Is Power Inherently Bad?

I have written before that war is the real villain of our text.  Not Sauron, Saruman, Gollum, nor any of the others.  Those characters are only evil because they engage in, or fervantly wish for, war and conflict.  But I'd like to widen that scope this week.  I think our text has more to say.  War is an evil, yes, but war is the result of something else.  War is the result of contested power.  If only one person had all the power there'd be no war.  But can we say we've conquered evil while also enduring a tyrant, even a benevolent one?

If war is not the real villain, what is?  The underlying conflicts?  Those are many and varied.  It would be unhelpful to highlight just one, and it would also be unhelpful to focus on them all.  Let's dig deeper, what causes those conflicts?

In order for a conflict to be real, it must be about competing power.  An adult cannot have a real conflict with a 5-month-old.  There can be tension and unhappiness, but the 5-month-old has no power of their own.  A CEO and a low-level employee can cause disruption to the work place, but the two of them can't have a real conflict - the power imbalance is too great.  So the issue seems to be power imbalance.

But power is inherently unevenly distributed, and its distribution is volatile.  Further, people like power.  People want to use the power they get.  People do not want to lose the power they have.  An easy way to ensure you do not lose power is to acquire more.  Fences around fences.  But this feeds the unequal distribution of power, which leads to conflict and war.  The only way to end conflict, then, is to end power.  So it looks like power is the real villain.  Let's turn now to our text and see what it says...

This week's chapter is called "The Mirror of Galadriel."  The Fellowship enjoy a respite from their Quest for some time (weeks, probably, though time in Lothlorien is weird).  The narrative focuses on a specific event: Galadriel takes Frodo and Sam to a special grove in Lothlorien and fills a basin with water.  She then tells them that if they look into the water they will see "things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be."  First Sam looks and he sees the Shire being industrialized, the hobbits being put to work and his own father evicted.  Then Frodo looks in and sees the history and the future of the War of the Ring, and the Eye of Sauron.   Suddenly the Ring on his neck grows heavy and actual steam rises from the vision in the water.

Frodo despairs at what he has seen and offers the Ring to Galadriel.  She is wise and a leader among the elves.  Frodo is just a hobbit accompanied by his gardener.  Surely Galadriel is more capable of standing up to Sauron?

Galadriel, dramatically, refuses.  Sam speaks up and says:

'I wish you'd take his Ring.  You'd put things to rights...
You'd make some folk pay for their dirty work.'

'I would,' [Galadriel] said. 'That is how it would begin.
But it would not stop with that, alas!'

An analogy: When given a toy weapon, a child will want to use it.  They attack a cooperative adult who falls over and plays dead.  "Whoa!" The child thinks, "Cool!"  The child play-attacks different people.  They do not usually have the power to make adults fall over.  They want to see how long this power lasts and explore what they can do with it.

But inevitably someone won't play along.  This is the limit of their power.  And what happens?  The child gets cranky.  They have lost their power, an inherently disappointing experience.  We like power, we like to use power, we do not like to lose power.

Even Galadriel is not immune to this temptation of power.  This is what she means when speaking to Sam.  First, she'd find the villains and "make them pay."  Then maybe she'd find those who supported the villains and make them pay.  But would that be enough?  What about those who could have opposed the villains, but done nothing?  Surely they deserve punishment for sitting on the sidelines.  And what of those who opposed the villains but could have done more?  She can give them their own Schindler's List moment.  And on it goes.

Eventually it would be Galadriel who would need to be stopped.  Her crusade of retribution would have gotten out of control.  And retribution isn't a foundation for peace.  At the war's end many villains and their supporters will have to be forgiven.  The alternatives are to exile them (and then vigilantly enforce it forever) or to kill them all (an action difficult to morally justify).  Galadriel sees this and realizes the strength needed to forgive and forget is not in her.  As we saw last week, the Elves are concerned with purity.  To forgive one must forgo the virtue of purity.  The power of the Ring would lead her to do harm, even if she sought to do good.

The only solution, then, is to destroy the Ring.  It's power is too great.  It cannot be harnessed.  It cannot be turned to good.  And so it is with power, in general.  Power must be denied and destroyed.  But this guide is supposed to be practical.  We have no One Ring to destroy - we cannot eliminate power.  The best we can do is create a balance of it - a way to ensure ambition is kept in check.  But, as we've said, power is inherently unevenly distributed and that distribution is volatile.  So how can that be both the problem and the solution?  Hmmmm.

It's 4:30 on Saturday.  I'm already far beyond my self-set deadline.  Maybe some weeks we're left with questions instead of answer.  I'm OK with that.  Power will come up again in our text, I am sure.  But it is worth noting that, though out text features elvish bows and dwarven axes and cavalry and armies and battering rams that, actually, all of the morally best characters refuse the Ring, that which would give them ultimate power.  The goal is not that the good guys overpower the bad guys, but that the very thing they are fighting over is destroyed.

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