OliveTapenade
No bio...
User ID: 1729
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Yes, and that's consistent where, though I see the anti-semitic or at least anti-Judaic reading of an evil deity who demands people make a 'House of the Lord', acknowledge him sole god of the world, and worship only him, I think in context Tolkien is plainly criticising idolatry in a manner consistent with biblical convictions. Morgoth, and later Sauron, set themselves up as false gods, appropriating and perverting the imagery associated with the true god.
I don't think Tolkien's refusal to depict any religion, even primitive religion, was wholly because of his setting being framed as prehistoric Earth. He says directly, in Letter #131, that he thinks that containing 'the Christian religion' is 'fatal' to a fairy-story. This was the reason for his dislike of Arthurian legend.
That said I do also think he has a paradox in his First Age writings that he never quite resolved, which is that, quite apart from being Christian or even Catholic works, Tolkien was also heavily inspired by what he called 'Northern' myth. Turin is a Germanic hero, and his story occurs in the atmosphere of Germanic or Anglo-Saxon (or to a lesser extent Scandinavian) mythology. That means, for instance, things like Fate or Doom as powerful forces in the text. These are, for lack of a better term, 'religious' concepts. Tolkien's chronology does not allow for Christian or Jewish characters - the closest he comes is a sort of ethical monotheism. However, it would allow for pagans, but he does not allow himself to have pagan protagonists, even when the whole story he's writing is derivative of a fatalistic pagan spirituality.
To an extent Lewis has a similar issue, except that Lewis is more of a classicist and his great pagan loves are Greek. Even so Lewis allows himself to speak about Christianity and our world's religions more explicitly, so he does a bit more explicit work in trying to find points of harmony.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
In that case I'd suggest that high-flown philosophy is probably not what you're looking for. People can often be very output-focused, and will project consciousness on to anything they like, from children acting like a teddy bear is alive, to adults talking to their car. I agree that a strong social norm against treating chatbots like people is a good idea, but it will not be established by just winning the argument about consciousness.
I'd also recommend maybe trying to find a less misanthropic tone? That usually does not help with trying to convince people of something for their own best interest.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
My point is that your response makes you one of the self-destructive, because if some significant sub-50% chunk of the population all die, even if you picked Red, you will get to sit there smugly assured of your intelligence while watching civilisation collapse.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
The empirical evidence seems to be that Blue wins anyway, but put it this way. If the vote is anywhere near close, then I think it is vitally important to get swing voters to pick Blue. A narrow win for Blue is fine; a narrow loss for Blue is the worst thing that has ever happened in human history, perhaps rivalled only by mass mortalities like the Black Death.
If the vote is not going to be close, then sure, pick Red. If it's a decisive win for Blue then whatever, we're all fine. If Blue cannot crest 30% or 35% or so, then you voting Blue would accomplish nothing but your own death.
However, judging from the Twitter poll, we seem to be in a world where Blue is winning with roughly 55-60% or so, and in that world... just keep Blue on top. Everything is fine as-is, and there is no reason to try to drag the Blue percentage down below that crucial 50% threshold.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
As a layman, I just want to put it out there: Anti AI consciousness people, you haven't lost me, but I wish you were making better arguments. Every time I hear about qualia my eyes start to glaze over. Unfalsifiable philosophical constructs and arbitrary opinion on where they might "exist" are not the kind of reassurance I'm looking for when machines are getting this convincing.
I suppose the question I'd ask is what kind of reassurance you're looking for.
It seems to me that when we talk about AI consciousness, we are, fundamentally and inescapably, talking about qualia. We are talking about interiority - about what it is like to be something. We are talking about that ineffable quality of experience or inner-ness that I know for a fact that I have, which I am more certain of than I am of any conceivable empirical observation, which I attribute to other human beings by analogy to myself, and which cannot otherwise be observed. That's the question!
Anything else is not the question of consciousness. If you're bored by that, then that's fine, but it would then seem to me that you're not really interested in consciousness.
You're perfectly free to not care about whether chatbots have interiority, intentionality, subjectivity, quality, what-it-is-like-ness, or the like. But that just sounds like not caring about the question of consciousness. Very well. Can you reframe what it is that you care about, then?
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Well, Tolkien was Catholic, not Anglican...
