Jack Law's Lord of the Rings Thread.

[luka]

I met one once, a friend of my uncles. My uncle looked at him with respect and wonderment and admiration "he never gets out of bed before 4pm" my uncle has all these wish fulfilment models, men of his age that aren't thoroughly domesticated and henpecked and just live in squalor smoking weed and eating last nights pizza for breakfast.

 

[luka]

I'm gradually turning into one of these people, or perhaps I am already one. Kind of sad and heroic all at once, defeated and triumphant. Very ambivalent figures. I remember looking at them in my younger years trying to work out if I was inspired or appalled. If they were role models or cautionary tales.

 

[luka]

They still smoked weed like I did. They still revered music like I did. They had books all over the floor. They'd never had a career. If they had had family they were divorced possibly estranged.

 

[luka]

Generally we are supposed to think that only eventual fame and success can justify these stubborn life decisions but that seems a little crude and vulgar to me.

 

[luka]

They've stayed mulishly loyal to their teenage values.They've never done anything to make their 16 year old self point angrily at them and yell you sell out!

 

[Corpsey]

I can't see myself getting married and having kids, really - and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. It seems like from middle age onwards having no family might create an appalling vacuum in the life of a person – if only because all your friends are doing it.

But I'm sure there are many married parents who are totally miserable in their situation, and many single childless people who have a great life.

 

[luka]

Which you can characterise as arrested development obviously, a kind of fear of growing up or being to weak and timid to fight tooth and nail for your slice of the pie in the economic battlefields. That feels too brutal and crass a judgement to me.

 

[Corpsey]

Often I encounter these geeks in documentaries who are in their 30s or 40s and are video games designers or whatever but they have a partner and a child/children and they seem totally well adjusted to the world.

The teenage geeks and the geeks in their 20s who can't get a girlfriend and spend all their time online are the ones who often seem to have real anger issues, hence 4chan.

 

[Corpsey]

I was thinking of this movie

 

[luka]

What you endure to maintain that kind of quixotic integrity is poverty of course, isolation to the point of near invisibility, low social status, frustrated ambition, a kind of stasis. Your life narrative stalls. There's no more progressions. No challenges met and overcome. No failures.

 

[Corpsey]

I wonder what Tolkien would have made of LOTR 'fandom' - him being this venerable academic figure.

Mind you, academia is basically a more respectable form of 'fandom', isn't it?

 

[Corpsey]

Devoting your life to deciphering runes... Being the leading expert on 13th century suchandsuch

 

[luka]

One of the things I was railing against in the Adler thread was this idea that there is really only one model for a life and it consists of embarking on and completing a small number of life tasks, something like education, socialisation, sex, love, family, death with no room for negotiation.

 

[Corpsey]

Old habits die hard, I suppose.

OTOH I can't help but think that some of these things are conventions because they're psychologically beneficial to us in the first place.

Like I'm bemused by the concept of marriage still existing but many of my friends have got married now and it does seem to make a difference to how they view their relationship. It's not just 'a piece of paper' or an excuse for a big party.

But I'd have assumed it is.

 

[luka]

They may be psychologically beneficial to us in a general sense if certain other conditions are met eg a suitable partner not just any partner but they also close off other avenues of exploration, avenues which should remain open if only for a few

 

[luka]

Every life is comprised of trade offs ultimately

 

[Corpsey]

Yeah, that's true - I sometimes get depressed about that. That you only get one shot at life and so you only experience a tiny fraction of what could be experienced. But of course that's the universal experience of individuals. I suppose you can make a concerted effort to broaden your range of experience, at least.

 

[Corpsey]

As it happens, this is one of the things that stops me from investing fully in the LOTR/fantasy world which I've mentioned I feel a gravitational pull towards. It feels like it would be very nice and comforting to be immersed in Tolkien lore, but I'd be aware that I'm missing out on so much outside it.

 

[Corpsey]

Earthsea is a different matter, I feel like there's so much profundity in that first book (I've not read the others) that I think it's much more worthy of sustained contemplation than Lord of the Rings.

Lord of the Rings is just pure escapism for me, I derive very little enlightenment from it.

 

[luka]

Yeah, that's true - I sometimes get depressed about that. That you only get one shot at life and so you only experience a tiny fraction of what could be experienced. But of course that's the universal experience of individuals. I suppose you can make a concerted effort to broaden your range of experience, at least.

My sense of it is more to commit fully to your own thing, pitbull jaw lock on your own thing. Not trying to sample the smorgasbord