Lord of the Rings (abridged version)

“Here we all are and here is the Ring,” said Gandalf, “but we have not yet come any nearer to our purpose. What shall we do with it?”

“Would Tom Bombadil not take the ring and keep it within the bounds he has set, forever harmless?” asked Erestor.

“NO,” said Gandalf, “Not willingly. And he would soon forget it, or most likely throw it away.”

“Power to defy our enemy is not in him,” said Galdor, “What power still remains lies with us, here in Imladris, or with Cirdan in the Havens, or in Lorien.”

“I have not the strength,” said Elrond, “Neither have they”.

“Then let us cast it into the deeps,” said Glorfindel, “ In the sea it would be safe.”

“Not safe forever,” said Gandalf, “We should seek a final end to this menace.”

“Now at last we must take a hard road, a road unforeseen,” said Elrond, “There lies our hope, if hope it be. To walk into peril – to Mordor. We must send the ring to the Fire.”

Boromir stirred, fingering his great horn and frowning.

“I do not understand all this,” he said, “Why should we not think that the great ring has come into our hands to serve us in the very hour of our need? Wielding it the Free Lords of the Free may surely defeat the enemy.”

“Alas, no,” said Elrond, “We cannot use the Ruling Ring. It belongs to Sauron and was made by him alone and is altogether evil. I will not take the ring to wield it.”

“Nor I,” said Gandalf.

“Thus we return once more to the destroying of the ring,” said Erestor, “And yet come no nearer.”

“The road must be trod, but it will be very hard,” said Elrond. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us very far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong.”

The noon-bell rang. Still no one spoke. Frodo glanced at all the faces, but they were not turned to him. All the council sat with downcast eyes, as if in deep thought.

“Excuse me,” he said at length.

Elrond raised his eyes and looked at him, and Frodo felt his heart pierced by the sudden keenness of the glance.

“Are you all completely thick?” asked Frodo. Outraged and angry faces surrounded him amongst the council of the mighty and wise.

“Look, you cretins,” went on Frodo, “If you think I’m going to walk all the way to Mordor with this bloody thing, you can just forget it. All you need to do is summon Gwaihir the Windlord, Greatest of all the Eagles of the North, give him the ring and tell him to drop it in the crack of Mount Doom. And before you can say “Oops I never thought of that”, the ring will be destroyed, Sauron will be comprehensively stuffed and we can all have a nice dinner, a few drinks and a good night’s kip.”

“By the beard of Thorin Oakenshield himself, I think the halfling has it!” cried Gloin.

“Not all giants are extremely large,” noted Aragorn enigmatically.

“And then you can all come to Gondor for a massive party,” suggested Boromir, fingering his great horn excitedly.

And so it came to pass.

Non-linear non-sense

Although, to be fair, it's not really all that non-linear. By brain just doesn't do non-linear. I tried, I really did. I started going up and down the same page but I started seeing double, so I ended up with a whole bunch of linked pages. It's kind of juvenile but I don't see the point in being old if you can't be juvenile.

No, that can't be right.

Anyway, pit your wits against the Boyd YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED poetic hyperlinked riddle.

http://members.westnet.com.au/rboyd/numbered1.html

I confess -- I'm a Collaborator

On Wikipedia anyway.

The somewhat underpowered entry for RugbyWA, the governing body of rugby union here in Western Australia, has been enlarged and updated by your humble scribe and rugby journo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RugbyWA

I Drink Therefore I Am

Who am I?

The hard ones first eh?

What does ‘I’ even mean? And what is a “fixed, fully-centred identity”?

‘I’ is an expression of myself as an individual, an acknowledgement of the human person as separate from others, an establishment of an individual identity.

And what is identity? Identity and the sense of the individual are concepts of the Age of Enlightenment. Before that, people saw themselves as part of a divine cosmology, created by God or Gods and powerless before fate or destiny dictated by divine plan. The Age of Enlightenment proposed individuals as independent, conscious entities, controlling their existence through free will and reason, and possessing a centred identity from birth that developed as the individual experienced life.

As Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am”. Or as Monty Python said, more appealingly and a whole lot funnier, “I drink, therefore I am”.

The modern definition of identity expanded to acknowledge the effects of culture or society on individuals, and how their identity was shaped by the meanings and interactions of the culture they existed in. Modernity has also raised questions about the crisis of identity – whether the fragmentation of modern society from its traditional, established base roles of class, gender, race and belief has led to a destabilisation of identity as individuals no longer have fixed classifications to belong to.

The concept of a fixed, fully centred individual is of limited value. There are the questions of defining what fixed and fully centred actually means to different individuals, and then there is doubt whether individuals can evaluate themselves with anything other than complete subjectivity, which arguably makes the evaluation of limited worth.

Do I know who I am? Do I know who anyone else is? Do I know the culture that we all exist in, that influences so much of our understanding of ourselves and others? Arguably, no to all three. At best, I know what my behaviour is, and the behaviour of others, the behaviours expected and tolerated in the cultural context; and must draw conclusions from that.