Sauron's Great Miscalculation

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

That's true. But Evil's blindness seems to be more consistent.

Either that or the points in the stories where Good had the advantage and initiative where such insights matter more are fewer and further between.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Sauron was also a victim of very mundane poor intelligence. After the Ford of Bruinen he lost track of the Ring and never got a good fix on it again, even though he came very close at times. At best he learned - days after the fact - that it had been at Sarn Gebir; and it would have been entirely natural for him to assume that it was headed for either Rohan or Gondor (especially after Pippin's fortuitous blunder on Dol Baran). Aragorn then had the wit and the will to reinforce this misconception.

[Mithadan]

By "poor intelligence" I assume that you mean lack of strategic or military intelligence, i.e. where is the ring, as opposed to pure stupidity. Or maybe I am wrong.

The lack of "intelligence" relates to the efforts of Gandalf in concealing the path of the Ring, and, candidly, Sauron's failure to perceive that his opponents might seek to destroy the Ring rather than use it against him. So, perhaps, Sauron's "poor intelligence" was really a lack of understanding. The Ring was not being brought to Imladris to be wielded. It was not being brought to Lothlorien to be wielded. It was not being brought to Gondor or even Rohan to be wielded. it was not to be wielded at all, but rather destroyed.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

By "poor intelligence" I assume that you mean lack of strategic or military intelligence, i.e. where is the ring, as opposed to pure stupidity. Or maybe I am wrong.

The lack of "intelligence" relates to the efforts of Gandalf in concealing the path of the Ring, and, candidly, Sauron's failure to perceive that his opponents might seek to destroy the Ring rather than use it against him. So, perhaps, Sauron's "poor intelligence" was really a lack of understanding. The Ring was not being brought to Imladris to be wielded. It was not being brought to Lothlorien to be wielded. It was not being brought to Gondor or even Rohan to be wielded. it was not to be wielded at all, but rather destroyed.

The phrase "poor intelligence" also covers poor assumptions since in intelligence complete information is rare so assumptions are part and parcel of the thing.

So Sauron's poor intelligence was many-layered.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

One thing that Tolkien was very aware of, as a former Army signals officer,* is that it takes time for information to be relayed. Reading through Tolkien's detailed chronologies, one is struck by how carefully he tracked when Sauron, Saruman, the Witch-king etc actually learned a significant piece of intel- and the time-lag was significant, usually significant enough to make it "non-actionable."

One thing I hate about the movies is that PJ pretty much assumes that everything is known instantaneously across Middle-earth. Everyone knows way too much about what is going on, whereas the books are notable for how much most characters don't know.

*In 1916, realtime communication on the battlefield was restricted to field telephones, which only extended to your own front lines and even then were often knocked out, by shells, damp or just plain unreliability. Wireless was confined to divisional radio stations communicating in Morse code with higher headquarters. At the battalion level, it was still flares, carrier pigeons, and foot- or horse-borne couriers just like Waterloo. No wonder the commanders had no idea what was happening once the Tommies went over the top!

[Ivriniel]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

I posit that Sauron was a fool in creating the One. It did not succeed in its purpose. The creation of the One placed a large portion of his strength in an OBJECT that could be lost or destroyed. If he had not created the One and invested time and effort into trying to fool the Elves, he could have retained all his strength in himself and would have been no worse off. And ultimately, what happens? He loses the Ring when it is cut off his finger by Isildur, and eventually it is destroyed, also destroying him. The creation of the One Ring was a colossal miscalculation.

Hello Mithadan, it's a really interesting topic. I vary from seeing Sauron (Maia of Aule) as suffering from autocentric self-centred 'foolishness' and at my most unforgiving as suffering from monocentric lock. The two ideas place egocentrism on a continuum, with the latter serving, perhaps, ideas about egoic greed and narcissism in evil emotional pleasure of Sauronic greed, fed by the deployment of the Rings of Power, which divert to Sauron, autocentric control over Ring Bearers. It's the common interpretation of the mythology, where Tolkien cites Sauron at Eregion as passing some kind of critical point in egocentric, sadistic 'runaway mode', and uses actual word lust and greed in a conjoined reference to that tipping point leading to the War of Elves and Sauron (i'd need to lookup the citation - recognising Morth-oron is not far away hahahah).

