Discworld Rules
contraptions.venkateshrao.com
contraptions.venkateshrao.com
the Hobbits pursued not greatness or destiny, but took the only path toward life available to them and then returned to let the rest of the world get on with living.
Well, except for Aragorn, who turns out to be the true king of Gondor.
But that’s just what all wizards are and always have been. It’s the only way to be a wizard. It isn’t, like, a hidden fact or anything. Wizard is a race not a profession. Like elf or dwarf or hobbit.
>the entire story is about a weak and almost completely unknown set of people who were "chosen" only by the most inexplicable series of events anyone could imagine.
I don't know what your point is.
It really is, in-universe. Almost noone knows this save other maiar. The wizards are perceived as men by most people, them being maiar is far from common knowledge.
But it's also unambiguous that Aragorn, who was previously a nobody raised by elves, turns out to be the long-lost king and definitely does not just go back to whatever he was doing previously.
He absolutely does. Being the future king was a core part of his character, everything in his life was preparing him for it. The book version of Aragorn doesn't have the hesitance to accept his duty that the films portray, he doesn't have to be prodded into it: his whole life has revolved around his future kingship.
In a lot of ways the book Aragorn is just as superhuman as Gandalf is. He's an archetype, not a perspective character. The hobbits are the only normal humans.
> good does not need to destroy evil; good needs only to resist evil, and when it does that, evil destroys itself
> No theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.
The idea being that the evil that Melkor commits ultimately just builds towards the creators greater and secret purpose. It's kind of an attempt to deal with the "problem of evil".
(I’m not a Christian though so somebody please correct me if I am wrong)
The only way the Ring was destroyed was by accident when Gollum attacked Frodo to claim the Ring. The Evil that the ring stoked in the hearts of those it touched is what ended up destroying it in the end, not the Good people who took it to Mount Doom.
> Tolkien in his letters insists that Frodo did not fail – that his captivity to the Ring was inevitable
And I think movie-LOTR-fans in particular are there at least as much for the Great Big Hero Chosen People Of Destiny aspects and battles as for the hobbits.
Anyway. my take of tfa: in discworld, the whole system is designed for pluralism and messy progress. in middle earth, the entire universe is designed for epic quests and magical solutions from wise old wizards.
frodo might be a humble hobbit, but he's still caught in a deterministic prophecy machine where the fate of the world depends on ONE RING and ONE QUEST
Interesting to note that Peter Thiel has never named a company "Hobbiton"
Oh come off it.
I've read all the Discworld novels. I've also read every other book that Terry Pratchett ever wrote [1]. All, that is, except for one that I've left for... later [2].
If Pratchett were still with us and heard anyone making such pompous statements about Discworld he'd slap the culprit in the face [3]. See, the thing to understand about Terry Pratchett is that he was quintessentially British, and by that I mean the good British [4]. As such his greatest fear was that someone might take what he wrote seriously and try to follow it like some kind of life advice.
Remember what he quipped when he was knighted for "services to literature":
"I suspect the 'services to literature' consisted of refraining from trying to write any"
______________
[1] Yes, even "Where's my Cow?".
[2] Problem is, I don't remember which one so I'll have to read them all again to be sure. Hey, win-win.
[3] Gently. He was a gentle man.
[4] Think Lord Byron, not Lord Elgin. But without all the drinking and womanising, just the big heart.
This guy Pratchetts.
(That was so good this Sunday morning. Thanks :D)
My introduction to Discworld happened when I bought a few second hand paperbacks on Portobello for under a pound in order to have something to read in the bus back from London. Later (well and truly addicted) I wenth through a few more when I was commuting regularly by train. But about a half of the Discworld novels I read as ebooks either on a Kindle, or a Kobo.
It has always been "frustrating" to have to click through the footnote links in Pratchetts ebooks. In a paper book (just like in Your comment) the footnotes really complete the train of thought. Often it's the whole pun of a joke. You know it's there. You damn well know it's worth it. On paper, all it takes is a glance down.
For me, the "Pratchett footnote" is therefore characterized as anything where "click to see a footnote" somehow breaks that payoff spell a bit.
But get it in paperback so the footnote-flipping doesn't drive you mad!
I wouldn't date to presume to compare my footnotes to Pratchett's. Like, my footnotes don't have footnotes of their own, but his often do.
I wonder how that works on an ebook.
you dont seem to have a blog. please have a blog.
... I write stuffy academic papers?
I don't think he meant it as a criticism of LotR, more pointing to the wealth of other literature that you might need a bit of maturity to get into.
It's funny how some people idolise "the classics" and yet if you actually read them then mostly they're just the popular fun stuff from an earlier era. Poor old Terry, he'll probably be a question on an A-level English exam one of these days.
> At 17, if you don't think Lord of The Rings is the greatest contribution to literature there's something wrong with your head. If you still think that at 50, there's definitely something wrong with your head.
(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/dec/09/jrrtolkien.sci...)
Him talking about "contribution to literature" instead of "best story" changes the quote for me. It makes it more about the craft of writing -- and I agree: LOTR isn't the world's best literature. But it's still a damn good story.
