Hope in a Hopeless World
A reader with the magnificent name of Zaklog the Great asks:
“What do you make of Tolkien’s view of history as one long defeat only redeemed by occasional eucatastrophes?”
The question is a deep one, but I am not sure what you are asking. But let me venture an answer nonetheless.
I agree with the good Professor, not only because history shows he is correct, but faith also warns against fatuous love of the world. That includes fatuous hopes for future glories and triumphs which shall never come to pass.
However, if you notice, in Tolkien’s book, the Free People of the West, despite knowing full well that they are doomed and that the Shadow cannot be defeated, took up arms anyway. Read the passages concerning Theoden or the story of Aragorn’s mother, for example.
The crows of defeat croaking the American Dream to be a corpse is not the same, when, in fact, the so called corpse is dancing a jig for the first time in my lifetime, and defeating enemies in mere months which I would have gambled could not be done in decades.
Put no faith in the princes of this world. This world is a fickle mistress, and will break your heart. She is, to be blunt, the mistress of the Prince of the World, and she dances to his tune. Entropy always wins in the end. Folly always triumphs over human wit and wisdom, because human wit is finite, and folly is endless.
But there is a prince whose kingdom is not of this world. i see His wounded hand behind the unlikely events unfolding in the world. Whose finger toppled the Berlin Wall, if not His? The newspapers are now an empire as wide as theirs, even if it fields no troops and brandishes no arms. It is an Empire of Lies, and what human power can topple it?
No human power at all. The News is too strong, too ubiquitous. too fell and cunning. The tower is too tall and too strong.
It is as tall as the heavens. It is, in fact, the Tower of Babel
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
