The Will of a Ring of Power

The spirit of growth for the sake of growth, incarnated within the Instrument of the Enemy

“Well the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter – leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines. As the servants of the Machines are becoming a privileged class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful. What's their next move?”

— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters Of J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings for many reasons. He wanted to create a “creation myth” for Anglo-Saxons; he wanted to finish what he started in The Hobbit; and he wanted to warn human-kind about the dangers of industrial civilization, having seen first-hand its horrors in the trenches of The Great War.

As I have previously written, Tolkien was “in tune” to such a degree with history and mythology that he ended up creating, perhaps inadvertently, a Great Allegory. In other words, in creating a myth about the past, he foretold the future. He drew fictional lines out of history, but these lines were so well-rooted in the past that they actually run now in parallel with the unfolding future.

If the Great Allegory Theory holds, then there ought to be some analogue to the Rings of Power in “real life”. There ought to be some instruments of the elite which build and sustain great things, but are ultimately tied to the Will of the Machines, the spirit of industrial growth for the sake of growth which enslaves their human operators.

What might these instruments look like? How and why might they work?

Tolkien describes the enemy as “a Will”

The plain was dark with heir marching companies, and as far as eyes could strain in the mirk there sprouted, like foul fungus-growth, all about the beleaguered city great camps of tents, black or somber red. Busy as ants hurrying orcs were digging, digging lines of deep trenches in a huge ring, just out of bowshot from the walls; and as the trenches were made each was filled with fire, though how it was kindled or fed, by art or devilry, none could see; and soon yet more companies of the enemy were swiftly setting up, each behind the cover of a trench, great engines for the casting of missiles.

The engines did not waste shot upon the indomitable wall. It was no brigand or orc-chieftain that ordered the assault upon the Lord of Mordor’s greatest foe. A power and mind of malice guided it. As soon as the great catapults were set, with many yells and the creaking of rope and winch they began to throw missiles marvelously high, and many of them by some secret art burst info flame as they came toppling down.

There are countless examples just like this — for the sake of brevity, I will stop with just this one — examples of Tolkien describing the enemy as “a will”, “a mind”, “a force”. It’s even how Sauron is described throughout the novel: a lidless eye, disembodied, never once seen in-the-flesh. He is himself just a Spirit throughout the novels. And when Frodo destroys the ring, a black cloud rises from the wreckage of Barad-Dur, but then a wind blows it away. This is all Sauron is, all of his power, all of his force and will: just a spirit. Immaterial. Black. A mind. An energy guiding industry towards dark coordinates.

Tolkien is telling us that this is the nature of evil in OUR world too. The spirit animating the machines, rewarding their servants with privileged status. It is the spirit of fungus-growth for the sake of growth, of bug-life “busy as ants”.

And Tolkien encapsulates it neatly in one simple literary device: a ring. An instrument of power, with a will, mind, spirit that is tied to the will of its spiritual master. It’s an entity of power, and it seeks growth for the sake of growth.

What might be its real-world analogue?

The Mass Organization: A Ring of Power

Man and wife exchange wedding rings, and, together, form a unit. Their union grows to be something greater than the sum of their parts. They are themselves a ring of two, an organization capable of pursuing goals they would otherwise not pursue independently. The union, the organization, has its own interests: advancing the name and blood of the families from which they come. The spirit which animates this union, to that purpose, is something above and beyond the individuals, greater. It is, in a way, a will of its own.

A man and his three friends might form a business. They incorporate an LLC, they put their names to paper, and a new legal entity forms. This union is greater than the sum of the parts, it has unique goals, and is capable of pursuing those goals in a way that the individuals would not be able to alone. This business, this ring of men and resources, has an interest in pursuing wealth and power. This spirit of material growth is the very nature of the LLC, its only nature.

