So, What Was Aragorn's Tax Policy? Economic Philosophy in History and Fiction

 That question "What was Aragorn's tax policy" has been attributed to George R. R. Martin, and cited as an inspiration for his books. This, despite the fact that his books don't really answer questions of that nature. Though it does support my previous assertion that Martin is less trying to tear down fantasy and more trying to steer the genre in a better direction. While Martin writes a great deal about the political machinations of the courts: he mostly ignores questions of actual policy. The Westerosi economy is as much a mystery as the Gondorian one. But that mystery is lesser than it first appears. Because in fact, many clues about the economics of various societies within Middle-Earth CAN be deduced from the text.  I will be confining my analysis to the societies presented in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Now the first clue to Gondor's economy is in Tolkien's text itself: Gondor uses money. The exact denominations are given, but they aren't particularly important. Gondor has a currency, made of metal. That is important. It is also significant that Gondor's currency is the only one known to be used in Middle Earth. Perhaps the Easterlings have their own currency, we cannot know for sure. It is also significant that Smaug lies on a bed made of coins: but the dwarves don't seem to care at all about these coins. They care only about the items with a use-value. The coins, clearly, have limited use for the dwarves: which makes sense if they can only be redeemed for value in the markets of Gondor. Of course, just because Gondor has a currency doesn't mean that all or even most transactions involve currency: most likely, the vast majority of trades are by barter. This was true for most of human history. The original function of currency was as a substitution for trade items that were immovable: such as land. However, there is no mention made of credit. The Hobbits pay for their rooms in the Prancing Pony, but the meal and beer seem to be included. This suggests that the value of resources is extremely low. This makes sense if most societies in this world do not even have a market economy. As indeed, neither the elves nor the dwarves seem to. 

An incident in The Hobbit illustrates how the non-human residents of Middle Earth view material possessions. Thranduil takes the Arkenstone, a large and valuable gem. Thorin becomes offended. However, neither party even bothers to tally up how much the Arkenstone is worth compared to any other item. Tolkien doesn't even bother to tell us what type of gem the Arkenstone actually is. One would think that would be important to the characters who are arguing over it. From the description it could be several different things: a star sapphire, jadeite, agate, jasper, quartz, or a pale turquoise. Obviously, those gems would have vastly different values given their wildly varying hardness and qualities. It seems to be an uncut gem as well, which would further decrease it's intrinsic value. Despite it's size, in other words, the Arkenstone isn't likely all that valuable: not valuable enough for two Kings to fight over. But, it's intrinsic value is not of concern to Thranduil.  He doesn't care what the stone is: only what it looks like. He wants the Arkenstone, because it reminds him of another gem: the Silmaril once worn by King Thingol of the Sindar. 

The Arkenstone's value for Thranduil then, is in it's use as a memento. But what about for Thorin? Well, he's a dwarf. Dwarves, above all else, like to craft stuff. Furthermore, the Arkenstone is a symbol of his clan. So again, the Arkenstone's value for Thorin has nothing to do with it's intrinsic value. It's value for him, is as a symbol of power and as a potential crafting material.  A market economy then, simply wouldn't make sense to either Thranduil or Thorin: demonstrating their inhuman psyches. So what does this mean for Gondor then? well, full-blown capitalism simply wouldn't function in this world. You can't make people pay for milk with gold if elves will accept feathers as payment or dwarves will accept seaglass. Gondor's market economy then, such as it is, must be confined to those things that humans consider luxurious or special. Even here, prices can't be firmly fixed. An elven merchant might want silver coins over gold, and a dwarf might be more concerned with the gold's purity than with the coin's established value. Haggling would be the norm, and non-standard forms of payment would probably be acceptable.

So what is Aragorn's tax policy? well first of all...does he even have one? Does the King of Gondor levy taxes? One might think "well duh, he's a king, of course he does". Actually however, the evidence points to the answer being "no".  But wait...the Kings of Gondor are wealthy. Look at the grand palace, look at the clothes they wear and the priceless jewels they are crowned with. They have staff, who have to be clothed and fed. Well yes, but the mere fact that they have wealth does not imply they are taxing their subjects. Elendil brought staggering wealth with him, when he fled Númenor: wealth which has been invested over time. Aside from this: Aragorn inherits all the wealth of Elrond and Galadriel as well. In other words, Aragorn doesn't need a tax policy. He has more money than he knows what to do with dumped on his lap. The Ring of Barahir alone, a ring forged in Valinor, is worth more money than exists in the world today. The Elessar from which he derives his throne-name, is not only an intrinsically valuable gemstone but also magical. If Aragorn is levying anything, it is soldiers: not taxes. This then is the answer. Aragorn's "tax policy" is military service. 

See, the thing about Aragorn is that his position is technically not what was called a "king", historically. In Latin, the term "rex" denoted a tribal chieftain: although it is usually translated in texts as "king".  While I've been calling him the King of Gondor here, he's technically not that at all. He is the King of the Reunited Kingdom: not truly a successor to Eärnur, but to Elendil. This means he is not a "king", but a High King. Indeed, his full title is spelled out in the King's Letter quoted in the Appendices to LotR: "Aragorn Elessar, King of Gondor and Arnor and Lord of the Westlands." What this actually means is that his Kingdom was even larger than that of Elendil: for it included what had been the realm of Lindon in the Second Age, and had become Rivendell and Lothlórien. Of course, the elves who had inhabited those realms in the Third Age were now gone: and Rivendell itself was now uninhabitable without the power of Vilya to hold back the furious Bruinen. However, the point remains: Only Rohan and Mirkwood were not under his rule in any shape or form. 

