Bernatk - Heatherfield Citizen

The Hobbit - Smaug's Philosophy

Peter Jackson's Desolation of Smaug (2013) had a great impact on me for numerous reasons. When I was introduced to Tolkien's tale, I was in high school and I found a number of morals of the story, that I could revisit now. This time, however, I have come across a thing in Smaug's reasoning, that was brand new to me.

When Bilbo and Smaug have their conversation, the dragon speaks scornfully of Thorin's attempt to reconquer the mountain. He says, that the dwarf if misled, if he believes, that his ancestors' kingdom can be restored. The dragon also argues, that no one has right to Erebor but him.

We, the sons and daughters of modern democracies, which mostly promote both liberal and communitarian values, automatically think, that of course the Lonely Mountain rightfully belongs to Thorin. He is heir to the throne and the land was taken by force by a--so to speak--tyrant. The dwarf's reasoning seems legitimate and just. Smaug's evil and Thorin is virtuous, this is very clear.

But we must bring this conflict to further consideration to understand it in depth. What we actually see is how two philosophies confront each other. Smaug explains this almost explicitly to Bilbo. The dragon argues, that the dwarves have a narrative identity, which gives them ground to make their claims, on the contrary, Smaug says, he has just as much justification. His main argument is probably, that he is stronger, and justice exists only between equal parties but since they are inequal in strength, the more powerful does as he/she sees fit and the weaker obviously can't resist, ergo must undergo whatever the other decides. Smaug's second, maybe less conspicuous argument is, that his narrative identity also gives him ground to be ruler of Erebor: he conquered this land--probably by different means but with the same outcome--just as the race of the dwarves once did and now it belongs to him.

This predicament reminds me of the famous Melian Dialogue, which is in Thucydides' History. In that, the Athenian empire asked the island of Melos to surrender to them and pay tribute but they refused and appealed to Athen's sense of morals: mercy and the respect of neutrality. It is, of course, not an identical case, but what is very similar: the Athenians argued, that there's no true moral argument, that could be made in this case. They said: "For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretenses—either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us—and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Spartans, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must". Smaug reasoned very much like the Athenians did. He thought it foolish to bring up questions about a code of honor or virtue because none of them can be more morally approved, than the other, since every land comes to be ruled by being conquered. The dragon kept arguing, that he has the right to do as he does by possessing the power that he does.

Naturally, Thorin's claim still seems more justified. Our approval can be traced back to two possible roots, both sufficiently sublime to give us peace about our point of view.

The first possible explanation is, that Thorin aimed to cultivate the land and the neighbor peoples. He wanted to restore a state of prosperity to the benefit of all.

The second possibility is, that Thorin's allegiance was to the side of good or the side of light, as opposed to Smaug's, which was to Sauron and the side of darkness. In this case the dwarf king was trying to reach a divine goal: to overcome evil with good.

Of course both explanations have their shortcomings, mostly because of Thorin's weaknesses, that are often in the nature of morals, but all in all, he is something like a "good guy".

Smaug's reasoning in IR and political philosophy in general is called a realist approach. It's like Machiavelli's "power is power" way of thinking. I believe our disapproval of the dragon's line of argument shows our natural tendency to believe in more than just causality. We have a moral code implanted in our souls. We can, of course, fight it in favor of profit or the "greater good" or whatnot but it's undeniably there. This tendency is a beacon of hope for me. It gives me faith and not just in humanity or a set of ideals, no. It gives me hope, that overall there is good, which transcends our desperate, miserable and depressing world. It gives me hope, that there is God, in whom I can lay my trust.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Some things we do are as reasonable as dropping salt to our eyes.

this guy... still hilarious and still helps a lot when it comes down to survival

We are one tonight, and I'm singing it out! We are on tonight, And we are dreaming out loud...

Jon Foreman

There’s no happy ending with me.

Sherlock's Wisdom on Getting Married

I quite recently watched a Sherlock episode, titled: The Sign of Three. It was, in my sincere opinion, a relief after the surprisingly disappointing season premier--and I haven't watched the season finale, so please don't spoil that for me.

In this episode, besides of a number of complicated and smartly intertwined cases being solved by Sherlock, Dr. Watson gets married. Well, marriage is and has now been for a pretty good while a sensitive and controversial subject and no one blog entry could contain the expression of the complete set of my views on this topic, so I'll just reflect on one thing.

As Sherlock prepares for his awkward and unromantic best man speech, he points out a flaw in the institution of marriage. He says, that a wedding is not a big day, since two adults, who already live in the same household, will merely continue their relationship, without any addition or alternation in regards of form or content, just implementing a brief intermission consisting of a grand celebration and a short vacation.

