Utopian Shire

[The Might]

So as to celebrate my recent return to the BW I decided to start an interesting thread here. The idea for the topic came to me while reading an essay on utopian societies, which immediately made me think of Hobbits.

Here is an excerpt of the essay:

The only real ideal that humanity should have is simply this: “Love your neighbor as your self”. Humanity’s known this maxim since time immemorial; since the first tribe discovered that the only way they could indeed stay together was through cooperation! And actually that’s all it really is – cooperation. Why is cooperation really that hard to achieve?

Well, what do we have to have in order to create cooperation? Firstly, cooperation is between people. Secondly, it’s between people who trust each other. “There be the rub”, as Shakespeare would say!

Trust is indeed a problem; we see the consequences of its loss all around us, everywhere we turn, in this, so called, “enlightened” society of ours. You see, when we say we trust someone, we expect that they in turn trust us, and visa versa; each person in this relationship expects something in return… namely,… you got it, … trust! But that old maxim that we spouted above, “Love your neighbor as yourself”, doesn’t say that you should love him because he loves you, or that you should expect anything at all in return! It just says “Love him or her” period! Of course “loving”, him or her, assumes giving, him or her, your trust and cooperation.

I find it beautifully written and with a lot of truth in it.

It was by reading this that I realised what makes Hobbits so special really - it is their trust and their desire to cooperate.

Now, of course there are examples against this, Hobbits fearful or mistrustful of others, but really deep down, in need they would all stand united against a common foe - take Lobelia's example of attacking a Ruffian with an umbrella.

All in all, Hobbits, were happy to help and to work together for the common good, and although they of course all had their personal interests and wanted to get something for themselves, they didn't neglect the needs of others.

Of course an example the true utopian Shire is the coming of Saruman and the ruffians - it showed that under threat Hobbits would side with aggressors and neglect their own kin, an argument this could of course be their actual lack of knowledge as far as attacks from the outside are concerned.

Ok, that's about all I had to say in the introductory post, what I wish to add at the end is that this thread is supposed to be about a utopian Shire in general and about the abstract values that helped create it not about what utopian system is best or something else.

Have fun posting, I'm looking forward to reading your replies!

[Bêthberry]

I think this aspect of utopia could be a good reason why Gandalf would never beat a hobbit.

[Rumil]

Hi Might,

the problem for me with the utopian vision of the Shire is that the Red Book etc were written by gentle-hobbits as you might say. Bilbo and Frodo were independently wealthy, Pippin and Merry were scions of the most poweful families of the Shire, only Sam really represents the ordinary hobbit.

Imagine a Victorian gentleman who lives in the countryside, he might describe his life in similar terms to those used in the Shire, all about family, community, good fellowship etc. Naturally he'd know there were worse places, the coal-mining towns, bleak mills and city rookeries, but he might overlook the poverty of the rural folk.

I think that any agricultural society requires the majority of people to work on the land, which was hard back-breaking work before machinery was available. Nowadays we see one guy with a combine harvester doing what would have taken hundreds of people to do in the old days. If the harvest failed people would starve, simple as that, (like the Fell Winter in the Shire), unless you had money or goods put by to see you through the hard times, only possible if you earned well! Hobbits seem good at helping each other out, but I doubt eveyone was as generous as the Bagginses (eg Sackville-Bagginses!)

The Gaffer comes to mind with his waistcoat, sack of spuds and a new spade. He's more of a typical hobbit, with 'local' ways and mistrust of outsiders, than Bilbo!

The 'outsider' hobbits always fascinated me. Were they adventurers or outcasts, perhaps a little of both!

So not utopia, just a sleepy rural land with, to be fair, more of the good things and fewer of the bad things, than a typical rural human community before the machine age.

[Morthoron]

Well, obviously the Shire is Tolkien's utopian vision of the England that was, the countryside of his youth -- agrarian and nonindustrial -- before the advent of Sandyman's dark, satanic mill. Sandyman's mill and the noveau-riche Sackville-Baggins' modern incursions presaged the more overt industrialism and totalitarianism of Sharkey and his Ruffians: clear-cutting forests, slipshod shanties in place of traditional Hobbitish farm and disintegration of the nuclear family (or at least the bonds within the extended Hobbit families).

Samwise 'Appleseed' Gamgee and his coterie of martial hobbits (Pippin and Merry) returned conservatism, restored the old folkways and reforested the scarred hills during a renaissance that I am sure was Tolkien's heartfelt and vengeful hope for the overthrow of industrialized England.

[Lalwendë]

What's that saying about the perfect society always being the one that was fifty years ago? That's the impression I get from what Tolkien was trying to paint for The Shire - it was the rural past of England that was just, but only just, out of his reach.