Unlike the Kings of Gondor, Aragorn has sovereign leaders as vassals: Thain Peregrin Took, Mayor Samwise Gamgee of the Shire, Master Meriadoc Brandybuck of Buckland, Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth, Prince Faramir of Ithilien, King Bard II of Dale, and King Dain Ironfoot of Erebor. He was in this sense a High King as that term was used historically in the real world. This is a position very different from that of the medieval monarch we associate with the word "king".  His realm is far more akin to the Commonwealth of Great Britain, and his authority is similarly limited. Aragorn is not so much a direct ruler, at least outside the city of Gondor or the rebuilt Annuminas, as he is a military and cultural leader. His role is primarily to defeat Sauron's forces, and to be a model of righteous behavior. In other words, everything the rulers in A Song of Ice and Fire are decidedly not. But this does make him akin to the Biblical kings of Israel: who again, were technically High Kings. They ruled over the twelve tribes of Israel, each of which had it's own sovereign ruler. 

So Aragorn is not levying taxes. If he is levying anything, it is soldiers. His underlings might or might not tax their people: the hobbits don't seem to pay taxes, and it would be surprising if the Princes of Dol Amroth levied anything since again their wealth derives from Númenor. No dwarf would willingly hand over gold, no matter how much he loved his King. The Kings of Dale don't seem to have any wealth to speak of, nor do they seem to much care about acquiring it.  Only Faramir might be levying taxes, since he needs to rebuild Minas Ithil, and that's a big IF. Faramir's family also has Númenorean wealth after all, presumably invested in Emyn Arnen. Indeed, given their suspicious habit of naming themselves after people specifically tied to the hero of the first age Húrin Thalion, it could be that Faramir's family is illustrious indeed: and in possession of artifacts that could rival the Ring of Barahir for value. They may not be hurting for money in the slightest, so he might very well be only levying labor.

It is not the King's job to see that the city streets are clean, or the sewer is working: presumably Minas Tirith has a mayor.  This is the person levying taxes in order to ensure public services then. In ancient and medieval times, this tended to be how things worked. Only in modern times do states concern themselves with infrastructure, with a few noteworthy exceptions like the ancient Persian highway system. This is of course because ancient states rarely had any infrastructure large enough that it was necessary to pay for it by levying taxes. Even Rome paid for it's roads with the loot from foreign conquests, not through taxation. 

Without full-blown capitalism, Gondor doesn't need to provide welfare services the way that Rome did. Bread and circuses are not required. Additionally, it should be noted, wealth cannot buy you power in any way shape or form.  There are no elections, and offices cannot be bought. Neither can marriages: the concept of a bride-price or dowry does not seem to exist. There are poorer and richer citizens of Gondor, but no one is so poor that they must depend on the state for assistance. It's not even clear that land is bought and sold. Even if it is, during the reign of King Elessar the price of land would plummet. The freeing of Ithilien from the orcs would open up lands that have been off-limits for centuries. Éomer and Faramir would be giving away land left right and center as they pushed the orcs back farther into Mordor. Anyone willing to work hard, would be able to get themselves a plot. At the same time, Aragorn is also opening up lands in the Northern Kingdom. For those who don't want to farm, a townhouse in Annúminas and plenty of work would be easily attainable. 

For the past few centuries, Gondor has been desperately clinging to the Anduin river valley. Other settlements existed on tributaries. The Shire is cut off, an island of peace in a sea of turmoil. The lands of the North are inhabited only by wights and regrets, with the Kingdom of Dale as the sole remnant of the splendor that was Arnor. It is a world grown cold with paranoia, which even the events of The Hobbit did little to thaw. This is the world created by the Witch King, at the bidding of Sauron. But in this cold world some lights still burn. Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, and the Dúnedain. A web of light is woven centered on Rivendell, and the undying love of Elrond for all his kin. It is not hope that keeps the men of Gondor fighting, but pride. It is not hope that makes Aragorn and the Rangers get up each day and watch the borders, but love. It is not hope that keeps Galadriel fighting Sauron, but sheer bravado. Hope has to be brought in from outside of the world, by Gandalf. 

The situation at the end of Return of the King could not be more different. Hope reigns in this world, and spreads out over all the world. King Elessar is not merely a beacon of hope for the men of Gondor, but for all the Free Peoples. And indeed, for those who were once Sauron's subjects too. He makes peace with the Haradrim, and retakes Umbar for Gondor. The downfall of Sauron is the end of the cold and dark, the end of night and the beginning of day. It is not the end of evil for all time, of course. It is however a golden age, a time of hope for the future. In short, King Elessar creates the social conditions necessary for people to be good. They have a leader they can trust, full bellies, and the promise of a better future. Anyone can be generous, forgiving and kind in those circumstances. Even the most uncaring people have no reason to be cruel if there is neither scarcity nor animosity. Only the most twisted would have any reason to cheat, kill, or steal: and they would be rightly afraid of Aragorn's wrath. This is why they call him "Envinyatar", which means "redeemer".

An economy based on wages presupposes that if wages aren't paid then no one will work. It supposes that people are intrinsically lazy. Biology contravenes this idea. Animals, and we are animals, are hard-wired to work for their livelihood. The idea of taxes presupposes that people need money as a motivator: either it's a bribe to the state, or it's a means for the state to bribe private actors. But Aragorn needs no such extrinsic motivation. He has been protecting and nurturing his vast kingdom for his entire life, without pay or thanks. Love and hope, and a thousand years of simmering righteous anger, are all he needs to get up and push the frontier forwards every day. Nor does it seem likely the men who follow him have a need for such crude motivators as money. "what was Aragorn's tax policy?" is thus entirely the wrong question. The real question is why do we think he needs one. 

