I dunno. I’ve had a real deep break with the kind of euro-catholic monarchy loving worldview he pushes. It goes deep to the point where I find the cognitive dissonance of being a fan a bit unbearable and have to give it up to find my own sense of inspiration and hope. Perhaps unfair, but so is the worldview he pushed, whether he meant it with love or not, imo. Perhaps someday the rift will heal, but that won’t only be up to me.
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There are lots of good and bad things in Tolkien. I personally still love his works, but I can understand if the second have gotten too much for you or anyone else.
It also genuinely doesn’t help when all the worst people gravitate around something. Like, I really love Greek and Roman history too…but so often it makes me feel like something is wrong with me when I hear how people talk about them online. I wasn’t actually cool with slavery or cheering for the repressive oligarchs, am I the only one?
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Yeah… this is getting too OT so I won’t post more I swear… but honestly there’s a deeper sensation for me like I’m also sick of the regressive ideation. I want to envision a better future and I’m so damned tired of idealizing a worldview or mythologizing a past that doesn’t even have a place for me or most of the people I love to exist in it. If we can’t even imagine a way to exist in our fantasies what is the point of being attached to them anymore? Whose dreams and fantasies are they even?
They are undoubtedly great works of fiction, but at the same time I do honestly believe that the roots of fascism are in the kind of Eurocentric mythmaking that gave us a narrative that enables colonialism and fascism… and Lord of the Rings… because it creates a sense of identity through some imagined shared body of lore and fabricated tribal connection. To me these are the stories some of my ancestors told themselves to justify these things just like they are the stories inspiring men like Putin and Peter Thiel today. While I like to believe Tolkien wanted people to take a better message than that, intent is ultimately irrelevant when it comes to art I think because the artist dies and the art lives on in other people. So I have to ask myself honestly, what is the purpose of that in my life?
Ps: I don’t really wish Tolkien to hell. I meant that more as hyperbole than a sincere hope. For one thing I don’t believe in hell. I’m just really disillusioned with a lot of things right now and I guess I had an “unfair” feeling about the cultural baggage of Tolkien in the face of atrocities.
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Not really no… that’s your view and you’re entitled to it… I don’t think that you expressing your opinion on Tolkien is remotely “unfair” to anyone… I find it a little tedious to constantly have to read how some people find other’s opinions on pop culture “wrong”…
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This. I don’t want to add to this because I love how you’ve broken this down. So I’m just gonna
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If you’re being tossed into the grinder because Great Leader only planned for the quick, cheap, and easy part of a war; I wouldn’t be unduly comforted by receiving the quick, cheap, and easy part of IVF with unlikely-to-be-binding assurances that the difficult and expensive part of the procedure will be handled as well.
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If only Putin had bought Twitter.
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I kinda sorta get why in the middle of a war such a law would be drafted, but it really is in need of followup legislation. And yeah, there are more pressing matters like a big fucking abuser nation currently trying to kill you, but it can’t be ignored. And the goal now of the law is to clamp down on the disinformation that Russia is attempting.
I remain optimistic that this is something that will be fixed. If anything, it’s in the spirit of progressivism to keep changing, keep trying something new and not wallow in nostalgia for good old days that were never that good to begin with.
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The craftsmanship on that karate medal is… lacking.
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‘I know how they think’ A Hezbollah official-turned-critic explains the group’s relationship with Moscow and how Russia’s failures in Ukraine likely derailed a real partnership
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