In general he resisted too obvious readings. He once admitted to a reader (Letter #320), "I think it is true that I owe much of this character [Galadriel] to Christian and Catholic teaching and imagination about Mary", while clarifying that Galadriel is a penitent rather than direct analogue. Here's a bit more of Tolkien on the subject.
Letter #142:
I think I know exactly what you mean by the order of Grace; and of course by your references to Our Lady, upon which all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded. The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism. However that is very clumsily put, and sounds more self-important than I feel. For as a matter of fact, I have consciously planned very little; and should chiefly be grateful for having been brought up (since I was eight) in a Faith that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know; and that I owe to my mother, who clung to her conversion and died young, largely through the hardships of poverty resulting from it.
Letter #213:
Or more important, I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic. The latter 'fact' perhaps cannot be deduced; though one critic (by letter) asserted that the invocations of Elbereth, and the character of Galadriel as directly described (or through the words of Gimli and Sam) were clearly related to Catholic devotion to Mary. Another saw in waybread (lembas)= viaticum and the reference to its feeding the will (vol. III, p. 213) and being more potent when fasting, a derivation from the Eucharist. (That is: far greater things may colour the mind in dealing with the lesser things of a fairy-story.)
That said there are definitely elements of LotR that can be read along other lines. Though it was Tolkien's intent to not depict any positive 'religion' in the text, because he thinks that a metaphor cannot include the very thing that it is a metaphor for within itself and still function, a Protestant or atheist might note that, when it does appear, organised religion in Tolkien's works is always evil. He removed most references from LotR, but in The Tale of Adanel the first demand Morgoth makes of humanity is that they build a temple to worship him:
'So be it!' he said. 'Now build Me a house upon a high place, and call it the House of the Lord. Thither I will come when I will. There ye shall call on Me and make your petitions to Me.'
And when we had built a great house, he came and stood before the high seat, and the house was lit as with fire. 'Now,' he said, 'come forth any who still listen to the Voice!'
There were some, but for fear they remained still and said naught. 'Then bow before Me and acknowledge Me!' he said. And all bowed to the ground before him, saying: 'Thou art the One Great, and we are Thine.'
Thereupon he went up as in a great flame and smoke, and we were scorched by the heat. But suddenly he was gone, and it was darker than night; and we fled from the House.
In the Akallabeth, Sauron also establishes a temple where sacrifices will be offered, which is contrasted with the simple, austere purity of earlier Numenorean worship:
But in the midst of the land was a mountain tall and steep, and it was named the Meneltarma, the Pillar of Heaven, and upon it was a high place that was hallowed to Eru Ilúvatar, and it was open and unroofed, and no other temple or fane was there in the land of the Númenóreans.
[...]
But Sauron caused to be built upon the hill in the midst of the city of the Númenóreans, Armenelos the Golden, a mighty temple; and it was in the form of a circle at the base, and there the walls were fifty feet in thickness, and the width of the base was five hundred feet across the centre, and the walls rose from the ground five hundred feet, and they were crowned with a mighty dome. And that dome was roofed all with silver, and rose glittering in the sun, so that the light of it could be seen afar off; but soon the light was darkened, and the silver became black. For there was an altar of fire in the midst of the temple, and in the topmost of the dome there was a louver, whence there issued a great smoke. And the first fire upon the altar Sauron kindled with the hewn wood of Nimloth, and it crackled and was consumed; but men marvelled at the reek that went up from it, so that the land lay under a cloud for seven days, until slowly it passed into the west.
Thereafter the fire and smoke went up without ceasing; for the power of Sauron daily increased, and in that temple, with spilling of blood and torment and great wickedness, men made sacrifice to Melkor that he should release them from Death.
Perhaps two instances are not enough to make a pattern, but one cannot help but notice that in Tolkien's world, the good guys never make temples or churches, and never have priests or monastics or any kinds of religious official. Nor do they even make prayer very often; perhaps the closest example in LotR is Faramir and his rangers taking a moment of silence to face west, towards lost Numenor, before a meal. In general it seems that heroic characters, though very much of aware of their dependence on providence and implicitly trusting in God, do not build mediating institutions. On the contrary, building a temple or establishing a religious hierarchy is an activity seen only among the villains. It is a form of idolatry, born of fear and showing a lack of genuine faith, and which only enslaves them.
