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Tolkien does not promise that these last battles will be easily won. By all accounts we face a huge foe, even after synarchism has been defeated. In the saga, this foe is a multitude of orcs and the like, ugly creatures that live for only one goal, to see the pain in their opponent's eye as they perish before them.
This vast horde of orcs represents all the small-minded thinking in society, which is indeed a vast sea of ghostly force. Tolkien suggests that this sea of small-minded thinking can be defeated if we sharpen out wits. The people of Gondor appear to have the required quality for that. They are sharp, witty, industrious, practical, and quite aware of what they can and need to do.
Thus they face the onslaught of Sauron's evil that continues to exist for as long as the ring exists, that looms over that land and unfolds with a thundering, beastly roar that is in real terms but a 'deafening silence.' That silence, that emptiness, needs yet to be demonstrated. Sauron's vast horde of orcs (force), that has no power in itself, needs to be defeated. The kingdom becomes embattled by this force. But who are they, these orcs? Who is the real world equivalent of this beleaguering force? Isn't it society's own small-minded thinking? We have become incapacitated by small-minded thinking. Thus, mankind's greatest foe is not synarchism, but small-minded thinking. Synarchism thrives in a world of small-minded thinking. That is our greatest foe. But are we fighting it? No, we have not even recognized it. In order to explore this domain and to shed some light into it, I have written a series of five novels "The Lodging for the Rose," that looks at our small-minded thinking at the lowest grassroots level of our day to day living, at our home base, so to speak.
The answer is truthfulness - sharpen your truthfulness!
Anybody can do this. That's how Tolkien destroys the power base of Saruman's synarchist empire in the saga. He assigns this task on which the survival of the world of men depends, not to greatest warriors, the mightiest wizard, the largest army; no, he puts it into the hands of two hobbits who are but half the size of any man, who sooner swing a jug of ale and have breakfast twice a day, then save the world. Rather than being educated as people of great knowledge Tolkien displays them as two little kids 'lost in the forest.' Isn't that where we find ourselves as society, in respect to the great task that we face to save our world, as but some kids 'lost in the jungle?'
So, how does Tolkien utilize these two kids to save the world? He gives them the task to mobilize the 'trees' into a fighting force. What task could be greater, in an organizational sense, than that? Those trees have stood their ground for thousands of years and have not moved an inch on any issue. How many of those do you know in our real world who behave like that? The hobbits are captured by the trees. Even in an effort to determine whether the hobbits be friend or foe the trees require a long time of thinking. They hold a counsel and debate, and then just, hm, think about it, forever, so it seems. Does that sound familiar? Surprisingly, they do come to the conclusion, after being guided by the hobbits, that the hobbits are not their enemy.
With that hurdle surpassed, in their simple open honesty the hobbits try to convince the trees that their actual enemy is Saruman in Isengard and that Saruman is at war with the world and needs to be stopped.
The trees answer that the world of men and their wars do not concern them. So they decide to take the hobbits to the edge of the forest far away from Isengard, away from where evil lurks. It turns out that the trees can walk.
After a long argumentation the hobbits convince the tree who listens to them, named Treebeard, that they really want to go the other way, to fight the evil, as their friends are at war, and that the trees should help them since the world they would save is their world, too. Reluctantly Treebeard takes them to the other side of the forest, to near Isengard. There, he sees with his own eyes the truthfulness of what the hobbits have told. He sees that the forest has already been destroyed there. With Treebeard having discovered the truth, he communicates the truth abroad, and does indeed raise an army to do something to stop the ravishing menace.
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