Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Order



I was outside this morning pulling weeds and had some thoughts about us Takers.

We love "order", as in everything just as we want it. More to the point, just as our society tells us it "should" be, because to be honest I just pull weeds to feed my rabbits and to get my neighbors (and the city) off my back. I've always been a bit chaotic, as much as I've fought against that tendency.

Nature, however, couldn't care less about "order". Or perhaps everything already is where it's supposed to be, who knows? In any case, if you go to a field or a forest or a desert, things aren't growing in nice lines with one kind of plant -- all kinds of plants grow together, some tall, some short, some creeping along.

But we love order, so much that people order their homes in various configurations, order their yards, order their neighborhoods and cities and nations, and everyone has to conform to the socially-correct state of order.

I'm not saying anything anyone doesn't already know, because this is a feature of Taker culture. I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that every Taker culture has this ordering, this arranging, going on.

I don't know enough about Leaver cultures to know if they do this too, but what I do know of the ones I've read about is that they don't tend to arrange or take control of their natural surroundings so much but rather work with them.

And since I'm a huge Lord of the Rings geek, inevitably I thought about the books, and of course the movie.

I think that Tolkien was trying to say much the same things as Ishmael did, only he did it in a much grander story. It's well known that Tolkien loved nature and trees, and saw the coming of industrialization as one of the greatest evils man had ever thought up.

Take a look at his view of evil. Sauron had one eye. He made one ring to dominate and control everyone else. His creations, the orcs, were all very similar, and although there were different kinds, their differences ended up dividing them. The Uruk-hai vs the Moria orcs vs the Morgul orcs ... you get the picture.

Sauron's goal was to "cover the lands in a second darkness", where he would have ultimate dominion over all life, turning everything into Mordor.

Seems to me that's very much like what we're up to these days.

So who were the Leavers in this story? They were pretty much everyone else. You didn't see the realms of Men trying to enslave everyone, destroy the other cultures, wipe out anyone who wasn't them or disagreed with them. The Hobbits and Dwarves didn't do that either.

But to me, the ones who epitomize the Leaver spirit in this story are the Elves.

They worked with nature rather than fought against it. Their goal was to live in peace with the other races in Middle Earth.


I think Professor Tolkien would have liked what Ishmael was saying very much.

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