Adanel again:
Ever after we went in great dread of the Dark; but he seldom appeared among us again in fair form, and he brought few gifts. If at great need we dared to go to the House and pray to him to help us, we heard his voice, and received his commands. But now he would always command us to do some deed, or to give him some gift, before he would listen to our prayer; and ever the deeds became worse, and the gifts harder to give up.
[...]
Then we yearned for our life as it was before our Master came; and we hated him, but feared him no less than the Dark. And we did his bidding, and more than his bidding; for anything that we thought would please him, however evil, we did, in the hope that he would lighten our afflictions, and at the least would not slay us.
For most of us this was in vain. But to some he began to show favour: to the strongest and cruellest, and to those who went most often to the House. He gave gifts to them, and knowledge that they kept secret; and they became powerful and proud, and they enslaved us, so that we had no rest from labour amidst our afflictions.
It's easy for a Protestant, especially an evangelical or someone descended from the Radical Reformation, to read this and say, "Aha! Idolatry! Rome!" For that matter one might be tempted to link it to the Temple in Jerusalem, perhaps echoing Jesus' criticisms of the Temple hierarchy. (Or one might take it in a more anti-semitic direction, but I see no need to encourage people like that.)
An author may end up sending messages he never intended, and this is one where I think there is a tension between Tolkien's writing and some of his own life and convictions.
I wonder sometimes about how this applies to Tolkien's very many atheist fans, to the extent of defacements like Palantir and Anduril. I suppose it's not fair to tar atheist fans of Tolkien with those abominations. Those are examples of a culture that simultaneously adores Tolkien's work, at least on the superficial level, while despising his ethics. But an atheist - perhaps indeed like Pratchett - might appreciate Tolkien's work and his ethics even while believing him to be, however understandably, in error about the existence of God or the truth of Catholicism.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Narnia, even the heavily secularised film version, is obvious enough that I don't think you could miss it. Even before seeing the film itself, Narnia is famous as a Christian series of children's books, and C. S. Lewis is extremely widely beloved by everyone from Catholics to evangelicals, despite being neither. The first Narnia film was trying to imitate the Jackson LotR and go for mainstream appeal, but by the sequels my impression was that they had realised they were making films for a niche, mostly-Christian audience.
LotR hides it a bit better, especially the films, which tend to strip out Tolkien's ethics in favour of generic fantasy action. It was, of course, Tolkien's intent to be less direct, but in this case the films take out most of the moral worldview, and I'm skeptical much made it through to audiences.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
...sure?
I am fully in favour of sending criminals to jail. That is a different hypothetical, though.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Maybe; could be that if you take the average of two biased perspectives you get closer to reflecting the true state of things.
This is correct.
Let's say women in general tend left and men in general tend right. This would give you the situation we see at the moment, where sometimes the left wins and sometimes the right wins, and swing voters matter a great deal in directing which way it goes. This is plausibly superior to "the left always wins" or "the right always wins".
Of course, since we've seen male-only electorates, we have a pretty good idea of what a single-sex electorate would actually do, which is not that so-and-so partisan split always wins. Rather, both major parties will orient around the median voter. In a male-only electorate, the Overton Window of politics is probably further right than it is right now, but government still swings back and forth between the less-right and the more-right parties. Replace 'right' with 'left' and that's likely what you get in an all-female electorate.
It would be the just world fallacy to suggest that the electorate at present has the Overton Window in exactly the right place. It is, however, not obvious that the current state of the electorate is worse than either the right-tilted male electorate or the left-tilted female electorate.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I'd argue that in terms of pure self-interest, you should vote Blue, because even supposing that the majority of Blue voters are irrational idiots, the deaths of the dumbest 40% or so of society will drag you down. You should expect significant suffering as a result.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
All right, but what you said was:
If you're happy paying them to exist and letting your two kids figure out how to support their three then have fun with that, but that's all you've been doing and all you'll be doing, and I don't consider the whole farce deserving of the respect you apparently feel it's entitled to.
As far as I can tell, you are the one who's happy just paying a population to survive on endless welfare, while I'm the one insisting that this status quo is not acceptable.
You yourself said that you don't have a different option. You're fine with this, then, are you?
