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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ (00:02.622)
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Graham McAleer, professor of philosophy at Loyola University, Maryland. I've had him on previously, Dr. Alexander Rosenthal -Pueble, about their book, Conservative Humanism and the Western Tradition, and we're gonna talk about Dr. McAleer's book today, Tolkien, Philosopher of War. Dr. McAleer, wonderful to have you today.
Graham McAleer (00:27.854)
Yeah, no, thanks. Thanks. Thrilled to be back. It was a great conversation last time.
PJ (00:33.054)
Dr. McAleer, why this book? And I'm really excited because I mean, I told you this beforehand. I really enjoyed getting into it. The textual analysis of Tolkien, plus all the political, the depth of political and philosophical thought. Normally with these kinds of books, you kind of have one is shallow and a pretext for the other. And I felt like you really dove deep into both. What made you kind of connect these two things?
Graham McAleer (01:01.518)
So a lot of the stuff that I write comes out of teaching. And there was a time, especially in sort of, after the release of the movies where college students were, they were so interested in Tolkien. So, but then, I'm a philosopher, so I had to come up with some sort of philosophical take on the books. So, I pulled that together. And so that's, teaching is the sort of the origin of the book.
PJ (01:05.726)
Mm.
PJ (01:22.91)
Ha ha ha ha!
Graham McAleer (01:31.726)
But then as I got into it I started to think like this is kind of weird why isn't there a book? Because there's lots of books on Tolkien and philosophy and I thought well why isn't there a book about Tolkien and the philosophy of war since the books are all about war. Now there is a book on his time in the First World War which is a kind of a biography and there is also a book on
his sort of continuity with some of the first world war war poets, but there wasn't a kind of philosophical treatment of what seems to be an absolutely core element of his work, the problem of war. So that's why I thought, you know, I could probably do, you know, contribute something to Tolkien studies, you know, because as you can imagine, Tolkien studies is vast. You know, the number of people who have written on it, think about it, enjoy it, it's just enormous. So.
PJ (02:23.678)
Yes.
Graham McAleer (02:30.702)
You know, it's like you've got to think a little bit about, okay, how can you like enter that and do something kind of valuable?
PJ (02:39.39)
Yeah, that's awesome. As a personal background, I was definitely a nerd growing up. I don't think anyone's surprised by that. And I'm young enough that I was going through school before the books came out. And I was reading Lord of the Rings and trying to get my classmates to read it. And they were like, that fantasy stuff, this is before nerd was cool. And so.
And as before Amazon, I'm trying to explain to my kids, they're like, I have nothing new to read, which is not true. We have 2 ,500 books, maybe 3 ,000 books in the house. I'm like, okay, you haven't read Tom Sawyer yet. And they're like, why would I want to read that? I try not to let my disappointment show too much on my face. So I read books over and over because getting new books was, you went to the bookstore, like the library. It was difficult. Not the same anyways.
Graham McAleer (03:09.23)
I'm glad.
Graham McAleer (03:18.574)
Thank you.
PJ (03:32.318)
And so I read Lord of the Rings five or six times, probably through middle school, and I read The Hobbit, and I know that this is probably heretical, but I read The Hobbit probably 12 to 15 times. I like The Hobbit better, which I know is... It probably says something about my maturity level. So when you talked about this topic, there's an immense personal interest for me, and I think that's part of the reason why Tolkien studies are so huge.
What made you focus on the, as you look at this, what made you focus on the war aspect of that? What called to you personally about that?
Graham McAleer (04:08.75)
I think I've always been quite interested in the, I mean, if not the problem of war, a lot of my earlier books were about the problem of homicide, especially in the philosophy of law. You know, what moral, legal, political grounds are there for us killing another human being? And
PJ (04:19.902)
Mmm.
Graham McAleer (04:35.342)
My original training was in medieval philosophy and Thomas Aquinas and Aquinas wrote a little treatise on the problem of killing. And so I kind of started working that terrain of looking into that. And then so the kind of the general political problem of the relationship between violence and rule of law or violence and order. Right. And that's probably, you know, I mean, that's totally mythic. Right.
So then there was a kind of a natural introduction to Tolkien, right? Who is clearly super interested in the problem of violence and order. So, you know, it was a very natural evolution to go into that. And then, as I say, you know, just finding material that students, you know, got sort of excited about, you know.
PJ (05:14.046)
Hmm.
PJ (05:27.23)
Yeah, of course. So I'm glad that you mentioned that you worked in Aquinas because you get very much into some of the technical definitions of Aquinas. And I wanted to ask you about those because some of what you mentioned, especially, I love this, obviously you're coming from the Catholic tradition. I'm a Protestant. I'm central Florida. I was screwed to begin with.
That's not true. I have some good friends who are Catholics down here. But it's definitely a cultural tendency. You talk about Tolkien. Somebody showed up. Yeah. So you talked to... yeah, yeah. We'll let it go.
Graham McAleer (06:06.702)
Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?
WHA -
Sorry, that was probably somebody dropping something off at the door.
PJ (06:29.47)
No. yeah. yeah. I mean, we've probably bought a good quarter of Bezos' super yacht, you know, with all our Amazon packages. So I totally get that. This is, I have made a mistake here looking at your, I need to do this. Okay. I'm trying to find your three theses in your book and the, for some reason it reformatted it and it's very painful.
PJ (07:01.15)
so you're an Aquinas scholar and I was going to kind of, I wanted to ask you about these kinds of questions. You talk about Tolkien, obviously a Catholic writer as well, Catholic thinker, and you talk about how in a lot of ways he's defending the analogy of being. Can you tell us one, what is the analogy of being? Because one, that's simple, of course, right? That's not contested ground at all what the analogy of being is.
And then two, sorry, couldn't resist a little sarcasm there. But two, what is Tolkien doing in Lord of the Rings and in his other works to defend the analogy of being wise that important to him and important in this discussion of war?
Graham McAleer (07:34.798)
you
Graham McAleer (07:47.31)
Right, so the analogy of being is indeed quite controversial, right, because it goes to how humans think about their relationship with God and how intimate of that relationship is or can be, what can one know about God, and the great religions kind of vary on this, and of course Protestantism and Catholicism really vary on this.
PJ (07:54.751)
Right, yes.
PJ (08:15.166)
Very much so, yes. Well, depending on your Protestant thinker, it's true. But which I appreciate though, because you, like when you talk about one of the more important Protestant systematic theologians, you mentioned Karl Barth, and Karl Barth, I mean of all the things to say, this is why I'm a Protestant, he says it's the analogy of being, right? Which is, for all the things you could say, that's pretty strong. So I appreciate you making that point.
