The Orc Problem

I don't get this anymore...

Yes healing is a good thing. And what do orcs make of it? Their version of miruvor is a bitter "Amphetamine" and their version of wound healing is an ugly dark paste that causes pain and leaves ugly dark scars.

They even spoil such an objectively good thing like healing...
 
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They did not steal the medicine just to tempt the hobbits. It was their own which they shared at need. That they had it for themselves is a sign that they are actively combating the corruption they are subjected to.

Well, after several pages, it's more than clear that we simply won't agree on this matter. Have a good day.
 
They're not combating anything but their own fear they might deliver their prisoner dead instead of alive and thus may get punished by the white hand.

Everything else: evidence zero.
 
I think the main issue is "what is Good"?

What standard would there be to hold such a God to, outside Himself? And yet judging by His standard is not subjective, as He placed it into the very fabric of Creation.

I think the issue is that of that kind of God is what Eru is then only Eru is truly fit to understand his own nature and therefore is the only one capable of understanding Goodness. Anyone else trying to assess Goodness by measuring up to Eru is making their own subjective judgement calls in trying to understand an unknowable nature.

Then you get into the ‘Eru heals and therefore healing is good’ argument, and Odola’s interpretation becomes just as valid. Only Eru can truly know Eru and thus truly know Goodness and judge based on it
 
I found an interesting quote...

User Roger Wilco brought up the issue of medical health when he was giving the many problems in our discussion to Narnion.

What if: Orcs are insane?

I mean... what if they are the way they are not because they are evil by free choice but what if they choose to be evil because they have a genetical inherited psychological health problem? They are psychopaths who cannot feel compassion, enjoy inflicting pain and destroying things and generally have little love for anything else but... it isn't their fault because they have that condition which renders them mentally ill... , and that is which was done to them by Morgoth? He could not make them evil from birth, but he could set up every condition which practically disabled them from becoming anything else but constantly hungry, in pain and agressive... if you grow up,that way in a cultural environment like that i guess you can only become an Orc.
 
I don't get this anymore...

Yes healing is a good thing. And what do orcs make of it? Their version of miruvor is a bitter "Amphetamine" and their version of wound healing is an ugly dark paste that causes pain and leaves ugly dark scars.

They even spoil such an objectively good thing like healing...

I AM simple delighted here you admit healing is an objectiv good in ME. Costed me a lot of effort to convinced others of it. ;-)

Most medicine is bitter. But that is not the criterion for medicine. Medicine has not to be nice. It just has to work. This is why I think human mortality is a remedy. It is bitter and neither nice or pleasant. But it works, it prevents total complete corruption in a human. It naturally limits it. We see this in Boromir's death scene, when he is at death's door the ring's temptation cannot reach him anymore and looses its power over him. This is the reason Sauron takes it away mortality from those he enslaves completely.

I found an interesting quote...

User Roger Wilco brought up the issue of medical health when he was giving the many problems in our discussion to Narnion.

What if: Orcs are insane?

I mean... what if they are the way they are not because they are evil by free choice but what if they choose to be evil because they have a genetical inherited psychological health problem? They are psychopaths who cannot feel compassion, enjoy inflicting pain and destroying things and generally have little love for anything else but... it isn't their fault because they have that condition which renders them mentally ill... , and that is which was done to them by Morgoth? He could not make them evil from birth, but he could set up every condition which practically disabled them from becoming anything else but constantly hungry, in pain and agressive... if you grow up,that way in a cultural environment like that i guess you can only become an Orc.

Yes, this is what I mentioned before. What orcs need foremost is healing (Oh, Irmo, where are you!). (I do not knows if you know but the Orthodox consider "ancestral sin"(what the Western Christians call "orginal sin") more an illness in need of healing and less a guilf to be redeemed.)

They're not combating anything but their own fear they might deliver their prisoner dead instead of alive and thus may get punished by the white hand.

They had the medicine prior to taking the hobbits. To use for themselves. They are trying to combat their own ilnesses/corruption. As such they are still fighting it. If so, they have not totally succumbed as yet.
 
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I think the issue is that of that kind of God is what Eru is then only Eru is truly fit to understand his own nature and therefore is the only one capable of understanding Goodness. Anyone else trying to assess Goodness by measuring up to Eru is making their own subjective judgement calls in trying to understand an unknowable nature.

Then you get into the ‘Eru heals and therefore healing is good’ argument, and Odola’s interpretation becomes just as valid. Only Eru can truly know Eru and thus truly know Goodness and judge based on it
I do consider one of LOTR's main themes the exploration on the nature of evil. The ring is evil, we observe its effects on Bilbo, Frodo, Gollum, Sam, Boromir, Denethor and the methods to cope with it. Less an exploration of Eru/Good itself. I things in ME at least Good is obvious.

Maybe this is what the critics objects to when they say LOTR is black and white. But we are analysing evil here, if we start to question Good, then this becomes impossible. The book's title is Sauron, not Eru.
 