The business grows and, in time, becomes a corporation. Any of the desires of the four founders now are basically irrelevant and subservient to the will of the corporation. Co-founder #1 wants to sell red trinkets? Well, the marketing division conducted a study that says blue will increase sales by 20%, and the finance division says that blue is 10% lower cost; the corporation has a legal obligation to maximize value for share-holders; the co-founder has no choice but to defer to the will of the ring. The spirit of growth compels the action. The co-founder is just along for the ride, now.

Bronze Age Pervert writes in Bronze Age Mindset, how dictators like Stalin or Mao don’t actually have power:

In many ways they were hostages to their own security services. Someone like Stalin was trapped in a stream of events where his freedom to operate existed only in the realm of murder, and murder alone, and any small step outside of this would mean his doom. These are ‘systems’ of control that call on the mobilization of the entire society; and the demands of this control far outweigh the capabilities of a single man. In a monarchy he could delegate these tasks to ministers and concern himself with other projects, but someone like Stalin or Mao can’t really do that. You must understand that all true greatness is parasitic on matter, for example the brain and nervous system are parasitic on the body: for anything good to happen the capacity of the hegemon must exceed the demands made on it for attention, management and control. The analogy here would be a body with lower organs so large and powerful, their demands for control so overwhelming, that the brain would be barely equal to the task and would remain entirely in their service, although ruling or tyrannizing over them. This is the kind of ‘modern dictator’ you know about. And these types of men that are drawn into this today are also quite different, they are the kind of ideological martinet you meet every day among those who are “public spirited” and into “public service.” It’s a very aggressive schoolmarm type. This is a lower kind of creature. What I’m talking about is entirely different from public service, but seeks to live like a parasite on the state and on the substance of its various factions, to pursue quite different interests and desires. They have interests alien to yours. In the modern world this condition isn’t approached by dictators of totalitarian states, but certain others I will describe soon. In fact the great totalitarian states you know about weren’t that different from our own, or the “liberal democracies”: we live in the same kind of state, only that it is more prosperous and the viciousness of the power is indirect and hidden. But it is no less monstrous. If anyone is free, it certainly isn’t anyone you see or know about. No Greek that I talk about, in any case, would have enjoyed being the gofer of the national security and industrial state and its thousands of demands.

Russell Brand examined mass bureaucracies on a recent Joe Rogan Podcast appearance: he pointed out that within the CIA, for example, no one person knows what’s going on. It’s so diffuse, there’s so many operations, there’s no one in charge or even in the know about the totality of its operations; there are only agents working toward what they perceive is the purpose of the organization. Or look at Yanis Varoufakis, who was a political leader in a Greek left-wing extremist party, who said “we’re not paying back all that debt”, and the EU called them in and said “yes you are, you don’t have the authority to make that position,” but Varoufakis realized that this person doesn’t actually have any power, they only have the power that the role affords them. The “system” which Varoufakis stood up to, here, is essentially functioning on its own, there’s no one individual who can actually make you pay, just as there’s no one person who can tell you what the CIA is doing. It’s like there’s a set of coordinates and there is a system which has a force behind it, an energy, guiding it towards the coordinates, towards a certain agenda: a financial agenda, an authoritarian agenda. The system is self-sustaining, self-advancing, it excludes the possibility of disruption, it selects only for people who serve its agenda, somehow. It functions like an algorithm. It can’t afford individualism. When peoples’ wills are expressed, the algorithm delegitimizes it; when there’s a popular uprising, the uprising itself is discredited (this uprising happened from the left in Latin America, it’s happening from the right in North America now, and the system stuffs it out either way).

Again, harken back to what Tolkien says: “As the servants of the Machines are becoming a privileged class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful. What's their next move?”

These mass organizations sprang from the Industrial Revolution, the Machines created systems that propagated more of their kind, and Mankind rushed into the managerial positions required to propagate them, because of the rich rewards of status and social capital that could be extracted from the system.

And the mass organizations have a will of their own. The same exact will, spirit, animating principle, of a Ring of Power: growth for the sake of growth, the spirit of cancer, the will of fungus-life, the bloating of a parasite until its host dies.