But LOTR is about vibes not facts. Friendship, loyalty, hope, doing the right thing with what power you have, appreciating what is good and green and gentle in the world, etc.
> the more seriously you take Middle Earth, the dumber you get about Roundworld
The more seriously you take the rules of LOTR, yes. But you can take LOTR seriously without taking the rules seriously - by taking the vibes seriously.
Monarchy makes for some of both the best and worst governments on record. The problem isn't that you can't get good results, but rather the extreme variance.
I’m in Australia and the Trump presidency will be the thing for the next century that we can point to and say that this is why we are not going to ever, ever, ever get rid of the king or queen, in favour of a local president. I suspect that Canada and other countries feel much the same.
The best monarchs were the ones deposed by the revolutionaries, or the ones who abdicated the real power. There are 2 problems:
1. _Nobody_ should be ruling for more than 8-10 years.
2. You can't have a real monarchy without feudalism. And feudalism _always_ sucks.
Missed that part in your parent reply originally, you're right of course, cheers :)
That apart, the "show" function is important, too. It separates the Head of State and Head of Government functions, which makes it easier to dismiss the Head of Government, without disturbing the stability of the State. The US system fuses the two, which (in my view) is part of what makes the Congress reluctant to follow through on impeachment. (To avoid recent examples: had Bill Clinton been (treated like) a British Prime Minister in 1998 he'd have lost a no-confidence vote among his own party, and Al Gore would have served out his term. I think that would have been a better outcome than what actually happened, and followed.)
King Arthur vibes. Royalty, wizards, magical objects, heros and villains, destiny, romance, fealty, etc.
But obviously dispensing swords from lakes is no sound system basis for government.
When Arthur pulled the sword out of the stone, he was remembering all the stuff that Merlyn taught him about the different ways that animals run their societies and how it informed how he would lead if he were in charge.
That might be TH White's flavoring to it though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_King_Arthur_and_H...
"I won't get into which book is better, today I am only evaluating these books according to a set of rules I am making up, to see which succeeds at something neither author set out to achieve, and which most readers don't know or care about, and which is ultimately just an analogy for something else. Intrigued? Read on!"
And that would give me cause to read no further.
Edit: for reasons expressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43306581
Pixar has some in-house rules for stories. One of them is:
Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___
That sums up a Chosen One story. Chosen One protagonists do not work their way up. They are special snowflakes.
Star Wars is an extreme case of Chosen One popular culture. So is the Marvel Overextended Universe. (Note that Star Trek is not. Starfleet people start at the bottom and work up.) The top 8 highest grossing films of all time, unadjusted for inflation, [1] are all Chosen One movies.
Overexposure to Chosen One stories predisposes people to look for a Strong Leader, one who is somehow special. This seems to be a problem. Historically, the United States didn't work that way, having rebelled against a European monarchy which did. But I digress.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films
The stories you are talking about, also known as The Monomyth, have been part of every recorded culture and civilization.
It seems that the Chosen One stuff is not a result of stories. It is a fundamental part of our species and that is reflected in our most popular stories. From ancient times all the way to today.
Take the Iliad. Where's the monomyth? Achilles is an asshole, he gets into a fight with his boss, causes his bestie to get killed and then gets killed himself. There's a wooden horse. End of story.
No monomyth there, guv'nor.
Nor in the Odyssey. Smart guy wins the Trojan war with impossile stratagem. He pisses off the God of the Sea and takes 10 years to reach home, losing all his companions along the way. A little massacre to clear the air and they live happily ever after. End of story.
No monomyth.
I could go on. But, you know, that's the Iliad and the Odyssey. Should be enough.
It was a crazy, deeply dysfunctional city, full of crazy, dysfunctional people, but he obviously loved it, and the reader ends up loving the city, as well.
I think that's a fairly accurate way to look at the world around us.
I believe that Tolkien's depictions of Mordor and the Shire, came from his own personal experiences in the trenches of WWI, so I'd argue that LOTR actually has some fairly significant reflection on the real world.
Yes, and the general impinging of mechanisation and automation on rural life.
(I’ve always been curious to what if any extent one influenced the other; Discworld is older, but Ankh Morpork gets fleshed out a lot later. Given how small a world UK sci-fi/fantasy is they’d almost certainly have been aware of each others’ work.)
I do remember thinking Kraken was a little Gaimanesque though so that suggests at least a transitive link to Pratchett, so perhaps ...?
btw your blog link in your profile doesn't work for me (we seem to have similar taste in literature so I thought I'd see what you've written)
I’m currently on book 2 of Discworld and finding it ludicrously enjoyable. Its absurdity makes it feel like an antidote to many things.
It feels more fantasy than “hardest of hard sci fi” to me though? And I think the space suit was broken so is it a good model for tech?
Speaking of sci fi - have you read Strata and Dark Side? They're pastiches of Asimov and Niven and so on, but he has some really neat ideas in there as well. I particularly like his notion of vacuum tube technology taken to its limits in Strata.
If ever I needed proof of the non-existence of a benign all powerful god then the fact that someone who loved writing that kind of intricate and clever sophisticated humour would be so cruelly struck down with Alzheimers would suffice.
