Decades after its release in the 1950s, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings continues to captivate readers across the globe, with the Peter Jackson film adaptation in the early 2000s bringing the story to life for a new generation. The Lord of the Rings’ enduring popularity is in no small part a reflection of Tolkien’s deep Christian faith, with which his writing is suffused. Within the theological framework Tolkien utilized, an important, though oft-overlooked aspect of the trilogy is its application to contemporary geopolitical issues, particularly those stemming from modern technology. This is evident when we examine two of Tolkien’s fantastical creations – the palantiri and the orcs.
A palantir is a seeing stone – literally, “that which looks far away.” Those familiar with Jackson’s films will recall Pippin’s dramatic encounter with Saruman’s palantir, but in Tolkien’s original work, we learn more of their provenance and power. As Gandalf explains to Pippin, the high elf created the seven palantiri long ago. They are not inherently evil, but rather were used “by the men of old” to “see far off and to converse with one another.” At some point, “at least one Sauron must have obtained and mastered to his purposes,” so now he can see and dominate any users of the palantiri save one “with a will of adamant.” Even those with the strength to resist his direct control (such as Denethor, Steward of Gondor) can be deceived, for while “the Stones of Seeing do not lie,” Sauron can “choose what things shall be seen” or “cause them to mistake the meaning of what they see.”
The palantiri bear a remarkable resemblance to internet-enabled technologies, including smart phones and social media. Tolkien scholar Joseph Pearce has argued that Tolkien intended the stones to resemble television and its use for wartime propaganda. Extending this resemblance to modern technology seems only natural. (Clearly Peter Thiel thought so, as he named his data-mining company Palantir.) The internet and its technological offspring have exponentially amplified the communicative, but also deceptive, powers of television. Like the palantiri, the internet is not inherently bad, but the results of its use depend largely on the user. Even virtuous people are easily deceived by the internet’s false promise of limitless communication and knowledge, and they unknowingly make themselves visible to adversaries through data collection and hacking, stalking, etc.
Russia’s disinformation campaigns are a case in point of the ways that a hostile geopolitical power can use the internet for deception, an example of the unintended consequences the palantiri can release upon the world. China, too, has shown the will and ability to manipulate the palantir-like properties of the internet, perhaps most infamously through its control of TikTok. Such geopolitical concerns might seem a far-off threat, but we ignore them at our peril. Only by recognizing how the internet carries the power of a palantir can we hope to use it prudently and avoid or withstand the deceptions of our enemies.
A less obvious, but equally important, lesson in modern technology and geopolitics is found in the orcs of Isengard. Rapid advances in gene editing technology have made headlines recently. Together with advances in assisted reproductive technology, such as artificial wombs, the possibility of entire armies of humans created and gene-edited specifically to be warriors is no longer limited to the realms of science fiction and fantasy. The question is simply whether the most unscrupulous actors can be deterred from using technology for this purpose, and whether the US and other liberal democracies can resist the temptation to do so themselves. It is easy to think that our own country would never succumb to such a horrifying practice, but imagine a world in which our most powerful enemies are already creating genetically modified super-armies; the temptation to follow suit would surely be strong.
Tolkien’s treatment of Saruman’s orc army offers a potent antidote to such a temptation. The orcs were originally created “by the Dark Power of the North,” and “they cannot abide the Sun…” Noting that Saruman’s orc army can, in contrast, bear sunlight, the Ent Treebeard surmises that Saruman seems to “have blended the races of Orcs and Men…” or somehow turned men into orcs. To be clear, I am not suggesting that gene-edited humans are like these orcs. Every human being retains his or her human nature and dignity, regardless of the manner of conception and birth, or of medical intervention. In contrast, the Isengard orcs, while apparently crossed with or derived from men, are not human.
While there may be some morally legitimate uses for gene editing, nonetheless Tolkien speaks to the temptations of modern gene-editing by showing that breeding an entire army without respect for human dignity or human nature is inherently evil. Engineering humans to be instruments of destruction does not take their dignity from them, but it does deface the souls of all who participate in or condone such a project.
These are but two ways that The Lord of the Rings casts light on modern technology and geopolitics. Doubtless there are many more, including Manousha Dhiwaghar’s recent insights on the eye of Sauron and the modern surveillance state. Although it sounds contradictory to claim that realism can benefit from fantasy, reflecting on Tolkien’s masterpiece can help to clarify and hone the Christian realist approach to geopolitics. Through his other writings and commentary, Tolkien helps us understand why this is so and, I think, gives his blessing to this mode of interpretation.
Tolkien confirmed the Christian underpinning of his work when he wrote that “The Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally religious and Catholic work…” At the same time, he rejected allegory (in the sense that Tolkien scholar Joseph Pearce has termed formal or crude allegory), complaining that it “(resides)…in the purposed domination of the author.” Tolkien did not impose a single interpretation on his readers, but his dedication to realism in his fantasy allowed him to convey an essentially Christian worldview. He does this in part through “recovery.” In his essay “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien explains that one of the key elements of fantasy is “recovery,” or “the regaining of a clear view.” By presenting the world as other than we know it, fantasy allows us to perceive our own world more clearly. As once unimaginable technologies such as the internet and gene-editing become more commonplace, it may take their reflection in fantasy to help us recover a realistic vision of what these technologies truly are, and what is at stake.
Tolkien went even further in his assessment of fantasy’s potential to convey reality, though, claiming that Salvation History is the ultimate fairy-story – a fairy-story that is real in this, the primary world, and of which all man-made fairy-stories are a reflection. If this is so, it follows that the best fairy-stories will most clearly reflect the Gospel and all that Christianity implies. Tolkien could not have foreseen that his work would impart lessons on geopolitics and 21st century technologies; however, I don’t think he would be surprised. Tolkien gave his readers the freedom to discover the reality of the Gospel in his tales. Even as the realities of technology change, each generation anew will seek and find in The Lord of the Rings those realities that, rooted in Christ, are unchanging.