Graham McAleer (08:16.334)
so... Yeah, right, that's right. No, that's absolutely correct, right?
Graham McAleer (08:29.07)
Right.
Graham McAleer (08:34.446)
Yeah, right.
Right, right, right, right. So I mean, the options are, there are three options, right? Either one really can know almost nothing about God. God is completely transcendent, completely mysterious. Or another option would be actually God is kind of in continuity with us. We can know all sorts about God.
God's not that mysterious. God's your best mate and all this kind of thing, right? There's nothing awesome or terrifying about God. He's just this really gentle loving soul that you're really familiar with and right. And then there's the sort of the analogy of being position, which is to try to go between these two extremes of extreme familiarity and extreme aloofness.
So the analogy of being kind of goes down that road and there's all sorts of theological implications and of course, political implications because this brings us to a classic problem and a real difference between Protestants and Catholics often, right? Problem mediation, right? So very famously, right? Some Protestants find the idea of, for example, Catholics going to confession and...
PJ (09:51.742)
Mm -hmm.
Graham McAleer (10:00.494)
receiving forgiveness via a conduit of the priest, just bizarre, right? Just crazy and bizarre, right? So I think Tolkien is really quite interested in this problem of mediation, this problem of hierarchies, right? So this is another thing, right? That I guess, especially I think in the American context, right? There's a kind of a flat structure, right? Because of the egalitarianism.
this idea no one's the boss of me, I'm an independent soul albeit under the divine, right? But there's no one kind of telling me what to do, et cetera. And the Catholic church is obviously the very opposite of this, right? It's a very strong sort of structure of obedience. And this links then to the sort of philosophy of, and morality of hierarchy. And I think you really see this in Tolkien.
It is a very hierarchical image, societal image that he offers, right? There are things like hobbits, which are kind of simple folk. And then you've got your Aragons of the world, right? These are remarkably sophisticated kings. And then even beyond them, there's even more sophisticated beings, your Lord Elrond's, Nevermind Ganon.
right? So I mean you have this and he's quite interesting of course right in the Silmarillion where you get his sort of I don't know what to call that like his cosmology or his metaphysics you know you have the hierarchy of the angels as well right these angels and these gods they all are in these kind of hierarchies and this of course is what makes Sauron such a tricky enemy because he is a kind of his status is sort of like Gandalf's status.
PJ (11:34.494)
Yeah.
Graham McAleer (11:52.59)
Right, he far exceeds like a Lord Elrond in power. And then of course, beyond Sauron, there's this Morgoth character, right? Who is this sort of the archangel of the entire, kind of a god, a god -like figure who is sort of second only to the actual god principle in Tolkien. So you just have all of these hierarchies, all of these mediating structures.
And so I wanted to kind of think about that in terms of this more metaphysical or theological idea of the analogy of being. I mean, it seemed to me there had to be some sort of connection between the Catholic idea of analogy and then this super hierarchical mediated political cosmology.
PJ (12:44.446)
And of course the attack on that would be kind of that Gnostic idea, this Gnosticism, which is what you pit Tolkien against. He's defending this idea of mediation against Gnosticism. Can you maybe stretch that out a little bit? I know you start with Dawson's idea of two enlightenments and then you think, you say, Tolkien isn't really buying into that. He's saying that enlightenment leads to Gnosticism. Can you give us a little bit of that intellectual history?
Graham McAleer (13:13.358)
Right, yeah, so I mean, I recall the last time we chatted, we talked about Vogel and right. And there's a lot of Vogel in this book as well, because I'm a big fan of Eric Vogel, this German American political theorist. And he wanted to argue that the great sort of competitor.
PJ (13:17.47)
Yes.
Graham McAleer (13:30.99)
with a theological vision of the world. The great competitor is Gnosticism. And he argues that it actually had its origins more or less around the time of Jesus. That it was a, not so much a, if you think about Christianity as God sort of taking on the world, becoming a human, really integrating with the world. Well, Gnosticism was the opposite movement, spiritual movement. It was that this world is radically benighted.
Humans need to be released from it. To be released from it, you will need some enormously powerful sage -like figure who brings a kind of an intellectual and who can draw us out of this world. So that can sometimes find itself for somebody like Voglen in sort of utopian movements. But of course in Tolkien, it's this problem of technology and Sauron.
the sage figure that Sauron is, right? Because Sauron, so again, in the Silmarillion, the Silmarillion is a super interesting book. It's a very strange book, very hard to read. But, you know, in that book, right, he comes as a sort of a sage figure to the Numenoreans, right? The Numenoreans are the forebearers of Aragon. And he starts to say to them, you know, you can live without this god character, this eru character. You don't need that guy.
and he's holding you back and we can do better than that. We can be more than he claimed. I know he's told you to obey him and not break the ban by going to the lands of the gods, but I say let's do that, right? So, you know, it really kind of fits in with this. On the one hand, you've got this idea of obedience, which seems to be this sort of an analogy of being idea. And then you've got the Gnostic idea of a release from
all restraints and Sauron, you know, he plays that card, the Numenoreans fall into it. And then of course, the God figure, you know, creates a kind of a micro apocalypse and wipes out the Numenoreans. You know, I mean, the Silmarillion is a super dark book, you know, where, you know, God just sort of...
Graham McAleer (15:53.294)
just eradicates this super sophisticated civilization that the civilization had kind of broken the demand of obedience, right?
PJ (16:04.03)
Almost like a retelling of the flood in some ways. Yeah
Graham McAleer (16:07.342)
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, and so this is it, right? I mean, Tolkien is channeling so many mythic elements, you know, and I think that this meat, it is kind of, I think that partly explains why he's so popular. Because I think people are quite interested in the myths, but they have very different kinds of ideas about what might be a good myth or the myths that attract them. And you can kind of bring all that to bear on his work, right? His work is a kind of a conduit for thinking about.
these enormously important sort of places of finding meaning, right, in these mythic structures, which again, to kind of go back to Voglen, right, Voglen thinks, you know, we can't live without myth, right? So if the enlightenment was this idea, we need to throw off the old and mythic origins of civilization, we need to enter into this pure reason and science and intellectuality.
Vogelin just thinks, yeah, that's gonna be really bad. That's gonna lead to carnage. That's terrible. And so for him, right, Gnosticism was a form of apocalypticism. And so he was interested, Vogelin, in tracking various apocalyptic political movements. And then that's part of the book, right? He's looking at the role of apocalypse inside of Tolkien.
