November 2008
1 post
The Abstraction Machine
The Lord of the Rings is not fantasy; it’s abstraction. J. R. R. Tolkien strived for applicability, the idea that symbols do not stand for just one thing, like say, Middle-earth standing for England in World War II, but that the reader can instead apply the story to many many different things.
Abstraction and application are antitheses. One builds, the other breaks down. The mind is an...