I am not fine with this, and I do not think that Aboriginal people are so congenitally incompetent that they cannot find some role, even a very humble role, in a modern economy.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I'm still on Team Blue. This is a coordination problem. You need to get close to 100% of people to pick Red in order for Red to be non-horrifying. Blue only needs 51%. As long as some significant portion of the population are picking Blue, and I don't think it's possible to change that, Blue is the only option that prevents atrocity.
The good endings here, so to speak, are 100% Red, or 50+% Blue. The latter is achievable, and the former is not.
Is this stupid? Yes. If everybody were rational, we could all just pick Red and we'd be fine. But unless you're willing to bite the bullet and say that irrational or foolish or unlucky people should all die, even 80-20 in favour of Red, or 90-10 in favour of Red, is a nation-wrecking calamity.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I agree that doing what we've done for the last few decades is not adequate. It will not work, and the Voice was just a pitiful attempt at doubling down on that.
From my perspective, both the Voice and what you're saying are counsels of despair. You and Megan Davis are both saying the same thing, which is essentially, "Nothing will ever change, welfare forever."
I do not accept that this is good enough. This is not acceptable. Maybe you think Aboriginals are all dumb, fine, whatever. But Aboriginals are not as badly off as the dumb members of other racial groups. I would at least aim for that level!
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
The Aboriginal population is growing on paper, but I'm not sure about overall birthrate figures - the increase in people identifying as Aboriginal is partly driven by changing patterns of identification (and the increasing number of mostly-white people claiming indigenous identity) as well as increasing life expectancies. So even if the birthrate stayed completely flat I would expect the number of Aboriginal people on the census to increase.
As far as I can tell the Aboriginal birth rate is pretty flat overall, though higher than that of non-indigenous people. It is not so high that I expect an exploding Aboriginal population in the short to medium term, especiall since, though their birth rate is higher than non-indigenous people, large-scale migration means that the non-indigenous population is still growing much more quickly than the Aboriginal population. This paper is older but takes a longer look and seems to indicate that Aboriginal TFR has been falling, along with everybody else's.
If you would like policy to try to increase the non-indigenous birthrate in Australia, and to encourage family formation and children among Australians in general (perhaps specifically white Australians?), then I have no hesitation in supporting that. I think fertility decline is a serious problem across the entire Western world and I expect it to become one of the foremost global crises over the 21st century. So I am wholly behind pro-natalist policy.
I think my position overall, then, is that there is no particular threat of a rapidly expanding Aboriginal population making demands on the Australian welfare system that bankrupts us, but that I support pro-natalist policy regardless, for other reasons.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I suppose I think the issue you're dodging, then, is that something must be done. Both option one and option two lead to undesirable outcomes - you only have to glance at Alice Springs to see that.
I don't think Aboriginals must be brought to some level of luxury, but even supposing for the sake of argument that Aboriginal people all have a median IQ of 80 or so, I think getting them into the same rough position of IQ 80 non-Aboriginal people would be a step up, both of them and for the rest of Australia. I won't dispute that the last fifty years of Aboriginal policy have failed, but I don't accept that "just live with a horrible problem forever" is a better approach.
This is a response to both you and @Southkraut below:
Well, a permanent class of parasites is what we have now. Part of the goal of Closing the Gap is to get Aboriginal people into the kind of economic system that would allow them to be like any other demographic in Australia.
I fully agree that it is a failure if all we do is bring Aboriginals up to the same standard of living as other Australians by throwing money into a sucking pit. The goal of all Closing the Gap schemes has to be getting the Aboriginal population to a point where they are sustainable participants in the Australian economy and even the Australian community.
The metrics by which the Gap is measured include educational and employment outcomes. The thing we are trying to do is get Aboriginal people to have jobs. I oppose just throwing charity or welfare at people forever. But if we can get most Aboriginal people to have tolerably decent jobs that are bringing them 60k AUD a year or whatever (which is well below average but enough to live on), then that is a good thing.
It seems to me that there are basically three paths before us.
Path one: Do absolutely nothing. Don't care, just let Aboriginal people starve or turn to crime or otherwise form a permanent underclass.
Path two: Provide enough welfare or charity to avoid one. Create a permanent welfare class.
Path three: Use a combination of welfare, education, and targeted social interventions to try to shift this group into sustainable participation in the Australian economy.