"A life with footnotes", the biography of him by Rob Wilkins is excellent and very moving.
I envy those reading the series for the first time!
One of the major recurring themes of r/discworld is that so much of the amazing ideas in Discworld were actually real things.
All the books were written over span of 30+ years and they changed over the time during this.
There are no lengthy stilted lectures (characters explaining stuff to other characters) as in some other books by other authors, and only few (and usually short) descriptions of what happens when and then this and then that and then something else.
Think of how the "Dread Portal" scene in Guards Guards! would play out on stage and one sees exactly what he means.
Love that.
I love LoTR too. I would never feel the need to pick one OR the other. It’s not about WHICH. Much better to love BOTH. AND is the correct operator to place between these two great sets of works.
I think an under appreciated subset of Discworld is the Tiffany Aching series. If you really want to see Pratchett’s notions of “good morality” on display, these model it the best IMO.
> The Lord of the Rings on the other hand — the more seriously you take Middle Earth, the dumber you get about Roundworld.
> ...
> The thought I began with, that The Lord of the Rings, whatever its merits as a fantasy tale, is brain-rot for the technological mind, is one that I find so obvious it feels barely worth stating.
It's honestly hard to read the piece because of how clearly visible the author's sneer towards those who love Tolkien is.
Depends where. Getting serious about Discworld would make you think thinking something makes it real. Which is a different set of crazy.
Yeah, the author indicates he skipped them, probably because of the YA moniker, but honestly, _maybe_ Wee Free Men exempted, they're equally as mature as any other discworld books, with really the only YA thing about them being their underage protagonist.
Also, the author does a disservice to Small Gods (also, oddly names the god Om as GamesStop, was that humor?), but this novel is one of the best ones in my opinion -- self-contained and both humorous and strangely moving.
agree that it's one of the best
'you don't know what they mean / they know what they mean'
Memestocks get their value not through some form of fundamentals but how many people believe in them.
Also, I find it slightly distasteful to refer to works of literature I like with the fad term du jour.
I can't say I liked this article overall.
To each their own, but to me the Tiffany books definitely felt weaker and felt like Terry Pratchett was restricting himself in terms of worldbuilding, human complexity (which Discworld usually portrays very well), and narrative. I hadn't knownn they were meant as YA fiction, but looking back, that would explain the mild feeling of lack-of-Discworld-richness to the books.
They aren't bad books by any means - just today, I was thinking about the "third thoughts" idea from one of these books and how interesting a mental model it is - but they certainly have a different feel from the rest of them.
This seems very wrong. Discworld heroes value the power of legends, LOTR heroes live for everyday life and sillines. While different on the outside, the essence of these books can be quite similar.
The anti-LOTR has always been Dune, which Tolkien himself was aware of. It's one of the few stories he was uncharacteristically openly negative about.
Tolkien also faced extensive criticism from Christians for a non catholic fictive world, something he easily disregarded as trite. He was a loyal devout catholic in every respect.
His biography by Humphrey Carpenter goes into all this.
J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, 1977
Middle-earth is a fantasy history of England and we're in sixth age (or something like that) of it.
It becomes round with the third age.
People tend to mistake sarcasm and satire with realistic and valuable insight. If, for example, you want to understand something about war in our Roundworld, do not read LotR or Jingo. Read Thucidydes.
2) I don’t respect the bald claim that all chosen ones are bad, or the implicit claim that we can somehow avoid them. Universals always have exceptions. If we’re being “real” here about our agential change, we must admit that species evolve by natural selection we might say genetic chosen ones. And anyway I do think there are some special people so sue me.
3) consider the names of Peter Thiel’s companies: palantir, mithril. Thiel, I’m sure ironically, named his companies after objects possessing exactly that moral ambiguity that the author claims does not exist in Tolkien’s world. Thiel is telegraphing it straight to you via Tolkien: do not trust me, I will use these objects for my own gain.
4) Discworld can afford to be light and playful because it was written in easy times. In one preface, Tolkien wrote that all the world’s great powers would obviously have tried to turn the ring into a weapon if it really existed.
No, it’s really about taking either universe at face value, which is the problem. And with Discworld, its overt absurdity and humor forces you to think about it more deeply.
LOTR doesn’t make an effort to explain what it is about. But knowing just a little about history and the author goes a long way.
The rest of it, I think, won't persuade anyone to read Discworld novels who's resisted them so far. Those who have and love them will find it a pleasant enough survey.
Oh and I personally think that Equal Rites is the best entry point to the series rather than Sourcery. But then I was reading them in publishing order anyway and eagerly waiting for each new one to come out. Damn I miss being able to look forward to a new Pratchett novel; he was a Wodehouse for my generation.
I understand the view, I just don't agree. It has lots of nice subtle jokes in it and was the first to have a bit more depth to the story rather than being a slightly scattered and episodic parody of thr fantasy genre.
But then I like Dark Side and Strata a lot too.
Edit to add: incidentally there are a lot of minor throwaway jokes throughout the series that require you to have read the preceding books to get them. That in itself is IMO enough reason to aim to read them in publication order. But you do you, he was very prolific, I can see why someone coming in after the fact might choose not to tackle the whole lot from beginning to end.
