Be a hobbit and have hope for a better day

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday July 21st, 2008

In another incarnation there was this Master Sergeant who gave me a lot of grief. I actually forget his name, but not his signature yell of disapproval, "Anningson, what is your major malfunction?" which he pronounced with embarrassing frequency.

Well. It has taken a couple of decades but I think I have an answer for him. My major malfunction is cynicism. Of course, I am not alone in this. I have begun to think that the one major problem plaguing modern civilization is in fact the amount of cynicism we all have towards everything.

It really does not matter whether we are talking about your job, the television reporter, waiter at a restaurant, government, or even your friends and family --- we are actually a society that expects the worst from everyone. Or at the very least, we are not surprised when people do stunningly foolish things, or the wrong things, or cheat us out of our all important cash.

It was not always this way. Scholars point out that the human race used to be hopelessly enthusiastic to the point of being naive about just how much progress is possible. As we developed through the dark ages and into the age of reason the best and brightest thought that there was no limit to what was possible. For the most part they were right. This was the time when we invented steam locomotives, and iron clad ships, airplanes and penicillin. For every problem we could manufacture a solution. At the same time Mozart wrote music and Rembrandt painted pictures. Leonardo DaVinci even had plans to build a helicopter. Anything was possible. So what happened?

It could be argued, first and foremost, that the First World War got in the way. Then the Depression hit. Both of these events came as a monumental shock to the average person. Soldiers went to their death in the trenches reading Nietzsche who told them that we are beginning the age of the "supermen" who would overcome every problem the world would throw at them. Stock brokers were plummeting to their death from their office towers wearing pins that said "Every Day in Every Way Things are Getting Better."

We lost hope. It did not get any better; there was another World War following the war to end all wars, there was the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cholera and flu epidemics, right up to Ethiopian famines, Rwanda and the Middle East. There are very few of us who believe it is all getting better and better.

Really, if we could get over this one little stumbling block, personally and as a society, everything would be different. Whenever you stop and think about life and wonder what your response should be, I encourage you to go read anything by J.R.R. Tolkien; or at the very least have a Lord of the Rings movie marathon.

Tolkien wrote during the period when optimism was falling apart. He wrote fantasy about Elves And trolls in which he very clearly pointed out what was wrong with humans. Consider this, the evil characters of his stories are dark and angry folk, living in huge citadels, who use assembly lines to create weapons of mass destruction. The heroes live in close relationship to nature, in small villages or individual farms. They are always using the things they find around them and believe that the journey is more important than the destination.

Tolkien's favourite hero is the hobbit; the smallest and simplest of the lot --- who concern themselves mostly with good food, good song, and good beer; and yet are fearless when it comes to doing the right thing. The reason they do the right thing is not for personal fortune or fame, but simply because it needs to get done. These are the folk who are also not overly concerned when things go horribly wrong. Even in the face of certain death they simply shrug, make up a new song to sing, and keep trudging along.

If you know the story at all you know that the quest is to take an evil ring, which has the power to control the world, a power no one should have, back to the volcano it was forged in and destroy it. The Hobbit who was chosen for this task is Frodo, and at one point in the story, after people have died, they have been lost, tortured, alone and afraid and death seems certain says, "Still we have to try. It's no worse than I expected. I never hoped to get across. I can't see any hope of it now. But I've still got to do the best I can."

In their own understanding the company of the ring is only doing the tiniest of good deeds in a world increasingly filled with cosmic evil. But they believe it is worth the effort. They are hopefully optimistic in the face of everything that should make them cynical.

It is a powerful thing. It could change everything. Imagine if we could put all of our cynicism aside even for just a little while. Long enough, say, to go out and vote believing it would make a difference; or to expect that the person who cut you off is just having a bad day and forgive them, or to believe that we have always solved global problems before so it is likely that someone will invent another form of fuelling our lives before the oil runs out.

I firmly believe that the problem with society is that we are all depressed, in one way or another. So this is my challenge for you today: have hope; be optimistic. Everything is going to be OK.