That They May Have Clean Earth To Till
The Pope says you’d better be Hobbitmaxing.
I read Pius XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas two weeks ago while writing my essay on the Butlerian Jihad, and some readers pointed out that I forgot to explore the more obvious literary parallel in the work. This was not to Frank Herberts’ Dune, but rather explicitly to The Lord of the Rings.
Rest assured, Dear Reader. I would not pass up the opportunity to remark on the inclusion of Tolkien in any prominent aspect of cultural discourse.
As you might have guessed, it was initially my hope to write a broader article exploring the literary significance of Herbert and Tolkien’s work to conversations about AI, technology, and domination. Alas, I am far too much a nerd about both series to limit my analysis to a single article.
So fortunately for you, you get two!
There is something about the whole spirit of Magnifica Humanitas that feels very Tolkienian. Perhaps it would be more accurate to remark that the literary spirit of J.R.R. Tolkien feels very Catholic.
I have written extensively about the political imagination of Tolkien and how it was informed by his devout Roman Catholicism, his Englishness, and his paradoxical and simultaneous attraction to the twin poles of anarchy and monarchy. He also believed in setting proper limits on the rapid forward progress of technology.
This latter conviction was derived not from a reactionary Luddism but from an understanding of technology as useful only insofar as it promotes human flourishing. Tolkien believed that technological progress should never be seen as an end unto itself, merely as a means to promoting a more humane and integrated society.
While we might be entranced by the wonders of technology as an imaginative exercise in futurism, the reality is that it might arrive with a bang but quickly becomes a whimper. There is something rather curious about the human disposition that it quickly normalizes and adapts itself to new technologies. We live amongst a garden of modern miracles, from PayPal to penicillin, but we hardly seem to notice them unless the break or go missing.
As the protagonist of Aldous Huxley’s novel in Eyeless in Gaza remarks: **
“Men don’t spend their time thanking God for cars; they only curse when the carburetor is choked.”
The best science fiction acknowledges this odd human tendency. Returning to Frank Herbert’s Dune, we see evidence of this. It is not incidental that, when the various factions of the Dune universe discover the life-extending and conscious-altering spice Melange, they primarily employ it to hurl the galactic equivalent of oil tankers through the known universe at faster-than-light speeds.
This would be like if Richard Nixon actually listened to Timothy Leary and–instead of Turning On, Tuning In, and Dropping Out–decided to start dosing the helmsmen of America’s nuclear submarine fleet with heroic doses of LSD so that they could see the communists through the walls.
Anyway…
Reclaiming Tolkien
I think what I loved most about Pius XIV’s encyclical is that it sought to deliberately reclaim Tolkien from the forces of evil for the forces of good. By good, I don’t really mean the Roman Catholic Church, what with its… somewhat fraught institutional history.
I mean that in a world where the legacy of J.R.R. Tolkien is constantly twisted and bastardized by tech bro failsons to create vast machines of inhumanity–gnostic archons lurking in sprawling digital cages–it is nice to see him invoked in defense of the humane.
Many Tolkien fans have been dismayed to see words like Palantir, Anduril, Mithril, Valar, and Erebor take on meanings more closely associated with defense tech and stock tickers than their literary associations.
I think of my friend Rawan Khatib, a Palestinian refugee who grew up in Lebanon, herself a huge Tolkien fan. Rawan guided me through her home in the Dahieh suburb of Beirut two years ago to proudly show me her complete set of The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and her Legolas action figure.
A few months later, Israel invaded Lebanon and bombed her neighborhood. Those bombs were guided by AI systems developed by companies run by self-described Tolkien superfans with names like ‘Palantir’ and ‘Anduril.’ Her neighborhood was destroyed and she was forced to evacuate. But she managed to rescue her The Lord of the Rings box set. And the Legolas action figure. She then proceeded to gather hundreds of displaced children in a church in Zahle, and provided blankets and warm clothing for them to survive the winter weather.
She spent her last birthday helping her relatives–knife attack victims of a horrific armed robbery–navigate the perilous Lebanese healthcare system and bring justice to their attackers.
Far be it from me to say what Tolkien would or would not have supported, but something tells me he would have seen much more heroism in this plucky Palestinian girl taking up the mantle to care for her community than in the fawning owners of companies like Rivendell One LLC, Lembas Capital, and (yes) Sauron Systems.
Perhaps he would have written a story about her, or woven her story into his broader myth.
Rawan the Brave. I want to hear more about Rawan! Charles would not have got very far on his documentary without Rawan.
The Palantir Is A Dangerous Tool
Like Saruman the White, men like Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Palmer Luckey, and J.D. Vance are enthralled by the Spirit of Isengard, that of “gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning.” They chew up men and growing things from afar with cold precision, betraying fidelity to mankind simply for the chance to rule over it.
Instead of using their power to oppose the Dark Lord, they have looked long into their Palantíri, succumbed to fear, and decided it would be wise to join with him.
They imagine themselves as the valiant defenders of the West, but they are far closer to the aging Lords of Gondor that Faramir, son of Gondor’s steward, described to the Hobbits Frodo and Sam:
“Death was ever present, because the Númenóreans still, as they had in their old kingdom, and so lost it, hungered after endless life unchanging. Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars.”1
As Musk, Thiel, and others sit in high, cold towers asking questions of the stars, the rest of us walk the living earth, which is perhaps even now in more peril than at any point in its history.
Climate change. Nuclear proliferation. Wars and rumors of wars. And now the threat of the thinking machines. It is into this terrifying matrix that Magnifica Humanitas speaks with great clarity, reminding us that it is not great power that keeps evil in check, but rather the ordinary deeds of everyday folk that keep the darkness at bay.