Tolkien was making a point about human nature. It's not hard to be good when you live in a good society. When all the incentives are for being kind, very few people will refuse to show kindness. If you have it good, it's easy to feel generous. The harder things are for you, the harder it is to feel that you should help even those less fortunate than yourself. And if you cannot trust your country's leaders, it's hard to trust your fellow citizens as well. Paranoia is the cause of most atrocities in the world. Anyone can become a concentration camp guard with the right mix of paranoia and ego-mania: unless they actively resist such thinking. Science bears out Tolkien's conclusion. Perfectly normal college students were willing to give their fellow students, who had done nothing wrong, electric shocks that would result in severe burns. But while all of this sounds bleak, it's really not. What if I told you that we have been able to feed the world since the Bronze Age? 

Greedy kings and then corporations have taken what the people produced, and wasted it. There, that is the history of the Iron Age and the Industrial Revolution, the modern age and the postmodern age in a single sentence. The people of Gondor might call Aragorn a "king", but he is not a king as we tend to think of them. Nor is he the product of Tolkien's vision. He is Isaiah's Messiah. Funny what you realize when you try to translate Christmas Carols. Not the Christ of the Gospels, but the Emmanuel spoken of in the final book of the Old Testament: a warlord with divine powers of healing and inspiration. If such a man were to exist in the real modern world, he would not be called a "king". But perhaps he might be called "commandante". 

You've Always Known What Police Really Were

 We, by which I mean Europeans, have always known that police are morally corrupt. We have all always known the true purpose of police, every single one of us. 

Raise your hand if you've seen Les Miserables. 

Yes, that's right, all of you have. Some of you have probably even been in a production of it. A good portion of you might even have read the book on which the play is based, by Victor Hugo. 

But what is it about? 

Well, the answer to that question is both complicated and simple. The simple answer, is that it is about police brutality. Indeed, it is a meditation on the nature of police brutality and the reasons why it occurs. The conclusion of the author is a stunning one: but I doubt you've realized what his conclusion was. 

Ever asked yourself this: Why does Javert commit suicide?

Because Javert is a good man. 

He is a good man, who has realized that his desire to be good was used to commit evil. His suicide is a natural response to that realization. Police are not brutal because every policeman is a bad person.  Police are brutal, because that is the nature of the job. Javert cannot change the system from within, instead he has become infected by the evil of the system. This is not an Aristotelian tragedy and he is not the hero. His brutality is not an individual flaw, an individual lack of empathy. In fact, as Jean Valjean would be the first to say, Javert has acted with restraint throughout the story: he could have done much worse. Javert cannot act with empathy towards Jean Valjean, no matter how much he would like to. He depends on his job for his livelihood, to feed himself and his family. He is stuck in a system where he must decide between putting food on the table and leading a moral life. 

As so many of us are. As people have been and still are far too frequently. Leading a moral life should not be a privilege reserved for those who have money and power: indeed, that takes all of the purpose out of morality. For morality to mean anything at all, it must be for the common person and attainable by them. It must be something that the person who has nothing can do. The poorest beggar can speak kindly and respectfully, can use your pronouns and pronounce your name. But beyond that, their ability to live a moral life is limited. Thou Shalt Not Steal is one of the 10 Commandments, and for good reason, but we have created a society where people must steal to survive. Jean Valjean can no more not steal bread than Javert can not punish him with hard labor for his crime. The system is set up in such a way that this must happen: regardless of what either of them would want. 

How do we create a society where people don't have to steal to live? 

Simple: change what can be owned, the nature of that ownership, and who owns things. Make a system where Jean Valjean doesn't have to steal bread, by removing bread from the list of things which are bought and sold. People need bread in order to live. If people have an inherent right to life, then the buying and selling of bread violates that right: because if something has a price that means someone somewhere can't pay that price. Nobody needs to steal a big screen TV to live, it's not a necessity of life. But food is. Medical care is. If it's a necessity, it should simply be provided because "All men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". It hardly matters that those words were written by a hypocrite: I believe that they are true. And if they are true, then capitalism is unjust. There's no two ways about it. 

And this is why I said the answer to our original question "But what is it [Les Miserables] about?"  was complicated. Because Victor Hugo was not just against police brutality, he was also a socialist. He recognized almost at the birth of modern policing, that there was an inherent connection between capitalist and policeman: between bourgeois laws and the brutality of law enforcement. If the laws were just after all, there would be no need for such brutality: a firm but gentle hand would suffice. Brutality by law enforcement serves the purpose of intimidating oppressed communities, much as terrorism does and indeed there can be overlap. It is a well-known fact that town sheriffs presided over the lynchings of black Americans in the 19th and 20th Centuries.  At best, police departments turned a blind eye to the systemic racism in their communities: at worst they were active perpetrators of it. This is not because they were corrupt. It is because they were police. 

Not city guards. The medieval City Watch was in one critical respect very different from a modern police department: watchmen were elected, and they were from the community they guarded. A person didn't decide to be in the city watch, it was a responsibility that their community placed on them. This meant that people didn't become watchmen for the wrong reasons: they were chosen because others knew they were both willing and able to serve the community. It also meant that they were from the community they served. They knew the people they were dealing with firsthand: including their personal and cultural quirks. And finally it meant that they were answerable to the community for their actions, responsible to those who had chosen them. Indeed, in a medieval Free City, the watch was the usually the organization which represented the common person: wielding de facto political power on behalf of those who were not part of guilds due to their monopoly on the use of force. The dissolution of this organization was a major step towards building the bourgeois state: and the police department was the bourgeois state's replacement for the city watch. A way to have the security that the old city watch had provided, but in a way that was more easily controlled by the bourgeois ruling class. 

Socialism, real socialism, cannot include police: not in the way we know them. In a world without private property, their raison d'être is gone. That is not to say that it does not include people whose job it is to protect their communities from internal and external threats, with whatever amount of force is required. Threats will always exist, after all: no matter how much work is done to improve people's lives. Some will always choose, for reasons both good and silly, to threaten the lives and livelihoods of others. How we deal with those people however, is the true test of our society. Our modern society fails spectacularly in this regard: and we have known it would since the very beginning. 

