“Everyone needs a fantasy.”
-Andy Warhol-
I’m not a huge fantasy guy. I’d like to look like a wizard some day. I’d like to ride a dragon, cast spells, and say things like henceforth henceforth so forth and so on. But my ability to cast all my worldly thoughts aside for a chance to hide in an elf’s hat and take down a castle of demon dwarfs is stunted and limited by my mind’s insistence on focusing on the already fantastic shit soaked streets of West Oakland where I roam.
I mean I’m kind of a fantasy guy, in that I fantasize all the time. I fantasize the streets are clean and made of swimmable raspberry jam. But then the fantasy dissipates because I just picture the shit all over my raspberry road and that is a flavor and skateboarding combination I prefer not to fantasize about.
Ok I am a huge fantasy guy. I see no element in present day society that wouldn’t be tremendously improved by talking bus sized eagles and imagination beings called schnarfillions and schnogrgroggins. I’ll go one step further and say that all of language would immediately improve if we just added a “sch” or a “schn” to the beginning of most words. Schnit schwould be scho schnawesome!
There was probably no greater fantasy story in my era of growing up than J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of The Rings. The Lord of the Rings is both a series of novels and a trio of 90 hour films documenting a troop of heroicish hobbits, dwarves and warriors trying to protect the one ring of power. The one ring is a ring that gives anyone who wears it power over everyone else.
The real hero of these stories is a small bald gremlin guy named Gollum or Smeagol depending on who or what you are talking to1. He started his life as Smeagol and ended up a Gollum after he took the one ring [by murdering his brother] and was cursed by its powers [and probably that murder]. Smeagol is pronounced Schmeagol because Tolkiein understood the power of the “sch” previously mentioned. Schmeagol-Gollum lives in a cave, talks about himself in 3rd person, obsesses over his preciousness, and adds extra “s’s” to most of what he says[es]. I thinkes thates mightes be a greates wayes to talkes as welles myselefeses.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this greasy Gollum recently. My initial thought was around whether or not he masturbated while creepily moaning my preciouses in that cave over his 500 years of ring worship. This is a profane and unnecessary thought, but I give it a better than 95% chance that he totally wanked it while saying that. Lonely men do lonely things in their lonely caves [see Plato’s famous unreleased sequel - “The Cave Drawings I Wacked Off To”]. My other thought was me thinking about why I was thinking about Gollum masturbating. I think it is safe to say that is my fantasy [even if that fantasy is mildly moldy and unhinged].
“Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.”
-Francisco Goya-
Gollum is emblematic of the modern man in several resonant ways. An unending devotion to attaining power, existence filtered tightly through devoted self purpose, philosophy lensed through the 3rd person, and a balding combover masking thoughts of world domination. And I can’t consider this fantasy construction without seeing all the other human Gollums amongst us. I'm thinking of Bryan Johnson, the cave dwelling centimillionaire tech entrepreneur who wants to live forever2. I’m thinking about all the billionaire breeder pronatalists trying to biohack a new form of eugenics into mainstream acceptance3. I’m thinking about the swole billionaire bald man making $1.43 Million dollars an hour who spends his day building yachts for his yacht to carry around while his workers piss and shit in bottles so they can avoid losing their jobs45. These men are obsessed with their precious. A life spent accumulating power has sent them spiraling inward trying to extend their life through cryochambers, gene hacking, and staged PR photoshoots of them getting in and out of helicopters on yachts.
In Tolkein’s novels, the one ring of power gives its wearer the ability to control others, but Smeagol, after murdering his brother for the ring, moves instead into a cave and practices riddles until a tiny man with furry feet steals it and escapes using the ring’s power of invisibility. The ring extends life, but in all its applications lead to moral corruption and in most cases destruction.
*SPOILER ALERT* …now if you are one of those people who would read an article about Lord of the Rings wanking, but aren’t familiar with the books or films, and you plan on watching and reading them “for the good parts like hobbits jacking off” then you should skip this next section...
Gollum in his quest to retake the ring eventually falls into a volcano with it, saving the world, but once and for all destroying himself. Other beings cross paths with the ring and are also killed or destroyed. Allegorically speaking, its power corrupts. The ring gives its bearers control and invisibility, but it also separates them from their fellow beings and in the end their core is shattered or non-existent.