Of course we can find plenty of reasons why the Real World at that time might not have been so perfect, and we could probably find some reasons why The Shire was not so perfect. I mean, why did Bilbo have to teach Sam his 'letters'? Was there no schooling for working class Hobbit children? If I was to write a Marxist analysis of Tolkien's work then that would certainly figure highly...

But anyway, yes, The Shire approaches something Utopian in that there is a general air of happiness about the place and we do not see any obvious examples of suffering or oppression. There is no need for much 'policing' which suggests a lack of crime, and the classes (Sackville-Bagginses aside) seem to rub up nicely, certainly the upper crust Merry and Pippin treat Sam very well. Of course, I could just see The Shire that way as the world I lived in as a small child wasn't too different from The Shire, being rural and cosy and populated by Gaffer types.

There are plenty of readings of The Shire as being a bit 'anarcho-syndicalist' in that there are few 'rules' and little Authority yet people seem to work co-operatively and happily together. There have also been parallels drawn between The Shire (and Tolkien in general) with William Morris and his own idealised views of how the world ought to be. And still more, people have 'read' it as symbolising England in the age of Empire when people 'knew their place' and life was bountiful.

I suppose you can almost read whatever 'sort' of Utopia into it that you wish, really...and the biggest tragedy about what Saruman does is that he destroys this idyll and even though it can be 'repaired', the memory of it won't ever go, and it's very much Innocence Lost.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

What's that saying about the perfect society always being the one that was fifty years ago? That's the impression I get from what Tolkien was trying to paint for The Shire - it was the rural past of England that was just, but only just, out of his reach.

The basic trait of any conservatism is this: a longing for a past that never actually was but which they think there should have been. So conservatism is utopianism after all?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

The basic trait of any conservatism is this: a longing for a past that never actually was but which they think there should have been. So conservatism is utopianism after all?

I presume you mean classical conservatism, and not scary 'let's rip everything down and build business parks' neo-conservatism?

[Laurinquë]

Perhaps I'm just being an Alaskan, but I fail to see what is so great about a peaceful agrarian society. I would much rather live in a peaceful society that hasn't ripped the land to shreds, aka "tamed" it. For this reason I much prefer places like Lothlorien or Rivendell, where there is peaceful civilization, but also where the land has been left fairly undisturbed.

I do not think we should see a bygone era of pre-industrialization farming as a wonderful golden age of humanity, a time before the land was laid to waste or whatever, if the land has been farmed it has already been laid to waste, it's as simple as that.

Tolkien seems to have considered pre-industrialization England as the true England, when really he should have been looking back to a time before humans had ever laid eyes on the place.

For these reason, I cannot say that I would consider the Shire to be a utopia, or at least not one I would care to live in.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Laurinquë

Perhaps I'm just being an Alaskan, but I fail to see what is so great about a peaceful agrarian society. I would much rather live in a peaceful society that hasn't ripped the land to shreds, aka "tamed" it. For this reason I much prefer places like Lothlorien or Rivendell, where there is peaceful civilization, but also where the land has been left fairly undisturbed.

I do not think we should see a bygone era of pre-industrialization farming as a wonderful golden age of humanity, a time before the land was laid to waste or whatever, if the land has been farmed it has already been laid to waste, it's as simple as that.

Tolkien seems to have considered pre-industrialization England as the true England, when really he should have been looking back to a time before humans had ever laid eyes on the place.

For these reason, I cannot say that I would consider the Shire to be a utopia, or at least not one I would care to live in.

The English landscape has been that way for millennia by the hands of man and their farming activities. Tolkien liked to see green fields and hedgerows as much as he liked to see woodland, and before men began to farm, most of England was just wildwood. There is a delicate balance between farming and nature in this country and if farmers change their methods or just stop farming then we'd actually lose a lot of the beautiful landscapes as we know them.

If you take the Lakeland fells as just one example - hill farmers using traditional methods of turning sheep out on the same fields each year helps to keep the hillsides free of gorse and a place where wildflowers and wildlife can flourish. If farmers stop doing this - and many are, as it's about as hard a life as you could imagine, being a hill farmer - then the landscape would actually be quite ugly. Farmers in the UK are subsidised to maintain old practices in an attempt to stop some landscapes being despoiled as 'natural' isn't always that nice.

Tolkien enjoyed seeing the pretty, well tended fields of agricultural areas as much as he liked the woods and the wilder places - maybe even more if you look at how scary his woodlands are!

[Rumil]

When a squirrel could go from branch to branch from Land's End to John O' Groats.

It would have been a sight to see the Wild Wood of primeval Britain, with the chalk hills and rugged mountains poking their heads out of the treescape and the Eastern wetlands with reeds as far as the eye could see. But it was mostly gone by the Bronze Age.

There's a small wood on Cadair Idris which has never been cut down, and is very beautiful, but few others that have survived from prehistory.