In the post you responded to I rejected path one. You now accuse me of path two. I agree that path two is bad. I therefore favour path three.
I can't think of any other path, save perhaps a 'path zero' which would be to just kill them all, or deport them all, or otherwise make Aboriginal people not exist in Australia any more. That's obviously not an acceptable path either. So what else is there?
What's your favoured path? What do you think should be done?
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
You're the one who brought up genetics.
The case for Closing the Gap is that Aboriginals, whatever else the case may be, are people and therefore should not be suffering avoidable harm. We should try to care for the worst off in our society.
This does not require blank-slatism. This does not require believing any woke nonsense about 'the oldest continuous culture on Earth', or submitting to any of the noble savage garbage that our enlightened academic superiors try to foist on us. This does not require any left-wing commitment.
Aboriginals are human beings and therefore, insofar as are reasonably able (and we are a very wealthy First World country), we should try to avoid them living in poverty, violence, and misery.
I promise I am not a bleeding heart leftie. I voted No to the Voice, and I believe that was right. I believe that my prior commentary on the issue establishes that I am not on the left, and if my views were known publicly, I suspect I would be denounced as a vicious racist. Nor am I supportive of the clearly hucksterish Aboriginal activist industry, which is full of people using Aboriginal suffering as a bad-faith explanation for why they should given more wealth and influence. I do not think that Aboriginals deserve any special or additional consideration relative to any other suffering group.
But Aboriginals are people. They are not orcs. If it is possible to 'close the gap', that is, to bring their life outcomes more-or-less into the range of the entire rest of the Australian population, that would be a good thing.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I think on my ranking of swear words, "bugger off" is harsher than "get stuffed", but less harsh than "piss off". I could say "go bugger yourself" or something to make it more intense, but that still feels fairly 'light' to me.
It's hard to imagine 'bugger' being very offensive, at least to me, because it's such a funny word? Aurally, it sounds a bit silly or amusing. You cannot say 'bugger' with the same harshness or violence as most of the four-letter words.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I think this was my polite upper-middle-class family and upbringing, actually, and I do not regret it.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Well, I don't try to adhere to the positions of every person who has ever called himself Protestant, so pointing out that Protestants disagree doesn't do anything for me. And I don't see how you can get from "Protestants disagree with each other" to "Catholics are right". Size or uniformity are not evidence of correctness, after all, even if we overlook the great many internal disagreements among Catholics. But fundamentally, if Protestant Pastor 1, Protestant Pastor 2, and the pope all disagree, you cannot reason from PP1 and PP2's disagreement to the pope's correctness. The pope is in the same situation as a hypothetical Protestant Pastor 3 - he's just one more pastor with an opinion. What's missing here is the reason why the pope's opinion is more reliable or authoritative. I think we're better off just discussing the positive case for the pope. The fact of disagreement among Protestants proves absolutely nothing.
Disagreement isn't the problem, it's the fact that these people generally all have similar hermenutics and ways of trying to answer the questions, and then all get different answers on matters that impact their salvation.
I don't see how Catholicism offers any solution to this problem. I've studied under Catholic professors, Jesuits and Dominicans. Catholic theologians have very similar hermeneutics and ways of trying to answer theological questions to Protestants. Almost all the baseline work of theology is the same regardless of whether you're in a Catholic or Protestant faculty. The Catholics just have a bunch more different answers, on matters that impact salvation. There is no fundamental difference of kind.
Have you figured out a consistent system that includes everything essential and excludes everything not essential? If so, good for you and I guess you're better off than myself.
Well, no, and I don't think any human is capable of producing such a system. Thomas Aquinas made a heroic effort but failed. It's seashells all the way down. The human mind cannot fully grasp God.
My position is that Catholicism does not provide an escape hatch from this dilemma. It does not offer a complete or consistent system, and the smartest Catholics, certainly including the pope, face exactly the same problems that you and I do.
I'll stick to Catholicism which on its own provides so much spiritual depth and less anxiety about trying to solve for every intellectual problem myself.
For me, part of my conversion experience - my own dark night of the soul - was admitting my own inadequacy. Like I suspect a lot of Motters, I was an intelligent kid who grew up very convinced of my own genius, and running into the wall of my inability to fathom the depths of God, my inability to jam the ocean into the hole on the beach, was my intellectual crisis. Learning to trust and put my faith in a God infinitely beyond myself was essential.
