The One Ring and the Villain in All of Us
Kit Knightly
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of Peter Jackson’s trilogy adapting JRR Tolkien’s Lord of Rings. Next weekend is the Tolkien Society lectures. And later this year it’s possible Amazon’s Lord of Rings television series might be released.
All those things combined made me want to dig this essay out of the archives.
I wrote it a long time ago, before OffGuardian, when I had time to analyse films, and hadn’t quite been crafted into the hardened cynic of today.
Outside of writing fiction, pop culture analysis was what I wanted to do. Geopolitics may have become my arranged marriage, but I still fondly remember my first love.
The subject is, perhaps, more relevant than ever today. When the faceless, soulless nature of modern evil is growing more obvious every day. And when the “small acts of kindness and love” are more needed than ever before.
*
Meet Alan Howard.
Not meaning to sound like a hipster, but you have probably never heard of him. It could be the name sounds faintly familiar. Maybe you saw him in that thing, you know? Years ago? With that woman? He was really good in it. What was it bloody called? Ah, that’s gonna drive me crazy!
Anyway, he’s a solid, classically trained character actor. He was in The Cook, the Thief his Wife & Her Lover (1989), he played Oliver Cromwell in the not-as-bad-as-everyone-says Return of the Musketeers (also 1989) and more recently played the father in Parade’s End opposite the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch.
He also did the voice of The Ring in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Think about that…The Ring had a voice. It seems strange to say it out loud, yet we all just accepted it without question while watching the films. Who is the villain of the trilogy? Sauron, of course. But he is nothing but a distant presence. A giant flaming eye, seen in small snatches. He has no voice, no face.
It is a triumph of storytelling that director Peter Jackson can keep you watching a movie for 10+ hours, despite it having no true antagonist. No real villain. Except The Ring.
The Ring is the most prominent and threatening source of villainy present in the films, and yet all it does is sit in the hero’s pocket and whisper. It is this, the ephemeral nature of the evil in The Lord of the Rings (hereafter LotR), that I want to explore.
If you own the Special Extended Edition of The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) (which you should, because it’s fantastic) then you have probably watched the DVD extras (which are also fantastic). The first program, “JRR Tolkien: Creator of Middle Earth”, makes some interesting points about the nature of evil as depicted in LotR.
Tom Shippey, Oxford Don and Tolkien biographer, analyses a short scene early in the film. In this scene Gandalf (Ian McKellen) is encouraging Frodo (Elijah Wood) to hide the ring away and never use it.
“Keep it secret. Keep it safe,” he says. Extending an empty envelope and waiting for Frodo to simply drop the ring in. Frodo waits. His face anxious. Suddenly, letting the ring go is difficult. The book describes it as becoming immensely heavy in Frodo’s hand.
The interesting question therefore becomes: Why does the Ring feel heavier?
To paraphrase Dr Shippey’s analysis of this: One of two things is occurring here. Either Frodo’s subconscious is feeling the ring as heavy because, deep down, he is reticent to give it up. If that’s the case then the Ring’s power is internal. It can influence your decisions, your state of mind. The second possibility is that Ring simply has its own magical sentience. It can make itself heavier, it has a will of its own. In that instance its power is external.
However, if the Ring’s power is solely external, how much of a threat does it truly pose? Anybody could carry it without ill effects. Anybody with good intentions and a mind of their own could be the hero.
We are told over and over that this is not the case. Gandalf, Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen). All, at one point or another, feel the lure of The Ring’s power. All know they should resist that temptation. Gandalf and Galadriel explicitly warn Frodo of the “great and terrible” power the ring would “wield through them”.
Tolkien makes it quite clear: Good intentions won’t save you from the pervasive evil of the Ring. The threat of The Ring hides in the dark recesses of your ego and your own ambition.
In place fo the Dark Lord you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn…
This is, perhaps, why Hobbits have such a “remarkable resistance to its evil”. Innocent creatures content with simple things. They not only lack power, but harbor no secret ambitions. They are happy to affect the world in what small, pleasant ways they can. It’s worth noting that the only two characters to EVER give up The Ring voluntarily are Hobbits, (Bilbo and Sam).
So what exactly is The Ring?
Tolkien famously despised allegory, favouring what he called “applicability”. The latter, he said, resides in the freedom of the reader and the former the purposed domination of the author. Perhaps his reluctance to in any way “dominate” the minds of his readers is expressed in the vagueness of the Ring as an entity.
We’re never sure exactly why or how it does the things it does. We never know the limits, if there are any, to its magic. In Jackson’s films this is further highlighted. The size, shape and weight of the ring are all fluid. Nothing about it is definite. Only one word is ever concretely linked to it: Power. The Ring has power. The Ring is power.
The effects of this power are keenly felt, sharply observed, and subtly portrayed across a wide spectrum of characters through all three Lord of the Rings films and into the first two parts of The Hobbit. Vainglorious men like Deneathor (John Noble), brought low by despair, become monsters. Wise but ambitious Saruman (Christopher Lee) turns Quisling for scraps of power. Boromir (Sean Bean), a strong man and decent to his core, is crippled and twisted by fear.
Gollum, perfectly realised by Andy Serkis, is perhaps Tolkien’s most complex and original creation. He serves as a warning to us throughout Two Towers and Return of the King. The ravages of the Ring show through his thin hair and pale skin and cracked smile.
“You were not so very different from a Hobbit once,” Frodo tells him in the second film. And we see this for a fact in the sad and brutal flashback that kicks off the third instalment. He was once content to sit and fish the river with his cousin. And now? Now he has “forgotten the taste of bread, the sound of trees. He has even forgotten his own name.” If such an apparently simple creature can succumb to easily, what chance does Frodo stand? What chance do we stand?
Even gentle, kindly Bilbo (Martin Freeman/Ian Holm) is not totally immune. In The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (2013) we see him savagely cut down a seemingly benign creature for the sake of his new bauble. When he darkly and triumphantly declares “Mine!” through a mask of spattered blood, a chill goes down your spine as you are reminded of that moment in Fellowship. When, for a heartbeat, the mask slips and you’re confronted with the darkness that Bilbo’s strength of character has held at bay for sixty years.
The most potent symbols of the Ring’s malign influence are the Nazgul, or Ringwraiths. The book tells us little about them, the films even less. We know they were once nine “Great Kings of Men” who were tricked by Sauron, who played on their greed, and one by one they “fell into darkness”. We’re never told exactly what that means.
They have no voice anymore, no face. No hopes or desires or hatreds. “They are neither living nor dead.” says Aragorn in Fellowship “Drawn to the power of The Ring. They will never stop hunting you.” All of these things create an image of shape without a soul. A husk of a being with purpose where a heart should be.