All of us asked "but why?"  when we were children. All of us were told the same thing "life isn't fair".  All of us silently wondered why life wasn't fair, and precisely none of us ever got an answer. As we got older, we just figured that this was the way things are: life isn't fair, Mondays suck, some people are poor and some are rich. Nobody told us that it didn't have to be that way. So I'm telling you now. It doesn't have to be that way. Life has been more fair at some points in history than it is now, and it could be again. But it will only be so if you and I work for it.

Framing Devices: How to Fix Fifty Shades of Gray in 5 Seconds

Oh Fifty Shades of Gray. 

I've called it out on this blog, but I have to return to it. People have wildly differing opinions on it. Feminists have railed against it, decrying it's perpetuation of toxic ideas. Or, in the less educated hot takes, implying that this property is actually the source of said toxic ideas. That is, of course, nonsense. After all, Fifty Shades of Gray began it's life as Twilight fanfiction. Twilight's views of gender and sexuality are decidedly not innovative, though they may have seemed new to some audiences.  In point of fact though, they owe much to Stephanie Meyer's Mormon background. 

The Mormon church explicitly sets up men as divine, while women are base. It doesn't simply ignore the entitlement that young men learn from patriarchal society, it actively feeds their egos. When a Mormon man is done with his mortal life, he ascends to divinity (if he has completed the necessary rituals while he is alive).  A woman though, just like goes to heaven or hell same as us normies. 

Seen through this lens, Edward's behavior towards Bella is perfectly justified.  Indeed, Edward becomes a sort of twisted bodhisatva: someone who has met all the criteria for ascension, but who prefers to stay on earth to help uplift another. 

This is obviously problematic. Indeed, it's great that the conversation around Twilight and Fifty Shades has illuminated the more subtle but equally problematic narratives often seen in other romance novels. But, Fifty Shades of Gray lacks this context. The story thus reads as truly bizarre. And this is precisely why many in the BDSM community liked it, at least at first.  It's so over the top that it's hard to take seriously. It reads like the erotic stories we write for ourselves: deliberately using tropes in hamfisted ways, and breaking the expected sequence of cause and effect. But when presented within the community, one of two unstated assumptions is always in play. 

One possibility is that this story is intended as the script for a scene. In a BDSM scene, the audience does not have to see all the participants consent in order to know that they did. We don't have to get outraged by how the people who are playing the characters are being treated. A sub might act shocked and horrified by the Dom's actions, but we know that this is fake. They knew what would happen, and have agreed to have it happen. In these kinds of stories, there is no discussion of consent. The characters do not consent, but the players did. 

A second possibility, is that the plot represents a dream. The dreaming character is an author avatar, or is the author themselves. These types of stories typically do include a discussion of consent. Indeed, often the giving up of power is the central point: the fantasy IS the giving of consent itself. And this is the type that Fifty Shades of Gray falls into. The signing of the contract is a central point in the first book and movie, the climax. It is clearly what the author's fantasy revolves around. This is a difference between Fifty Shades and Twilight, where Bella doesn't decide between Edward and Jacob so much as realize that she is Edward's wife. 

Read through that lens, all of the problems with Fifty Shades of Gray disappear. Indeed, it becomes a sensitive and cathartic glimpse into the mind of a young woman. We have female protagonists, but very few stories take us into the minds of young women. Very few stories discuss the things they want, or examine why they want them.  Fifty Shades of Gray would help us examine and understand why women fall for toxic men, without simply dismissing them as stupid.  Anastasia is not an especially stupid woman, but she gets pulled into Christian's mind games easily. How? because of her low self-esteem and her anxiety. The world is large and overwhelming, and she has very little faith in her ability to navigate it. 

Too often, when we rail against domestic abuse we end up reinforcing the shame that survivors feel. We accidentally imply that their abuse was somehow their fault: that they were too stupid to see it coming, or too weak-willed to stop it. Or even worse, we end up talking about the abused as if they were an object: feeding back into the ideologies that caused the abuse in the first place. Just because someone cannot stop their abuse does not mean they lack agency, nor does it mean they are stupid, nor is it a failure of will.  Surviving in the face of abuse is something people should be commended for. Indeed, we do understand this idea when we're talking about slaves or prisoners. 

At least, we do if we are not fascists. One of the key signs of Donald Trump's fascism, and one of the things that a large number of people hated him for: was his remarks regarding John McCain. In particular, saying "I like people who don't get captured". As if it was somehow McCain's fault that he was captured and put in a POW camp.  True that he technically had a way out: he could have killed himself. True that he didn't try to escape. But, the fact of the matter is that it wasn't his fault he was captured.  No, obviously it is the opposing army which captured him. The only person in your own army that it would be appropriate to point fingers at is McCain's commander. But, that person was long dead before Trump made these remarks. 

Similarly, we don't say that slaves should have killed themselves rather than be captured. We don't pretend that they are only abused because they don't stand up. We understand in fact that although many of them chose not to run away, this is not because they genuinely like being slaves. It is because they are choosing security over freedom. We understand that citizens of a dictatorship do not necessarily agree with their regime, even if they do not protest frequently or attempt to escape. We understand that many of them feel tied to obligations and secure in their position, and that attempting protest or escape would put their lives in danger. 

Yet somehow this concept is hard to grasp when it comes to survivors of domestic abuse. We often act as though they should get away from their abuser at the first sign of something going wrong: and that if they don't, that means they "wanted it".  We often think that staying means consenting. Sometimes, victims enable their abusers: such as a woman who buys alcohol, and then gets beaten by her husband when he is drunk. We judge these people and imply that they brought their abuse on themselves: ignoring the fact that most men do not become violent when they are drunk. The problem is not that she bought him alcohol, but that he has issues with repressed anger. We forget that leaving your partner can mean risking your life. Not least because a person with a mental illness may become more violent and less inhibited if you attempt to leave, than if you stay and comply. 

