h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

said individual caught that and is in total agreement.
sorry for reading the first line and jumping to conclusions.
oops. my bad

GiGaBaNE

said individual was taking on too much at the time.
well not really, but i did lose my objectivity(however its spelled)
i dont suppose many people think well when flustered.

as ~jwf~ mentioned, it's important to step back and take a breath sometimes.

>> i dont suppose many people think well when flustered. <<

That of course is the method of this lynch-mob madness. It's basically a tribal hunting strategy, also used by wolves and other pack hunters. Teenagers call it swarming.

The quarry (in this case you Master GigGa) is surrounded by snapping jaws and scraping claws until you become tired and disoriented. Then the sheer weight of numbers wears the quarry down.

It's very much like the savage behaviour described in The Lord of the Flies. Sadly, it actually happens around here every now and then. You just happened to get cast as the stranger in this strange land.


~jwf~

i honestly do understand.
but all my statment about going quiet is true enough.
i leaked a little bit of my idea into the forum,a nd was to be honest, totaly overwhealmed by the response(volume) i got.
i could spend years in here slowly gleaming facts about the universe, but that is too slow.
if i use this method i will become obsesses, and spend too much time in here like some others might be doing.
allthough very noble, i feel that if there is a faster way to the top, i must find it.
and yes i do define my life with an end purpose.
the abolition of all human ailments.
my particular skew on things might not be to the liking of many.
but the goal itself is as noble a cause in this life as any other, if not better than most(especialy negative goals)

as to a pesky pack.
well they obviously have no idea of the stamina one can atain, actually living in the realm of my head. hehe.
'You may have drawn blood, BUT DID YOU DRAG ME TO THE GROUND?'
no doubt they will try again today, when they get out of bed that is.
no one has ever been tougher on me than me.
and when i know what you know(believe me that day will come) i will be harder on my ideas than you guys were.

Because a number of people have acknowledged that it's not just topic drift here, but that it is getting hard to have an on-topic conversation at all, I am suggesting that we finish with the GGB focus here now.

On the off chance that people might actually do this I've replied to ~jwf~'s post 685 (above), in another thread:

F19585?thread=453181&post=5616985#p5616985

Another orc question. Once the ring and Sauron are destroyed do the orcs lose their raison d'être and stop multiplying? In the book I think it just mentions that they are either killed or scattered - can't remember any mention of them totally disappearing.


az

<>


*looks up at the last three postings*

I think he might have meant us, girls.


az

I thought he might have been referring to the badger(ette)s

az there was a quote a few pages back about the orcs either killing themselves or hiding in the deepest, darkest holes when the Ring was destroyed.

kea,

I must have - somehow! - missed that one. I wonder how?


az

yeah some good stuff has been getting lost

Umm....one of those.

Dont forget that tolken was a schollar of european lore and tales upon which this was based on. Its more disturbing that religion is a main base than race. remember the following points:

1) the lore in lord of the rings is based on stories about a thousand years old. how many illistrations in the books from 1000 years ago dont have white people in them?

2) most of the story is set in european type decidious woodland areas. the natives to these areas are white becuase the sun exposure is not sufficient to create excess menalin for protection. as the story is set in ancient times where cross continetal travel is possible, there would not be reason for any dark skined or black people in the story.

3) at the time that tolken has set his story, lets say a period of 1000 years ago? what was the biggest war of the time? Oh yes....the crusades? where the 'evil' men were turban wearing saracens, who had occupied the holy land and were seen as evil, and the 'men from the west' were the english under richard the lionheart? If he had the vikings in his mindset when writing why not assume this was part of his vision too?

At the end of the day, we cant have a 'token' black man in everything. Oh dear, that statment is probably classed as racist too. maybe you want some guy to be cast into lord of the rings in a tolken era wheelchair too?

I cant wait for the time when a movie comes out thats just about pre-europeanised african tribes, and a token white man is cast to play the village chief....but then things never happen that way round.

LOOK at the end of the day stop moaning about something that obviously isnt out to cause offence. its obvious why it was like it was and there is no reason to moan just becuase of the lack of races etc. sounds like you have a bit of a complex my friend.

take this post as you will.