Sherlock's argument against marriage is, however, not, that it should be done differently but that it shouldn't be done at all, having understood the little relevance it has. Of course we discard this argument as a trivial mistake. We feel this way because the essence of marriage and what it constitutes are unuttured but very valuable things.

The essence of marriage is problem #1. Out of all the definitions I've heard in my short life, the most easily acceptable and most up-to-date is this: a union between two willing adults, sanctified by the state, promoting romantic values. This is fairly true to popular contemporary views I believe.

On to problem #2: what does marriage constitute? To answer this question, we will now draw consequences about our answer to problem #1. Marriage essentially constitutes a state, in which the participants have their relationship recognized by the state and their pursue of romantic goals is hence justified.

I will now try to contradict my previous statements and conclusions by explaining faults I believe to have identified.

Fault #1: the state's sanctification is inadequate. I will demonstrate this by one argument but I believe even more exist. My example is this: take a christian couple. They get married and according to their beliefs their marriage was sanctified not solely by the state but also by God. If we define marriage as a thing getting its sanctification by the state we have disrespected and at least the way the given couple sees it, degraded their marriage. On the contrary, it would be problematic to change the definition in their favor because that would be misfit for the people not sharing christian faith.

Fault #2: in case marriage essentially promotes romantic values, such as romantic love, fidelity, companionship and such ones, it must mark the distinction between the state of promotion and the state, where these values were not promoted or not in the same manner. This means, that, for instance, before the marriage you have the liberty to break up the relationship you have, however, after you're married, you willingly give this up and thus will never have the freedom to get a divorce. Of course this seems extremely orthodox and hard to accept but given the definition above, the state of marriage does not allow you to violate the institution of it.

The list of problems and faults may be too short or inaccurate in contrast with others' views but I believe it's quite enough food for thought for now.

Both faults, listed above, originate from how we define the essence of marriage and what we want it to constitute. Now, that I have questioned and denied the modern day thinking about this topic, it may seem, that I agree with Sherlock and see marriage as an irrelevant contingency in life but that's not the case either. What I personally think about it is, that as long as we don't have a unanimous definition of marriage, we can't make court rulings or legislations defining its aims, since no matter how liberal we are, it will always take away the freedom of at least a few. And to give my view on what to make of the current problem, I will say, that marriage is valuable and it should continue to exist, however, to fill it with importance, contemporary thinking about it should indeed be changed.

Tarsem’s The Fall #2 - Immersion

In this series I’m exploring the reasons why Tarsem’s “The Fall” is my favorite movie.

Seeing a movie for the first time can be awfully important because as the viewer goes along with the story they build up their attitudes, which will hardly change later. Now this doesn’t apply in all cases, since many art films heavily rely on alienation, absurdity and obscurity, all these undermining the importance of the first time, as the case is often that the conception and solidification of attitudes and a deeper understanding of the experience come later. In fact we regularly process movies after the event, however this is usually more of an adjustment in the case of genre movies.

One feature that I find overarching The Fall is its generosity and it is present and foremost here, in the field of immersion, as well as in many other places. The Fall, being an independent film with an R rating, didn’t have very much to win by being as viewer-friendly as it ended up being. My argument is that this film is enjoyable and not at all puzzling at the first time viewing but it serves an artistic purpose and not popularity.

I found two interconnected parts of the film that helped it accomplish this feat.

#1: Placing us in Alexandria’s point of view. First off, a child seems a relatable protagonist, since everyone has been one. Her being in a hospital with a broken arm seems like nothing out of the ordinary; even if one has never had a broken bone, there’s nothing predominantly exotic about it.

#2: The narrative arc is gradual. To delay the exposure of the audience to the more powerful motifs of a film is a hard thing to do because it requires confidence in the script and performances and high payoff value expectation. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the story’s starting point is very familiar and seemingly simple. When we are shown the characters and their depths, the movie follows a classic formula: we start with more mundane details and progressively move toward the more dramatic. A juxtaposition: in today’s storytelling it’s more common to try to shock the viewer early on and thus induce an immediate and strong emotional response.

The Fall follows through with this approach of gradual expansion on every layer, e.g. Roy’s story starts out as an independent tale, which is very safe and light, then it becomes inseparable with their reality and concerns the darkest and hardest topics around the end. In this narrative mode the audience is granted safety from confusion, as there’s an obvious story on the top that is entertaining in itself. At the same time, however, the more profound layers of the film, through being concentrated in the later parts, can be encountered without the deception that sudden shocks and an ensuing emotional chaos would have caused. Thus I think the art in The Fall is exquisitely genuine and can be experienced as such, which is a very rare merit.