All of Tolkien’s personifications of evil are defined in that same way: by what they have lost. By what they used to be, rather than what they are. Gollum used to be Smeagol. Wormtongue “was once a man of Rohan”. Saruman was the greatest and wisest of the Wizards. Orcs used to be Elves. The Devil was an angel once.
In Tolkien’s works, evil is a vacuum, defined by absence. Just as darkness is only an absence of light.
Tolkien, of course, was a veteran of World War I. And who knows how that changed him or his outlook on things. We know he lost virtually all his close friends in what is largely regarded (and was even at the time) as a massive waste of time, and money, and young lives. It achieved nothing, visited terrible times on innocent men and their families, and yet it droned on. Why? Because the people in charge had “fallen into darkness”.
The more common picture of evil is, perhaps, rather childish in comparison. The cartoon bad guy who simply enjoys being mean. The sadistic psycho who gets his kicks peeling off people’s skin. The Bond villain who rejoices in being bad. The cackling witch who’ll get you and your little dog too.
It’s almost reassuring to think of villains that way. Caricatures who possess traits we can’t imagine in ourselves. But that’s not the real nature of true evil in the modern world. Evil is beyond sadism, beyond malignity. The greatest evils of our time weren’t done with wicked smiles, but by the sigh of a work-a-day clerk.
The nature of evil in the twentieth century is (as Dr Shippey puts it) “curiously impersonal.” Bureaucrats signing over millions of lives with the flick of a pen. Presidents flattening whole cities with the push of a button. Politicians and civil servants chatting over coffee, as they start a war that lasts ten years.
More specific recent examples are NHS trusts shuttering their A&E departments for no purpose. Politicians voting through bills that render tens-of-millions unemployed. Doctors signing DNR orders for the autistic or mildly frail. Guidelines forcing ventilator tubes down throats all across the world.
Not because they think it’s right, not even because they secretly enjoy being wrong. They don’t see right or wrong any more. Only opinion polls and balance sheets. They serve the machinery of power now, and have lost themselves completely. Morals have become nothing by stones on an abacus.
That is what it means to become a wraith, and no longer be either living or dead. That is how you fall into darkness. That’s the troubling image of evil that Tolkien and Jackson present to us.
*
The casting of Alan Howard to voice the ring was a brilliant move by Peter Jackson (and the other writers/producers). It accomplishes something important: it adds menace to an oddly villainless story. It adds a solid, corporeal counterweight to a plot filled with memorable heroes. Respect must also be paid to Howard Shore’s genius use of music. The Ring’s theme, something you’d expect to be menacing, is this elegiac piece. Full of age and sadness. Almost a siren’s call. “Come with me,” it seems to say. Promising to return you to some safe dream you had long, long ago.
The use of music and voice merge to give The Ring a presence in the films. It broods over everything, a dark cloud of energy. But energy and presence are not character. The Ring isn’t literally alive. The Ring isn’t a person with direction, it is simply the void calling you home. Inviting you to be the worst version of yourself.
In that sense, the fantasy world of an old Oxford don holds something very real, and very unsettling. To quote Dr Tom Shippey one last time:
People say this fantasy fiction is escapist and evading the real world, well I think that’s an evasion. The Lord of Rings is trying to confront something most people would rather not confront. ‘It could be you.’ It’s saying. And under the right circumstances, it WILL be you.”
Maybe that fell in line with Tolkien’s religion, the idea of being born pure and the soul becoming corrupt. Maybe it’s just the way he saw the world, as an old man having lived through some dark times.
Through Tolkien’s books and Jackson’s films we are confronted with our own ability to indulge the worst parts of ourselves. The chance we will become the villain. And while this makes us shuffle uncomfortably in our seats, it should also empower us.
If Evil is small. If villainy is nothing but a weakness of mind and a lack of compassion and empathy. If we can see through its grandiose self-image to the degraded thing it really is, it becomes easier to fight.
That message of hope is beautifully stated in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012):
Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay… small acts of kindness and love.”
An important message, for our time and all time.
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When I’m at my computer reading, I often wear headphones and play classical music to block out the distraction of my noisy family. Something that plays uninterrupted music for a couple hours is ideal. I recently discovered this talented person who has put the best of Middle Earth’s music to ambient scenes, like animated wallpaper. It’s hard to pick a favorite being each is a soothing balm for the soul, but I do find myself frequenting the Shire the most:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBmbI8dzc-M
The others I’ll just paste the titles minus the links so as not to clutter the page:
Lord of the Rings | Middle Earth Music & Ambience, 3 Hours
Lord of the Rings | The Grey Havens Music & Ambience, 3 Hours
Enjoy!
Sorry, my english is a bit rusted, as I am from Germany. I read the Trilogy in the early 90′ ties. But now it makes more sense. Watched it severely again.Tolkien said a lot of things that now come into revelation. An army bred for one purpose. To supress the free folk of the earth. The one Ring seems to be Corona. And they were, or are still, all hypnotized by this little thing…. like Boromir . Like Gollum….
There is a profound recognition in the call to NOT choose fear-defined control as the corrupting substitution for love’s honesty, or integrity of being.
The temptation to use fear/control will seem justified, but by such a choice are all freedoms exchanged for hidden tyranny that may seem far off or in the past, but will break into the little Shire of a seeming insignificance…
The Washington’s Ring!
just came across this quote by the Australian Julian Assaange:
“We should understand, Australia is part of the United States. It is part of this English-speaking empire, the center of gravity of which is the United States, the second center of which is the United Kingdom,” he has said. “Australia is a suburb in that arrangement. Our capital is Washington. The capital of Australia is DC. That’s the reality…That’s where the decisions are made.”
Any doubt about this?
Just that the City of London continues to play its part completely outwith the relative size or stature of the UK. Its a ‘triplet’ with NYC and DC.
Galadriel: “In place of the Dark Lord you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn…” Well, okay, dark I guess.
I was going to re-watch a Lord Of The Rings movie recently. It always rewards. I’m also reminded of a 2018 blog post I did titled “Progressives And Their PRECIOUS Facebook.“
Love this article …. watching the films fills me … I know not what ….. they speak to me ….. is it the long long lost word of integrity ….. there are too few moments that the word applies to me …. but over the last 16 months …. I see that word emboldened …. stiffened up …. its give me a faint glimmer in an ever darkening day!
Is there much that Benadryl Cabbagepatch hasn’t been in,in the last decade ?
I saw Alan Howard as Richard ii and iii when the RSC came to Newcastle in the early 80s. I was a kid but I was spellbound, the way he made that blank verse pop – never seen/heard anything like it before or since. The RSC where in a real golden age at the time. Anyone remember their Dream with the puppets? Classic. But Alan Howard! His like is not in the world today.