Horrible elves, Granny at her best (and Nanny), Magrat the killer queen, Morris dancing, stupid wizzards and lots of other stuff - what's not to like?
Probably just because it's my fave. But you can read them and enjoy in any order.
(Along those lines I would also recommend Susanna Clarke’s “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell” which builds its own parallel history set in the early 1800s Britain, with Fairies taking the same role as elves in discworld.
Yeah, more or less. The “elves/fairies are nice, or at least _good_” thing is a fairly modern creation (owing a lot to Tolkien, really).
Mustn't grumble though, it's not like Jonathan Strange was a pamphlet!
If you like “Guards! Guards!” or “Equal Rites”, then go back and start from the beginning. The first two novels are fun, but sound like Pratchett was channeling Monty Python and Douglas Adams. It took a few books before his own voice really shined through.
I generally recommend starting with Wyrd Sisters, since many people are familiar with Macbeth.
Besides, it introduces Granny Weatherwax, who is IMO one of his two greatest creations (the other being Vimes of course).
Edit: Oh, by the way, if you're just now working your way through them then (a) I envy you and (b) I recommend reading the Annotated Pratchett File for each book - after you finish each of course: https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/
Sadly, it’s pretty sparse or non-existent for the later books, but the TVTropes pages on them are usually very good, and cover a lot of the same ground.
I was a bit surprised by the change in tone in a way I probably wouldn't've been if I'd read chronologically.
It and Light Fantastic are both fantasy-parody travelogues, which are mostly about the protagonists moving through a sequence of largely disconnected pastiches of other fantasy works. After this the series rapidly switches to fantasy as metaphor for real-world situations, with the fantasy elements being more broad tropes rather than specifics references.
For the same reason, "Small Gods" is actually a great introduction to the series. I think it's really my favorite book in the series.
He must have liked it; he rewrote it later as Good Omens.
I find it hard to see Good Omens as a do-over of Sourcery, but I guess they do have something in common.
He’ll amuse you, sure, but he won’t tell you that things are great just the way they are or that they’re hopeless and there’s nothing you can do. He’ll tell you that you — yes, you — should make them better.
And then he’ll do something even more radical. He’ll make you think you can.
-- randombrethren, Tumblr
[0] Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
1 - why not both?
2 - via MST3K “If you're wondering how he eats & breathes, And other science facts...(la! la! la!) Then repeat to yourself its just a show, I should really just relax...”
LOTR makes its theme and conceits explicit - it is about the appeal of power to the ego. Industrialization is an expression of that will to power, and its ability to magnify man's already-present distorted relationship with nature. That industry relies on technology does not make technology the central topic or even the target of critique.
Bone-headed take.
In fact, Alice in Wonderland relationship to ettiquette, both at a tea table and in royal court, is a curious theme.
It also feels a bit like the false dichotomy arguments from my teenage years, where you could like either Star Trek or Star Wars, but not both.
> This law can be stated compactly as: science fiction is about strange rules, while fantasy is about special people.
Anyone who believes that has not read much of either. And the writer admits this immediately:
> Whether the story is about spaceships or dragons is irrelevant.
I have a hard time listening to someone who use established terminology to refer to some completely orthogonal concept, in a context guaranteed to cause confusion, for no reason except to snipe at a genre they don't like, for reasons they know are neither fundamental to nor unique to that genre.
You’re basically basing your whole technology worldview off a fantasy world created by a single person
What? Do words even have meaning anymore? How is that anything to do with being "woke"?
Where I hesitate is that I'm not sure Discworld's humour will land with everyone. It's a very dry form of absurdist British humour - if you enjoy Douglas Adams, you will probably get along with Terry Pratchett.
Discworld is a very funny place - I'm sure you would enjoy it.
That’s exactly where it fails for me: it is too cute, like a longer than necessary joke.
It’s just not my cup of tea to read and think “oh yeah, I see they inverted the thing, very cute, they even have the elephants and the turtles”. It’s ok but maybe for a short essay or a comic book only.
It's perfectly ok for them not to be your cuppa of course; my Mum and I loved them but my Dad never got into them despite trying quite a few times. Funny because generally our tastes intersected quite thoroughly.
(To be honest I'm lying, the standalone book I prefer myself is Pyramids, but the one I'd recommend to others is Small Gods.)
If you like Death, Hogfather is my first recommendation.
So many good gags in that one. I love the cinematic flashback scenes while Pteppic is falling off the wall. Plus it's where the "Pterry" nickname comes from of course.
The 4th book, Mort, is Terry dealing with the fact that he has a successfull series running, so he might as well start writing his own stories. He's not primarily reactionary at this point. This is for me the first 'real' discworld book.
In fact, I find the first 3 books a string of stand alone gags if you don't see them as critiques of the genre. Funny but shallow. Small Gods has real depth, but the author still stands at the sidelines. The Truth or Nightwatch are even deeper, and I suspect they are both autobiographic and cathartic on some level.
what
Man this dude sure has a definition of “woke” that is completely alien to the roots of that term.
