once I job that I found John Rawls’ argument that it is unfair to benefit from one’s natural abilities to be inferior to the ideas found in JRR Tolkein’s work The Lord of the Rings:
More than anything, this kind of attitude reminds me of what Boromir said to Frodo when he tried to take the Ring of Power:
It’s not yours, except by an unfortunate coincidence! It could have been mine! It should be mine! Give it to me!
To Tolkien, these are the words of someone whose mind has been corrupted under the influence of demonic evil. But for Rawls, this is simply what justice requires because of the injustice of benefiting from one’s own attributes. As far as I’m concerned, Tolkien has more true wisdom to share with the world than Rawls.
Today I will continue this theme and argue that Tolkien’s fictional writings also demonstrated greater wisdom in predicting what the future holds than the writings of the great science writer Isaac Asimov.
For starters, Tyler Cowen recently sharing a list of predictions made by Asimov in 1981 about what we should expect in the coming decades. On this list we find the following:
1985 — World oil production will fall below world needs
1990 — North America will no longer be a reliable source of food exports
1995 — The nations of the world will come together (reluctantly) at a world congress to seriously tackle the problems of population, food and energy.
2000 — Thanks to global sponsorship, construction of solar power plants in orbit around Earth will have begun.
2005 — A mining station will be operational on the Moon.
2010 — The world’s population will have peaked at around 7 billion.
2015 — The dismantling of the world’s military machines will have made international war impractical.
2020 – The flow of energy from solar space stations will have begun. Nuclear fusion power plants will be under construction.
2025 — The World Congress will be recognized as a permanent institution. Improved communications will have developed a global “lingua franca” that will be taught in schools.
2030 — The use of microcomputers and electronic computers will have revolutionized education, created a global village and prepared humanity for the in-depth exploration of the solar system and plans for possible advances to the stars.
As you may have noticed, dear reader, most of Asimov’s predictions were far from accurate (although Cowen credits him with being close to the truth on two of those counts). Now, I’m not writing this to dunk on Asimov because he was mostly wrong in his predictions. I’m sure that at the time Asimov could have made what would have seemed like very compelling arguments for why things would have turned out the way he predicted, arguments that I doubt I would have could counter convincingly. But as the great philosopher and poet Yogi Berra once said, prediction is difficult, especially when it comes to the future. I’m also not saying that I could have made better predictions in his place. No one can make such big predictions over such a long period of time and get them right. The world is simply too complex and unexpected developments that have not been accounted for and therefore derail your predictions will always occur.
And this is what I think is overlooked by extremely intelligent people like Asimov. He wasn’t stupid – in terms of pure intelligence, I doubt I could hold a candle to him. And I suspect Asimov would surpass Tolkien on this measure as well. If we resurrected Asimov today and asked him to revise his predictions, I’m sure he would be able to come up with all sorts of things. ex-post explanations as to why things didn’t turn out the way he hoped. But the inability to achieve in advance whether this is the case is the key to failure here. As I have writing elsewhere, the fact that you could not know what outcome your actions might bring about is often itself something you could and should have known. And when you make big predictions, the fact that there will be unexpected developments that you can’t predict that will affect how things play out is also something you could have (and should) have known about.
So where does Tolkien figure in all this? Well, I think a wiser perspective was shared by Tolkien through the character of Elrond in the first book of his trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. While discussing how to deal with the threat of Sauron and the One Ring in Rivendell, the council slowly realizes that the best way forward will not depend on the great feats of mighty warriors like Glorfindel or powerful wizards like Gandalf , but from the simple courage of humble Hobbits. Elrond says to Frodo (and everyone at the council):
“If I understand correctly all that I have heard,” he said, “I think that this task is assigned to you, Frodo; and that if you don’t find a way, no one will. It is time for the people of the Shire, when they rise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and councils of the Great Ones. Who of all the Sages could have predicted this? Or if they are wise, why should they expect to know it until the hour strikes?
It’s that last sentence that’s really at the heart of what I’m talking about here. Elrond not only recognizes that things have unfolded in ways that even the wisest could not have predicted. More importantly, Elrond also says that the unpredictability of how things will turn out is itself something that true sages would have already understood. And this shows the difference between raw intellect and true wisdom. In terms of brain power, I’m sure Asimov would have outclassed Tolkien. But wisdom goes far beyond mere intelligence – and too often the pride that accompanies great intelligence undermines the humility necessary for true wisdom. And just as William Buckley once said that he would rather be governed by people selected from a telephone directory than by Harvard professors, I would rather live in a society guided by the wisdom of Tolkien than by the intelligence of ‘Asimov.