I worked in the same cast as Alan in 1967 at Stratford, on Trevor Nunn’s production of ‘Revenger’s Tragedy’. He was just as electrifying even then, playing Lussurioso. Unforgettable privilege to be part of the RSC in one of its heydays at that time. The young Ben Kingsley was in the same cast, just slightly higher up the pecking order than me. I was walking on, Ben had one line. But the way he did it, you knew at once that he was going to be a prominent actor too. Great to watch, every night, just for the delight of how he did that one line! 🙂
PS: I went by the English version of my name then. The version that I use now is Cymraeg/Cymreig.
I just watched Gandhi.I couldn’t take my eyes off Ben K.
“the right to Differ” Is also what Gandhi stood for.
What amazing service – to be part of something so foundational for so many! Thank you, and thanks to the RSC. That’s what it means to nurture a culture. Perhaps it will be enough to save us.
The greatest evils are most often committed in counter to a perceived evil.
Such a good analysis, I really enjoyed reading it, thank you!
“Not because they think it’s right, not even because they secretly enjoy being wrong. They don’t see right or wrong any more. Only opinion polls and balance sheets. They serve the machinery of power now, and have lost themselves completely. Morals have become nothing by stones on an abacus.”
Maybe this gives us actually the solution? We have to find a way to get our morals back.
I didn’t think that the film dealt with the return to the shire at all well. In the book it was like coming back to reality that had to be dealt with or the whole experience of the quest was meaningless. It didn’t stay in magic land but carried the lessons learned there back to earth, quite the opposite of Harry Potter it seems to me, although I haven’t given Potter much attention, to be fair.
Bless your heart! Or perhaps I should say “Elen síla lúmenn‘ omentielvo!”
As a lifelong (at least since age 12) Tolkien fan, I appreciated and enjoyed Kit’s essay, but avoided the comments until today. I just didn’t want to aggravate myself by reading vituperative comments trashing either JRRT or the film version– especially the usual knowing condemnations excoriating Tolkien for being, oh I don’t know, “controlled opposition” or the like.
It’s refreshing, though not surprising, that the old ideological identity-politics denunciations of Tolkien as a “racist”, “sexist”, etc. didn’t surface here (so far).
But I’m replying to fervently concur with your criticism of the film. My brother is also a Tolkien fan, and knows LOTR well. But he’s more temperamentally inclined to be a tolerant “cut them some slack” critic.
I acquired the deluxe DVD set of the films, and watched all of the commentary “extras”. So I’m well aware of the challenges in transferring the story to film, and am not unsympathetic to the necessity of making omissions, changes, and edits. But my brother and I disagreed on some crucial changes.
I conceded that, say, Tom Bombadil, and the Barrow-wight episode, wasn’t absolutely vital to the plot and could be omitted given the demands of the production. But I was still annoyed that my brother breezily dismissed him as a superfluous “throwaway” character, with the implication that Tolkien could or should’ve omitted him in the first place.
But we differed sharply on the omission of the final act: the scouring of the Shire. My brother also felt this was an easy call: he thought it would be too tedious, gratuitous, and even confusing– an anticlimax for an audience who didn’t know and love the book version.
I couldn’t disagree more! Even apart from seeing Saruman’s fate, the return to the Shire was vital to the returning hobbits’ “journey”; reclaiming the occupied Shire was a cumulative microcosm of the Ring quest. “So they all got home and lived happily ever after” was a cop-out and letdown.
I’m still annoyed that my brother insists that it was better left off, and that he didn’t even miss it. I’m pleased to find that at least one other person understands this. 😉
PS: For some reason, despite some urging to do so, I never read any of the Harry Potter books. That brother of mine did, and told me that Rowling was a good storyteller– but that there was no real substance to them, so I wasn’t missing anything.
Bombadil, like Treebeard is one of the deepest, most weighty creations of the saga. According to Tolkien himself, I seem to remember. I love that little touch when the Elves, speaking with Treebeard, respectfully call him: “Eldest”. Awful lot of crucial stuff had to be altered for the films.
Ort – Have you seen the extended versions? We just finished the 4K TTT, and are on to TRotK this evening. While not quite as extensive or expressive as the novel, the extended version of TRotK deals much more with the halfling’s (particularly Frodo) coming to terms with returning home to the Shire different than they left, and the fact that even as far removed as the Shire is from the rest of Middle Earth, the evil had changed it as well.
TLotR trilogy was made exactly when it should have been – that is, when CGI had progressed to a point of good enough to be believable, and just prior to the libtard push for extreme wokeness in everything entertainment. The update to 4K and the associated reworking of all the CGI just might make it the most epic movie saga in the history of mankind. Sadly, there will most likely never be a rival given the fucking retards in Hollyweird these days.
It makes me apprehensive of what they are going to do to Herbert’s Dune in the upcoming film. It will probably have some whackadoo additions that will undoubtedly leave a sour taste in my mouth.
I notice below, mention of Bombadil and I agree, he’s so solid, there are characters like him about, you might meet one in a pinch if you’re lucky. I’m so glad you agree about the ending, I don’t know if I adequately expressed myself there, but it made it so real for me. I still think Rings is true fiction with more meaning than history which is more like true lies. When I first heard about cloning, I immediately thought- orcs, which were well done in the film,even worse than my picture. They did get Radegast? in (or was that in the Hobbit?) I still get Dicken’s characters mixed up, all of them could be in any of the tales, they’re all real people. Re your DVDs- I had a gorgeous set of the books, dark blue bindings, silver page ends, silk,well it might have been nylon,page markers and possibly a card box that I got in Portobello road market which I lost in my wilderness years!
Radegast the Brown was in the Hobbit movies, which was a different beast altogether. Much was pulled from the Silmarillion for those movies. Mostly due to the insistence of the studio that it be a trilogy, when Jackson wanted to only do 2 movies. Since The Hobbit is quite short compared the TLotR trilogy, and there is much less book to build a movie on, Jackson had to fill time by bringing in things that were still in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, but not from the book, The Hobbit.
Good article. I heard today, of a conversation between to pre-boomers (born 1939). One is a Samaritan, her children are a nurse and doctor. The friend is just a gardener and local volunteer.
She (samaritan) asked ‘Have you had the vaccine’.
Her friend replied ‘No’.
The samaritan said ‘How did you avoid it’.
Her friend replied ‘I chose not to, I don’t take the flu jab so why take this’.
Avoid – Chose. How did you avoid it; sounds like regret to me. The good people have Lost their Will or had it stolen by later generations. Apparently the samaritans all had it, and her nhs son and daughter would have, maybe ‘advised’ her.
Maybe the vaccine is a power struggle, between generations and paradigms. A demoralised people will accept the vaccine. Wilful ignorance or lack of will. Somewhere in all that, is the evil.