It's interesting that Tolkien refers to 'seduction' and 'lust' in how he describes what I always saw as the basis of the 'egocentric blindness' (autocetric lock) or Vanity of Narcissism where Suaron becomes nauseatingly self-referential, in imagining everyone wants, in the end to be 'evilly pleasured' by power and greed. Think legally here Mithadan and Morthoron, as in 'intention elements and evidentiary weight for culpability analyses. We use 'psychopathy' in law and society as the analogue, where we suggest that 'wise foolishness' perhaps is the analogue for the 'absence of seeing/perspective taking/empathy' of psychopathy. It is interesting that the implications of a singularity of monocentrism, is inconsistent with positing that Sauron had not another 'plan' post Third Age. He needed beings NOT to be OF his 'self' as well, so he could avoid boredom, if nothing else. hahahha

It's interesting that the Rings imbue a Sauronic solution about 'lack of affective empathy' inherent in psychopathic (the lust/greed motif) by making the Ring Owner 'able to see' the actual thoughts of each bearer. This, I think is what 'wise foolishness' might be Tolkien's idea. It follows the ideas in The Return of the King about Sauron's failure to infer that 'they want to what? destroy the Ring').

The topic of sadistic greed of Sauron, however, has Tolkien's Christianity in a biasing (again the legal idea of bias works well here) motivation of perpetrators. The bias tends to obviate any likelihood that Sauron had any beneficent motivation. We know this is incorrect. His Orcs were sentients, and had will. He wanted to thrive, and had a parental relationship with them. And frankly, they were much better at coping with dust and impoverished environments than vain, conceited Elves, determined to make creepy artifacts in their own images, which is a nausea at times I have about how Elves make things. At times, I see Sauron's point about Galadriel, whose vanity had NO end (e.g. she was "UNfriends" with Feanor "FOREVER"), and that mirror was offensive. Anyhows, hahah that's for another topic, and no doubt it upsets Elf lovers.

More recently, however, I've wondered a great deal about the Ring Command upon Sméagol at Orodruin. If you place Gollum betwixt the Barad Dur and Frodo, then the 'Vanity Inversion' (theory, okay ) of the Ring Command it was that struck Gollum OF the Ring, and not BY Frodo's residual Hobbitish Flesh. I wonder, then, was it instead, the Vanity Vector traces to the Barad Dur, implying that Gollum's awareness of Frodo made Gollum enabled with Free Will, at exactly that point forwards.

At the Sammath Naur, then, Gollum and Sméagol both exert Free Will in the Sméagol/Deagol analogue, this time, with Frodo in the 'Smeagol' role and Gollum atoning for Deagol. This is a Vanity Direction theory. It's premise is that the Ring not Frodo self-commanded OF itself OF Sauronic Origin, directionally TO Gollum, WITHOUT Frodo's contribution.

I also have a 'Sauronic Foresight' hypothesis, if anyone is interested, after this post is looked at.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

The bias tends to obviate any likelihood that Sauron had any beneficent motivation. We know this is incorrect. His Orcs were sentients, and had will. He wanted to thrive, and had a parental relationship with them. And frankly, they were much better at coping with dust and impoverished environments than vain, conceited Elves, determined to make creepy artifacts in their own images, which is a nausea at times I have about how Elves make things. At times, I see Sauron's point about Galadriel, whose vanity had NO end (e.g. she was "UNfriends" with Feanor "FOREVER"), and that mirror was offensive. Anyhows, hahah that's for another topic, and no doubt it upsets Elf lovers.

I disagree with your assessment of Sauron's relationship with the orcs.

First, there is a wide range of possible interpretations about the level of sentience for the orcs, but operating from the assumption that they all had full sentience Sauron deserves no credit for this because he didn't make them, or at least was not the prime engineer in their creation.

Second, at best he regarded them as "useful servants." In the context of the expression of that very sentiment he didn't care if Shelob ate some of them. The Witch-king, and by extension Sauron himself, did not care how many of them were killed in the assault on Minas Tirith. He never seems to have gone to the bother to effectively equip and train the orcs. Saruman seems to have done a better job on that front.

Orcs may have been better able to exist on a more primitive and impoverished level than the Elves but Sauron never did anything to raise them above that status. They were trapped in miserable conditions in a brutal tribal society barely able to function at even the most basic level. Orcs functioned adequately enough, in Sauron's mind, for the purposes he desired and so he kept them trapped at that level. He didn't care about them. He certainly didn't have a parental attitude toward them.

As an aside, I would argue that orcs didn't function to a serviceable level at all. In the narrative we see the entire garrison of one significant border fortress exterminated and the remaining garrison of an even more significant border fortress seriously depleted all through a petty little tribal conflict over a single piece of loot.

It can hardly be overstated how "non-functional" this is in a military context...or indeed in any context.

I'm not convinced that in the event of Sauron's victory that he would have even kept orcs around. They were not good slaves. In the event of his dominance they would have served their purpose. He might well have extirpated them. He was always more interested in Men and Elves anyway. Orcs were just a tool for him to achieve domination over them.