PJ (17:29.79)
The origins of apocalypse are obviously in the revelation of Jesus Christ, right, like that, at least as it's used in the Western Greek tradition. But over time it's come to mean like this end of days, kind of this punishment side of things.
PJ (17:51.006)
Does any of that revelation side show up? Or is it, when you're saying apocalyptic, are you talking purely in that end of days, end of the world, Armageddon type of use?
Graham McAleer (18:04.462)
So this this is quite an interesting controversy in the Tolkien literature because Tolkien's son and editor Christopher Tolkien left out of the Silmarillion a part of the book that his father had written into it, which was actually an apocalypse in the fairly conventional sense, right? The end of days in when Tolkien originally wrote the Silmarillion included a 50
year long battle. At the end of that battle, the forces of evil, the Gnostic forces, will be destroyed. And then the world will kind of, things will be remade, right? So it's a kind of, kind of classic, classical tale, right? An apocalyptic classical tale, right? Of a carnage followed by a kind of a city of God kind of concept.
PJ (18:37.054)
wow.
Graham McAleer (19:03.726)
So what happens is that Christopher thought that his father had meant to remove that, left it in because the Silmarillion was unfinished at the time of Tolkien's death. And his son felt that there had been certain shifts or movements in his father's thinking that meant that that could no longer really be part of the story. But there's quite a lot of controversy about that, like, hmm.
PJ (19:15.902)
Right.
Graham McAleer (19:31.758)
That's odd. What grounds did the sun move? And here's the thing, right? Because Christopher Tolkien, the final version of the Silmarillion that is published, still includes elements. The character is still talking a little bit about this apocalypse, right? The actual final battle is removed. So it's a really interesting question, I think, right? This sort of, to what degree does it kind of an apocalypse?
PJ (19:32.862)
Yeah.
PJ (19:48.318)
Hmm.
Graham McAleer (20:01.518)
thinking figure in Tolkien.
PJ (20:08.446)
As we look at the book, you give it three theses. You talk about a metaphysical, political, and aesthetic. Can you talk us through those three theses? You have, and this is part of the reason I asked about the apocalyptic, right? You have the apocalyptic anxiety of Tolkien's lore is traceable to the Gnostic rejection of the analogy of being, a rejection typical of the philosophy of history that dominated his day.
And I think we've talked a little bit about that, but can you expand a little bit more on that metaphysical thesis and how it shows up in Lord of the Rings? Or in, sorry, in the world of Tolkien? Yeah.
Graham McAleer (20:41.646)
Yeah, so well, I mean, I mean, the if if if.
Graham McAleer (20:48.302)
If we think about, say, Catholicism as the political structure of the Middle Ages, then what modernity is about, right, modernity is sort of polemically related, right, to Christianity, certainly, and more specifically, perhaps, to Catholicism. So if the analogy of being is kind of basic to Catholic thinking, then you'd expect modernity to be sort of hostile.
And indeed, this is exactly what you find in the philosophies of history that came to dominate modernity, Marxism or even fascism, right? Even Hitler's sort of idea is this sort of like return to this much deeper level of myth pre -Christianity, right? It's a kind of a really profound turning back of the clock, right?
So you have these various or even even the famous book, right, by Francis Fukuyama, right, the end of history where liberalism, liberalism is the sort of final end state of human existence. Right. So you have these various philosophies of history that dominate 19th and 20th century philosophy and politics. And we can more or less say they're polemically opposed to the analogy, analogy of being.
And I think Tolkien has a real issue with that. Right. I think Tolkien is a, you know, a fairly standard issue. Catholic. And let me say this, right, because a lot of contemporary Catholics are not remotely like Tolkien. Tolkien, I think, would be regarded by most younger folk as really quite strange, right, in that he held to a very traditional
hierarchical, obediential Catholicism. So, you know, in 1965, the Catholic Church changed significantly and abandoned the Latin Mass, adopted the Mass in the vernacular, and Tolkien always kept saying it in Latin. He would go to the English Mass, he had no choice, because the Latin Mass simply stopped, more or less. But he would...
PJ (23:01.602)
Ha ha
Graham McAleer (23:10.51)
recite various things standing there in the pews, you know, so he was a real contrarian. So I think he set his face against not modernity in total, but the underlying philosophies of history of modernity that were opposed. And we can maybe just say that, right? They were trying to impose some kind of flat horizontal version of
political order versus his more sort of vertical hierarchical concept, something like that. And then that can bring us to the aesthetics, right? Because I spent quite a bit of time on modernism, modern Italian, especially Italian futurism. And this really started to fascinate me as I got more into it, because it seems so perfectly aligned to really infuriate Tolkien.
I think Tolkien was a man who could sometimes get quite angry actually. He could certainly, you could put his nose out a joint. And I think this Italian futurism stuff, which was very, actually I think a lot of people still quite like it, but it was really kind of technology driven, speed driven. It was very much a celebration of war. It really kind of arose. It was kind of an aesthetic movement about the machine.
PJ (24:10.654)
Ha ha ha ha.
Graham McAleer (24:35.822)
that arose at the time of the first World War. And I think, I do, so this is the aesthetic side of it. I think Tolkien has that in his sights. So for example, one of the, the peculiar thing about these Italian futurists is that, and then futurism became dominant, you know, Russian, French, English. In England, it had this weird title called vorticism, right? But that was kind of interesting itself, right? This vorticism and the idea of going down into a vortice.
the idea of a kind of confusion or a whirlpool or a vertigo or, you know, like, and Tolkien's world, right, is all about kind of stability, order, obedience, hierarchy. It's not about getting a kind of a vertigo kind of, hey, I'm losing my bearings here, right? That's not what it's about. But so the English version of futurism was called vorticism. And it was all the rage when Tolkien was a young.
a young man, and indeed subsequently. So I think a good example of this, right, that would kind of legitimate why I think this, these artists, they would write these manifestos, and one of the manifestos was, let's kill the moon, let's murder the moon. That was one of the manifestos. And the idea was you would remove the heavenly body.