Just a gardener?
Ahh…. a good one, in the leauge of what I think.
Some minore corrections, Bombadil, is an person whom the ring did not work on, he felt it, but the rings power wasnt strong enough.
Bobadil is also one of the original wizards, like Gandalf.
The movie was more or less perfect, cant put my finger on anything, but I dont know if they are doing Silmarillion, witch can be seen as an pre runner to LOTR triologi.
I wounder why the strange feeling of recognition, from Norwegian folk tales to another one witch indeed have the One Ring, etc, to language created, like the elvish ones, is from Kalevala, but most of it, incl dragons are comon temas.
And thanks to Shamens, Becca Tarnas video, witch I liked because of the explanations witch also incl the Creation story, everything sound again familiare, dont it, if you realise that it makes you think religion on an new term, if you know ancient religions they point to that clearly, and karma is serious shit, infact they all shere the same fudamentals, be good, good things happens to good people, etc, respect everything, but try to stabb me with an knife, I will slam an aks into your scul.
The weird thing is, this Becca T. take on this, is remarkable similare to the way our world was created teached by Yeshua ben Yosef, but keept away from the cannonised scriptures and survived thru some few Gospels, like the Gospel of Barnabas and the Gospel of Mary Magdalena, apart from that our world was created caotic, but the range of demiurges was he same incl evil.
The fundament of Ying and Yang, you do kill to eat, we all do, everything is living.
Yeah, could give anyone head ace.
A lot of people dont or stil dont get the importance of learning, hearing and reading from ancient times about storys, to day called myths, etc, to fairy tales, but the main thing is, that if you dont know or see what this storys have stored in it, you loose a lot, every thing has meanings, caracters etc, animals you name it, even the direction of the wind.
I recomend to read, for an greater understanding of story telling, Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohosts Storm.
peace
Very well said, Mikael!
Uplifting analysis, much appreciated.
Excellent analysis.
Erich Fromm’s classic book, The Art of Loving, said it best, I think:
“And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power – almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving.”
“Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individuals, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking – and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority. The consensus of all serves as a proof for the ‘correctness’ of their ideas. Since there is still a need to feel some individuality, such need is satisfied with regard to minor differences; the initials on a handbag or the sweater, the name plate of the bank teller, the belonging to the Democratic as against the Republican party, to the Elks instead of the Shriners become the expression of individual differences.”
Given this, Fromm realizes love requires conscious, proactive action on the part of man in order to truly thrive and not let love be stolen from us:
“Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two…In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving. For the productive character, giving has an entirely different meaning. Giving is the highest degree of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. The experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous.
Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness…. Love is the active concern for the life and growth of that which we love. Where this active concern is lacking, there is no love. Care and concern imply another aspect of love; that of responsibility. Today responsibility is often meant to denote duty, something imposed upon one from the outside. But responsibility in its true sense, is an entirely voluntary act; its is my response to the needs, expressed or unexpressed, of another human being. The be ‘responsible’ means to be able and ready to ‘respond’.”
TOTW… i just thought to look-up your moniker… interesting ! thanks for the Sign-post…i had no idea of Tesla’s interest in That Area…
as kit knightly observes tolkien’s opus was forged (at least mentally and spiritually) on the battlefields of world war one, he actually lived through many of the dark visions he committed to prose, something that most who managed to survive would never speak of and was not incidentally a professor of anglo-saxon as well as a professor of english language and literature at pembroke and merton college oxford..
his vision, borrowing strongly from ancient anglo-saxon and nordic mythology was a quintessentially english ( the ‘shires’ under threat from malign influence ) view of the ‘eternal battle’ between good and evil and of course the corrupting and destructive influence of materialism and technology (ahriman/sauron)…. and like all great art deals heavily in metaphor..
no doubt these writings were a cathartic endeavor and of great scope, eventually becoming a mythos (though owing heavily) to rival the ‘norse sagas’ (he himself of nordic stock)…
he was a man who could ‘see’ where things were headed.. and through his writings has kept alive some of the ancient north european ‘sense’ of historicity that would no doubt have died along with most imbeciles sense of their own culture…
unfortunately, most have long since lost their will to resist the perverse and malign powers that seek to flood and change ‘their’ place of belonging ‘in the shires’, indeed to cover the shires in evil and ugliness…
the ‘ring’ (lucifer) a shiny screen….
In the idea of being possessed by the ring I see also echoes of one Dostoeivsky`s main themes, most famously represented by the Grand Inquisitor: that of the terrifying (and lonely) nature of freedom; of that human tendency to submit to power in order to ease the burden of facing doubts, helplessness, fear, and death.
This tendency is the source of most of human evil, corruption and suffering; only a few are brave enough to battle it. The only way is to remain free, being true to oneself, and to find meaning in life by virtue of courage, love, and empathy.
But that is the hard way, the temptation is huge, the urgency to gain the power to overcome our human frailties imbues all of our deeds; most would submit their freedom, individuality and integrity for it. Morality is a very fragile break, the battle is constant. Evil is indeed pervasive and most of the time invisible.
But that power evil offers is of course spurious, it is only a promise of power that comes at a high cost. To submit the rest means submitting and losing oneself, too. It means becoming faceless, controlled, corrupted. Losing freedom is also losing life and the promise of transcending it.
In a way, Frodo and Alyosha Karamazov are analogous characters: they are (for the most part) lonely in their quests, they are free, authentic and naturally inclined towards good, but they understand better than anyone else the temptation. From this understanding and from their love for the rest, comes their faith, their courage and their ability to fight it.
Great piece, Kit. Thank you.
Thank you, Skeptic, for such an excellent articulation of the apparent combinations of characteristics of both truth-seekers/defenders and truth-avoiders/deniers, AND their respective drivers.
It’s puzzled me since this ‘situation’ arose, what it was that separates the awake from the comatose, and the dissidents from the collaborators. I think you’ve nailed it!
This was different, i liked it.
I do recall Tolken son actually hated the film version.
from how i see it, the ring is in all of us. this is as easy as someone being a member of staff being made manager and going Hitler, I have seen that more than once.
Normal folks coming in to money and going power crazy.
Or the over zealous admin on forums who goes trigger happy with control and censor people and then say they dont.
Who hasn’t gone dark or power crazy?
Their seems to be lots if blame on the outside i.e politicians etc this evil force.
What is it? that makes humans knowing full well how corrupt theses subhumans are,
yet continuity keep voting for them,? abuser – abuse relationship ?
Becca Tarnas | Journey To The Imaginal Realm: Archetypes In The Lord Of The Rings
Who was Alan Howard?