A Ring is a treacherous instrument, and it pulls all lesser rings into its dominion

Elrond described the forging of the Rings of Power in the Second Age: Elven-smiths were friends with Moria-dwarves, and Sauron ensnared them by their eagerness for knowledge. They received his aid happily, grew mighty in their crafts. The three Elven rings were not made for weapons of war or conquest; those who made them didn’t desire strength or domination or wealth, but understanding, making, healing, preserving power. “But all that has been wrought by those who wield the Three will turn to their undoing. It would be better if the Three had never been.” If the Ruling Ring is destroyed, Elrond suspects that the things they built will fade and be forgotten. But they can’t hope to ever actually use the One Ring, because it belongs to Sauron, its Will is tied to His. As soon as Sauron made his own ring to ensnare the others, one elf, Celebrimor, became aware of him, and thus the great wars began.

Hear me out: what if very particular kinds of Rings of Power (Mass Organizations) were created during the Industrial Revolution. What if these Rings were created, ostensibly, to advance construction, medicine, and culture? But what if it became exposed, at some point, that these Rings were actually tied to the will of another Ring, a higher Ring, a Ring whose spirit pointed at nothing short of global domination and the propagation of fungus-life? What if certain free races caught onto this, and decided to go to war against the Servants of the Machines, to try to destroy this great Ring? What if these free nations came to know that the things they built with their Rings would necessarily have to fade, but also came to accept this fate by their understanding that growth for the sake of growth is unsustainable and only ever leads to subjugation by the Machines, by the spirit of Industry?

Now, I’m not going to pretend to know the history of every Bank in the world, but I’m pretty sure that there is one Mass Organization which, by its nature, eats all local and regional Organizations, and rolls all power up ultimately into the Global Government. There is one kind of Organization which promises to enable construction, medicine, and development of populations, but ultimately delivers the opposite. There is one kind of Organization most responsible for propagating the global Ponzi-scheme of debt, the spirit of growth-for-the-sake-of-growth.

There is one particular Instrument of Power which is the One Ring of our own age: the Big Bank.

The Big Bank is an Instrument which encapsulates the Spirit of Industry, the Will of the Hegemon, the Interest of Global Domination. It promises gold, but it only delivers dust. It is deceptive, treacherous, and pulls all into itself. It is unsustainability, incarnate. Usury itself is slavery, and its debt bubbles are the engine that fuels fake and destructive industrial civilization. The Big Bank is the primary instrument of growth for the sake of growth.

If industrial civilization must grow limitlessly, then it must enslave us all in the end. Could it live without usury? I think not. I think, instead, the Big Bank in its modern form is the very thing that grants this spirit its material power. I think, if we could destroy the global ring of big banks, somehow, that this clown world would finally dissolve and blow away on a wind, that the bugs would scatter into the hills, and that, though many of the things we’ve built because of the banks would necessarily have to fade away, we would find our way back to a sustainable world that can prioritize higher life over fungus-life once more. Yes, I think this is the key. As Gandalf and Elrond advised the council of free races, we must understand that we cannot take control of the leviathan for our own purposes, because its very nature, its will, its spirit, can only ever be used in service of growth for the sake of growth. And so we must adopt a fool’s hope that the instrument which grants leviathan its material power can somehow be destroyed.

How?

Well, if the Great Allegory is to be fulfilled, then it will take a fellowship of men dedicated to descending into the heart of the beast, in secrecy. Descending into darkness while they keep their eyes on the star of Elendil… Traversing the shadow of Mordor while their spirit fixes itself with a great focus and obsession on that light of the Silmarils… not forgetting its call and the eternal task it whispers into those with ears to listen.

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The true equation is ‘democracy’ equals government by world financiers. The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or what is most important of all, the banker of the backer. Enthroned above all, in a manner without parallel in all past, is the veiled prophet of finance, swaying all men living by a sort of magic, and delivering oracles in a language not understood of the people.

— J.R.R. Tolkien, Candour Magazine, 13 July 1956