And in its place, you put big spotlights, right? So even the way the world was to be illuminated was to be through artificial human technology. So the idea is, right, that we, to this day, right, we might look up at the heavenly bodies and be like, ooh, wow, we're in a kind of a cosmos. Like, this is kind of cool. We're kind of these small things and the world is bigger than us. Well, the futurists wanted to say, no, let's just put up into the sky.
things that are just us. Because then there's no obedience. It's just us represented everywhere we look, we just keep seeing ourselves. And so I think that that right. So that's the ultimate flat structure, right? Where there is nothing outside of human dynamism. And I think this partially explains, right, Tolkien's interest in the natural order God.
PJ (26:56.414)
Hmm.
Graham McAleer (27:02.734)
gardens, forests, trees, and this is where you get those thinkers who are quite interested in these sort of ecological, the ecological aspects of Tolkien, right? And I think that that's kind of valid, but I think it has much deeper aesthetic roots in this problem, this confrontation. So for me, Tolkien is an artist, a writer confronting another set of artists.
PJ (27:33.122)
And forgive me, maybe you mentioned this, do we have record of Tolkien talking about the futurists?
Graham McAleer (27:40.43)
So this is always a little bit the problem, right? With all Tolkien studies, I think, with all Tolkien studies, right? It's not always clear what his sources were, right? I mean, he's so capacious that it's very hard to know. So we do know some of the books he had in his libraries. We have certain...
PJ (27:42.782)
Okay. Yeah.
Graham McAleer (28:11.534)
things that he explicitly spoke about in his letters. He wrote only a few little essays beyond his books. I mean, his academic output was quite small.
But we have so we have various kinds of clues about
what his sort of interests were, things he liked, things he didn't like. So for example, we know he liked Japanese prints, right, because he had some in his home, right? So Japanese art was something that he quite liked. And again, I think if you think about Japanese art, right, you can see this interest in the natural order.
a certain kind of hierarchical kind of pastoralism, right? You do sort of like, you know, when you read like, you had some sort of Japanese art prints, you're like, yeah, that makes perfect sense, actually. So we have to pull together a little bit.
PJ (29:00.798)
Certainly hierarchical. Yeah.
Graham McAleer (29:19.47)
the
Who has sort of, who kind of annoyed him, right? So one thing he says, right, is that the world has been cheapened by multiplication. So he loved driving cars. He had a car, he enjoyed going out in the car, he would take the family on little Sunday trips in the car. And he said, but cars have been made really cheap by multiplication. And so you can see this, right? The craft world of the elves.
PJ (29:25.182)
Hahaha
Graham McAleer (29:52.11)
versus a more industrial multiplication idea. And the futurists were all about that multiplication idea, right? And it was an art that dominated the period that was completely driven by the idea of industry, the machine. So I don't think it's a stretch to be thinking about the
Futurists just because and that but I do this in the book right I say look here are some Artworks of theirs here are some of their manifestos and you'll see Talking definitely is against that sort of stuff, right? And then of course right in terms of the philosophy of war Right one thing I spend a bit of time on is there is this weird phenomenon in war where people wear trophies
So this is my sort of argument, right? That Tolkien thinks that war is ultimately an aesthetic problem. And if you think about the military garnering trophies to take back home, so you think about the ancient Romans, right? The great generals would go in a triumph into Rome and they would have the slaves that they'd captured. They would have all the various plunder that they had captured. They themselves would...
you know, have a laurel wreath or something like that, right? So this whole idea of the decoration, right? Or say the Aztecs, right? The Aztecs, kind of a sacrificial culture. So the warriors who would capture a person who would then be sacrificed, part of the trophy structure for the warrior was the warrior would wear the skin of the sacrificial victim.
And this actually affected how the Aztecs fought, right? They tended to fight as solitary warriors, otherwise the property relations would get confused. Hey, who captured that guy? Well, I captured that guy. I went up against him, mano a mano, and I captured him, therefore I get to wear his skin. That trophy is mine. So the idea of war...
PJ (31:56.03)
You're right, right.
Graham McAleer (32:09.678)
and trophies and then what's the aesthetics of the trophy, you know, that became a kind of a theme in the book. And so this is kind of why I want to say that there's a kind of aesthetics in Tolkien's account of war. And that's when I get into all the gardening stuff as well.
PJ (32:30.91)
Yes, as I'm listening, I think, would it be fair to say that there are kind of tight connections we can look through where Tolkien names names, or he's talking about very specific sorts of things, and then there's loose connections where it's like, he certainly would have been aware of futurism. And he was definitely writing against that sort of thing. And it's possible that there's a tight connection there that we don't have access to, where he very specifically was writing against them.
And we don't know that for sure, but it's very clear on a kind of cultural level. They were very popular. It's a... I may, if I had never said anything about Trump, it would still be appropriate to... Excuse me. To read anything I wrote during this time period or anything I say. You could definitely do an analysis based on what's happening with Trump at the time, because Trump is that big right now. And that seems to be kind of...
Graham McAleer (33:19.374)
Okay. Right.
PJ (33:28.734)
At least that loose connection is possible there. And the trophies one is a very tight connection. I mean, I love the, you're talking about the Aztecs and you're talking about the Romans, but Tolkien himself had to go to a parade, right? And he was not happy about it. This is where we like, am I remembering that correctly or?
Graham McAleer (33:31.502)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Graham McAleer (33:50.542)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is, so in the Second World War, he was part of the Home Guard, right? He was part of, essentially he was on a kind of a battery, an anti -aircraft battery, right? And so he was a kind of part of the older generation who would defend the homeland should the Nazis cross the English Channel kind of concept, right? And the end of the war,
There's going to be a parade to celebrate and he has to go and he writes this letter like, you know, I don't want to go to this thing, you know. And then he actually say something really profound, right? And maybe it's quite controversial. You know, he says, he gives his reasons why he doesn't want to go. I mean, on the one hand, right, you just think, look, he doesn't want to go, right? He's alone. Whatever. But then he says, you know, they, they say the war is over.
PJ (34:40.222)
Right, right, right.
PJ (34:46.814)
Yes.
Graham McAleer (34:47.374)
And they say we have won. But actually the war isn't over and nobody ever wins wars. So this is kind of then this really interesting sort of pessimism. But his pessimism isn't total, right? Because he did believe in these sort of glimpses of beauty, these glimpses of almost redemption, these glimpses of divine glory. He often talks about in his letters having visions, especially religious visions.
And he certainly strongly believed in the presence of angels, guardian angels in our lives and things like that. But I think this letter at the end of the Second World War is quite useful because it helps us understand why war figures right at the start of the Silmarillion. The Silmarillion is the background to the Lord of the Rings.