He had an honour for a start so wasn’t exactly anti-establishment. His uncle was Leslie Howard, the famous actor of the 1930s (he played Ashley Wilkes in GWTW). Leslie Howard was born Leslie Steiner and his father was a Hungarian Jew. A surprisingly large number of the British film elite came from similar backgrounds at that time (like Emeric Pressburger and most famously of all Alexander Korda who was a known Intelligence asset). Leslie Howard disappeared in an incident that is extremely dubious and reeks of an Intelligence/secret society operation.
In Howard’s ‘Pimpernel Smith’ there’s a strange section where he questions Shakespeare’s authorship. It seems like Howard knew the truth about “Shakespeare”.
Alan Howard’s most famous film role was indeed for Peter Greenaway. Greenaway was an obvious Freemason – see the themes and artwork for ‘The Baby of Macon’ or the explicit gematria of ‘Drowning by Numbers’. I watched Howard recently playing a spy in ‘The Dog it was that Died’. This was written by Tom Stoppard, a Jew from Moravia with multiple establishment honours. It’s a small club…
Culture is controlled by elite secret societies. They know plenty of people will never watch the news but can be indoctrinated by “entertainment” when their guard is down. It’s full-spectrum dominance. This is a pill too bitter for some to swallow. It’s weird how some people can grasp, for example, that 9/11 was an inside job but get very aggressive if you try to argue their favourite band or actor is an asset.
I think you’re missing everything by confusing minutiae of personality with a great work of creation. You can dismiss any art by critiquing how or why it was produced, but a better method is to find the good in the art and let it speak beyond the bounds of its creator. Your type of zero sum only benefits the destroyers.
Prove all things and hold on to what is good.
Thank you for this comment. I get so tired of having almost anything anyone can come up with dismissed as somehow propagandistic. No work of art can ever be “perfect” in having been created in a vacuum. And we know very well that the “suits” often have the final word in the creation of movies. But that doesn’t negate the good stuff we can glean from a work of art.
We are all corrupt as thought is corrupt.
We are all innocent as all thought is innocent.
Or what do you mean by ‘thought’?
That a self contradiction can run as a thought disruptor as seemingly private thinking is s thought reversal. In that frame, all thought is set in self-conflict, but masks as ‘self’ while distancing from a world perceived as conflict.
“It achieved nothing, visited terrible times on innocent men and their families, and yet it droned on. Why?”
So that the oil bearing lands of West Asia could fall into the hands of the victors.
The Fellowship of The Ring = The Zodiac (that brings us all and in the darkness binds us).
The Two Towers = Boaz & Jachim (The Sun & dual).
The Return of The King = Return of Christ (of the dual).
Also see: http://www.darkstar1.co.uk/ring.html
All mythology tells the same story (Hamlet’s Mill). Tolkien explained that he was creating one for England.
Excellent read! Thanks!
As for:
I have been called a sociopath by some for refusing to uptake the mRNA Covid vaccines. Am I really a villainous, bad person?
You are when you try to become a good person.
I haven’t watched the film or read the book, but what I deduced from it is that Tolkien uses Plato’s ‘ring of Gyges narrative’, which is about a ring that makes you invisible. And which therefore is a story about corruption (able to do things without being held accountable).
I think Socrates analysis is true that is that he argues that justice does not derive from this social construct (the ring): the man who abuses the power of the Ring of Gyges (gives in to corruption) has in fact enslaved himself to his appetites, while the man who chose not to use it remains rationally in control of himself and is therefore happy (Republic 10:612b).
You see this ‘problem’ of whether or not one wants to wear ‘the ring’ every day. If I had to pick a film that describes this problem best, I would say it’s Wall Street
Lou Mannheim: ‘The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don’t want to do.’
Some more quotes here
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwKBIK-i37U
Good analysis. The ring also represents the merely the promise of power – because in the end, throughout the story, the ring actually does nothing good for any of it’s wearers, it does not make anyone powerful (beyond a bit of invisibility here and there) – it actually makes them weak and easy to control (by the real power at the top). Ultimately the message is that power, even the promise of it, corrupts even the best of souls. Quite a bleak message indeed.
As long as you have a materialistic or spiritual goal you are corrupt. Not because you are corrupt but because the instrument you use, thought, is a corrupt instrument.
What a load of crap
It is strange that the editorial staff is trying to influence the readers by using this kind of language.
Until now my comments have been decent and you have been censoring my comments. if you are completely honest to yourself you know that this is a sign that your thoughts are corrupt.
It is apparently difficult to admit this.
Anyone who suggests thought is per se ‘corrupt’ is either a fool or an intentional shill for the bogus relativism intended to stifle pursuit of truth. Either way you have nothing to contribute to any meaningful discussion. But no, you haven’t been censored so don’t lie.
Some comments are censored. Why can’t you admit this?
If I cannot say here that thought is a corrupt instrument, this is telling enough for people who realizes this.
You are apparently not capable of being completely honest to youself about your own corrupt thoughts.
We remove spam and trolling regularly. You said YOU were being censored, and that is blatantly untrue.
But look Tom, we have to keep these discussion threads viable and stop trolls or lunatics spamming them with garbage to the point they become unusable. If you continue littering this thread with the same comment over and over about thought being ‘corrupt’, I WILL have to start removing these repetitive comments.
Play nice ok.
Just wanted to give support, Good job on calling out trolling, derailment attempts and general BS.
We remove spam and trolling regularly. You said YOU were being censored, and that is blatantly untrue.
But look Tom, we have to keep these discussion threads viable and stop trolls or lunatics spamming them with garbage to the point they become unusable.
You do censor, you should just be honest and admit it. Of course you class as trolling anything you don’t want to appear, but this really is censorship.
I have tried to encourage debate on certain topics but those have never appeared. When I stay more on message, they appear.
There are certain things you do not want people talking about. This is proof of censorship.
We have a comment policy Zen, and if anyone breaks it their comment may be removed. Not invariably, because we try to be tolerant and cut slack. But, for example, if anyone persistently tries to ‘encourage debate’ about whether Jewish or Moslem or black or white or gay or straight (etc) people should be put in ‘ovens’ en masse or are responsible, en masse, for all the ills of the world merely by being Jewish, Moslem, black, white, gay, straight etc, that contravenes our policy and will be canned.
If you can find a site of comparable size/prominence that has a more open comment policy please post a link here
All sorts of equivalent debate is allowed here, that is, debate which talks about peoples of different religions/ideologies/ethnicities. But not the chosen ones. Anyone who’s honest and has the slightest capacity for critical thinking can see this.
If you want to know who rules over you, look at who you can’t criticise.
That’s a complete falsehood. We do not allow any collective attacks on ethnic or religious groups.
Criticism of Judaism is fine.
Criticism of Israel is fine.