A few years ago a bunch of Turkish dudes were sued by the president of Turkey because they said he looked like Gollum. This led to a court case where a jury got to decide whether or not Gollum was actually good or bad6. It also led to 3 different real humans doing jail time in Turkey for making memes. What I take this all to mean is that powerful people do not like being told they are really just greasy cave trolls.
I keep having this recurring fantasy that some day as a society we will get tired and sick of the exploitation of our working lowest classes by people who have so much time and money on their hands that they are building baby yachts for their mega yachts. But the Gollums with their rings of power won’t have it that way. They prefer we piss into Pringles cans until they have built robots to replace even that level of humanity from us. The stated goal of the Tesla robot for instance is to replace humans7. The only safeguard is a stop button and the morals of shareholders. So our future will be built off the ironclad morals of a group of strangers trying to figure out how to get the most money for themselves. Can greed be a religion?
Perhaps these powerful guys aren’t Smeagols or Gollums. Maybe they are actually Saurons? Sauron is the antagonist of The Lord of The Rings, the actual Lord the book is based on, and his goal is explicitly to bear the ring and control all on Earth under his power. So whereas Gollum got the ring and went to a cave to jack off with it, Sauron instead makes everyone take a look at it and then do whatever the heck he tells them to [like watch him jack off].
This is the power of fantasy. Through fantasy you can imagine any reality into reality. I can patiently and vividly with great detailed details imagine Gollum grabbing a tub of vaseline and going at himself for hours while he watches some deranged cave porn called “Two Elves, One Chalice” or I can instead imagine all the world’s richest most powerful men are just Gollums and I can demonstrate quick for you which Gollum is which….
In reality we all have a ring of power, and that ring of power is fantasy. No matter how ill our reality is, fantasy provides us a means of escaping or altering it to whatever ends we wish. You may be pissing in a can tomorrow, but imagine if instead you just piss all over the floor of that warehouse and then a dancing robot slips on your piss and everyone gets the day off for a literal piss break? Or imagine you are no longer yourself, but rather schyourschelf, and schnow schnaything schnis schpossible! Fantasy is fantastic.
But paying mind to Tolkein’s teachings we must be wary of how we wield this newfound power. If we Gollum ourselves with our rings and troll off to the darkest corners of life, we stand only to lose this power to hair-footed men who can invisibly rob us. The power of the ring corrupts, but maybe that is only if we obsess over that power? Trying to live forever, making genetically perfect babies, and building newborn yachts for daddy yachts are fantasies gooed to the walls of masturbatory cave dwelling. These are fantasies of self obsession and delusion. This is what happens when the ring is MY precious.
Is there any way the ring could be OUR precious instead? I’m not expecting that a world this chaotic could produce a collective fantasy, but I do fantasize that it could allow for the space and opportunity for us all to have one. So my fantasy might be a greasy little goober making cave paintings, and yours might be not pissing into old gatorade bottles. Heck you can even fantasize about having teeny tiny yachts, but maybe they can be built off the backs of people who get to use bathrooms instead of workers forced to rig piss cords to their pant legs? I’m not sure the path to get there, but from reading the back of the Lord of the Rings DVD I am sure that there is a path us collective heroes can take to help save this world from the wickedness of the ring. So grow the fur long on your feet, smoke a huge pipe of hobbit hash, and schlet’s schee schwere the schroad schtakes schus…
“All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.”
-Carl Jung-
FOOTENOTES
Smeagol is his given name, but then he is given the name Gollum because of a horrible swallowing noise in his throat. Wait until they hear the other noises he is making in the cave.
https://time.com/6315607/bryan-johnsons-quest-for-immortality/
https://www.businessinsider.com/pronatalism-elon-musk-simone-malcolm-collins-underpopulation-breeding-tech-2022-11?op=1
https://robbreport.com/motors/marine/jeff-bezos-oceanco-sailing-yacht-delivered-1234828428/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7amyn/amazon-denies-workers-pee-in-bottles-here-are-the-pee-bottles
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/71943/gollum-good-or-bad-outcome-turkish-court-case-rides-answer
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63100636
Thank you CansaFis. A worthy prompt to inquire about whether I own the ring or the ring owns me.
schshit schthis schis schthe schfunniest schthing schI've schread schall schday sch!