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C00002 00002	Kidding aside, Tolkien pushes some very bad ideas in his writings.
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Kidding aside, Tolkien pushes some very bad ideas in his writings.
Here are two.

1. The world was created for a purpose and each thing in it can
be understood by understanding its particular purposes.
This view is neatly expressed by a religious song that says,
"God gave Noah that rainbow sign, that if won't be water but
fire next time".  Until modern times, men looked for such explanations
of natural phenomena.  These attempts were uniformly unsuccessful,
and after much struggle, the scientific world-view was developed.
In this view, explanations in terms of purpose are limited to
structures evolved by competition for survival, and structures
created by intelligent beings.  The theory that the universe was
created by an intelligent being still survives, but theories about
the purposes of particular features of the universe have been
abandoned by almost everyone.

	In Tolkien's world, the important phenomena are to be explained
in terms of the purpose of their creator, e.g. Orcs - the race it is
ok to hate.

2. Unpleasantness is mainly caused by evil persons and great
unpleasantness has a great unknown evil force behind it.  The way to cure
unpleasantness is to kill the evil ones.  This is the most immoral message
of Tolkien's work.  The scientific view is that the universe was not
designed either for our convenience or for our discomfort.  If we try hard
to understand it, and are willing to work hard, and are willing to
compromise our desires with those of others, the universe can be made more
comfortable.  It is important to distinguish those aspects of the universe
like our bodies that have evolved in response to natural selection from
those aspects like the location of rivers and mountain ranges that cannot
be expected to serve any function better than some other location of the
ranges.  The former can only be modified in the context of great
understanding and even then unexpected disadvantages may appear.  The
latter can be modified on the basis of more superficial analyses.

	Views that particular unpleasant phenomena are caused by evil behavior
and can be cured by attacking the evil people appeal to human emotions.
Sometimes it is even true, but more often it is false.  Once the idea is
accept that certain people are bad and should be attacked, the project
of attacking them often prevents any effort at understanding the
phenomena.  In Tolkien's imaginary world, all evil is caused by the
evil ones and can only be cured by killing.

	Tolkien further advances the view that the cures are always
temporary, because evil will arise again.  As I understand it, the
fundamental process is one of decay, so that defeats can be permanent
while victories are temporary.  In itself, this view is morally neutral,
although it has bad effects on people.  From a super long range point
of view, humanity seems to be doomed by increasing entropy, but we
can manage to survive for at least a few hundred billion years, and
maybe for trillions.  All life is thus a baby and humanity barely
conceived and not even born.  Tolkien's attitude of literary pessimism
is more appropriate for a decaying old man than for a species that
hasn't begun to explore its possibilities.

	In fact, this pessimism is has always been about as prevalent
among adolescents and young adults as among old people.  It can rarely
be cured by argument, so maybe it is primarily a matter of chemistry,
though discouragement in some endeavor certainly contributes.