> I read one Pratchett novel (Thief of Time I think) in college, but I’m glad I didn’t properly get into it till my mid-forties. These are books you cannot really appreciate if you’re too young. I read through the lot around 2017-19, during the first Trump admin, when I was in my early forties.
what
Dude they are comic fantasy, yes Pratchett has Things to Say about the world in them, more and more as the series goes on, but I picked up Equal Rites soon after it came out when I was eighteen and the series was a constant delight through my college years and beyond. Yes there are things in Discworld that will zoom right by a kid and only land when you come back to it as an adult. That’s part of why they’re good books. There’s things like that in Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Cycle (Book of Three, Black Cauldron, etc) that hit me like a ton of bricks when I pick up those little books forty years after I first read them as a kid and completely missed those parts. Stories can speak to multiple ages on multiple levels.
And it has become a convenient shibboleth: anyone using the word that way has nothing of value to say to me on any topic.
If you mean to restrict it to the Biblical usage of pronunciation, it generalized past that centuries ago.
I read Colour of Magic when I was 13 I think. It might have been a year or two later; a friend's mother had heard the Radio 4 "Woman's Hour" reading of Equal Rites and recommended them to me as she knew I liked Douglas Adams.
Adams and Pratchett had this in common - they had sufficient layers of jokes in them that they could appeal to both me in my early teens, and a friend's mother in her 40s (roughly). I missed a huge number of gags on the first read through. I like to re-read familiar books, though, and I used to get a few more each time through.
Until I read the APF there were still a bunch of historical gags or similar that I was missing by a country mile! I'm sure there are plenty more that have still gone over my head.
I honestly think that Pratchett was a better writer than Wodehouse, even though that's practically heresy for a Brit.
That comment also raised some eyebrows when I read it. Discworld is pretty "woke". The female dwarves are a bunch of LGBT analogues, a huge chunk of the watch series is about racism, Night Watch and Jingo are both pretty anti-populism.
Pratchett wrote good kids books earlier in his career too
> As for any inner meaning or ‘message’, it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical
Tolkien himself in the foreword to fellowship
This person needs to cool it with the pseudo intellectualism and let people enjoy things
But honestly KJ Parkers novels are better again.
Those are actually some of the better ones among the later books though! If you're going to skip, skip the Moist von Lipwig books. They're substantially worse than the other books in the series, IMO. Not too big a fan of the Watch books after Night Watch either (Night Watch was definitely peak Vimes though!).
> These are books you cannot really appreciate if you’re too young.
Other than maybe missing one or two sex jokes, not really?
> The only story revolving consequentially around gods is Small Gods, about a meme-stock god named GameStop, whose power crashes, and who ambitiously plans to pump himself back up to a new high.
Did an LLM hallucinate or is this supposed to be a joke? The god's name is Om.
Such entities have a special existence on Discworld.
There's only one Discworld book I don't like, and it is unseen academicals - the football one - I struggled to finish that, and it's the only one I've read only a single time. Every other discworld book I've read numerous times over the past 20+ years.
There's a point where you get a lot of rather similar monologues from his characters. I presume these are from the period after he had to dictate as he couldn't write directly any more. If so it's amazing that they're as good as they are.
What an embuggerance (as he said himself).
The one thing I'll fault the Moist books on is they're sort of the same book 3 times if you're in it for the story. If you enjoy the post/finance/rail exploration, that's enough to get past it, and I certainly did, but I can't blame others who didn't.
For eg., Going Postal and Making Money have the same basic setup, and a one-line story description would sound very similar. But Going Postal is about themes of past and future, regret and risk, connecting to the past while bringing in the future; while Making Money feels like a constant tug-of-war between order and chaos, and hence ultimately about balance.
More power to your elbow if so, but I didn't. Fortunately the broader slapstick and parody was right up my alley and I grew into (at least some of) the rest.
Lewis wanted beer and belches. Strange how his own sermonising is so boring.
> What I have a problem with is people trying to live forever as part of a Chosen One script which involves them trying to carve up all of the world into the dead empires of a dystopian Great Game world run according to a totalizing script.
I'm confident Tolkien would agree.
I also think any evaluation of LoTR should take into account Tolkien's background as a veteran of the trenches in WWI. In 2025 America, maybe that makes LoTR seem less relevant to our world. To someone living in Ukraine, it probably feels like a much closer fit.
You may be right, but is it a better fit? Is there any hope left when you face overwhelming hordes of evil orcs that cannot be negotiated or reasoned with, especially when there's no convenient ring to throw in a volcano?
The black-and-white starkness of LotR is what makes it unfit for use as an analogy to the real world! There is very rarely ever a situation in which Good vs Evil is a correct or useful framing, even if it may be a comforting and inspiring story to tell ourselves.
The Nazis had a black-and-white ideological viewpoint and seemed to believe themselves to be heroes fighting to save their people from evil Jews and their brainwashed minions. Do you see why those narratives are so dangerous now?
To be sure, there are situations where there is some genuinely complicated moral situation. But that doesn't mean we have to pretend to be moral morons and sagely nod our heads and say "Yes, but Nazis thought they were right too, hmm, hmm."
The problem, of course, is that belief. It’s catastrophically wrong. And it’s the sort of thing that black and white good vs evil thinking can lead you towards.