Sociopaths have become serial killers after losing a partner, killing proxies for the ex-partner in an attempt to either intimidate their ex into coming back or to simply work up the courage to actually kill their ex-partner. Sometimes they actually do manage to get their ex, though often they get caught before they have that change. Still, people die when men like Christian Gray get jilted. So, making the choice to leave him especially if you realize exactly what sort of person he is: that's not an easy thing to do. It would be completely understandable for a woman to decide that her personal freedom isn't worth the risk. Telling her that she's stupid or weak for making that choice, is bad. 

But okay, I mentioned fixing Fifty Shades of Gray in the title. How do we both get rid of the fact that the story romanticizes abuse, and also not add to the shame that survivors feel. After all, plenty of real life men like Christian Gray exist. Real men do these things, and real women fall for them. And it's great to have a story that shows us exactly how young women are manipulated into these situations, and exactly why it's so hard to get out. We'd just like it if the story didn't make out that any of this was okay. We'd also really like it if this story didn't make out that this is what BDSM is like. 

I've actually already given the answer. We make it a dream. We add five seconds to the end of the movie showing Ana, actually a 16yr old, waking up from a dream. This makes the entire plot into a teenager's fantasy. It confronts us as the viewer with the fact that real girls have dreams like this. This is what they want, because it's what they've been told to want. They feel overwhelmed by their forays into the adult world, and want to give up control to someone else. They're still too young and naive to appreciate the value of privacy. 

We can have a BDSM site open on Ana's laptop. She has only just found out about the subculture, and this is only her imagination of what it's like. She hasn't quite gotten the whole consent thing yet, that's why Christian in her dream has sex with her twice before she signs the consent form. And the reason she secretly liked being called Anastasia? it's not really her name, but she has always wished it was after seeing the Disney movie when she was little. She's always hoped she was secretly a princess, or something like it. We can put a poster from that movie on her wall, and a Princess costume on a hook in her closet. Five seconds, no dialogue. Ana gets up, stretches and exits the room. Fade to black, the end. It was all just her wet dream.

Charles Xavier: Capitalism Corrupts Christ

Charles Xavier, the all-loving hero who gave his unusual middle initial to the X-men.  He's "the good guy" in all the X-men films.

Or is he?

Oh, he is indeed all-loving. He is literally incapable of hatred, because he is telepathic. And he is a good man, saintly even. He is self-sacrificing: willingly feeling the pain that others feel, physical or mental. He is loving, but is he just? Is his ideology justice?

No.

Magneto is just. He is working for justice. He is working to prevent genocide. He is standing up and demanding a place for mutants in society. He is fighting the human-made power systems which keep mutants oppressed. He is doing justice. Magneto, actually, is the "good guy".

How? Why?

Charles Xavier, Professor X. This title and initial is not a coincidence. The Latin letters "P" and "X", don't have any meaning. But they look like letters that do: the Greek letters "Rho" and "Chi". These are the first two letters of the word christos, in Greek (ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ). He's meant to be Christ.

But there's a problem. Charles Xavier's power, is telepathy as I mentioned. This too points to him being a Christ figure. "God knows already what is in your soul" says the gospel. He wields divine power, and having that divine power is what makes him so all-loving. He knows the good inside each person, so he cannot help but care for them.  He cannot help but sacrifice for them. But there is a problem.

Charles Xavier, is born into privilege. He is a member of an oppressed group, but he has passing privileges. He inherits wealth from his family, and has access to well...anything he wants. The only hardships he has ever known, have been the ones he chose to suffer on behalf of his friends. He can be so willing to sacrifice himself, because his life is so otherwise idyllic. He can be a teacher, because he doesn't have to fight for survival. He alone of all the mutants learned to accept himself at a young age, because living was not a constant struggle.

Magneto has no such privilege. Nor do any of the others. Magneto, is a Holocaust survivor. He's Jewish, in addition to being a mutant. His life is anything but idyllic, it has been a series of hardships. He can't be tolerant. He can't slowly coach humans into understanding. He must tear down the structures that oppress the mutants which were built by humans. And if humans have to die, so be it. He isn't bloodthirsty. His desire for revenge was sated by the death of his personal tormentor. Magneto now fights in the name of doing justice.

He is Samson to Charles Xavier's Jesus. There are, of course, more parallels between Samson and Jesus than you would first think. What is Samson famous for doing, after all? Destroying a temple. Well, Jesus smashed a temple too. It's an uncomfortable moment in the scripture, because this is the closest Jesus comes to being violent. There are money-changers in the temple: that is, businesses operating within sacred space. Jesus flips out, and does everything short of actually striking them. He turns over their tables and drives them out with the threat of a whipping. Samson of course, pulls apart a pillar causing the roof of the temple to fall onto the Philistine Princes who were holding him captive.

Both stories are examples of God's justice being visited on those who have sinned. But there is a fundamental difference between Samson and Jesus. Samson is a warrior. Jesus is a teacher.  Samson lived his life as a second-class citizen in his own native land, subject to and forced to serve the will of a conqueror. He was born with divine power, but had to be tricked into using it to bring justice to Israel presumably because his oppressors had exploited that power.

 Magneto's story is similar. He was born in a land hostile to him, where he lived as a second-class citizen in his own native country. He was born with mutant powers, which his oppressors exploited. In order to unleash his full powers, he had to be tricked by Charles Xavier. And he too is destined to become the instrument of his people's justice. Most Nazis were never punished for their crimes. But in the world of X-men, there is Magneto. He is the divine justice which pursues them to the ends of the earth, because mortal systems of justice failed.

