What ain't there and ought to be.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by lmp

It just seems to me that we shouldn't assume that because someone's poor they're unhappy. Maybe people these days who are poor (at least in First World countries) consider themselves to be entitled to more. This was not so when Tolkien was a child. Poverty was not necessarily a direct road to unhappiness.

It's right that we shouldn't assume poverty equals unhappiness; I spent many years living hand to mouth, and I had endless time to indulge in reading, writing, walking, anything pleasurable, yet when the bills came in I couldn't count myself as anything approaching happy. Poverty can be bearable if we live in a society that is willing to help us without judging us (not calling us scroungers or making us jump through hoops to get anything), and if we have the imagination and creativity to cope, but in the developed world there is a deep shame attached to poverty; we see poor people and assume many things about them, as though their poverty could somehow 'infect' us. And it has always been the case that poverty is likely to lead to unhappiness. Thinking of my grandparents, just a little younger than Tolkien, they would not have said they were happy being poor. They might have expressed a certain inverse pride at just how far they coped with their poverty, but they would have been constantly on the brink of disaster without the safety net that those of us with more money have.

The Shire is idealised, and we cannot imagine anyone going without. I sometimes wonder what destitution lies behind the doors of those smials, but this is me reading into the story the things I know. Tolkien did not approve of certain political systems, and even posited that he might be something of an anarchist; this latter theory is not all about 'bucking the system', it is also about societies which work together co-operatively and peacefully and in so doing, manage without governments. I think that this is what exists in The Shire, a society where burdens are shared and little interference is needed.