We can simultaneously say “the Nazis thought they were good” and “the Nazis were profoundly evil.” We can acknowledge the relativity of perspective without needing to apply a relativity of good and evil.
A necessary element of true goodness is a willingness to consider new ideas, a constant reevaluation of one’s beliefs, and an acknowledgment that the world is complicated and messy. Someone who does these things can justifiably conclude that they’re good and the other guys are evil, but you have to maintain that openness and reevaluation or you can slide into Good vs Evil where you can see no wrong on your own side, and that leads to disaster.
Normative language used as shorthand for current consensus for whether the conflict was justified given the likely alternative outcomes for not engaging.
is learning and changing hypocrisy?
Only when they are "narratives". When they are caution stories from historical facts we want to avoid repiting then they are not so stigmatising but a warnins.
Nobody should trow that storises again and again and some behaviour schamas should be always avoided. Unluckily that stories need to be reminded from time to time.
Even better: people should not only know about WWII-nazi-communism works but should know broad historical contects - what bring that evilness to Earth: communistic imperialism wanting to take over globe and using Germany poor situation (eg. sponsoring nazi party) after WWI to make attempt at concuering Europe (first).
Or maybe it was just another part of "Great Game" and reaults with using new technologies are worse and worse...
"What a pity Bilbo did not stab the vile creature, when he had a chance!
Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need.
I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death.
Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends."
-The Two Towers
> You may be right, but is it a better fit? Is there any hope left when you face overwhelming hordes of evil orcs that cannot be negotiated or reasoned with
"The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure. How shall any tower withstand such numbers and such reckless hate? ... I will not end here, taken like an old badger in a trap. Snowmane and Hasufel and the horses of my guard are in the inner court. When dawn comes, I will bid men sound Helm’s horn, and I will ride forth. Will you ride with me then, son of Arathorn? Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make such an end as will be worth a song – if any be left to sing of us hereafter.
'I will ride with you', said Aragorn"
-The Two Towers
Seems like it fits to me...
This may or may not be true, but Ukraine vs. Putin is absolutely one of those times where it's 100% accurate and useful.
Putin invaded Ukraine unprovoked, motivated by visions of restoring an empire to its former glory. He cannot be reasoned with, he cannot be appeased. The only hope that any of the formerly-occupied countries have is to defeat him, and any and all efforts to make the issue appear to be more grayscale than that will necessarily lead to disappointment and to further wars and bloodshed.
XO Hunter: "...I just think that in the nuclear world, the true enemy can't be destroyed."
Captain Ramsey: "Attention on deck. Von Clausewitz will now tell us exactly who the real enemy is. Von?"
XO Hunter: "In my humble opinion... in the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself."
I think that's the difference. In WWII, appeasing Hitler was a mistake because it only emboldened him. Even back then, Tolkien had reservations about how far to take the war. While he abhorred Hitler, he initially supported Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" policy.
But today, a nuclear Russia cannot be defeated the way Germany was. "In the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself."
We cannot allow a nuclear war to happen, even if it means letting Putin have Ukraine.
The question everyone is wrestling with is, how do we save Ukraine while preventing nuclear war? Unfortunately, we don't know the answer, and the risk of getting it wrong is catastrophic.
As soon as you decide this, and let others know you have, you have lost everything. Because if that logic applies to Ukraine it applies equally to Poland, to Alaska, France, to Washington, D.C., to your hometown. You've committed to surrender everything to any power that has the potential to escalate to nuclear war.
(It's even worse if you don't believe this -- or if you think you do but would think differently if the thing to surrender was closer to home -- and let people think you do, because that makes it almost inevitable that things will escalate beyond your trigger point, resulting in nuclear war.)
That's also the reason why Alaska and France are safe, why Iran wants nukes, and is the best argument against disarmament you can find. The cat is out of the bag, and the attempts to put it back are starting to leave scars.
Because every time it is brought up it is easily demonstrated that nobody actually agreed to defend Ukraine. They each agreed not to invade Ukraine.
The only assurance of assistance built into the agreement is that parties would complain to the UN security council.
The Obama administration let Russia violate the agreement when they took Crimea. Putin's justification that Ukraine isn't a nation but a historically Russian territory only works if Russia pretends it was never a signatory, since recognition of Ukraine as an independent and sovereign nation was a part of it.
In short, pieces of paper do not trump the fear of nuclear weapons.
So? If nuclear war is always an intolerable choice for America, then America's nuclear weapons will never be used in any case, and any aggressor who can plausibly threaten nuclear war is free to seize anything from America with that threat.
If nuclear war isn't always intolerable, then, well, we've eliminated the premise off the upthread argument about Ukraine, and are in a different discussion.
Had Russia invaded a NATO country, we still would not have launched first, but rather used conventional weapons, given the fallout (literal and metaphorical), but actually using them to prevent greater numbers of casualties from protracted war is not fully off the table, so to speak.
It’s only rational to start a nuclear war if a country faces a direct existential threat: i.e. a significant percentage of the population will be killed or conquered and enslaved. The perceived outcome of nuclear war (widespread devastation) has to be preferable to what would happen otherwise.
