Embracing Our Own Danger

This week's chapter is called "The White Rider."  We rejoin our three hunters on their search for Merry and Pippin.  Eventually the trail takes them into Fangorn Forest.  Aragorn and Gimli recall Celeborn and Galadriel's warning to avoid that place, and Legolas says he feels young in the presence of such an old forest.  They spend the night outside the forest.  They will decide what to do in the light of day.

In the morning things don't seem so perilous, and they decide to enter Fangorn and continue their search.  They find strange signs and Aragorn has trouble keeping the trail (he doesn't recognize what we know are Treebeard's prints.  Aragorn has never encountered an Ent).  Finally, a figure in white appears to them.  They ask for its name, but it will not answer.  Tension builds before the figure reveals itself as Gandalf, who has Returned from his battle with the Balrog.  Due to the nature of his Return, he had forgotten his name (He initially says "Indeed I am Saruman, one might say, Saruman as he should be").

After catching Gandalf up on everything that has since happened, Gandalf tells them he knows Merry and Pippin are safe with Treebeard.  The chase now resolved, the four of them determine to go to Edoras to speak with Theoden, King of Rohan.  But Gimli expresses concern about leaving the hobbits with Treebeard.

"I thought Fangorn was dangerous."

"'Dangerous!' cried Gandalf.  "And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous

than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the seat

of the Dark Lord.  And Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous.  You are

beset with dangers, Gimli son of Gloin, for you are dangerous yourself."

Usually when we think of dangerous things we mean swords or bombs or drunk drivers or cancer.  If it's dangerous, it's bad.  WATCH OUT, DANGER!  A sign like that is more than just information - it's a warning.  But in truth danger doesn't just mean 'bad'.  Gandalf is pushing us to view danger as something that not just works against us, but that also can work in our favor.

First, let's define danger:  Danger is the quality of potentially causing harm.  The key word is "potentially."  A trapeze artist is always engaging in a dangerous performance, even if they never get hurt.  Similarly, it's strange to think of punching a cement wall as dangerous.  The harm is basically a certainty.  Danger suggests a potential.

We often rank someone's goodness by the lack of harm they can cause.  But tough, imposing, dangerous people aren't necessarily evil.  A better metric would be to learn when one causes harm and why.  Boycotting a business to protest their use of slave labor is, indeed, a good use of one's power.  So is enacting social pressure on homophobes.  Social and economic pressure can be dangerous, too.

Sometimes people are described as "wouldn't hurt a fly".  I automatically don't trust these people.  I don't consider such a description to be a compliment, but an indictment.  These people are powerless.  Sometimes we need to cause harm, or we need a credible threat of potentially causing harm.  We need to be seen as dangerous by those who would wrong us.  The world can be rough.  You need power to enact some change over it.

There are those who eschew power.  They'll say any power imbalance is wrong - that being a billionaire is inherently immoral.  I strongly disagree with that.  Power is amoral.  What defines you is how you acquire it and how you use it.  And that,in turn, defines who sees you as dangerous.

If we continue to adhere to the belief that the strong are wicked and the weak are good we resign ourselves to choosing between getting our way and being good.  That should be intolerable.  Losing but being morally good makes for an inspiring story but a difficult life.  And while some may be willing to endure for the sake of "The Good," it's unreasonable to expect this of others.  If we define being good as necessarily living in squalor, how can we fault those for refusing for the sake of their own comfort.  Being good is a moral choice.  It should not come with a material cost.

You are powerful.  You are dangerous.  You can impact the world around you.  Your friends, your family, your workplace, your neighborhood, your town, you can make a difference.  But to make an impact you need to accept the responsibility of having power.  To those without power, any cost of power is wrong.  But those who wield power know every usage has a cost, including abstention.  Know thyself, learn your strengths, practice using power.  The world is very broken.  You can't fix everything, but you must fix something.  Apply yourself to fix the things that are dearest to your heart.

You are dangerous to someone.  You have a potential they hope remains untapped forever.  Don't give them a moment's rest!  Get up and start making an impact.  Make them fear you.

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