Thanks CG. (you seem to have missed a few hundred expansions and clarifications of the original question, however)

Most of your points are absolutely correct in general sentiment (although at times off in detail). I was not, however, moaning about Tolkien's work in isolation (I wasn't moanning, actually). And I was not being offended by Tolkien, as should have been clear from the initial post. The disturbance I felt (and still feel) has to do with the probability that the idea of The Lord of the Rings will soon become the centre of quasi-religious attention in popular culture. This disturbance is, as I said elsewhere, disappointment and concern that Tolkien will be worshipped by hoards who have only a superficial and twisted knowledge of his work and that this worship will be used as a tool by those white supremecist groups who already have been trying to use his works for recruiting.

Again, your points are fairly accurate, but I'm afraid you are rather stating the obvious and actually missing the concern that I was expressing and, I might add, that a number of people on this thread have also been expressing.

Sorry, but nowhere have I asked that Tolkien's works be anything but what they are. What I have, however, been hoping is that Tolkien's works would actually be understood in something more than a superficial way.


Some points of detail:

1) the "lore" is far older than 1000 years

2) funny, I would look at it as the daily sun exposure in the temperate regions being low enough that melanin production would have to be reduced in order for the body to produce enough Vitamin D. Most likely the Northerners lost their dark skins rather than the other way around.

Again, I never suggested, implied, or imagined a "token" anything. What I did ask is whether, after a careful reading of the books and after watching the movie, people felt any disturbance. You seem to fall into the group that sees the problematic elements but are not troubled by them. That's fine.

>>1) the lore in lord of the rings is based on stories about a thousand years old. how many illistrations in the books from 1000 years ago dont have white people in them?<<

All the ones being written in Arabia, India, China, etc., etc.

>>2) most of the story is set in european type decidious woodland areas. the natives to these areas are white becuase the sun exposure is not sufficient to create excess menalin for protection. as the story is set in ancient times where cross continetal travel is possible, there would not be reason for any dark skined or black people in the story.<<

Er ... elves? Orcs? Dragons?

>>3) at the time that tolken has set his story, lets say a period of 1000 years ago? what was the biggest war of the time? Oh yes....the crusades? where the 'evil' men were turban wearing saracens, who had occupied the holy land and were seen as evil, and the 'men from the west' were the english under richard the lionheart? If he had the vikings in his mindset when writing why not assume this was part of his vision too?<<

No, let's not say a period of 1000 years ago: let's try and be specific. As you note Tolkien was a scholar and presumably knew enough medieval history not to equate Islamic culture at the time of the Crusades with 'evil'. After all, Richard the Lionheart didn't, when exposed by his new-found friend Saladin to what 'civilisation' actually meant.

>>At the end of the day, we cant have a 'token' black man in everything. Oh dear, that statment is probably classed as racist too. maybe you want some guy to be cast into lord of the rings in a tolken era wheelchair too?<<

No one is talking about the under-representation of black people in LOTR - what is being discussed here is Tolkien's use, conscious or not, of certain ideas about race which do not derive from 'about 1000 years ago', but quite specifically from the 1940s and 50s.

>>I cant wait for the time when a movie comes out thats just about pre-europeanised african tribes, and a token white man is cast to play the village chief....but then things never happen that way round.<<

'Things' never happen either way round according to this schema. Might I recommend Chinua Achebe's novel 'Things Fall Apart'? Firstly, to see how forcefully the white experience has been remorselessly privileged in so-called 'African Fiction' of the 20th century; and secondly, so that you can form some idea of quite how complex and troubling the notion of 'pre-europeanised african tribes' is (a history and a culture which is very difficult if not impossible to reconstruct at this point in time, for reasons no one in Europe should feel particularly proud - suffice it to say that these things weren't simply lost in a fit of carelessness)

Oh, and, CG:

What, exactly, do you mean by "one of those"?

Let's see, in the post to which you were responding, the only description of myself I gave was that I was a 'scholar of european lore' as you put it, that I have a deep respect and admiration for Tolkien's work and that he has been a profound influence on me.

So, what, do you mean by "one of those"? Do you mean "Umm... a Medievalist with exactly the same scholarly background as Tolkien who has read every word the guy has written and probably has a pretty good understanding of both where Tolkien was coming from and where he was headed"?

Or do you mean something else?

Do you mean "umm...one of those people who actually knows whereof they speak so I better just post a bunch of superficial irrellevancies while trying to be vaguely insulting in an obscurely reactionary way"?

Sounds like you, in fact, do have a complex. Why would you react in such a personal way, all the time putting words in my mouth, to a question about a literary work and the film adaptation of that work?

Perhaps you should read a little more of the discussion before you start trying to insult a person who asks a considered question about a subject with which you obviously have some knee-jerk issues.