Conflicts over territories at the far fringes of a great power’s sphere of influence (or desired sphere of influence) obviously don’t meet the bar. If it’s trivial to call your bluff, it’s probably better not to bluff.
But what if Putin thinks that unless he takes Ukraine, Russia will cease to exist (or Putin will cease to exist). In that scenario, taking Ukraine is an existential goal for Russa, and he will blow up the world unless he wins.
Unfortunately, I think the rational thing to do is to apply increasing pressure to Putin until he either backs down or proves that he is willing to blow up the world over Ukraine. If the latter, then we back down. Of course, the risks of that strategy are all too obvious.
Russia's nuclear arsenal is a perfectly adequate guarantee of Russia's security. Putin knows this, which is why he's happy to leave Russia's western border with NATO practically undefended while he pursues Ukraine. (This also disproves the "Putin invaded Ukraine because he's afraid of NATO" lie.)
It's more plausible that Putin's survival depends on the outcome of the Ukraine war. But "mad Putin blows up the world" is as much a problem for the Russians as anyone else.
The logical consequence of disagreeing with this is that every country that doesn't want a significant percentage of their population killed or conquered or enslaved should get their own nukes, because nobody else wants to help them. And I'm not sure every country acquires nukes is a safer world than maybe we don't let Putin have everything he wants
He knows it would be strategically impossible for the US or Nato to respond in kind to a nuclear attack on Ukraine. It can be rational for him to climb the escalation ladder if he knows his enemy will have to back down before he does because they have less to gain and more to lose.
I don’t like this situation at all, and I understand the point about rolling over to threats. Unfortunately, this is just how nuclear game theory works whether we like it or not. You can’t win in a conflict under MAD against an opponent who has more at stake than you.
And of course there can be an advantage for Russia in using nukes. They could destroy Ukraine's entire army, kill all its leaders, destroy all its infrastructure, etc. with no risk of (nuclear) retaliation. There would be many negative consequences too, so it's not likely to happen unless the conventional war is going very badly for Russia, but it's certainly a card they hold.
Putin doesn't know that. Putin doesn't know quite what the repercussions would be. That's why he hasn't used them so far.
The reason the EU countries don’t just waltz into Ukraine probably has more to do with the knowledge they’re not dealing with a rational person, but with a bunch of ego. It’s not hard to predict how Putin will respond if his ego is threatened, but how the rest of Russia will respond to the command to launch nukes.
It’s not unlike the US, except it’s currently still fairly easy to predict that any US commander will just say no when ordered to fire on the EU.
(I expect a first response would be a single city, with warnings to evacuate. A show of what's next.)
The goal would be that Russians assist in taking out an out of control, lunatic who will destroy us all.
Understand, this isn't just about today. Over the next 100 years, every country will obtain the capacity for nukes. Every person on this planet needs to see, and know that using them indiscriminately means you lose.
The consequences are too dire otherwise.
And when a US city is taken out in response? Do you keep going? Over a country that ultimately has very little impact on the US?
Your premise is basically that US military leaders are irrational to the point of insanity.
This isn't a game you win by backing off. There is no safety in that move.
Understand, the claim that the Ukraine is "Russian" is an absurd bluff. No one truly believes that, not Putin certainly. There are a dozen other countries in that region that Putin could make the same bluff about.
By allowing this bluff to continue for this long, matters have only gotten worse. We allowed 2014 to happen. Now, we're here. It won't stop a a peace agreement, or at Ukraine in whole.
The insanity is Russian. And you don't leave a rambling, insane man with a gun outside your house, shooting randomly at houses, because they're not quite at your doorstep yet.
The game theory works roughly like this: Putin wins the most if his threats work. If they don't work, he has the choice between drawing a new red line, launching a limited nuclear attack on Ukraine, or full-on nuclear war. The last option is obviously out (guaranteed destruction is in no proportion to the reward). A limited nuclear attack would likely make him a pariah on the world stage and make it even more difficult to find trading partners. So instead he redraws the line.
If he ever went for the limited nuclear attack option Ukraine might give up, and the west would have to choose between war against Russia (high risk, low reward) or just tightening economic sanctions to the max and punishing anyone who dares to trade with him.
If we assume rational actors I don't see how this would ever escalate to nuclear war. And as long as Ukraine doesn't find a way to decisively push Russian troops out Russia has no incentive to climb the escalation ladder. Even as prolonged war leads to internal instability
Ukraine can cross as many of Putin's "red lines" as they wish. Ukraine did not start this war.
That's purely a psychological trick, if you take this as true then it would be rational for everyone to place madmen in the negotiating seat. A better example, if I had Trump say to China, if you don't open up your markets and drop your tariffs on us, we will nuke you. If I can guarantee as thought exercise that Trump will fire nukes if demands are not met (and that's not difficult to do in reality), do you think Xi Jingping will concede here?
That’s, again, the whole problem. You don’t have to view Putin as “mad” to see him taking a nuclear last stand over Ukraine. He is already invested and taking risk at an extreme level to the point that no one can doubt the importance to him and his willingness to make heavy sacrifices to win. There is no believable narrative where a US leader would be willing to gamble at an existential level over Ukraine.