So I agree that it's very important to realise that you cannot solve every intellectual problem yourself, and find a way to accept faith alongside a level of ignorance or uncertainty - to step into the luminous darkness.
I think that we see a very different role for the church, epistemologically, in the growth of faith. It might be worth exploring that further, though I'd suggest that we might want to reframe it in a more constructive way, so that we can learn from each other, rather than engage in a Catholic-Protestant jousting match!
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Going straight to the section on papal infallibility, from page 53 onwards, this seems... straightforwardly false, to me? It's not true that the pope was understood to have universal jurisdiction, and his argument that universal jurisdiction coupled with the infallibility of the church as a whole body implies the infallibility of the pope seems like a non sequitur. To say that God will not allow the church as a whole body to permanently fall into grievous error does not imply that any particular individual in the church, not even the individual ex hypothesi at its head, cannot fall into error. It certainly does not imply that any such head is authorised to unilaterally promulgate new doctrine.
On the contrary, ancient sources that speak highly of the popes often do so on the basis of the pope's defense of doctrines known to be true some other way - this is what Vincent of Lérins argues, for instance. Vincent affirms some kind of infallibility of the church but without affirming a similar status for the pope. Pope Stephen is praised for his adherence to the tradition of the ancients, which is the relevant authority.
Fortescue cites many examples of ancient authors respecting the pope in some way, which is unproblematic as far as it goes, but then makes the unmerited assumption that all of these statements in the aggregate, none of which individually imply papal infallibility, do collectively imply it. Isn't that absurd?
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I am wary of reasoning from any individual case to a general principle. I don't think the Council of Rimini qualifies as a true ecumenical council, but I did say myself that I think a legitimate ecumenical council can err, so even were that the case it would not matter. An example of a council erring and a pope being correct does not challenge me whatsoever. I think that both councils and popes are capable of error.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Oh, fair. Sorry for misreading you.
I'm not sure what significance that is? You can declare statements infallible post facto, but the doctrine of papal infallibility is nonetheless an innovation, surely? Or do you disagree with my assertion that Munificentissimus Deus and Ineffabilis Deus are the only two uncontested instances of papal infallibility? (The latter of which also predates Vatican I, actually.)
My understanding was that because there isn't a clear label, theologians can and often do debate whether exactly which statements come under papal infallibility and which do not.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Isn't that just a matter of what's presently controversial?
In contemporary America, you expect everybody to know and accept that murder is bad. It is not controversial. The film In Bruges expects you to understand that murder is bad. It is, in a sense, already priced in. Add in that fictional violence is often treated symbolically, and not as seriously as real violence, and it does not occasion any cognitive dissonance for you to sympathise with the hitman. Child murder is presented as a flaw, and hating child murder does not position you on either side of a contemporary partisan conflict.
On the other hand, saying nasty things about a fat black woman does position you on this or that side of a present divide. Attitudes to fat people or mentally disabled people or whatever do code as left-wing or right-wing or the like.
Compare the way that, for example, in Mass Effect 3 (2012) you can carry out the genocide of entire species, but you cannot disapprove of gay marriage. In Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014) you can lobotomise people, control people through their drug addictions, and so on, but you cannot misgender Krem. Capital-E Evil choices are fine, as long as everyone knows they're evil, but being on the wrong side of a subject of present controversy, which codes political, is not fine. The low-stakes issues matter more than the high-stakes ones, not because they're more important, but because they sort people.
Sean Astin definitely does a good job, though I'll disagree with some of your other examples and characters. In general I think Jackson's films tend to emphasise martial achievement too much, while mis-casting or mis-portraying characters like Aragorn, Gimli, or even Denethor.
For the most part I just don't like the Jackson films, and I feel somewhat vindicated in the Hobbit trilogy, which show the same flaws, only now it seems that the scales have fallen from the audience's eyes and they can see them.
In general I think there's a solid case that the Jackson films are, for the most part, competent Tolkien-inspired action films, but I do not think Tolkien himself would approve, or that they capture much of what he wanted to say. I think they are probably the most overrated films of the 21st century thus far, and there is a lot of competition for that title.
More options
Context Copy link