A temperate forset can be inhabited by hunter-gatherers but if you start serious farming the forest becomes wood for building and heating and the hunting reserve of the nobility.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Rumil

When a squirrel could go from branch to branch from Land's End to John O' Groats.

Though of course if squirrels could do that now then we'd have no Reds left at all, as the only thing keeping the Greys from mixing with them and giving them Pox is the presence of isolated pockets of woodland

I'd not turn my nose up at seeing those wetlands though...

[Laurinquë]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

The English landscape has been that way for millennia by the hands of man and their farming activities. Tolkien liked to see green fields and hedgerows as much as he liked to see woodland, and before men began to farm, most of England was just wildwood. There is a delicate balance between farming and nature in this country and if farmers change their methods or just stop farming then we'd actually lose a lot of the beautiful landscapes as we know them.

If you take the Lakeland fells as just one example - hill farmers using traditional methods of turning sheep out on the same fields each year helps to keep the hillsides free of gorse and a place where wildflowers and wildlife can flourish. If farmers stop doing this - and many are, as it's about as hard a life as you could imagine, being a hill farmer - then the landscape would actually be quite ugly. Farmers in the UK are subsidised to maintain old practices in an attempt to stop some landscapes being despoiled as 'natural' isn't always that nice.

Tolkien enjoyed seeing the pretty, well tended fields of agricultural areas as much as he liked the woods and the wilder places - maybe even more if you look at how scary his woodlands are!

I understand that England and Alaska are quite dissimilar, what is good for Alaska is not necessarily good for England. However, what is wrong with an "ugly" landscape if it is natural? If the land were left uncultivated long enough it would probably stop looking so unpleasant as it would be reclaimed slowly by nature. However, it's true that England has some very interesting ecosystems that have adapted to agriculture, and agriculture must be maintained in these areas if they are to retain their present ecosystem.

But just because something has been one way for millennia does not necessarily mean it has to stay that way. Think of England though geologic time, where a few millennia mean nothing it all in the scope of all of earth's, and England's, history. Your beautiful landscapes have only been around for a very small amount of time - and are not naturally occurring - though I'm sure they're lovely none the less.

I don't personally know much about Tolkien's preferences for wilderness, but I believe you hit upon a very important point when you mentioned his penchant for depicting frightening woodlands, a point that has been discussed on The Downs before. He seemed to possess a very primeval view on dense, old growth forests. You might notice that place like the Old Forest and Mirkwood were shown to be dark and dangerous places, full of malice and creeping beasts; whilst open, cleared land was safe and a desirable place to be. I will note however that Tolkien presented pleasent creatures like the Ents, which went in contrast to his otherwise medieval take on trees and woodland. I, as a lover of forests and wilderness, appreciate this addition, and perhaps it can make up for Tolkien's otherwise derogative depictions of forests and wilderness.

[Lalwendë]

England has been under cultivation for so long that our species are thoroughly adapted to it and if we went back to wildwoods then we'd also lose many of those species. Red squirrels for example - as they can now only thrive in isolated pockets of woodland and even then they struggle. We've also a lot of birds adapted to hedgerows and birds of prey adapted over millennia to hunting open fields for mice and voles.

I think Tolkien liked variety of landscape to be honest - he has these vast woodlands which are untamed and frankly creepy, but he wouldn't have had any wide open vistas to write about if people hadn't cleared them! Taking just one place, the area of the Barrow-Downs must have at one time been cleared of gorse by setting sheep to graze there or it wouldn't have looked like that.

[Bêthberry]

This discussion between Laurinquë and Lalwendë brings in an important aspect of Tolkien's evironmental stance. It wasn't green he was after so much as beauty.

Sub-creation was for Tolkien an essential activity of human beings, as an expression of both beauty and power or control. Essentially as Lal points out the English landscape has been sub-created, with several effects, the most significant for many being an aesthetic quality often associated with Beauty. It is a beauty which has not always been associated with the Sublime, another aesthetic quality, which at least in the 18C was regarded as a quality of the kind of environment Laur speaks of, Mount Blanc in the Swiss Alps (which I read as her Alaskan wilderness, neither of which is a man-made environment (except as the oil and gas conglomerates and animal-hunting-by-airplane-advocates have their impact). This is a very different kind of beauty, one not associated with human sub-creation. It is a kind of landscape which often, in my reading of the historical expansion of North America, developes an adversarial relationship between humans and nature--and it is this very adversarial aspect which stimulates such tourist and sports development as heli-skiing and mountain climbing and championship snowmobiling races.

Beauty being always in the eye of the beholder, it would however seem that Tolkien would prefer, as a Utopia, a landscape that spoke of sub-creation.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

This discussion between Laurinquë and Lalwendë brings in an important aspect of Tolkien's evironmental stance. It wasn't green he was after so much as beauty....