Criticism of individual Jewish people is fine, provided the criticism is about their actions or words and not simply about the fact they are Jewish.
Generic attacks on all Jews for simply being Jews or for being corrupt, evil etc simply on account of their Jewishness is NOT ok.
The problem is some people here seem genuinely unable to appreciate the distinction.
I’m pretty sure you allow some heavy criticism of Christians and Muslims. Judaism is a religion, that is to say a voluntary ideology. Not a race.
Religions are voluntary.
The Jewish Question asks what if there is something in the Jewish religious ideology that presents a great problem for everyone else.
The fact they refer to us as cattle should spark anyone’s curiosity. And the answer becomes more clear the more you look into it.
To your first point, no you are wrong. We would never tolerate generic attacks on any ethnicity or religious group.
To your second point. By all means critique the Torah, but don’t make the ridiculous leap of assuming it somehow speaks for all Jews and informs their worldview, any more than an ancient Christian text should be regarded as embodying the worldview of all Anglicans or Catholics. That’s the point.
Haha! You took the words right out of my …. keyboard.
“A load of crap” you say, responding to just two lines.
Of course, using idioms is fine, but in this case the choice of idiom speaks of an automatism coupled with an intent to annihilate.
And that, in turn, is practically indistinguishable from what Kit Knightley above argues is the essence of evil.
In other words, Sophie, you- you- you, ahem, are … evil!!
…
“thought is a corrupt instrument” is so odd & ridiculously sounding that people may laugh it off.
Frowning upon it shows it’s not so trivial: it’s like it has planted a germ of doubt : what it could be right?
But is it? Thought must necessarily proceed from something within a person who “thinks”; and since possibly millions of pieces of brain data go into even the simplest thought, it is impossible to think anything without there being at least some small element of “corruption” helping to formulate the thought.
Come to think of it, both “thought” and “corruption” are words so inexact that perhaps they should be removed altogether from our language.
At any rate, thinking is an act of will. And will cannot be entirely free of corruption.
Isn’t corruption originally a word that describes what happens to a living being when it dies? I would say that it’s animating force has gone, or maybe it’s will. That means the will can’t be corrupt. That which is corruptible is the flesh.
The Comment, i’d think about it but as thought is ……negated ?
Take no thought for yourself, is Jesus’s invitation.
He didn’t demonise thought but accepted the Father’s Will in which we find what we need to think, say of do in the moment at hand instead of from a strategic self-interest founded in fear’s conditioning.
Tom appears to be revelling in being provocative from some version of a nondual perspective, and only generates antipathy – which may prove his ‘enlightenment’ to himself in terms of a specialness of self.
What we call thinking is a pale derivative split off from Living Thought – so as to hide behind fig-leaf thinking from a nakedness of self associated in fear with lack of reality. However, our thought can be redeemed by serving a different purpose than the identity in fear that made it.
Releasing the identity of fear as control is relinquishing the Ring – which is actually beyond our own capacity, yet we can be willing to begin a journey that we cannot complete alone, and by this invite the recognition we are not alone.
While we live our part, all else aligns as synchronicity that strategy or force of arms cannot achieve.
Negative synchronicities serve a deeper self-enquiry once responsibility for acceptance of meaning is loved as the foundation of freedom/
Fear and hatred are feared and hated as ‘within us’ by the very attempt to cast them out or project away from a ‘self’ that now usurps or masks over true and simple presence.
“We need to constantly remind ourselves that democracy can produce tyranny just as readily as any other system of government unless the individual democrat has learned to attach supreme importance to individual freedom”. Sir Robert Menzies
Ok, and how do we apply this toward defeating the New World Order?
Create your small world order… and protect it
Already done that, I’m thinking bigger, as we all should.
Be brave and authentic, like Frodo. Create your own fellowships. Don´t succumb to the lies of Sauron. Understand we are all tempted by the ring.
It is all there.
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6260748415001#sp=show-clips
Physician/ expert on mRNA warns of “risk-benefit analysis”
Now do you not understand that there is no risk….I went on a little wander this afternoon…folks the only way you can be hurt by the needle is to have an immediate allergic reaction….everything else, including strokes, heart attacks etc etc are mere things that happen…which incidentally i am hearing from people who have the same and turn up at drs and hospitals….no we have no idea what is causing whatever, but no it isn’t the needle….
funny that ….somewhere I think there is a concerted effort to turn a blind eye to any claims of harm and danger…one can only wonder why….could be having had to have the bloody thing themselves most drs want to believe there cannot be any harm…thus they are happy to live in fairy land and gaslight anyone attempting to insist their symptoms could be related….perhaps another reason medical staff have been basically forced to be injected…bizarre…
Doctors are well paid and enjoy a powerful social position due to how they are perceived by most.
They are not going to go rogue. No way.
I have spoke to a few Drs since the beginning of this crime and they are either brain dead or great actors.
Two things that keep nagging for my attention lately….1) the collapse of every civilisation goes arm in arm with the abandonment of morality, so, Is the widespread corruption of the Western political classes a harbinger of The West’s demise ? (I dont include the business class, as corruption is central to Doing Business)…. 2) The Western world seems thoroughly pre-occupied by two concerns, “Health”, and “Security”; though concerned about both at the same time .(The Biosecurity state is concerned about the states health, and the states security)
Also, lately, i’ve wondered if That Loud Mouth at the World Economic Forum got his inspiration for his 4th industrial revolution from Issac Asimov’s ‘Robot’ SF series… From the story about a planet that had a hugely reduced population, and on which all Work was totally robotised / automated…
Schwab is probably trying to walk in the shoes of HG Wells, so you could well be right, that he’s read Asimov (Foundation=Illuminati) and is unwittingly regurgitating it.
Your big clue is that Schwab wrote a story – a lullaby – to reassure the superficially inquisitive that those machinating on the world’s stage are on top of things (however dystopic the trajectory).
Your biggest clue is the title of Schwab’s story.
Schwab is probably trying to walk in the shoes of HG Wells, so you could well be right, that he’s read Asimov (Foundation=Illuminati) and is unwittingly regurgitating it.
The reality is so much more interesting. You see, in his recounts how he came to write The Foundation, he says that his editor John W. Campbell called him to his office one spring day in 1941/1942. to tell him of this concept of a small organisation determining the course of future history, and practically ordered him to write a story based on that. And after Asimov wrote one such story, Campbell pressed him to go on and on with sequels. Asimov continued quite unwillingly, expressing his dislike for the idea as much as he could – even in the stories themselves.
Now, let’s take a step back. Recall Norman Dodd’s testimony, which he gave for decades without any modification, about the foundations and the WW1, etc. And Quigley’s history of elite conspiracies.