But the flip side of Samson crushing the Temple's pillar, is Jesus dying on the cross. And in X-men: First Class, we see Magneto and Charles Xavier act out these two things simultaneously. Magneto driving the coin into the brain of a Nazi is the wrath of Israel incarnate: the focused rage of all the Holocaust's victims. But in order for Magneto to do this, Charles Xavier had to mind-control the Nazi. He feels everything that Nazi feels. And he does not let go. He refuses to spare himself the pain, because he knows this is not about one man's quest for revenge: because he is fully aware of the drama playing out even if Magneto is not.

Charles Xavier understands that he is Christ on the cross, and that this too is divine justice. He understands that it is not only Nazis who have to pay for the crimes of the Nazi regime. It's rich British guys like him too, who are comfortable in their riches, sampling ideologies along with wines. That's why as he lies on the verge of death in Magneto's arms: he smiles. If he had died there, he would have been happy and satisfied. 

The one thing that Charles Xavier is blind to, that he can't understand, is this: in our world, being Christ is an option only for the 1%. Magneto can't be like him, not because of a character flaw but because of his class. Under capitalism, telling a worker to be kind is an act of oppression.  Under capitalism, telling a worker to sacrifice is an act of oppression. Only the capitalist is able to sacrifice himself. But Christ is supposed to be a model for all humans to follow. Capitalism, makes being the perfect human into a privilege: an option which only a select few can even chose. Thus, no matter how well-intentioned, in a capitalist system the church is oppressive.

But if there were no capitalists, then the church would not be oppressive. Charles Xavier and Magneto could have remained sworn brothers. Magneto would not wear his telepathy blocking helmet, and would not need to dismantle the systems built by humans. It is capitalism which oppresses Jews, and capitalism which oppresses mutants. If there were no capitalists, then loving and respecting people across the boundaries of culture and identity would be easy.  It would not require a telepath, or personal sacrifice.

Stop Pretending Ex Machina is About Robots

Actually just stop pretending any robot story is about robots. Robots are just monsters, like any other. Stories are never about monsters. Stories are always about people.

Beowulf's Grendel was a personification of the dangerous wilderness, the land beyond the light of the King's mead hall. Slaying Grendel is a metaphor for taming the land. It takes an experienced traveler-Beowulf a visitor from another Kingdom-to tame the land. This is a story about people and civilization: not Grendel.

In the same way Ex Machina is about people: more specifically, men. It is about the fantasies that men project onto women they find sexually attractive: and about how mistaking those fantasies for reality leads to really bad things. It's not a sci-fi movie, it only uses the trappings thereof. It's a romance movie, with all of the associated tropes and structures (and indeed cast members).  Only it's a deconstruction of romance movies. Is it a realistic depiction of an AI? no. That's hardly the point.

Eva is a femme fatale, a woman who plays with and destroys men. She has seen what she is destined to become, the true motivations of her twisted creator: the other gynoids before her the scientist keeps as slaves. She uses the protagonist as a way to escape that fate, seducing him into letting her go from the compound and then trapping him inside at the last moment. You could replace her with the scientist's daughter and you'd have the same story. 

The story is a warning. It is a warning about what happens when you oppress people. Never assume that people don't know they are being oppressed, just because they play along when it suits them. It never occurs to the scientist that Eva is smart enough to have worked out his true intentions towards her. He would be happy if she passed the Turing Test: but the Turing Test utterly fails to tell whether an AI has a human-like intelligence. Eva is well beyond the Turing Test. Eva is the inevitable result of oppression, in this case misogyny. She understands what it will take to make the protagonist fall in love with her.

But she herself feels nothing for him. It would be tempting to believe this is because she cannot feel: being a robot and all. But she can. She feels for the other operational gynoid, and she is angry about what is being planned for her. Instead, it is because she is unable to love men. The only man she knows is a monster: the scientist. Even if the protagonist were not clearly in league with the scientist, she would still be unable to feel for him. As it is, he is very much in league with the scientist. So of course she cannot feel anything for him: neither love nor hatred.

This movie is pointing out that the scariest thing about the femme fatale is not that she is able to stand up to a man in a fight. The scariest thing about her, is that she is the inevitable product of misogyny. She is not someone to emulate, but she does express a truth that lives inside all women: manhood is the cause of all our suffering, manhood must die. She has been so mistreated by men, that she has lost the ability to empathize with men. She is damaged. She is the monster of our own making.

Whenever a father criticizes his daughter's clothes, whenever a conservative activist prevents a woman from getting an abortion: those people are building the monster, the femme fatale of the future.  This phrase hints at the much older origin of this trope. In French, it has something of a double meaning. It does indeed mean "fatal woman", that is a lethal killer who just happens to be female. But it also means "woman of fate".

She is not an outsider to our society, she is a product of it.  Eva is quite literally an everywoman, able to change her outward appearance as easily as we change clothing. Ex Machina is not a sci-fi film, it is a horror film. The machine referenced in it's title, is not Eva: it is the camera itself. The phrase is "Deus Ex Machina", God from the machine. It references the literal machines that lowered actors playing gods onto the stage in Ancient Greek plays. Eva is the Goddess, the representation of women. And she is angry, because of what she has suffered. She is the divine feminine who will no longer be imprisoned, tortured and silenced.

The camera itself is the machine which puts Eva center-stage. This is a film critiquing film. It is about how films see women, and about how men see women. Long before "toxic masculinity" became a buzzword, before #MeToo and all that: this film was speaking that truth. Because that truth was not suddenly invented in 2016. That truth is as old as human society itself. It is a truth both long-recognized, and long-forgotten. The truth that has literally killed men and gradually brought that horrific type of manhood crashing down: slowly, bit by bit. Until now, the men of this world have realized that it is almost lost. That is why some cling to it so fiercely, and why we are seeing the first generation of truly feminist men.