....This is a very different kind of beauty, one not associated with human sub-creation. It is a kind of landscape which often, in my reading of the historical expansion of North America, developes an adversarial relationship between humans and nature--and it is this very adversarial aspect which stimulates such tourist and sports development as heli-skiing and mountain climbing and championship snowmobiling races.

I have long been dismayed by the poor stewardship we Americans have of our land. I can still remember watching on TV in the '70's the Cuyahoga River in Ceveland burning (yes, the actual river was on fire from petroleum and chemical run-off!). Here in Michigan, the original pine, oak and beech forests were stripped by copper mining before the advent of the 20th century, and our current forests (which we still have many) now have a totally different make-up than the original.

Some time ago I wrote a parody of Woody Guthrie's 'This Land is your Land' for a protest of some sort or other (I think it was regarding building a monstrous incinerator in Detroit). So, with apologies to Woody's ghost, here it is:

This land was your land, this land was my land.
But the once great forests are now self-serve islands,
Or tacky strip malls on concrete highways --
This land was paved for you and me.

I look and shivered at the ghastly rivers,
Where the half-dead fish swam with cancerous livers.
Dead ducks and otters in oily waters --
This land betrayed by you and me.

This land was your land, this land was my land,
From the smog in L.A. out to Three-Mile Island,
From Gulf refineries to eerie Erie --
This land a grave for you and me.

Et cetera, et cetera...

*Sniffs*

Where have all the protest songs gone?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

It is a beauty which has not always been associated with the Sublime, another aesthetic quality, which at least in the 18C was regarded as a quality of the kind of environment Laur speaks of, Mount Blanc in the Swiss Alps (which I read as her Alaskan wilderness, neither of which is a man-made environment (except as the oil and gas conglomerates and animal-hunting-by-airplane-advocates have their impact). This is a very different kind of beauty, one not associated with human sub-creation. It is a kind of landscape which often, in my reading of the historical expansion of North America, developes an adversarial relationship between humans and nature--and it is this very adversarial aspect which stimulates such tourist and sports development as heli-skiing and mountain climbing and championship snowmobiling races.

Although the Romantics in the UK certainly found plenty of the Sublime in the English landscape - take Wordsworth as just one example. Though to be fair, they probably were unaware of just how delicate a balance between farming and nature had formed the Lakeland Fells and assumed 'God' had just done it all!

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

*Sniffs*

Where have all the protest songs gone?

Gone for adverts, every one.

You know, not everything about the American stewardship of land is abysmal. I find the interstate highway system amazing as no matter where I've driven in the northeast, the highway has been surrounded by dense thickets of trees. It is right in the heartland of industrialisation but you'd never know. I've sometimes wondered if it was a deliberate plan to foil any invasions via the interstates--without the signs, you'd never know where you were.

Originally Posted by Lal

Although the Romantics in the UK certainly found plenty of the Sublime in the English landscape - take Wordsworth as just one example. Though to be fair, they probably were unaware of just how delicate a balance between farming and nature had formed the Lakeland Fells and assumed 'God' had just done it all!

All those daffydillies must have been intoxicating. I'd recommend Loch Lomond though myself.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Although the Romantics in the UK certainly found plenty of the Sublime in the English landscape - take Wordsworth as just one example. Though to be fair, they probably were unaware of just how delicate a balance between farming and nature had formed the Lakeland Fells and assumed 'God' had just done it all!

And what a difference comparing Wordsworth's placid vistas of the Lake District to Dickens' nightmarish vision of sooty and abysmal London.

[Lindale]

No offense to Wordsworth or any of the Romantics or anybody else, but I agree with Rumil and his "gentlehobbit" view of Frodo, Bilbo, Pippin and Merry. If you really look at it with even just the slightest Marxist eye, the ones who do talk in Tolkien's works are the high-born, whatever your term for them, with very few exceptions like Sam (who ended up as Mayor of the Shire anyway) and Voronwe (who was of the Noldor, but not exactly the nobility in the same way Gwindor was).

During one of my classes in English literature someone (not your poor little Lindale!) asked if any of the Romantics of England did experience what we may consider poverty. Did Wordsworth or Coleridge or any other of their sort work with their hands? The Romanticism in England, after all, did spring, from among others, a sort of dissent in the Industrial Revolution. And they're Romantics. They were young, geniuses in their own right, but they were young.

Somehow I can argue that only those from the middle class up can be Romantics; you never (or at least, you almost never do, or Aristotle never did see) find the working class happily philosophizing while working or about their work. And among the conservative middle class, which exists in some societies still, like mine, those who have a bit of the Romantics lose it or at least manage to repress it before the "real world" sinks in. Or, after college or a few years after college.

Marx was Marx because he lived in his own time and space and society. So were the Romantics, and Tolkien.