Imagine a powerful people that tries to change world events, but have to keep that fact secret. Wouldn’t they feel the urge to tell it all? And wouldn’t they have the power to press upon the editor of, say, Astounding Science Fiction to promote that idea?
There are many clues provided for the perspicacious.
Check out the Helliconia trilogy by Brian Aldiss for even more clues.
When you understand all the clues, and, as it were, you’ve joined enough of the jigsaw pieces together to see the big picture, then you’ll see that it’s not an urge. TPTB are necessarily communicating something to the perspicacious (an ongoing process, especially in the last two decades).
Anyway, thanks for your comment, it provides another (unsurprising) piece in the 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.
There are at least two big pieces to be found in HG Wells’ writing (who moved in high echelons – pals with Churchill, etc.).
Asimov’s son had a massive stash of child pornography.
By their fruits shall you know them…
That planet Asimov described it as being in a permanent decay. Another SF that may be inspiring the Davos excrement is ACC’s The City and the Stars, where “people in Diaspar are machines designed by the creators of the city. Khedron, the jester, often feels resentment that after so many years, the designers can still “make him move like a puppet across their stage” . The people are …. mechanical reproductions now that they have lost the ability to physically reproduce themselves. They are re-created from the same pattern century after century � they are replications of themselves and one another. ” – from the website vanderbilt edu, – the url speaks for itself.
In his Robot City series, there are no humans at all.
A version of the ring wraiths came into a dream of mine some years back. A nightmare that I can still vividly recall.
I think that one of the ways we can look at Liberalism, to try and understand it, is through the frame of ‘good and evil’. I am sure that I am not alone in having experienced liberals denying the role of evil in the power hierarchy of our society. They have, by and large, retreated into a kind of infantile state of willful ignorance, such that offers to share important knowledge about current or historical events are interpretted by them as bullying. Even the psuedo-medical re-catagorisation of ‘evil’ as ‘psychopathy’ doesn’t really cut through this liberal shield of make believe, as the question of evil merely gets displaced into, “Why or how have we collectively made a social system that rewards and promotes psychopaths and sociopathic behaviour?”. There are no answers to that question coming from the realm of political science.
And yet strangely any set of ideas or movements which seek to address the real presence of evil in our world are seen, by liberals, as themselves fanatically evil. What is more, a supposedly self evident evil that needs no explanation. Whether it is some kind of look toward traditionalism, or a political view which acknowledges the fact that established people often show a great interest in occult sources of empowerment, these things become the vessel into which liberals can pour their suppressed projections of evil.
What was it Steiner said of evil, that considered ‘in the context of the universe it is like tiny specks of black dust in a sea of light’ (or words to that effect) ?
Hard to keep that in mind sometimes when you see the machine working on the souls of those close to you.
One cannot speak of Liberalism when it is clear that this group consists of the complete spectrum of people.
I’m a liberal. But am completely at odds with many modern Liberals.
It’s time to stop defining these people as liberals because they really are not liberal. They are much closer to being fascists.
Buttons by Carl Sandburg
Thanks, Kit.
Many are under the spell of deception from medical tyranny and corporate monopolies who covertly work together to create physical and mental illnesses through toxic foods, poisoned water, rigged media and Pharma poisons.
The entire fabrication is tied together with one main objective- control of everything.
Nothing is to be allowed to get in the way of this objective. Therefore it must be the pinnacle of the agenda, the full horror of which is becoming more visible each day.
Anyone willingly participating in wearing a face mask, anti-social distancing, locking themselves down, and taking a toxic genetic injection is willingly participating in the demise of humanity—their legacy will be that of a cowardly, ignorant fool.
Three weeks to “flatten the curve” has become a permanent lockdown with forever moving deadlines for reopening and the “one mask to rule them all” became the symbol of your submission to your own demise.
The awake among us have already realized that the “vaccine” will become a yearly
occurrence. Give in now and prepare to roll up your sleeve every six months to maintain your social credit as your body crumbles and falls apart from endless needles getting shoved into your arm all in the name of “health.”
Once you give up your body to government and Big Pharma you have already given up your mind. This normalizes state/private corporation intervention into your body. Forever. And now they want your children. How blind can you be to not see this?
Meanwhile Digital Vaccine passports are feverishly being developed by a group of big tech companies, the World Economic Forum and the Rockefeller Foundation aimed at making vaccination status a prerequisite for travel and access to basic services.
Are you this lazy, this brainwashed, this disconnected from your own body that you think you can snarf down a Big Mac, chug a Coke and then drive through somewhere to get a toxic mRNA injection, lipid nanoparticles included, to keep you healthy?
Where did this delusion come from? How to break the spell it has on people?
In the midst of a so-called “health crisis” of biblical proportions that the centerpiece of discussions from our so-called “experts” aren’t revolving around nutrition, exercise, human expression and social relations tells you conclusively that you are being lied to on a daily basis.
Once you understand the fundamental truth that by and large central governments are enemies of all people who are not part of the corporate government’s profit machine everything makes perfect sense. It’s rather simple: they want you dead or a controlled cog in their lies.
It really is that simple. It’s just too much for some people to fathom. Had they been able to, we would have ended this by now. By their gullibility and compliance, they are the enablers that are making this living hell and what’s to come possible.
“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.”
~ Voltaire ~
I have former friends who love all kinds of dark fiction, but yet could never, ever handle the truth about the illusion they live in — what they believe to be reality. It’s like they’re voyeurs living vicariously through the lives of heroes and villains in fantasy books and movies, never putting two and two together to see that the real world is way more “interesting.” Maybe reality is just too complex, which it is, of course — the myriad deceptions we’re constantly exposed to across virtually every sphere of this existence. Nobody could imagine planes flying into buildings. Failure of imagination and all that. What’s on Netflix?
But in the end, yes they are the enablers, leading all of us to a living hell on earth. Thanks Maxwell for your awareness and ability to speak the harsh truth.
Someone – not sure who – recently compared some people to an operating system with too many open apps and with all their bandwidth used so it’s like they are operating in ‘safe’mode They cannot cope with anything outside the mainstream normie narrative without some of these other apps closed down first.
that sounds about right – I was complaining to people about 4-5 years back that they had entirely lost their attention span, could not finish their own sentences, never mind conversations, without going back to their black mirror “look at this haha listen to this hoho”.
Popular as ever I was, then they changed the subject ; )
Thank you Maxwell. i love to read your eloquent comments.
Thank you again. The weak, the cowardly and the wilfully ignorant all helping usher in a technofascist nightmare through their blind obedience to whatever covid directive is issued.
The large majority just bend over backwards to comply.
Just had a man and his young son walk past me before. I asked the man “how old is your son”? The man goes ‘he’s 6’. I said to him “you do know there’s absolutely no risk of a child that age getting covid, don’t you – why’s he wearing a mask”?