And even before creation is finished, this Melkor character has started a war against the forces of the good. And so, Tolkien bakes into this cosmology, this constant reversion to war. And so I think that explains his...
responds to this idea that he's got to go to this parade to mark the end of the war. And he's like, no, the war is going to go on in different ways. And then this maybe does get us into his sort of contemporary politics for him. You know, he was quite militantly against the British Empire, right? He thought that this was kind of going abroad, just involving the English in other people's wars or provoking the wars themselves.
No, so he was quite sort of against that, right? So he's a quite a, he's a quirky figure, right? Because on the one hand, he's a bit of an English nationalist, right? The Lord of the Rings was written for the English, right? But on the other hand, he was by no means an imperialist. So, you know, he's, he's quirky in that regard, right? And I think he thought that the Cold War, and he's quite hostile to America. Right? So he was like, maybe a kind of a...
PJ (37:05.262)
Well, I mean, so that's the egalitarian impulse that he's fighting against, right? Yeah, yeah.
Graham McAleer (37:10.766)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Well, yeah, that's right. So he calls it Americo cosmopolitanism. Right. That's what he calls it. And he and he's dead against that. Right. And he right. It's essentially the it's the kind of the Fukuyama thesis. Right. Everyone in the world will become essentially liberal, democratic, like the American state. And he's like, yeah, you know, so, you know, the the the Lord of the Rings, he'd actually hope. Well, I don't know if he'd hope he would.
PJ (37:24.158)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Graham McAleer (37:39.31)
played around with the idea of dedicating it to Queen Elizabeth II. Now he didn't in fact do that, but he had played around with that at least. So, you know, he was a sort of English monarchist, but not an imperialist. And he certainly was very hostile to some sort of cosmopolitanism. Some idea that everyone on the world would just like globalization would have made him like, you know, like that's
you know, that kind of universal technology, like he's going to be against this.
PJ (38:15.562)
This is part of the reason I kind of grinned as you're talking my next two questions were going to be about Where does this idea of never -ending war come from when he talks about the war will never end? What does he mean? And then he started talking about that and In addition, I was gonna ask about vanity and then you know, you started talking a little bit about the political thesis So I makes me happy. I feel like we're on the same track Can you talk a little bit more about?
what he means, I can see it in your mention of imperialism, but I think there's a metaphysical thing underwriting there that you referenced a little bit, but I'd love to hear more about this idea that the war never ends, which I think is very prescient on his part. World War I was the great war, the war to end all wars, and then it's like, World War II, well, crap. And then it's like, well, everything after that is...
They're police actions, you know? I mean, just anything to get away from the stigma and it just keeps happening. Can you talk about that? And I think obviously that'll lead into, in many ways, you kind of culminate with this aesthetic idea and that revolves around this idea of vanity and glory. And so I'd love to kind of get into that. But first, when he talks about the war that never ends, what is that metaphysically? What is this idea of this conflict that never ends?
Graham McAleer (39:41.39)
So I think it's going to be the and it's going to be really related to vanity, right? But I mean, if if Gnosticism is this sort of rival that is clearly deeply appealing to people, right? Because because he at one point he it towards the end of his life, he does an interview with the BBC and it's actually hilarious, right? Because there's some still photographs.
And, you know, he's got his pipe, right? He's also got a big jug of beer on the table next to him, right? I mean, you know, for me, he's such a character, such a character, right? Because you can imagine today, imagine that if, you know, you went to an interview and you were like, right, you know, a bottle of scotch and you're pounding the scotch while you're having the interview. I mean, no, right. So the the idea of the
PJ (40:17.182)
You
Graham McAleer (40:40.174)
sort of never ending war, right, is that the Gnosticism is never ending. And then why? Because in this interview, this BBC interview, he actually pulls from his pocket a newspaper clipping. This goes back to your earlier question. What, how can we know what he was interested in? What he knew about? Well, it's really quite difficult in some ways, right? But.
One thing we know is he read a lot of stuff in the newspapers. Daily he got three newspapers. And of course this is before the internet, et cetera. So you're either reading books or you're reading the newspaper. So he pulls from his pocket. And it's not quite clear if he's always just walking around with his news clipping. But the news, yeah, yeah, right, right. But the news clipping.
PJ (41:17.118)
Right, right.
PJ (41:31.582)
or he brought it for the interview. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Graham McAleer (41:36.526)
involves something said by, I think it's by Dubuvoir, it might be by Hannah Arendt, I'm just not blanking with it, but anyways, either by Hannah Arendt or Dubuvoir. And the clipping says that the human is always astonished to find out that they are mortal. And not just astonished, but kind of enraged. Like, what the heck? Like, come on, it's me, right?
PJ (42:01.086)
Hmm. Yeah.
Graham McAleer (42:05.646)
I can't be mortal, right? And so he pulls this out and he's talking about it, right? And I think that's the deep engine of Gnosticism. Gnosticism is that we humans, metaphysically, deserve the utmost. It's an outrage against us that we have to die. It's an insult to our dignity and so on.
right, because we're so fantastic, we're so special, right? And so the idea, right, that it's in Christianity, of course, right, the idea that we live under a punishment and that punishment is death is, of course, to the Gnostic, just an outrage, right? It's just offensive, right? And so this is what he's, this is what he's took with this little clip, this newspaper clipping is about how offensive we find this, right?
So that's why the Gnosticism and therefore the rebellion and the constant struggle against our condition, which often comes out in the problem of war, right? Especially because wars, maybe not always, but very often they're resource wars. And that's connected with the things we want to build.
ourselves right so we're in this whole world of struggling with our mortality as well as then this problem of glory right this brings us to vanity right so the deadly sin of vanity in moral theology has a few kind of key characteristics one is a love of novelty we love shiny new things right so this is how we're on iPhone 13 or whatever we're on right
PJ (43:55.39)
You
Graham McAleer (43:55.565)
Because it would be sort of embarrassing if somebody still had an iPhone 6, right? This would be kind of socially a bit embarrassing, right? So we are...
PJ (44:02.398)
Right, right, right. I mean, I'm an Android user and I catch flack for that all the time. No, it is funny. I refuse to feel bad about this, but people try. Yeah, they do.
Graham McAleer (44:13.582)
Right, right, right. So on the one hand, right, we're, we live in a, so commercial civilizations, right, are heavily structured by this problem of novelty. And then the other thing about vanity is not only does it find shiny new things marvelous, but it has an interest in putting others down. It has an interest in domination. So we, when we think about the vain person, right, someone who's always like looking at the mirror,
PJ (44:18.142)
Yeah? Yes.
