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In surprisingly real terms, society is giving death great dominion over it. We hail death instead of life. We count life as a liability and terminate it at the first sign to trouble. Even the American President has boasted in his State of the Union address that thousands of people have been successfully killed, who in the future might have had the tendency to cause harm. Life has been thrown into the gutter, while death has been put onto the pedestal before which society kneels in solemn devotion. The airwaves are filled with video images focused on the destruction of life to cause death. It even has become a game for children to play with. Also, it is done economically quite well.
The reality is, that we have dug quite a deep pit for ourselves. But how do we get ourselves from where we now are, to where we should want to be, a culture of life?
We seem to be far distant from celebrating life and the wonders it holds, from celebrating its beauty in countless forms, its strengths, its boundless potential for development in the human domain where life unfolds as something immensely special, with qualities and capacities that cannot be found in any other species of life in the known universe.
So, how do we get to that? Obviously, we won't get there through drugs, mindless games, sexual excitation, degenerative sports, and the social glorification of the killing fields. Tolkien maps out quite a different path for us in his rich metaphors, a path through the jungle of death with sparks of life that he evidently saw unfolding as evermore precious in this wasteland of destruction that the wars left behind. Or maybe he recognized the potential for their unfolding.
He tells us a tale of a journey into life, an absolutely necessary journey if we wish to survive. Nor does he close his eye to the magnitude of the challenge. He recognizes that great battles must be fought and be won along the path of our would be journey to life.
Yes, there are great battles fought in the saga, some small, some large, but they are never battles fought by men against men. The battles in the saga are almost always fought against what he called, the "Orcs," some mythical entities with ghastly features that remotely resemble a humanoid form. The Orcs are the universal foe. Yes, they are fought with the sword. In today's world, the equivalent weapon that is required to defeat them is the weapon of profound ideas, the 'sword' of truth.
The Orcs in turn represent nothing that is in any way human. They represent inhuman policies and ideologies, more deadly than any creature could ever be, which are all forced on society without recourse. Indeed their name, "orcs" is rooted in the word "force."
Their sword and spear is the pen. With the stroke of a pen the living of entire nations is being destroyed in today's world, as a matter of policy. That is the kind of process that Tolkien saw the beginning of, that he warned us about. Those Orcs have become monsters in today's world. There are many battles being waged against the Orcs in the saga, since the Orcs have utterly infested the world to such a degree that one simply can't avoid running into them. They are almost everywhere. But instead of submitting to them, Tolkien fights.
All the characters that Tolkien creates in the saga, that represent our humanity, become invariably drawn into these battles where people must fight to save their existence. Those who don't fight, become consumed by the process that they thereby failed to defend themselves against. They become the synarchists and fascists of our world. Often they bear a noble name which hides the fact that they have developed ghastly methods for destroying society, in manners worse than what the Orcs represent.
Tolkien unmasks their face extensively, with an astonishing accuracy, that is reflected in what is being born out in the real world of today. He deals with all of these forces, and he deals with the forces of those who became trapped by them. He deals with them as he must, in order to clear the way to the celebration of human life that cannot unfold under their shadows.
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