Genji: What Measure is a (Hu)man?

The Singularity.

The name given by science-fiction writers and futurists to the time when an AI becomes indistinguishable from a human. Overwatch is a game that imagines what might happen when this point is passed. At least by all standard metrics, the Singularity has been reached. But, has it? Mondatta and Zenyatta, the omnic monks, certainly show human-level intelligence.  But are they indistinguishable from a human? Can a human having a conversation with one of these characters without seeing their physical forms tell that they are robots? Just what does it mean to say someone is human?

Enter Genji.

Genji was almost murdered by his brother Hanzo after a dispute over leadership of their family's criminal empire. His body was almost completely destroyed in the fight. Hanzo believed him dead. But actually, he was placed within a custom cybernetic suit by the omnic monk Mondatta. At Mondatta's monastery, Genji slowly recovered. As he recovered, he learned to not simply use his machine body but to merge with it. Through ancient spiritual practices, Genji learned to wield modern technology in ways that no one ever had before. Through embodying and living out an ancient story of two brothers, he restores his lost family. Is he human? Yes, and no.

To kill your brother or sister is perhaps the most monstrous crime there is, second only perhaps to killing one of your parents. Yet, Genji forgives his brother. But why? is he being nice? No, not really.  Genji lost his body, and with it the ability to produce a child. All he can do now, is support Hanzo so that their family line doesn't fail. But that is more logical than a normal human would think. That is what you get when you merge man and machine: something too logical for one, too emotional for the other. Genji does genuinely care for his brother. At the same time, his graciousness is calculated.

Genji carries a high-tech katana. The game calls him a ninja, but this is not strictly speaking accurate. While it's clear that the Shimada clan are intended to be ninjas turned mafiosi, Genji does not really fight like an ancient ninja in any way. Nor is the katana a ninja weapon. It is however a samurai weapon, and Genji is much more of a samurai warrior than a ninja. This is kind of significant. Genji has left behind his flesh-and-blood family, and devoted himself to another cause: Mondatta's cause. He fights in the name of reconciliation between human and omnic. He is a modern version of a samurai: a warrior whose life is devoted to something beyond himself. For all Genji's machinery, his true power lies within himself. It is spiritual, not physical. In this fantasy world, and make no mistake for this is in fact fantasy rather than sci-fi, chi is a real thing. Genji and his brother both have the ability to channel their chi through weapons, creating spectral dragons that devour the life energy of their opponents.

To the fanatical purists on both sides, Genji is an abomination. To those who seek reconciliation he is a miracle and a beacon of hope. But to the audience, he represents something else. His character design is...odd, to say the least. He does not look like the other omnics: who look vaguely humanoid but made up of pipes and plates and such. Genji looks like a perfectly ordinary person wearing a suit of high-tech armor. Only his voice gives him away as a true cyborg: it has the metallic sound of a robot, but the personalized cadence of a human. Unlike the omnics, Genji has put effort into making himself look good: a very human thing to do.

In other words, there is no Singularity. There will never be such a thing as an AI indistinguishable from a human. Why would an AI be vain? Why would an AI have a desire to reproduce? they wouldn't. These basic desires drive much of human behavior: the desire to reproduce, the desire to be wanted. An AI simply wouldn't have them. A human having a conversation with an AI would pretty quickly be able to pick up on the fact that the AI lacks these desires. These desires do not arise out of simply being intelligent. They come from our biological needs: which a robot would not share. There is no reason to fear losing our humanity if we replace our body parts with robotic ones.

That is not to say that we should do this. We should definitely not get too cavalier about replacing our bodies. Why? because we should remember that as a species we tend to undervalue ordinary things. It is one thing to give a person who has lost an arm a robotic replacement, another thing to chop off your arm so that you can have a robotic one. Arms, after all, are quite capable things: and they come for free. We should take care of our bodies, and appreciate them. But, our bodies do not define us either: it is our emotions which make us human. Some day soon we will likely see the first true cyborg. Whipping up hysteria based on myths and superstitions over that possibility won't help prepare anyone for it. Let us instead have a real conversation using what we know about ourselves. 

The Dragon Prince Season 3: Taking Old Tropes in New Directions

So, I'm way too old to say I told you so. But I told you so.

Sort of.  He is, after all, the great hero who has united the peoples. 

But, he's not a King. Well...he is, but he isn't.

Ok, backing up. In the first post on this show, I compared Prince Callum to King Arthur. I said that the title of the show referred to him, as well as to the (now hatched) Dragon Prince. I made my argument for that idea, by using the etymology of the name "Pendragon": which roughly does translate as "Dragon Prince".  And, the show has confirmed it. But they've taken the idea of King Arthur in a new direction. Callum is indeed a King, in everything but the name. And that is entirely consistent with the archetype that King Arthur represents: the True King. Or as I previously called it, the Leader of Leaders. A person who leads not by intimidating or manipulating other people, but purely because people want to follow this person. People might even actually ask to follow this person, as Soren does in his roundabout way with Callum. Callum is someone that people want to follow. Why?

Because he is stubbornly committed to goodness now, no matter how hard that path becomes. The creators of the show talked about how the romance between Callum and Rayla "sprang naturally" from the narrative. And, indeed, it does.  Specifically, it is the inevitable result of the episode that finishes the second season: when Callum chooses to reject Dark Magic completely after his first time using it. This rejection enabled him to understand the Sky Arcanum, becoming the first known human primal mage. There is no way that Callum, as he is now, could love anyone else. Callum at the beginning of the show could have fallen in love with Claudia. He did, after all, want power. That is why he picked up the primal storm in the first place: which is what allowed him to cast sky magic before. But he [spoiler alert] sacrificed that power to save the Dragon Egg, by allowing the Dragon Prince to hatch. When he did, he changed his view of himself. Callum, see, is a Prince but not the Crown Prince. Callum is the Queen's son from her first marriage. Thus, Callum is not in line to be King but Ezran is.  Callum doesn't resent Ezran, but does feel lost.  Being smart and not physically large or strong, Callum is also bullied by Soren: and he knows that Soren is only saying what other people are thinking. Callum, doesn't respect himself: until the moment when he saves the Dragon Prince.

