Tolkien, the Prophet, Wikipedia as Horror, de Maupassant, and Space Exploration
Off-Ramps for 26 December 2024
Welcome to Off-Ramps! Today I’ll highlight five interesting pieces that I think you will enjoy reading. Given the holidays—today is Boxing Day in Canada, and New Year’s Eve is less than a week away—we will set aside policy for the moment, and indulge ourselves in fiction.
1. The Tolkienic Hero
Before I offer you some fiction proper, let’s take in some literary criticism. If I asked the average thoughtful young person what makes a hero, I imagine they’d say something like this:
…heroism is grounded in a firm conviction: he [the hero] does not want to be a hero. The hero wants not fame, nor fortune; he is not motivated by power, nor by revenge. He performs his heroics out of necessity, out of duty, or out of the simple fact that he is the only one on the scene. The hero would rather not be out slaying dragons. He earnestly wishes for a normal life. He yearns for a peaceful and settled world where he is not the chosen one. But it is precisely because our hero lacks ambition that he can be trusted. In a world where men ache for power, we cheer for the protagonist who emphatically rejects it.
This description certainly describes the popular-fiction protagonists of our day: Luke Skywalker, Rand al’Thor, and Spider-Man, not to mention Hermione Granger and Katniss Everdeen. They are all reluctant heroes.
But if you pause to reflect, you’ll realize that while Reluctant Heroes are ubiquitous today, they are almost utterly absent from the heroic literature of yesterday. Achilles and Odysseus, Aeneas and Beowulf, Gawain and Lancelot… these heroes, proudly and eagerly, sought out fortune and glory and great deeds. They didn’t refuse the call. Indeed, they set out before it came.
So what changed? Tanner Greer has a convincing answer: it was J.R.R. Tolkien who, perhaps single-handedly, brought it about.
Readers familiar with Lord of the Rings will immediately see the connections between my opening sketch [quoted above] and the tale of Tolkien’s ring-bearer… An aversion to glory is not just the defining character trait of the novel’s central hero [Frodo Baggins, of course]. The distinction between greatness and power as goods to be strived for versus greatness and power as burdens to be carried is the distinction that sets apart almost of all of the novel’s protagonists from their foils [emphasis in original]. It is the defining difference between Frodo and Smeagol, Faramir and Boromir, Aragorn and Denethor, and Gandalf and Saruman.
Greer’s essay is, I think, thoroughly convincing, and my only complaint is that he does not take his argument far enough. I admire The Lord of the Rings as much as anyone and more than most, but I think this part of Tolkien’s vision has become hegemonic, and as a consequence, toxic.
It’s so hegemonic that in The Force Awakens, both Rey and Finn refuse the call; in the next film, The Last Jedi, not only does Finn do it again, but so does Luke Skywalker, who at that point had already spent a whole film trilogy learning not to do that.
It’s so hegemonic that the protagonists of both Gladiator and Troy refuse the call, despite this attitude being utterly anachronistic to the setting.
It’s so hegemonic that in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Aquaman refuses the call to heroism and responsibility three times in one film.
As I see it, culturally, we no longer count ambition as a virtue, but as a vice. In fact, shying away from opportunity is now coded as the right thing to do, and aspiration to greatness coded as villainous, or at least villain-adjacent. If I am correct, this set of emotional responses goes some way toward explaining why the West has become so static. If the desire to exercise one’s capabilities to their fullest extent becomes suspect, no one should be surprised if the result is stagnancy.
2. The Prophet and Caesar’s Wife
The last time I wrote about Scott Alexander, I described him as one mightier than I, the latchet of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. This metaphor applies for several reasons, one of which is his penchant to deliver extended parables; another of which is his refusal to make it easy by also providing explanations of them.
One such parable is Scott’s tale of “The Prophet and Caesar’s Wife”.
What is this story about? I think, from stray remarks Scott has made, it is based on his observations of the conflicts within not-for-profit organizations that have to decide how, why, and what to communicate with potential donors. But that’s merely the occasion that prompted him to write it. What is it about?
I think it’s about why honesty really is the best policy, despite temptations to depart from that standard, even from the best of intentions. I think it’s about why we should be careful about offering unsolicited advice, much less condemnation. And I think it’s about the need to work out high-level principles before grappling with object-level outcomes. Let he with ears to hear, let him hear.
Or perhaps I’m wrong and it’s about none of those things! Read it and decide for yourself. Even if you end confused, I think you’ll still be delighted.
3. de Mauspassant’s “Madame Baptiste”
It’s a tradition now lost, obliterated by oceans of saccharine commerciality, but once Christmas was a time for ghost stories, as befits a festival falling around the longest night of the year. The only remnants of this tradition are the spirits of Dickens’ Christmas Carol, and even of those, only the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come retains any aura of the uncanny.
But it is in that (ahem) spirit that I offer you these two stories. Not of the supernatural, but of the darkness, so you can see from where we have come, and where we may be going.
If you’ve never read Guy de Maupassant, I recommend him as one of the great nineteenth-century writers, and a master of the short story. Despite their brevity, his stories always have beginnings, middles, and endings, with sharply defined characters, in service of a point. As a late Victorian, his world is close enough to modernity to be recognizable, while far enough away to make it clear it is a different country. I have written before that, as modern consequentialists, we are products of guilt culture, and being placed into a shame culture unsettles us… especially when we realize that most of human history occurred in that frame.
And so, without further throat-clearing: “Madame Baptiste”, a vignette (only 2,200 words) that explores the cruelty of blaming the victim.
4. Lena: a Dark Tale
Now let’s look away from the past, toward a possible future, with this story, best offered with minimal context.
It is even shorter than the last, at fewer than 2,000 words; unsettling, as it suggests a world that is unlikely, but not impossible; and structurally interesting, as it is presented in the unusual format of a faux Wikipedia entry. The story’s success at inducing disquiet in such an unlikely fashion makes it worth reading for that reason alone.
The title, “Lena”, is a metaphor. A portrait of Swedish model Lena Söderberg, one that featured a mix of detail, transitions, shadows, and textures, was once a popular method of testing new image-processing algorithms. It was so popular, in fact, that it is one of the most reproduced images in human history.
5. The Future of Space Exploration
I have thought better of leaving you in a grim mood, so here is a parting gift. 2025 is nigh, and the spirit of the New Year should be looking forward with hope and expectation. Also, you come to Changing Lanes for interesting policy work, and I do not want you to be wholly deprived of it, even over the holidays. So I leave you with this: an overview of the Foresight Institute’s work helping to coordinate the future of space exploration, commercialization, and oversight.
I recommend this one in particular because I prepared it.
I write this newsletter twice a week, and throughout 2024 was co-writing The End of Driving, forthcoming in 2025; you will hear much more about it soon. But when not writing for myself, I occasionally provide technical writing for others, as I did in this case. The Foresight Institute is doing good work, and I was pleased to help them with this overview of their activities. As the report states:
Humans visited the Moon for the last time in 1972. Since then, fifty-two years have passed, during which time progress in aerospace has languished. There are bright sparks: the International Space Station has maintained a continuous human presence in orbit since 2000, and SpaceX has revolutionized spaceflight with reusable rockets that have dramatically reduced launch costs. Yet these achievements, impressive as they are, fall short of the bold visions of lunar bases and Mars missions that seemed within reach half a century ago.
How can humanity regain momentum in space exploration and development?
The report helps to provide the beginnings of an answer.