“Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”
Tolkien, chapter 9 The Last Debate, from the first book of The Return of the King.
It’s a time for cool heads and warm hearts. And for taking care.
1) Take care of yourself to begin with. Eat well, exercise, learn to breathe properly, meditate, read/write, listen to/make music, look after yourself physically and mentally, take care of personal hygiene;
2) Take care of the social environment. Look after others. Social distancing is an act of solidarity, stay at home, support those who are working hard out there, the medics, the cleaners, the delivery workers, all those who serve and supply our essential needs, (and make sure to remember them in the aftermath, the people whose labour is taken for granted and undervalued); look out for vulnerable and the needy in the community, and remember these ties of interdependence in the years to come;
3) Take care of the natural environment. Take time to ponder our relations to the world around us and upon which we depend for health and well-being, temper the demands we make upon the world and make a commitment to live lightly on the land, take care of place;
4) Take care of your soul. Be on good terms with inner being and the ultimate ground of being, take care of being.
Self-care, Social care, Earth care, and Soul care. Being and Place. Attending. And take care of imaginal space, too. We need to look take care of the imagination, to help nurture the vision that will lead us toward the future with faith and courage, in the confident hope that a better way of living is possible for all people on this planet, in respectful relation to the other beings and bodies of the more-than-human world.
That’s my dream. It may look like a fantasy in present circumstances. I don’t see how, mind. ‘Present circumstances’ have been too grim for far too many for far too long now. Have a look around the world. There's enough for all on this planet. Reality has been dashing our dreams for a long time now. We have continued to hope for better through it all.
Is it just an idle, comforting flight from reality?
Tolkien faced the charge that he offered only escapism in the face of unpleasant, unpalatable reality. I have always found that criticism superficial. It has a surface-level plausibility but fails utterly to grasp the depth in and weight of Tolkien’s vision. Tolkien had faced the harshest of reality, losing all of his friends in the First World War. Tolkien took part in the Battle of the Somme. “Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute,” he recalled. “Parting from my wife,” he wrote, expecting not to survive going off to the trenches, “was like a death.” Tolkien served for four months as a battalion signals officer with the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers in the Picardy region of France. Historian Martin Gilbert interviewed Tolkien years later about his combat experience. Tolkien had come under heavy fire and had heard “the fearful cries of men who had been hit.” Gilbert wrote that “Tolkien and his signalers were always vulnerable.”
I would suggest that that is as harsh as reality can get. I would also suggest that that is the kind of reality we certainly need to escape from, for reasons of of all that is sane and healthy. Tolkien took the charge of escapism head-on, drawing the distinction between the Escape of the Prisoner and the Flight of the Deserter. Critics fail to make that distinction, and thus see Tolkien’s escapism as mere flight. Tolkien’s vision is an escape, since his fantasy is a leaving of a world that is ugly and an entry into a world that is better, healthier, and saner. Tolkien is urging the prisoners incarcerated in in an ugly and brutal world to escape and go in search of better way of being. That, for Tolkien, was the world of Fäerie, and the biggest mistake a critic can make is to dismiss that world as mere unreal fantasy. Tolkien enjoins us to enter a deeper reality, and escape the chains that confine us within the prison of present reality. In denying escape in favour of an acceptance of ‘realism,’ critics are effectively telling us to reconcile ourselves to imprisonment, confined within a miserable present. Tolkien affirms the existence of a deeper and better reality, accessible to those with moral courage and imagination.
To state Tolkien’s lessons simply:
All concentrations of power are baneful, political, economic, religious;
And power, by its nature, does tend to concentrate.
Destroy the Ring! For fellowship’s sake.
The hobbits used technology not to change their way of life but to support it. That life the hobbits led was good and didn't stand in need of changing; they didn't need 'progress' and didn't need to be going anywhere other than where they already were.
That's not where we are, of course.
So where are we, then? Somewhere between intervening and interweaving, between creation and sub-creation?
In Tolkien's “The Return of the King,” there is a striking exchange between Gandalf and Denethor. Gandalf has just arrived with Pippin from Rohan, and the two have been admitted into an audience with the Steward of Gondor.
Denethor says to Gandalf:
“Yet the Lord of Gondor is not to be made the tool of other men’s purposes, however worthy. And to him there is no purpose higher in the world as it now stands than the good of Gondor; and the rule of Gondor, my lord, is mine and no other man’s, unless the king should come again.”
Gandalf replies:
“Unless the king should come again? Well, my lord Steward, it is your task to keep some kingdom still against that event, which few now look to see. In that task you shall have all the aid that you are pleased to ask for. But I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?”
Compare and contrast Gandalf's words on stewardship with the decadent conception of Denethor, who conflates the particular good of his realm with the common good of Middle-earth as such.
To repeat:
"it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”
Here is my own book on Tolkien:
Tolkien and the Fellowship of all Living Things: The Politics of Proximity, Person and Place
Abstract
“Tolkien’s words on ‘fighting the long defeat’ are wonderful and endlessly inspiring – he gives us a ‘hope without guarantees.’ And a long defeat that, in acts of love and kindness and solidarity, gives ‘glimpses of final victory.’ There’s a lot of discussion on what it takes to motivate people to act at the moment. Tolkien saw the impacts of industrialisation and urbanisation and didn’t like them, thought that they drew us away from the right way of relating to each other and to the world. Tolkien teaches that large scale ambitious projects need to be grounded in small-scale reasoning, communities of practice and love of place – a Hobbit like existence in which the ordinary actions of the little people knit communities together and create the warm and affective bonds between us, making us prepared to act to defend the places and persons we love and value. I develop these themes at length in this Tolkien piece. We need an environmentalism that gives the ‘little folk’ a material and moral stake. If we are Hobbits at heart, and if we create the Hobbit habits of the heart, then we will have the motivation to act and don’t need to be persuaded. And here I show how the protagonists in the Lord of the Rings put everything on the line and throw their whole heart and soul into the struggle. Everything they hold dear is at stake, the people and places they love, everything they hold true and know to be right. They long to preserve these things and are prepared to sacrifice themselves for their protection. I develop Tolkien's natural anarchy and pacifism.”
I’ll give the last word to Bilbo Baggins:
[writing his book]
“The twenty-second day of September in the year 1400 by Shire reckoning. Bag End, Bagshot Row, Hobbiton, West Farthing, The Shire, Middle Earth. The Third Age of this world. "There and back again, A Hobbit's tale, by Bilbo Baggins". Now, where to begin? Ah, yes. "Concerning Hobbits". Hobbits have been living and farming in the four Farthings of the Shire for many hundreds of years. Quite content to ignore and be ignored by the world of the Big Folk. Middle Earth being, after all, full of strange creatures beyond count. Hobbits must seem of little importance, being neither renowned as great warriors, nor counted amongst the very wise. ... In fact, it has been remarked by some that Hobbits' only real passion is for food. A rather unfair observation as we have also developed a keen interest in the brewing of ales and the smoking of pipeweed. But where our hearts truly lie is in peace and quiet and good tilled earth. For all Hobbits share a love of all things that grow. And yes, no doubt to others, our ways seem quaint. But today of all days, it is brought home to me it is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.”