Graham McAleer (44:43.246)
thinks they're very beautiful and thinks they're slaying it. Well, oftentimes what comes with that is like, I'm better than you, right? Like, there's a kind of an internal putting down of others. And then this is of course kind of Sauron's world. One ring, one ring to dominate all the other rings. And the ring of course is this shiny thing, but it's subtle, right?
So it's this shiny thing, but it's not the most glamorous ring one could imagine. But it's subtle because whatever it is about that ring, man, people love it. They love to see it, right? It seems to be a simple gold band or something like that, but there's something about it that's intensely alluring. Now, of course, that's then getting proximate to the great powerful one, right? And we think about that, right? So think about...
PJ (45:24.51)
Hmm.
Graham McAleer (45:40.59)
Think about your mates who are in LA or whatever and they see a celebrity. Then they just flood you with all these texts. You never guess who I just saw. my gosh, I might be going about forever, right? Talking about how they brush shoulders with Taylor Swift or whatever, right? So we're really interested in this phenomenon of glory. And with this idea of glory comes this problem of putting others down. And so there's a really cool, disturbing thing that Tolkien says in the Lord of the Rings, right?
He says that hobbits as slaves would make Sauron happier than hobbits free and happy. And you're like, wow, right? And so that's it, right? I mean, you know, one of the sort of, so the deadly sin of vanity, right, as it's talked about in moral theology is that one of the real darknesses of the human spirit is that.
of others really annoys us. And you know we bear grudges to those who come across as I don't know more favored than us or something like that right. So the biblical story right, it's great parable where Jesus talks about how he offers one worker a day's wage and then some other workers turn up but they only do like half the work and he offers them the same wage right.
And then there's some dude who turns up right just before they stop work and the owner of the vineyard offers the same wage. And then when everyone's getting their money, the one who worked for like 10 hours says, hey, how is it that I don't get more money than the guy who just turned up? And the parable then say something like, you know, why do you begrudge him? Are you not being given what I told you I would give you, a day's wage? Why then are you making beef about the guy who's...
You think he's getting something for nothing, right? So this is kind of, right, the reason that parable's in the Bible is because, well, humans were a bit this way, right? And Sauron is very much that way, right? Sauron really is the sort of archetype of the guy whose other people's happiness really ticks him off and he wants to bring him down.
PJ (48:02.878)
Would it be fair to say, I wanna make sure I'm tracking with you, another way of putting this is that this person who lacks peace, who has this kind of engine driving them will always struggle with someone who is content.
Graham McAleer (48:16.078)
Yeah, yeah, right.
PJ (48:17.374)
because they don't like, that's part of, there's a jealousy there because it does not feel good. And we think we're gonna satisfy it one way, which is through vanity. And then we look over and someone's like, how can you be satisfied? And that, of course what it makes us angry, right? Is that another way? I mean, it's very similar. I just wanna.
Graham McAleer (48:41.486)
Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, right, you've got sort of our psychology, right? So this vanity appeals to our sort of personal psychology. It's a kind of a...
problem of our personal morality, but it's also something that moves nations. Right? And so basically, right, what's happening in the Lord of the Rings is that this Sauron character is creating wars and the God figure essentially sends Gandalf down, you know, try and do something about it.
PJ (49:02.27)
Yes.
Graham McAleer (49:20.046)
And so Gandalf has to marshal all the forces that are feeling threatened and to try to hold it together, this sort of political alliance, to kind of push back against this enormously powerful character, who is sort of ontologically the same as Gandalf, right? I mean, this is quite important, right? It's a very fine balance and Gandalf is by no means assured that he could, you know, that he can absolutely take Sauron down.
And Gandalf's clear, right? He could not take the ring. If Gandalf were to take the ring, Sauron might be dethroned, but Sauron would have the last laugh.
PJ (49:51.582)
Right.
PJ (49:59.742)
That's the same thing for Galadriel. Yeah.
Graham McAleer (50:02.222)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right. They would be destroyed. So, you know, this Sauron character's no metaphysical chump, you know what I mean? He's got real status, this character, right? And he's intent on bringing others down.
PJ (50:21.022)
I actually would kind of that connecting thread between the personal psychology and kind of this hierarchy ontological side. I just talked about Augustine's disordered loves and it feels like you kind of have that. It's very important to him that our personal psychology orders our loves and that's where I think that the hierarchy meets with the psychology. Is that a fair way to look at it?
Graham McAleer (50:47.054)
Yeah, yeah, right. Because the and I think and I think that's such a great point, right? I mean, you could surely you could do another book on like Tolkien and Augustine, you know, you're like, you know, some really new Augustine could totally do that book. But the.
PJ (50:59.23)
Yeah, right. Well, yeah.
Graham McAleer (51:10.19)
So, if we just play with Augustine a little bit, right, this sort of this lust for domination that Augustine talks about, right? And so on the one hand, that's inside of each of us, but it also explains the Roman Empire, right? As Augustine says, right? The walls of Rome were stained in blood. And what blood? Fratricide, the blood of the brother, right? I mean, you really kind of, right? But that is sort of -
PJ (51:17.15)
Right.
PJ (51:34.142)
Hmm.
Graham McAleer (51:39.086)
how the whole Lord of the Rings Silmarillion gets gets going right you've got this God figure creates this Melkor character this Melkor character is so blessed and a kind of a divine fratricidal relationship kicks off and this is why I think there's a lot of emphasis on sibling relations in Tolkien
So you've got it with Boromir and Faromir. It's not fratricide in this, but there's a... And there's not a hostility exactly, right? But you call the Denethor strongly favors Boromir. But it turns out that Faromir, the more gentle one, is the actual genuine noble spirit. You've got the Mary Pippin thing, and they're not brothers exactly, but okay. You've got Frodo and Sam. You've got...
Gandalf Sauron, right? So you have all of the sort of fratricidal type repeating patterns and with a lot of sibling rivalry, right? It's who dominates, right?
PJ (52:54.718)
Yeah, yeah. That's probably something I learned more from books. My brother was nine years younger than me, so it was less. There was no competition, but. So, man, there's so much to talk about. A little bit out of the blue, and it's a callback to something you said earlier, but I know that Tolkien's background, he was a very serious philologist.
Graham McAleer (53:05.71)
Right, right, right, right, right.
Graham McAleer (53:23.982)
Right.
