As if reading the wrong chapters wasn't enough I now am quite behind, so I'm giving myself 45 minutes to write, 15 to edit, and then I'm gonna LET IT GO.
This week we read two chapters and end the second part of our text - the Two Towers. When I was younger I was convinced the towers were Isengard, Saruman's home, and Barad-dûr, Sauron's. But now I think the references are to Isengard (where the first half of the book ends), and Cirith Ungol, the tower Shelob's Lair leads to - where we leave Frodo and Sam. Just a thought...
The chapters we read this week are "Shelob's Lair" and "The Choices of Master Samwise." In them Gollum plays his big trick on the hobbits. He leads them to the titular Shelob's lair - who is a giant spider. She hunts down Frodo, though Sam is able to defeat her. And while she doesn't care about the Ring - her evil is more instinctual than Sauron's (or Gollum's) - we learn of a symbiotic relationship between them:
And as for Sauron: he knew where she lurked. It pleased him that
she should dwell
there hungry but unabated in malice, a more sure
watch upon that ancient
path into his land than any other that his
skill could have devised. And Orcs, they were
useful slaves, but he
had them in plenty. If now and again Shelob caught them to
stay
her appetite, she was welcome: he could spare them...
So they both lived, delighting in their own devices, and feared no
assault, nor wrath, nor any end of their wickedness. Never yet had
any fly escaped
from Shelob’s webs, and the greater now was her
rage and hunger.
Here we see a distinct property of evil-doing. There is no cooperation - only alignment. Sauron and Shelob are both evil and they can live-and-let-live, but they don't purposefully work together. Instead, it's more accurate to say they're a little less than apathetic to one another. Shelob eats Sauron's orcs, but they're just orcs anyway - he doesn't care. It's worth it, to him, to keep her in that tunnel. As an unwitting guard she assists Sauron, but not intentionally. If she lived on the borders of any Elvish or Human realm, she'd surely have been destroyed. She benefits, too, from evil.
Gollum is similarly planning to use her, but as long as she gets some meat she won't care. It's all instinct. But we know if she were hungry enough, she'd also eat Gollum. And we know if she took the Ring, Gollum would no longer see her as an asset.
While evil can work together, there's a clear limitation. "Use" is probably the better word. If you're useful to someone evil you'll be kept around. Once you lose that use, you're toast. There's no relationship to depend on - it's all transactional.
I recently played a tournament of Diplomacy, a game I have played for many years. It's the best way I can experience needing to be opportunistic in this way. Your neighbors are useful, or they are prey. When people let underlying relationships dictate their play it can feel unfair. It's at least always a bit surprising when that comes up. I had an opportunity to do that in my last game and I turned it down - I don't like to play that way. Someone else did do that that in my last game, and that required me to rethink my play.
Thinking of relationships as transactional is fun for a few hours over the weekend, but seems to me like an exhausting way to live. Constantly calculating if you can get enough out of this person to keep them around, or whether they've become more a drain than an asset.
Frodo and Sam want to save the world not to be heroes, or to reap rewards, but so they can go home and continue to live their old lives. They want to complete the Quest, but ideally they'd like to also survive together. Sauron and Gollum want the Ring for themselves to benefit themselves. They don't want to live their lives - they want to rule everything (Actually, Gollum may want to just live quietly underground - but what kind of life is that? He just obsesses over the Ring.).
If power is the great evil of our text, good's greatest asset is that it doesn't seek power for its own sake, and stops seeking it once a certain amount has been secured. Tom Bombadil shows us how this can manifest into apathy, but I don't think this is generally the case. We all want enough money to live comfortably - go on vacations and not need to panic when we're hit with a sudden bill. Few of us feel the drive to accumulate more and more, and those that do certainly seem unhappy throughout these pursuits. If the goal is more (money, time, lovers, followers, power, etc.) you'll never have enough. A target allows you to, at some point, decide to give up your pursuit and enjoy what you have. If your goal is power - or to strip your enemy of power - you're gonna have a hard time pumping the breaks. Diplomacy ends when someone captures 18 Supply Centers not because 18 is a cool number but because, at that point, they have the ability to capture the whole map. So that's the end of the game part. But in real life, where there are rarely well-agreed-upon, clear-cut moments of "winning," fights can go on well after things have "settled," and "settled" fights can ignite anew.
I think the best way to approach most of these culture wars is to stake out a position and cling to it - not move the goalposts to turn a victory into "the first of many." Celebrating victory is important, and allowing the dust to settle and so you can secure your victory is as important as winning in the first place. Diplomacy isn't a well-known enough game to analogize with, so instead I'll use Jenga. We all know that risky piece which, if we take, will feel GREAT and really leave our opponent reeling. That's fun! But culture wars should not thrive on fun and engagement. That feeling of enthusiastic and inevitable victory should give you very serious pause! Securing our goals is more important than the lure of more and more power.
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