The man told me to ‘shut it’ and ‘keep your opinions to yourself’. A group of people walked past shortly after, all in masks and all queueing up to scan the QR code. I called out “why do you think covid is still happening? Because you’re all still complying with this crap… stop complying and wake up”. One woman called me a ‘fucken idiot’ and another made out I was mentally sick.
At least they didn’t try to physically assault you. Sadly it seems this world has regressed back to the middle ages where people are intolerant of another viewpoint. Copernicus told us in 1500 that the earth went around the sun when everybody ‘knew for a fact’ at that time the earth was the centre of the universe. This morning at the doctor’s surgery I formed the impression the admin staff had completely lost sight of raison d’état like seeing the patients’ requirements in favour of mask-wearing compliance procedures. Surgery staff are now, it seems, are more frightened by not complying to the letter with admin protocols than they are by having somebody ‘croak’ on their premises.
Yep… its all about adhering to covid protocols now in the era of Covidtopia. Since I’ve told the staff at the mag I will not wear a mask nor scan the QR code, one of the staff has made it a point that when I enter the office she says in a firm tone “hand sanitiser thank you”. The sort of tone that can be translated as: ‘use the hand sanitiser or I won’t serve you’.
I’ve noticed she doesn’t say a word when vendors ahead of me in the queue enter the office, tho some do use it without having to be told.
The staff are fully on board the pandemic narrative, and a couple weeks ago overhead the manager asking vendors “have you had your covid vaccine yet? Are you going to get the vaccine”?
All these steps are being instituted step by step S. Up is down and black is white. It’s now not long before the vaccine passports will be widespread.
it is a petty tyrants dream, state-sponsored authority to grass, abuse and scape-goat; everyone playing their part, saving us from ourselves. nightmare.
The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.~Morpheus, The Matrix
Since that encounter on Monday with the man and his 6 year old son, and the others all fully complying, a number of people have pointed out to me that I’m wasting my breath on them because they are the only ones who can wake themselves up. Only them. No one else.
I was also told to practice detachment and unconditional love and let the sleepers continue sleeping.
“Most people are not ready to be unplugged”. Thank you Zen for this reminder, it is appreciated🙏
Great comment.
I particularly identify with the concept that so many people do not ‘understand’ what is going on. I keep hearing, “but none of this makes any sense.” In a way, I’m encouraged that they at least recognise there’s a problem, but they seem incapable of taking that crucial next step and actually analysing the origins and drivers of what is being done to them.
I point out that once you grasp what is actually happening, all of this makes perfect sense; there is no mystery to any of it. The problem lies in people trying to rationalise a situation that seems to be engendered by irrational drivers.
Notwithstanding the abundance of evidence which would help their ‘understanding’, it never takes long for the whispers of ‘conspiracy theorist’ or ‘anti-vaxxer’ to surface. These people have been provided with the sound bites to use and the circumstances under which to use them. They hold the mistaken belief they are espousing their own views, rather than those which have been relentlessly programmed into them via the msm.
It’s no wonder that “none of this makes any sense” to them.
I was talking with one of my neighbors yesterday, who now thinks I’m an insane conspiracy theorist. She physically backed away from me as we spoke. I thought I sounded pretty reasonable. The whole official story makes perfect sense to her. I wonder for how long. What will snap her out of her denial?
Do not cast pearls before swine. Ascertain their views first, prod and feel who is receptive to real knowledge, don’t waste your time trying to impart it to such people.
Well written, thoughtful and reflective without it turning into a lecture.
One is reminded of a talk given at St James church back in 1992 by well known Hopi Elder Thomas Banyanca.
He was in a stride of talking about some of the Dark History of humanity as the Hopi experienced it in previous ” Worlds”, then an audience member suddenly blurted out that this all seemed so arcane and esoteric, how does this relate to us he queried.?
Thomas, stopped, paused, sighed and there was a long silence.
Finally he took a piece of paper from the lectern and, turned it so the audience could see its thin edge, pointing to this edge he then spoke
What this is about is our Humanity, like this piece of paper , think of this piece of paper as but one layer in the millions upon millions of layers of geology that one sees in the Grand Canyon.
This Humanity that has been given to us as a gift , is this extremely thin layer at the top, it is new, thin and extremely fragile
We the Hopi see this as a gift, a great responsibility to do everything in our ability to keep this alive and whole. I have already shared with you that in our cultural; traditions and oral history, this has been lost 3 times already and we are now on the verge of losing it once again, this is why I am here in front of you saying these things.
When we say ” madness or insanity” we mean exactly that.
The spiritual health of humanity is its ability to fend off sickness, what you call Evil.
We are seeing this today, so much sickness, madness and inhumanity, this cannot continue for long before that ” precious” gift called Humanity is lost once again.
If, per The Hopi, you know what the Kachina is, then you will recognise that the Blue Kachina has returned (‘Return of The King’).
Here’s a nice video that covers the geological strata: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3VMjfe2fwE (discernment required regarding causation)
To understand the “power” of the ring, all you have to do is keep repeating: “Oh, my precious. Oh, my precious. Oh, my precious.” Dark enough?
What an apt description of politicians “Turn Quisling for scraps of power” ! And “Defined by what they have lost; by what they used to be.”
What I take from it, and many other sources as well, is that each and every one of us has an evil psychopath within us. While not strong, it is ever ready to break out given the opportunity. To be good is to deny it that opportunity. Unfortunately, so called leaders are most often a slave to it.
After Saturdays Freedom Rally Boris is probably thinking, “What the country needs is a short victorious war to stem the tide of revolution.” (V.K.Plevke, Russian Ministry of the Interior on the eve of the 1904 Russo-Japanese War)… So Boris provokes Russia with a warship….
There are no great powers in our societies. There are only individuals who each choose to follow their conscience–or not.
A culture of the mind–a concurrent belief–is the antidote to evil. Individually, serially, they can be disposed of by an opposing culture. Together, even without organization, they are practically impossible to control.
Evil is the control of people. Freedom is the absence of control. Liberty is free people choosing to be compatible and civil.
If an organic movement of defiance were to gel itself into being, people would discover just how impotent evil is. If one day in this next week everyone made a private commitment to exercise one’s liberty, everyone would witness the power of the individual choosing to be free.
The evil of today manifests itself through obedience which is enforced to a greater extent now than in the past.
You do what you’re told or find another way to pay the mortgage, Not as easy as it seems. Downsizing your career can be difficult. Over qualified candidates are treated with suspicion.
Brings to mind this Christian perspective from Fr. Stephen Freeman: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2017/10/24/cross-one-ring-power/
Very well written. Superb!