PJ (53:25.566)
And so when you talk about him reciting Latin, and if you don't have any thoughts on this, that's okay, this is completely out of the blue, but it's just so interesting. He's really, he's like, I'm going to use Latin. You know, he has this contrarian impulse. Do you see anything, even in the Lord of the Rings, he's developing languages and stuff like that. How does his love of languages and for him the importance of languages show up in kind of this philosophy of war? Does that interweave at all?
Graham McAleer (53:55.662)
yeah, I think so, because his particular focus in linguistics was in the aesthetics of language. Languages that he thought were beautiful.
and languages that aren't. So if you think about the Black Speech of Mordor, there's a great scene in the movies, but it's in the book as well, right? Where Gandalf actually uses the language of Mordor in Rivendell, and Elrond says, no one has ever spoken that tongue.
PJ (54:26.014)
Mmm.
Graham McAleer (54:26.126)
And they'll say, hey, if we mess this up, you'll all be speaking it, you know, before long. Right. But, you know, in the movie, it's really cool, right. Because the whole place starts to quake and the sky is dark and right. And that language is super abrasive. Right.
PJ (54:29.502)
Yeah.
PJ (54:43.07)
Yeah. Is there a little Hessian hating there? It feels a little bit.
Graham McAleer (54:48.014)
Yeah, you know, I mean, so it's, no, the thing is, it's also a bit like, we don't get a lot of the interiority of the orcs, right? That's really quite interesting. But there is this one moment where we meet this character, one of the captains called Shagrat, right? Even his name is, you know, really unpleasant sounding name, right? So there is this whole, I think, sort of aesthetics of
PJ (54:49.886)
Sorry.
PJ (54:58.878)
Right, right.
Graham McAleer (55:16.43)
the language and there's no doubt, right, so it's quite interesting the way that, I've always been interested in this, that Frodo is often identified as an elf friend because Frodo, unlike other hobbits,
PJ (55:29.598)
Hmm.
Graham McAleer (55:34.382)
obviously Bilbo, but he has a deep appreciation of the beauty of the elves and their language and their songs and their lore. And others pick up on this. Others pick up on Frodo sort of refinement. He's got a bit of an artistic sensibility about him or a bit of a kind of a high art sensibility about him. So I think that this is sort of question of language.
the aesthetics of language is super prevalent in the books and the way they're structured.
PJ (56:15.902)
Some of the way you talked about vanity and the ring of power reminded me of the way that Plato talks about the ring of Gaijies. Do you think, and forgive me, I know again, I took a kind of left turn here, but it was so fascinating to me. Do you think in some ways when Soran, excuse me, Tolkien, when Tolkien, I don't think he'd appreciate that comparison, no.
Graham McAleer (56:26.03)
Sure.
Graham McAleer (56:41.678)
Don't get him confused.
PJ (56:45.406)
When Tolkien's talking about the great temptation of the ring, there's a little bit of reference and illusion there that the real temptation is not invisibility from your crimes, but that you can pull them off and dominate. Do you think that there's some... Because it starts out with invisibility, right? Like, if you look at it, in a lot of ways, it's kind of the ring of Gaijis, and then he's like, no, no, the real temptation is not that you could get out without consequences because you actually want to be known, it's that you would be able to dominate.
Is that connection real?
Graham McAleer (57:14.83)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, look, I mean, I think this kind of goes back to something we were saying earlier, the really fascinating thing about Tolkien is that you can inject into Tolkien all these other references, right? There's another book somebody could do, Plato and all the other things, right? You know, we've mentioned Augustine and then of course, right, because you've got also like in Harry Potter, you've got the invisibility cloak and stuff like that.
PJ (57:32.158)
Yeah.
PJ (57:41.694)
Right.
Graham McAleer (57:43.918)
And so you this sort of, so it's a really important idea that.
Having spectators is one way that people are controlled. Right? So you just think about, you know, if you think no one's watching, and so this is why most crime happens at night, right? Because it's harder for people to see things that's going on, right? So, and think about conspiracies. Conspiracies happen behind closed doors, and this then maybe goes to your point about
politics is a big issue that a lot of us have, right? We're like, wait, who's pulling the levers of power here? I thought the commander -in -chief had to be really visible and we had to kind of know who this was and you know, so you get into all these issues, right? But yeah, the ring is, so on the one hand, right, there's a kind of invisibility issue, right? But Sauron, so Sauron's really quite interesting, right? Because by the time we meet him in the Lord of the Rings, he's disincarnated.
He's got to stay in that tower. He didn't actually have a body. But he's not hiding. He's right up there. He could not be making himself more visible in some ways. So yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally, totally. And so there's a really cool, I mean, I love it. There's a really cool bit in the book where Frodo is thinking about putting the ring on.
PJ (58:58.654)
Right. Yes.
PJ (59:05.886)
He's the ultimate spectator. Yeah.
Graham McAleer (59:20.526)
But as the ring's sort of going on, Sauron's eye is zooming in, finding Frodo, finding the ring, right? And then you get this sense that Frodo starts to hear a voice, take it off, you fool, take it off, you fool, right? And then all of a sudden, Sauron's gaze is kind of smacked away. And of course, that's Gandalf, right? That's Gandalf imposing his will.
on Frodo to say make sure he doesn't submit to the will of Sauron right such a cool image of this kind of fratricide between the two angels over this you know little character Frodo right so the I'm not sure where I was going with that precisely but
PJ (01:00:12.158)
Well, there's the invisibility side and then there's the spectating for control.
Graham McAleer (01:00:15.054)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. And so there's a good example.
PJ (01:00:20.158)
So then you have the good angel and the bad angel both spectating. Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Graham McAleer (01:00:23.662)
Right, right, right, right. Yeah, because here's the weird thing, right? On the one hand, there are things that Gandalf doesn't know. But on the other hand, he's definitely sort of pulling strings, right? I mean, he's not totally surprised when the Ents march off to war, right? Because he's kind of set that up in a way by sending Merry and Pippin, right? Who he thinks are going to be able to trigger the Ents.
So there is this and of course remember, think about Gandalf, right? He's always racing around. He's always on that white horse racing around between places, right? Because of course, as Klausjevitz says, on the battlefield, knowledge is everything, right? And the really fascinating thing is that Gandalf's constantly working to try to know things. So too is Sauron.
That's the, you know, that's the eyes updating everything. But the interesting thing is, and I think it is quite interesting why this is the case, but oddly enough, Sauron seems to not know anything about the hobbits.