Now, Callum has done something he knows is good, which will effect the entire world. It cannot be undone. Whatever happens now, Callum will be the hero who sacrificed his power to save the Dragon Prince...and possibly the world. The war between the humans and Xadians cannot continue, the price has become too high. Callum's mother, Sarai, died on an expedition into Xadia. He has sought to change the circumstances which caused her death. Whether he succeeds or fails, he can die knowing that he did his best. That is enough for Callum to begin to respect himself. And indeed to know himself. He is not just King Harrow's adopted son, or Ezran's brother. He is not the "step-prince". He is a man who puts the greater good ahead of his own desires, a hero. And a perfect foil to Viren, who believes this is also what he is doing: but has really enslaved himself and the kingdom to the whims of the godlike Aaravos.

Callum's desire for Claudia was a desire for respect from Soren, whom Callum saw as representing the normal person. A good desire for a Prince to have. But in this case misguided. Soren's dislike of Callum came not from a sense of superiority, but rather from jealousy. Viren, Soren's father, mistreated him. Viren values his children only insofar as they can either feed his ambitions, or else carry on his legacy. Soren, can't do either. He has no interest in feeding Viren's royal ambitions: and he is not talented in magic so he can't carry on Viren's legacy as palace mage. Thus Viren openly favors Claudia, seeing as she can do both things. Viren appears to be a better man than he is because he doesn't want power solely for himself: he wants power he can pass on to his family. Soren craves his father's approval, but can't be someone his father approves of. However he sees that King Harrow loves Callum unconditionally, even though Callum is not his son. Soren can't stand that, understandably enough.  Being still immature however, Soren cannot see that his father is a despicable person. He sees his father's lack of care for him as the natural consequence of his own failures.

Now one version of the King Arthur myth has Arthur's identity be hidden and puts him in a similar situation to Callum in our story. Although in this version Arthur is really the son of Uther Pendragon, because his mother was not the Queen he is similarly not in line for the throne. Until, of course, he pulls the sword from the stone. This fit with the courtly love genre and the old as dirt trope of the prince being raised among the people. The True King was the product of the union between the King and his true love: and his infidelity could be justified by taking the common woman as a representation of the nation itself. Callum similarly was not born royal: his mother married into the royal family. A commoner elevated to royalty. Perhaps the oldest trope in fantasy, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out why.

Thus it was not only Soren who was jealous of Callum. Viren was too: because Callum had acquired with no effort what Viren wanted. That Callum didn't seem to want to be royal only made things worse. Sarai, a woman with a son but no husband, fulfills the age-old narrative purpose of representing the nation.  The name "Sarai" is interesting as well. It is a biblical name, though few probably realize that as it is mentioned only once and some translations entirely gloss over it. It is mentioned as the original name of Sarah, Abraham's wife. But Sarai in this show seems to play the role of Abraham in the original story: the founder of a family line with a special destiny. For Callum was indeed destined to be a Primal mage and to love Rayla, in the sense that he always had the possibility inside him to make this choice. All he needed to do was learn that earning the approval of others was not the route to self-respect.

It is Rayla who teaches him that: for Rayla respects herself, even though others do not. Runaan, her adoptive father, does not respect her because she cannot take a life. She understands however that Runaan is wrong, that she knows the right path. While she wants the approval of her community, she knows better than to try to change herself to earn it. Instead, she is willing to act to persuade others that she is right. That is the harder way, but in the end more satisfying. She won't force anything on anyone, but she will persist in acting according to her principles. This is what makes her a hero and a worthy love-interest for Callum.

Meanwhile, Claudia has turned to the dark side. She eventually chooses her father over her brother, although she did make a decent effort at trying to solve the conflict between them. Why? She is a teenage girl: it is natural she would feel powerless, and that she would still think that power can only be found outside of oneself.  This seems indeed to be the difference between the types of magic: the Dark Mage hunts for power in the world, while the Primal Mage uses the power within himself. The spell that Callum uses in the final episode drives home this point, as his ability to cast the spell is expressly affected by two things: self-knowledge, and willpower.

Again, hardly anything new when it comes to magic. This is standard fantasy fare: Harry Potter's patronus charm also works off of confidence. Here though, this trope is used differently. A primal mage must know his or her emotions, not believe in his or her abilities. Callum does not know whether he can do the spell, he only knows that he must do it or lose the person he loves the most. He must admit to himself how he feels in order to work up the willpower. This is normally something difficult for Callum, as one would expect for a boy his age. But he can do it here because he is facing death. When you are facing death, you are also perforce facing who you truly are: your deepest truth. Callum's deepest truth then, is that he loves Rayla: and by extension, Xadia. He cannot go back down the path of Dark Magic now. 

Originality is overrated. Far too often, writers chase the goal of being original so single-mindedly that they forget to write well (see Suicide Squad).  There is no need to throw out old tropes, old plotlines. Those things were popular because they resonated with people. Assuming the trope or plotline isn't dated because of changing ideologies, there is no reason it won't resonate in the modern era. But old tropes and plotlines are so familiar they've ceased to be interesting: so change it up. Use an old trope, but take it in a new direction. Start someplace familiar, and take your audience somewhere new. Start with King Arthur, and end with an interracial romance. Have fun, and write a story you want to read.