Also while I do agree with you that there are features which are endemic to human nature, not a political side (rather the political sides ends up displaying these natures in manners which make the sides), I would dispute Tolkien as...
~~The personality that makes this move and the personality that staffs compliance apparatuses are the same personality. The trait-cluster identified in the previous piece (high conscientiousness, high in-group agreeableness, high disgust sensitivity toward defection) is the temperament that experiences taste-violation as moral crime. The artist-philosopher laundering taste into cosmology and the DEI trainer laundering preference into ethics are running on the same substrate. The difference is institutional position, not temperament.~~
Expressly because of his' works distinction from the others. Tolkien's tastes are expressly NOT turned into a cosmology. The ending of LOTR is not the entire rest of the world becoming like the Shire (his clear favorite and preference), it's expressly the Shire being allowed to remain itself.
Except it isn't either. The coda "Scouring of the Shire" also makes it clear that even the Shire cannot escape the consequences of the war - even it ends up becoming scarred by the conflict. But otherwise there is no indication in Middle-Earth that violations of Tolkien's taste is a moral crime. The Elves, Dwarves, Gondor and Rohan are all allowed to be "like themselves" and each do things their own ways after the War of the Ring, they do not all become like the Shire. (Rohan still keeps its horses. Gondor has its King and Queen, etc)
It certainly doesn't elevate them to moral crimes the way Rand or Morrison will elevate violations of their tastes in their works. (At least Rand had some excuses given some of the abuse and trauma she suffered.)
You would have a FAR stronger case that CS Lewis elevated taste to moral cosmology, especially on a shallow reading of the Space Trilogy or Narnia. I would disagree still, but would grant that it is a far stronger case with him.
Indeed, the character in LotR who represents industry and technology as corruption is Saruman. He is, explicitly, an industrialist who makes war on traditional England; but he is only a secondary antagonist. The true cosmic enemy, Sauron, the Lord of the Rings himself, is not an industrialist, but a straightforward military conqueror, and his war on Gondor is if anything modeled on the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. A place less like Merrie Olde England, aesthetically speaking, than the Byzantine Empire would be difficult to find; but Tolkien makes it clear, despite his aesthetic preference, that Gondor is as good as the Shire.
~~Morrison did not forge a diagnostic tool. Morrison wrote aesthetic preference laundered as cosmology. Any diagnostic capacity the reader extracted was the reader’s own work projected onto raw material that happened to flatter it. ~~
Thank you! This has been my impression of Morrison for awhile (and I say this as someone who credits his JLA run with getting me into comics), and it's becoming an issue with more writers I fear.
Also while I do agree with you that there are features which are endemic to human nature, not a political side (rather the political sides ends up displaying these natures in manners which make the sides), I would dispute Tolkien as...
~~The personality that makes this move and the personality that staffs compliance apparatuses are the same personality. The trait-cluster identified in the previous piece (high conscientiousness, high in-group agreeableness, high disgust sensitivity toward defection) is the temperament that experiences taste-violation as moral crime. The artist-philosopher laundering taste into cosmology and the DEI trainer laundering preference into ethics are running on the same substrate. The difference is institutional position, not temperament.~~
Expressly because of his' works distinction from the others. Tolkien's tastes are expressly NOT turned into a cosmology. The ending of LOTR is not the entire rest of the world becoming like the Shire (his clear favorite and preference), it's expressly the Shire being allowed to remain itself.
Except it isn't either. The coda "Scouring of the Shire" also makes it clear that even the Shire cannot escape the consequences of the war - even it ends up becoming scarred by the conflict. But otherwise there is no indication in Middle-Earth that violations of Tolkien's taste is a moral crime. The Elves, Dwarves, Gondor and Rohan are all allowed to be "like themselves" and each do things their own ways after the War of the Ring, they do not all become like the Shire. (Rohan still keeps its horses. Gondor has its King and Queen, etc)
It certainly doesn't elevate them to moral crimes the way Rand or Morrison will elevate violations of their tastes in their works. (At least Rand had some excuses given some of the abuse and trauma she suffered.)
You would have a FAR stronger case that CS Lewis elevated taste to moral cosmology, especially on a shallow reading of the Space Trilogy or Narnia. I would disagree still, but would grant that it is a far stronger case with him.
Indeed, the character in LotR who represents industry and technology as corruption is Saruman. He is, explicitly, an industrialist who makes war on traditional England; but he is only a secondary antagonist. The true cosmic enemy, Sauron, the Lord of the Rings himself, is not an industrialist, but a straightforward military conqueror, and his war on Gondor is if anything modeled on the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. A place less like Merrie Olde England, aesthetically speaking, than the Byzantine Empire would be difficult to find; but Tolkien makes it clear, despite his aesthetic preference, that Gondor is as good as the Shire.
~~Morrison did not forge a diagnostic tool. Morrison wrote aesthetic preference laundered as cosmology. Any diagnostic capacity the reader extracted was the reader’s own work projected onto raw material that happened to flatter it. ~~
Thank you! This has been my impression of Morrison for awhile (and I say this as someone who credits his JLA run with getting me into comics), and it's becoming an issue with more writers I fear.