Which he won't do if mutually assured destruction is credible. He's not going to destroy the world including himself and everything he loves for Ukraine.
Once there are doubts that use of nuclear weapons will be punished, then all bets are off.
It’s a bad idea to bluff in situations like this, because when the obvious bluff is called and you are forced to back down, it makes enemies more likely to test all your commitments and “red lines”.
While Putin might not be willing to risk MAD either over Ukraine, it’s a lot more believable that he would than that the US would. There have been direct kinetic attacks on Moscow and parts of Russia have been invaded. There have been assassination attempts against people close to him. This is not some far away conflict for him. He’s already taking on a huge amount of risk, a lot more than the US has taken on in a long time—even in WW2 there was no direct attack on the continental US.
Personally I don't see any real chance of nuclear escalation over Ukraine on both sides. The war needs to end but to do that Putin needs to be given a way to deescalate and claim a win at home. But that can only be allowed to happen if Ukraine is made safe and secure once again and if Putin is willing to swallow that. And I see no evidence of that being true.
If anything, nukes only remain an option because of the lack of Western troops in Ukraine, allowing Putin to make a limited nuclear attack that hits Ukrainians but isn't worth war a nuclear war for the West. And even that is a trigger Putin has repeatedly refused to pull, preferring to win the war the conventional way even if that takes years
And it was just so simple - provide Ukraine with all the weapons necessary to help them defend itself from the clear Russian agression. Or, you know, do that before the Russians started their main war in 2022, there was long enough warning from 2013, including hundreds of inocents murdered in an airliner the Russians show down...
As much as I felt the Dutch marines should have marched in there to retrieve the bodies when the Russians were faffing around, I do think the shooting down itself was an accident. Zero upside to doing that.
No. We cannot let people just walk over other nations even at the cost of nuclear war
Anything else means the evil ones eventually win.
But when you are talking about nuclear threats there is no other way to respond if you don’t want everything taken from you.
If you constantly back down by giving the playground bully your lunch money he’ll keep coming back for more. Punch him in the face however, and…
Exactly. Which is why I need to be perfectly willing to start one, because the alternative is that only I lose everything.
And finally: "We cannot allow a nuclear war to happen, even if it means letting Ukraine win the war" is foremost in russian minds, no?
We tossed the ring away in the 90ies, it turned out to be not the smartest idea
Little known fact: a while ago Russia doubled the sign-in bonus fot contractors to approximately $4.5k to keep the flow of people going. With Trump taking office this produced a wave of recruits who are betting on the chance that the war will be over before they finish training and actually arrive to the front.
Some of them are already there and the results are not good (for them).
I'm not saying the situation isn't difficult, but it doesn't serve the free world to see Russia as this unstoppable force, as it paints efforts at helping Ukraine as pointless.
To use the example already given, how about Ukraine? I have a very hard time not placing that in a good vs evil framing.
It’s true that Ukraine isn’t perfectly good, and Russia isn’t purely evil, but it’s pretty damn close.
Here’s a nation that was just keeping to themselves and growing closer to the ones that didn’t want to annex them (surprise surprise) and the evil overlord thought that was too threatening and decided to pre-emptively annex them.
Don't get me wrong, I'm swede and like most here I'm firmly on Ukraine's side and see the pure evil shit Russian military does _every _day without any illusions. But this framing of good vs evil does not seem to pan out. A common sentiment is just to wipe out Russia from the map. And tempting as it might be, that doesn't seem very noble/good and the alternative, "Russian people finds the good in them and throw out the oligarchy forcefully and install democracy", is very naive. I mean even the US, a fully armed populace of strong freeminded men can't seem to see that they are treading the same path as Russia and take action. How reasonable is it then to have that expectation of a people systematically disempowered for decades.
Good vs evil is simplistic, but it serves as shorthand for "it's worth fighting for".
Are you in Donbas currently? If not, you are not fighting anything.
That's a very simplistic world-view. One does not have to be on the frontlines to help an effort. People donating to https://ukrainedefensefund.org/ are still "fighting", even though they aren't literally gunning people down in Donbas.
But they are not fighting. They do not take the same risk, they do not suffer the same, they do no share burden with those that do.
The problem is that as a European, giving in here means they come closer. Next time it’s the Polish border, then the German.
Asassinate Putin, a sponsored coup. Something like that.
Good vs evil is simplistic enough that It can be used to convince basically anyone that those are a good idea. The only thing we really have to be wary of is that thing someone said:
The only thing that’s necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
Sadly, it seems like this particular point was missed by several prominent tech folks who took notes from LotR...
Quite apart from not wanting people to try to be Sauron, Tolkein just didn't like industry very much.
I'm sure you didn't intend to start an off-topic political argument but that's often what happens when references to stronger/more intense topics get casually dropped in.
Pratchett himself said so and that is mentioned in the article.
I love Mansfield Park. My partner hates it. Even in Austen you can pick and chose which bit of ivory to pick up.
Unlike wake, it's usefully short
Regrettably it's not about a bicycle or de selby
(Available on StageFlix: https://irishplayography.com/play?playid=31428 )