Discussion: The Downfall of Númenor – Part 2

Nonetheless for long it seemed to the Númenóreans that they prospered, and if they were not increased in happiness yet they grew more strong, and their rich men ever richer. For with the aid and counsel of Sauron they multiplied their possessions, and they devised engines, and they built ever greater ships.
—The Silmarillion: Akallabêth by J.R.R. Tolkien (1977)

Whenever people in that part of the world asked Patterson about the wonders of America, the possibilities and the hope of America, Patterson would say that it was a good and fine place but all the Americans were running it into the ground and that it would be a far better place if it had no Americans.
—The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2003)

This is the second part of an ongoing discussion about The Downfall of Númenor. The hope is to discover lessons that we can apply to our 21st century society, particularly in the United States of America. As with any in-depth discussion, context is critical so those who have not already done so are encouraged to the read the first part. Caveat lector: Grumpy bear may have sharp edges.

An empire doesn’t not collapse overnight. The decline of Númenor was a long time in coming, with Sauron doing everything within his power to bring about its doom. While Sauron was the mastermind and his agents executed his plan, it took the citizenry of Númenor, in their selfish indifference, to allow his plan to be carried out. In large enough numbers, apathetic humans are more dangerous than all of the Balrogs of Morgoth.

Ideas and manners had coalesced into old and cobwebbed conventions. The old stories were still being told, but their tellers seemed to lack confidence in them. Words seemed to have become detached from emotion and no longer flowed on the rhythm of passion. Even the great myths floated apart from their rituals.
—Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1977)

While Tolkien was far from a Luddite, his writing evinces a healthy skepticism of man’s obsession with technology. It is not that technology itself is an evil, more that it represents a temptation, which can easily lead men astray. He describes the Númenóreans as building “engines” and ever “greater ships”. The United States spent the 20th century building bigger and better versions of just about everything, but it is the miniaturization and turning inward of the 21st century which worries me most.

There is a temptation when reading The Lord of the Rings to compare the One Ring to a nuclear weapon. This comparison is not only simplistic but it fails to grasp the underlying theme of the narrative. As mentioned in part one, these kinds of reductive mappings are precisely why Tolkien had such a distaste for allegory. The One Ring is not a physical weapon, which can be expended in one terrible explosion. Looking at the narrative as a whole (including the appendices), The One Ring embodies something far more abstract. Like all great tragic symbols, it seems to manifest the deepest flaws of whoever wields it.

Hurtling at break-neck speed through the 21st century, we seem to have created a world filled with Rings of Power. Social media, the least social invention since the first man fled to the woods and hid in a cave. Smart phones, which give us a dopamine hit at some infernal cadence which ultimately turns us all into addicts. The One Ring seemed like such a fantastical extreme when I read the story as a child. How could something so powerful exist?

As an adult I have seen my country steadily corrupted, distracted by antagonistic technology, wallowing in the solipsism of our engorged egos, inexorably losing compassion for one another one piece of propaganda at a time. I realize that The One Ring was not any kind of exaggeration. The kind of apathy that allowed Sauron to bring about the destruction of Númenor is a thin piece of metal that each of us is holding in a tightly held fist, in our own pockets.

Nature’s answer to those who seek to control nature through programmable machines is to allow us to build systems whose nature is beyond programmable control.
—Analogia by George Dyson

Stories are more important than we realize. Stories are a conversation with ourselves throughout the centuries. If we listen carefully enough we can hear our past selves, warning us not to repeat their mistakes and encouraging us make a better world than the one they left. History has villains and heroes, to be sure, but what gives it the weight of inevitably is the sheer mass of people just being. Living their lives, every day in the best way they know how.

We’d all like to believe that we would have been a hero, had we been alive during the Nazi regime in Germany, or the Stalinist pogroms in Russia, or the Khmer under Pol Pot, or any one of the sadly too frequent atrocities which litter our history. It’s far more likely that we would fire off a quick tweet about thoughts and prayers and then go back to sleep. I am just as guilty of this inaction as anyone. Apathy is a cancer. It starts small, but replicates exponentially until we have convinced ourselves that there is nothing we can do.

Above, I included an image from Birmingham Alabama, in the Spring of 1963. A police officer has his knee on the neck of a black women. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail and his words speak far more eloquently on that time that I ever could. The story repeats itself. It’s easy to point at the racists in Birmingham as the villains, but segregation would never have existed without the apathy and indifference of the general populace.

We are all Númenóreans. We hear the deception spread by the agents of Sauron, and we can choose to let is pass. We see the great ships being built for a suicidal war against the Valar, and we can look away. We can speak polite nothings to each other, while injustice is wrought just outside our walls. Our great engines are no match for clever lies, told in the dark and instantly spread throughout the land.

I wish I’d a knowed more people. I would of loved ‘em all. If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more.
—Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

The story does not require that we all are heroes, merely that our conviction for good exceeds our desire for comfort. Compassion is meaningless without action. We cannot concede our collective power to the whims of egomaniacal despots. We owe it to ourselves and each other to preserve the worthwhile things in our world, the havens of beauty and art and mythic stories of bravery.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
—John Stuart Mill

Once again I’ve included a reading list. I encourage those who are curious about any of the topics discussed to read the words of these fine authors. A book is a journey into another world, one which leaves us forever changed.

Reading List
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Analogia: The Emergence of Technology Beyond Programmable Control by George Dyson
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien