[...] if you're assuming that he was unsympathetic to democracy just because he wrote about monarchies, I think that's pretty weak.
That's not what I'm trying to say. Let me exaggerate to make the point: the spirit of political democracy is that individuals are fungible. (Purely pragmatic democracy has no interest in this, hence "could be reconciled".) LotR disagrees.
It might be worth going outside the text. Would these be representative quotes?
"I am not a 'democrat' only because 'humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of powerâand then we get and are getting slavery,"
"My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)-or to 'unconstitutional' Monarchy,"
I think that the real division here is not anti-modernism versus high modernism, it's those who are primarily interested in what individuals go through versus those who are primarily interested in how things should be structured and organized.
That's a useful division. I don't see that it invalidates the other. If Brin's calling Tolkien anti-modernist is really missing the point, not just making a different one, please explain how?
He wanted England to have a myth cycle of its own,
A project not undertaken in a vacuum... Whig history may not be strictly a myth, but I say it serves the purpose.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2002-12-19 03:52 pm (UTC)That's not what I'm trying to say. Let me exaggerate to make the point: the spirit of political democracy is that individuals are fungible. (Purely pragmatic democracy has no interest in this, hence "could be reconciled".) LotR disagrees.
It might be worth going outside the text. Would these be representative quotes?
I think that the real division here is not anti-modernism versus high modernism, it's those who are primarily interested in what individuals go through versus those who are primarily interested in how things should be structured and organized.
That's a useful division. I don't see that it invalidates the other. If Brin's calling Tolkien anti-modernist is really missing the point, not just making a different one, please explain how?
He wanted England to have a myth cycle of its own,
A project not undertaken in a vacuum... Whig history may not be strictly a myth, but I say it serves the purpose.