HerenIstarion wrote:
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Hence, 'Good' and 'Evil' are not co-dependent, it is 'Evil' that is dependent and proceeds from 'Good'. But 'Good' exists in its own right and does not need 'Evil' to do the existence
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I have go along with this. As Brian Rosebury in his wonderful recent book Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon has stated:
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Any analysis of the aesthetic power ot the Lord of the Rings needs to take into account the fact that its values are organised around a moral conflict: Sauron’s despotism is not only to be ‘undesired’, it is to be undesired in the specific sense of being percieved as categorically morally bad. Nothing could be more false, however, than the notion that the Lord of the Rings represents a deterministic, or Manichean, universe of struggle between the innatley & unalterably good & the innatley & unalterably evil. On the contrary, as several critics have noticed, the imagined world is underpinned by an optimistic, & occaisionally explicit, theology of quite a different kind. ‘Nothing is evil in the begining’, Elrond observes. ‘Even Sauron was not so’. Though God is not referred to in the Lord of the Rings (except fleetingly in an appendix), & though the world is preChristian, there is no doubt that we are in an Augustinian universe, in which all creation is good, & evil is concieved in terms of freely chosen negation, of a willful abdication from an original state of created perfection. Sauron, the Dark Lord, is not a countervailing deity, but a fallen angel who, for all his awesome power, cannot create new life, only strive to annhiliate it or pervert it into abominable forms. Whether the reader consciously recognises the theology is unimportant: the essential point is that the negativity of evil, & the intrinsic goodness of ‘the effoliation & multiple enrichment of creation’ are consistently & palpably maintained.
...The defeat of the forces of evil should ideally appear, not as a lucky accident, or as a punishment inflicted from outside by a superior power (which deprives the actual process of defeat of any moral significance), but as the practical consequence of wickedness itself: Evil must appear as intrinsically self defeating in the long run. Sauron & his servants, despite their steadily growing superiiority in crude strength & terror, are hindered by weaknesses which are themselves vices: their lack of imagination, the irrational cruelty which denies them the option of voluntary assistance (the victim must be made to act against his own will), & the selfishness which disables their alliances.
It is the intellectual myopia of evil, however, on which greatest explicit emphasis is laid in the text. Just as the created world is intrinsically good, so disinterested curiosity about that world is an atribute of that good; the negativity of evil entails a loss of insight & of the desire to understand others. Whereas the light percieves the very heart of the darkness, its own secret has not been discovered’. (FR 366)
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In Tolkien's world evil is self defeating - perhaps another meaning of the 'Long Defeat' that Galadriel mentions.Not the long defeat of the good, but the long defeat of evil - they fight to hold it in check till it defeats itself. Sauron's defeat is inevitable because of the very nature of evil itself. Because evil is not a co-equal force with good, but a perversion of good, it has no true existence, it is onoly a perversion, & so can only pervert other things - even its own aims, ultimately defeating & destroying itself from within.
The Hobbits are curious to some degree about the world beyond their borders - Sam has heard abouts Oliphaunts. In the poems from the Red Book contained in the Adventures of Tom Bombadil there are accounts of othe lands & races. I think they simply became too inward looking, & caught up in their own affairs, rather than deliberately cutting themselves off, then, eventually, the outside world would come to seem alien to them. But I wouldn't describe them as not being curious - I think they were intensely curious about whatever they felt safe with - the land, plants, animals - woods, fields, little rivers. They preffered order, but not in the way or to the extent that Sauron did. They loved diversity, but struggled with it if they were suddenly confronted with things beyond their experience. I can't see any similarity between Hobbits at their worst, & Sauron, & I can't see that Tolkien wants us to.
As to 'poor Hobbits', well, their society is not perfect. Even within the Shire there is distrust of Hobbits from other areas. We don't know enough about their society or economy. I would speculate that large areas of the Shire were either not owned by anyone or owned in common, so I don't think anyone would have been denied access to natural resources. And if your idea of home is a hole in the ground, all you need is a shovel, & an axe to make yourself a place to live.
And we can't assume that any hobbits would live in a permanent state of poverty.