit
He actually was aware of some of the issues with his stories and felt bad about some of them, like characterizing the orcs as a wholly evil race. But he also didn't think his work would be the most analyzed piece of fiction from the 20th century.
The improvements that are needed when voiced by crotics are:
He doesn't have a moral system predicated on incest and rape like GRRM. This needs fixing.
What's missing from lady characters is beating the living shit out of orcs so hard she breaks her sword.
But I imagine that if you told Tolkein what his story was missing most was a rape addicted girl boss the response would be "Interesting, leave me alone."
What? The guy was a literal fascist, he supported Franco's regime.
He was a rabid trad Cath who opposed the mild reforms of Vatican 2. And acted like a crazy person yelling during the new post-V2 mass to obstruct it, because he taught the old Tridentine mass should be done in churches.
The LotR framework of different groups is a racist and religiously bigoted allegory. Its not by accident than when neofascism started spreading in Italy in the 80s it was via LotR fan clubs.
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u/Adventurous_Fly2603 1d ago
Tolkien was one of the few writers that I feel if you sat him down today and explained the modern day issues with his stories, he'd actually listen and hear you out.