There are many differences between the movie "Lord of the Rings" and Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings". Only by reading it carefully can you taste the content that the movie did not convey. Yesterday, when I was reading the first Lord of the Rings, I came across a detail that shocked me.
As we all know, before the Fellowship of the Ring team set off, the wizard Gandalf the Grey told Frodo Baggins the origin of the One Ring, hoping that he could take on the responsibility of destroying the One Ring. At first, Frodo felt that the task was daunting, and he was reluctant to take on such a great responsibility. So he took the One Ring directly to Gandalf and let him complete it.
Faced with the so-called Supreme Precious Ring, Gandalf immediately refused. In the movie, Gandalf explains it this way: "I only want the One Ring to do good, but through me the One Ring will unleash unimaginable evil." This sentence is easy to understand. Gandalf believed that the One Ring was evil and could not do good deeds, and would be even more evil if he used the magical powers he possessed.
However, this is not the case in the book. Instead, Gandalf explained it this way: "The Lord of the Rings invaded my heart by pity—pity for the weak, the desire for the power to do good... The desire to use it will be too strong for me to resist."
The words in the book have completely different meanings than the lines in the movie. Good and evil do not lie in the Supreme Precious Ring itself, but in the user who is good and evil. The One Ring will do what it pleases, and if you are willing to do good and help the weak, it will satisfy that desire. But in the process of doing good deeds, the bearer will fall into the devil's way, and finally become the servant of the Dark Lord Sauron.
The simple dialogue immediately shows the completely different values of the film creator and the original author. Pity the weak can actually fall into the devil's way? How could Tolkien think this way?
I tried to analyze why Tolkien made such a judgment.
First, strength is a relative concept. Everyone says that the rich are strong and the beggars are low. However, wealthy people often suffer from various diseases, and if their external environment changes slightly, they are as fragile as a candle in the wind and need various conditioning to restore their health. The beggars slept in the open air every day, without clothes to warm themselves in winter, without cold drinks in summer to dispel the heat, and lived in an environment that breeds bacteria and viruses every day. But many beggars have endured cruel tests, and their bodies are very strong. So, how to determine who is strong and who is weak? The weak are themselves judged out of a narrow range of knowledge. Compassion is a kind of self-righteous arrogance. This kind of arrogance will naturally lead you to fall into the devil's way.
In that case, someone will definitely refute that there are still recognized weak people in human society, such as women and children, the disabled, the poor, and the marginalized. Don't they deserve mercy?
The 20th century of human beings is an era when humanitarianism and social justice are popularized, and left-wing politics based on this value has also been publicized to the greatest extent. Today, pity and helping the recognized weak in the crowd seems to be self-evident. Is that true? This is already a complex political issue, and once the discussion is bound to fall into the real world of right and wrong. All I can say is that not every kind of poverty and weakness is caused by some people or some unreasonable system, and most poverty and weakness are caused by objective reasons of time, space and people themselves. Trying to change this state is essentially going against the sky. When changing, in fact, it also creates new poverty and new imbalances. If this change is driven by man-made forces, there will be more evil consequences waiting for human beings in the future. Therefore, starting from pity, the destination must be to fall into the devil's way.
So, what is the magic way?
In fact, Gandalf in the book has a key sentence: "Desire to obtain the power to do good." The key word is: desire. This is the reason for the magic. The so-called desire, is anxious, urgent desire, in short, greed.
Compassion for the weak and doing good deeds are not just based on subjective assumptions and actions against the sky, but more importantly, it is a strong desire in people's hearts. Doing something that satisfies sensory stimulation can give people inner satisfaction; in fact, doing good deeds can also achieve some kind of satisfaction. The human world not only gives rewards, but also rewards with joy in their own hearts.
It can be said that pity for the weak is an advanced desire. Desire is desire after all, and the process of realizing desire must be ignoring objective things and crazy about some ideal state. There is a saying in ancient China that "kindness does not lead troops, righteousness does not hold wealth, love does not lead to affairs, and kindness does not serve as an official". When the general is too merciful to the enemy, he is the devil who brings his soldiers to death. Likewise, excessive attachment to righteousness, affection, and kindness will inevitably bring irreversible disasters to others. Greedy persistence is the way of magic.
Why is this so? Every human being is a part of the universe, not the whole; every moral concept is a puzzle piece, not a complete picture, of human consciousness of the world. Perfection is to keep the world in balance, so that every part, every piece of the puzzle has its own place.
In the book "Lord of the Rings", Gandalf is a wizard with powerful mana, insight into the past and present, and immortality. In later episodes, he is also reborn like a phoenix and is one of the most powerful story characters in the Lord of the Rings universe. But he never longed to destroy the evil forces, nor did he ask for the slaughter of the orcs, strong orcs, and oriental peoples who helped the tyrants.
In stark contrast is the white robe wizard Saruman. Saruman was originally a member of the Protoss. Out of pity for mankind, he hoped to defeat the Dark Lord to transform the world, so he came to the human world (called Middle Earth in the book). Positive enterprising spirit, strong desire to change the world, let Saruman continue to suffer defeat. The setbacks of failure made him even more superstitious about powerful forces. After repeated failures, efforts, failures, and reincarnations, Saruman not only became very evil, but also completely became his accomplice after the rise of the Dark Lord.
As the saying goes, "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you". As a wise man, Gandalf has a deep understanding of human nature and a clearer understanding of himself. Compassion is his weakness. If he is greedy for this beautiful feeling, he must fall into the devil's way just like Saruman.
Don't long for mercy, let alone take the initiative to do good, these are the incentives to fall into the devil's way. But are we going to completely get rid of the feeling of pity and helping others? No, when someone really needs us to help him, that's when we really do good.
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