Friday 17 April 2020

How the One Ring was destroyed by Plan C

Frodo Baggins at the intersection of Providence and Free Will

 I explain this in a post at my Notion Club Papers blog

4 comments:

Matthew T said...

I must be dim today but I don't get Plan A - Gollum would cast the ring into the fire, or what? Why isn't Plan B Plan A?

Not that the rest of the post isn't good...

Bruce Charlton said...

@MT - Some bad things would not have happened - like Frodo being poisoned by Shelob.

Ingemar said...

I'm beginning to realize that Evil regimes almost never fall due to true grassroots popular uprisings, but rather via Plan C as you stated. The Soviet Union fell upon the weight of its own contradictions.

China seems to be in danger as well, as they reported their first economic contraction in decades and are quickly becoming the world's pariah due to the Birdemic.

And unfortunately, most of the West will fall as well, to the extent that they had supported China. The fall of the world order will be like the fall of the Second Temple: tragic, yet necessary due to the wickedness of the people.

Bruce Charlton said...

@I - "I'm beginning to realize that Evil regimes almost never fall due to true grassroots popular uprisings, but rather via Plan C as you stated."

That strikes me as an excellent insight - I had not myself made this connection.

"The fall of the world order will be like the fall of the Second Temple: tragic, yet necessary due to the wickedness of the people."

Yes, I'm afraid so. We had innumerable chances to repent, but failed even to acknowledge our sins - instead redefining them as virtues. Once inversion had been hardwired into a society and has been accepted (or embraced as the new improved morality) then that society must end, whatever the cost.

I myself will not survive a collapse, but I accept the neccessity (and biological death is not the end, but a transition).