Because he only finds out about the hobbits from
Graham McAleer (01:01:39.246)
Smeagol, right, from Gollum. Right, so only when Gollum's under torture that Gollum gives up the Shire, gives up Bilbo. And then all of a sudden Sauron's like, wait, you know, who are they? Like, what's going on there? Right. And this is really sort of fascinating part of the book, I think, right, that Sauron didn't know about them. And then, of course, as the war kicks into high gear,
He doesn't have enough time to find out about them. And so he can't understand their potencies, their potential. And that's the thing that Gandalf has, right? Because Saruman is always complaining to Gandalf, why do you hang out with those hobbits? A complete waste of space, those little creatures, right? But of course, what Gandalf's doing is he's like, nah, nah, there's something here. There's something about their resilience that I think is gonna come into play.
And it's that, Sauron doesn't know that. And that's where Sauron's big strategic mistake is, or his strategic surprise, right? So Klauschowicz has this thing, you know, in On War, he has this thing about how you want tactical surprises and you want strategic surprises. Now, strategic surprises are not easy to pull off, because usually enemies, they kind of know each other. They've been in consultations with each other. There's been diplomacy.
You know, they kind of know what's going on, right? But if you can pull off a strategic surprise, wow. And I think that that's what's going on in Lord of the Rings, right? This great strategic surprise that takes Sauron completely unawares is that these hobbits have a kind of a special power. They have a kind of a superpower. And that's something about their humility, their simplicity, their resilience.
their capacity to endure, right? Because the whole structure of the Lord of the Rings becomes this incredible endurance test where essentially basically what's happening is that Frodo under the weight of the ring is kind of getting ground down into the ground. And ultimately, you know, he can't move. He's just literally pinned to the ground, right? By the hostility of Sauron. And so Sam picks him up and carries him, you know?
PJ (01:03:59.422)
Yeah. Yeah.
Graham McAleer (01:04:01.134)
I mean, it's an awesome, awesome kind of trajectory about the question of resilience. And at one point in a letter Tolkien says that, he says, there was no moral failing in.
Graham McAleer (01:04:20.142)
in Frodo, you know, he just ran out of energy. He was just worn down and he needed to be helped across the finish line. And that's why Sam, as Tolkien says in one of the letters, Sam's the true hero. Cause he's the guy who finishes the race.
PJ (01:04:20.158)
Yeah.
PJ (01:04:38.974)
And I think this ties so beautifully into a lot of the major themes that you've drawn. I think one of the things that, one of the passages I always really appreciated about the hobbits is, they don't have any magic except the ordinary, everyday kind. They're very embodied. And so they're simple, good, very embodied. They love food. And it's kind of the, hobbits are the ultimate defense.
Graham McAleer (01:04:56.494)
All right.
PJ (01:05:07.742)
of mediation against this giant gnostic. I mean, can you think of anything more gnostic than a giant dis -incarnated eye? Right? Like, it's... You can see it in the very... And that's the strategic error is that the all -knowing, all -seeing eye, almost all -knowing, right? The all -seeing eye cannot understand simple embodied magic, simple goodness.
Graham McAleer (01:05:17.166)
Yeah, right. Right.
Graham McAleer (01:05:31.63)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I'd thematize that the way you just did. That's brilliant. You're right. Right. There's such a cool way of looking at the book. Right. You could think about like it's a struggle between the disincarnated and the incarnated. Right. Yeah. That's that's brilliant. Right. And that's another way of saying between sort of Jesus and the Gnostic. Right. Yeah.
PJ (01:05:35.486)
Yeah.
PJ (01:05:49.854)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and then of course, but for because it's mediation, because it's hierarchical, the hobbits very much need someone in between like Gandalf, right? So that's, it's not an egalitarian like, the little people, you know, like the little guy. It is the entirety of it.
Graham McAleer (01:06:01.998)
You know that's right. That's right.
Graham McAleer (01:06:10.734)
Yeah, right. And I think I think a such such an important point, right, that you would definitely be a mistake, I think, to think, Tolkien sort of about simple life. No, you know, he was a super refined guy, right? He knew all these languages. He knew all about history. He knew about geopolitics. Right. And although he was. Yeah, yeah, right.
PJ (01:06:35.486)
and he still drank a huge mug of beer, right? Like, yeah. Yeah.
Graham McAleer (01:06:38.67)
Right, even though he was kind of a homebody, right, I mean he loved Oxford and he didn't do a lot of world travel or anything like, you know, he basically went to France and moved to Switzerland, but I mean Ireland he went to, but basically he never really traveled, right? But he, so he's himself super sophisticated, and of course that's the role of the elves, right? The elves are there to, they,
are accessing a set of worldly goods that everyone should aspire to. And this is why Frodo is the elf friend and Frodo is himself a kind of a figure of mediation, right? Because he's taking and Bilbo, right? A hobbit that wrote a book, wow, right? I mean, that's like, remember, the other hobbits just think Bilbo's a weirdo, right? He's just bizarre.
PJ (01:07:33.534)
yeah, yeah.
Graham McAleer (01:07:35.95)
because he likes books and stuff like that. But you know, for talking, no, no, no, you really should like books.
PJ (01:07:40.318)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Dr. McAleer, I want to be respectful of your time. It's been an absolute joy, again, talking to you. Thank you so much for sharing. And is there anything, is there one thing you'd have our audience take away from our discussion today? Something to think on besides reading your book, besides rereading? This is great inspiration for me to reread The Lord of the Rings. It's been a hot minute. What is something that you would encourage people to think on as they go about their week?
Graham McAleer (01:08:08.302)
I mean, maybe something about Tolkien. Tolkien was criticized. Critics thought his writing was very one -dimensional. They thought it had no real human warmth. It was sort of too mythic, kind of black and white. But actually, one thing I'd say to anybody who wants to read The Lord of the Rings, there are some beautiful human...
portraits or portraits of persons both in their triumphs and in their sort of failings. Think about the character of Boromir, right? A noble character, but who yet dies, his spirit broken, broken by his own failure. So, you know, I find Tolkien's characters and even somebody like Gandalf, right? This sort of powerful angel character, you know, he's full of...
worries, anxieties, doubt, right? It's not, it's not simplistic, psychologically simplistic stuff at all. And so that's what I would maybe say to people if they wanted to get into a book that both had a, you know, a great like narrative arc, but also has some super hum -
introspective elements to the characters, then Lord of the Rings is a really good thing.
PJ (01:09:34.814)
Dr. Meckler, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you.
Graham McAleer (01:09:36.846)
Thanks PJ, I appreciate it. Thank you.