What is your One Ring?

Jason Kottke relates a passage from an explainer video on the One Ring from the Lord of the Rings:

“First, the ring tempts everyone (well, almost everyone) with promises that yes, this little ring can be a mighty weapon or a tool to reshape the world and gosh don’t you just look like the best guy to use it. Let’s go vanquish the powerful demigod who lives over there to get started, shall we? This is why the hobbits made great ring bearers, because they’re pretty happy with the way things are and don’t aspire to greatness. Of course, there’s Gollum, who started out as a hobbit, but all things considered, he held out pretty well for a couple hundred years. Set the ring on the desk of most men and they wouldn’t be able to finish their coffee before heading to Mordor to rule the world and do it right this time.”

I enjoyed Kottke’s take:

What’s interesting about hearing of The Ring in this focused way is how it becomes a part of Tolkien’s criticism of technology. The Ring does what every mighty bit of tech can do to its owner/user: makes them feel powerful and righteous. Look what we can do with this thing! So much! So much good! We are good therefore whatever we do with this will be good!

The full post is interesting.

If there were a way to get every Kottke post by email (is there?) this is probably one of the five blogs I would subscribe to, so as not to miss a post.

16 Responses

  1. Scholars have pondered the exact meaning of the ring since Tolkien published the trilogy, but the consensus is that it is impossible to understand the meaning of the ring outside Tolkien’s strong Catholic faith. Tolkien was a member of the group of Christian academics called “The Inklings” that used to meet every week in the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford to drink beer and discuss their latest writings, a group that included C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Hugo Dyson, and others. Indeed Tolkien was one of the people most responsible for C.S. Lewis becoming a Christian, and Lewis had a strong influence on The Lord of the Rings. What many believe is that the ring represents some kind of combination of the sinful nature of humanity with technology, i.e. in EconSpeak, something that amplifies the “marginal destructive product” of human beings (or similar creatures). It’s like the perfect empowering complement to a sin nature predisposed to selfishness, self-absorption, and destruction. Tolkien was adamant that LOR is not a Christian allegory (like the Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan = Christ) but instead the Christ figure in LOR seems to be divided between Gandalf (Wisdom), Frodo (servant), and Aragorn (King).

  2. But unlike what happens in LOTR, technology really does make the world better a little bit (sometimes a great bit) at a time…