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You surely can’t know what Evil is without defining what it is not. And we have to examine what are are presented with and from whom and how it can measures. Not saying we have to discredit it, but we must closely examine what we are given so we know what by what yardstick we are measuring Evil against.
 
So we may have finally come somewhere. As i before noted there is a slight separation between spirit and body in that the body is part of Arda while the spirit is not necessarily.So logically the body as part of Arda it also is subdue to Morgoth's corruption of Arda, the Morgothic element.Now cerebral damage, caused by Sorcery, as a sickness certainly must be seen as an unhealthy thing and so a form of corruption.
 
You surely can’t know what Evil is without defining what it is not. And we have to examine what are are presented with and from whom and how it can measures. Not saying we have to discredit it, but we must closely examine what we are given so we know what by what yardstick we are measuring Evil against.
That's true and this is why we have the this discussion here in the first place. But if we start to deconstruct Good as a valid concept the whole premise of LOTR start to fall apart as a house of cards. So for the purpose of this work our deconstruction of Good has to have its fuctional limits. We can ask what Good is, but cannot question its existence altogether. Not in ME anyway.
 
This also means that if Arda marred is finally remade, also the corruption Morgoth did to the orcs will be healed, so there is still some hope for the orcs because it would enable them to finally recover.
 
This also means that if Arda marred is finally remade, also the corruption Morgoth did to the orcs will be healed, so there is still some hope for the orcs because it would enable them to finally recover.
Indeed. but we do not see this far, that is beyond the horizon of our perspective.
 
This also means that if Arda marred is finally remade, also the corruption Morgoth did to the orcs will be healed, so there is still some hope for the orcs because it would enable them to finally recover.

So if orcs are redeemable, even in the end and perhaps only by grand cosmic terms, can they be called fundamentally evil? I guess the question is whether true evil is redeemable. Or is they the definition of evil. If evil can’t be redeemed but maybe orcs can then orcs aren’t evil. If evil is redeemable then maybe they could be called evil.

But I’m still not sure we know enough of them beyond their soldiers to know if they are indeed consistently wicked in all intent and deed.
 
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So if orcs are redeemable, even in the end and perhaps only by grand cosmic terms, can they be called fundamentally evil? I guess the question is whether true evil is redeemable. Or is they the definition of evil. If evil can’t be redeemed but maybe orcs can then orcs aren’t evil. If evil is redeemable then maybe they could be called evil.

But I’m still not sure we know enough of them beyond their soldiers to know if they are Audi consistently wicked in all intent and deed.

That's beyond the scope of the work completely. But if orcs are corrupted elves they can be healed for sure. In LOTR they are not presented as completely evil in the way Sauron is or even the Nazgul are. Such an evil would be incomptible with life, and orcs are alive still.
 
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It is a real shame in many ways that Tolkien, who was such a proponent of measuring a story by what it is rather than by considering authorial intent (thus despising allegory) went through such pains to tie his fiction to his own beliefs in a universal cosmology, thus creating discrepancies in his secondary world. It was not allowed to exist in seclusion. Though I suppose in doing so he has created a universe which has internal theological discrepancies and thus makes it more believable. Maybe there is no Orc Problem if we accept that there is an Orc Problem to the fictional scribes as well. Maybe it’s not an issue needing to be resolved but one that can remain to enrich the reality of the narrative. Tolkien’s own difficulty in rectifying it can be discounted if we take The Problem as presented: a part of Middle Earth???
 
JRRT HAD an Orc Problem...
But it had many facettes as Myth transformed illustrates pretty well. He was totally ok with Orcs being a fallen race... he was not ok with how this would work.After he had established his feä and hróa concept he thought elves had a stronger hróa and therefore were less likely the orcs ancestors, also the general attitude of his Orcs more resembled how he thought of evil men.In the end he preferred orcs to be men but never quite settled on this.

 
I appreciate JRRT himself had an orc problem, but I’m saying that textually perhaps there doesn’t need to be one. We could accept it as enrichment to the reality. In the same way character flaws and discrepancies add to the world’s richness.
 
The text doesn't have one because theres so much about Orcs we do not know.However WHAT we KNOW of them makes me not want to know too much also...

I like some fanwork, for example old RPGs like MERP where they describe orcish society in more detail, Gundabad or Goblin town i enjoyed reading.That is fan-work... and even THIS does work well without any deeper philosophical or theological problems on what orcs are or if they have souls.

Gamers as much as most fantasy readers don't give too much thought about such things.But JRRT was not such a person...
 
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The text doesn't have one because theres so much about Orcs we do not know.However WHAT we KNOW of them makes we not want to know too much also...

I like some fanwork, for example old RPGs like MERP where they describe orcish society in more detail, Gundabad or Goblin town i enjoyed reading.That is fan-work... and even THIS does work well without any deeper philosophical or theological problems on what orcs are or if they have souls.

Gamers as much as most fantasy readers don't give too much thought about such things.But JRRT was not such a person...

I think it’s unfair to say gamers and other fantasy readers don’t give to much thought, it’s just often that those other worlds allow for varied races and varied types of individual within those races. It’s perfectly possible in many other settings to have morally complex orcs.
 
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