this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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Lord of the memes
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You get to express yourself in a healthier masculine way in Middle Earth because you're not worried about fucking driving an hour to work and back to make some asshole rich while you worry about if you're going to eat next week, all the while trying to numb your senses with substances and stave off the fear that at any time, an illness could ruin you and your family financially and put you on the street. At least in ME, the existential problems men face are quantifiable: there's an orc that wants to kill me, etc.
Capitalism makes you emotionally unavailable? What?
My dear, I don't think that's the problem here
Try reading “The Way We Never Were”. While capitalism isn’t the cause, it’s certainly a contributor in the whole idea of men not needing anyone, men being sole provider, separating men from the tribes that gave them that emotional or physical support…not just men but women too.
Okay, I'll admit, in a 2 sentence blurb, the connection might not seem "all there" but yes. Yes, the toxic world that is based in capitalism, our current paradigm and the one we're comparing to LOTR, dividing and conquering people along arbitrary lines all the while we're scrambling to get as much money as possible in order to fulfill some 60 year old notion about what being a man or what being a woman means, yes that turns people toxic and we express ourselves in toxic manners because of it.
Identify a problem you see with modern men and I can probably boil that point down to how it's capitalism motivated.
Side note: certain places in LOTR resemble real world medieval feudalism, such as Gondor. You'll note how toxic men from Gondor are. The economic system that drives us influences our behavior.
My interpretation was always that distance to the enemy determines your pov. Shire was furthest, easy and laid back. Gondor is practically frontline, so some characters were more pragmatic and Machiavellian.
Rn I am speaking only about FOTR.
Fuck you I'm poor and angry
If capitalism is about competition, then the need to divide and display individual strength are characteristics reinforced by capitalism.