Why did Sauron turn evil? | LOTR Lore

Sauron wasn't always evil what happened one curious thing about tolkien's writing is his insistence that no matter how evil someone is even Saron they were once upon a time in some way good and why they turn evil is such a fundamental part of how he views the world morality and our mortality interestingly enough Amazon's the rings of power is set at a time that maybe Saron wasn't entirely Darkseid the show even opens with the line and nothing was evil in the beginning which is a reference to a quote from The Fellowship of the Ring where elrond says for nothing is evil in the beginning even Sauron was not so we'll have to see if the show manages to reflect tolkien's deeper ideas here by the way I'm doing Episode by episode breakdowns over on the second Channel what's working what's not whether Laura's right and wrong and weird thank you to the 50 000 of you who have already subscribed over there and thank you especially to my patrons who make all of this possible in the beginning Saron was a lower ranking angel of sorts who helped create the world and could shapeshift before he was um attracted to morgoth the original Dark Lord because quote it had been saron's virtue and therefore the cause of his fall and of his relapse that he loved order and coordination and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction Tolkien even mentions that Sauron had a love for intelligent creatures a passion for them even greater than most because I think he probably saw suffering in the world as a result of a lack of order of coordination of resources and power which is also why Saron was a Craftsman he had a deep love of Science of Technology of progress he was looking for more efficient ways to organize things to organize life to even create creature of his own but of course this desire for efficiency becomes a love of control and power itself and he goes the way of all tyrants this ordering and planning and organization for the good of all inhabitants of ADA becomes that his plans are and end the end in itself as with all dictators the line between them doing something good for others and something being good for others because they did it begins to blur not that Humanity has an innate weakness to do evil when we have power but that power makes it harder to see evil and more permissible and more justifiable the more power we can wield especially because it's a common theme in tolkien's work that more power means more distance between your actions and those affected by it and that distance makes it easier to do evil this is why industry and Machinery are so often and aligned with evil in his stories you know we've got Sauron Saruman and numenor Tolkien actually describes Orcs as rationale incarnate creatures technology creates that same distance between your actions and their impacts meaning you don't have to be confronted with the moral or natural reality I find this discussion fascinating and if you want to talk about it more then go watch my video on what the One Ring represents after morgoth Was Defeated at the end of the first stage Sauron actually has what Tolkien describes as a temporary turn to the good see the Vela who are kind of the Gods of Middle Earth they screwed everything up yeah they helped defeat morgoth but they waited way too long to step in they sunk half a continent in doing so and then they bug it off rather than stick around to help Sarah morgoth but after that he seemed to have a change of heart of sorts Saron lingers in Middle Earth very slowly beginning with fear motives the reorganization and Rehabilitation of the ruin of Middle Earth neglected by the gods Tolkien doesn't give us a lot of detail here but we can extrapolate what this could mean rebuilding industry trade political institutions rehoming refugees coordinating and reorganizing the survivors to avoid further conflicts over already limited resources that's the sort of thing that I'm reading here that Tolkien alludes to when he talks about the things that the Valar neglected Sauron always had a mind for industry for detail for technology and efficiency he didn't just rely on physical Force to change the world like the Valar seemingly did but those themes of order control and organization return here and of course lead Sauron back to evil Honestly though in the wake of this war against morgoth Middle Earth is a sort of post-apocalyptic place you know so many people and So Many Lands just wiped off the map and what's left and sounds looking at this and he goes we gotta get a hand on this I say we divide up the land maybe into like 13 districts and then every year we'll we'll host these games this is by the way the sort of setting rings of power is set in the second age after morgoth is defeated and Sauron is slowly falling back into his old ways or hasn't quite risen again though I don't know how much they're gonna play with these ideas we'll have to see and one of those ideas that's really interesting is tolkien's philosophy around the kind of good that Sauron initially wanted to do sauron's original desire for order had really envisaged the good estate especially physical well-being of his subjects and that according to his own wisdom he still at first considered the economic well-being of other inhabitants of the Earth but take a look at these words right economic and physical well-being they're explicitly pointed out as opposed to say spiritual or moral well-being because in tolkien's mythology evil repeatedly attaches itself to and emphasizes the physical world over anything else morgoth imbued Middle Earth itself with his life Essence Saron put himself into a physical object the ring and by the way a precious object at that gold and both lost their ability to change their form as they turned evil they in a sense became of the physical world and not the spiritual the one they came from part of the reason numenor Falls from grace and hopefully we'll see this in the show is that they get obsessed with greatness in the mortal world they want to live forever you know physically and in the minds of everyone else and they're looking for ways to do that often to evil ends they'd start colonizing and building huge statues and monuments to themselves so concerned with their own Grandeur in glory and leaving a Mark that they forget their spiritual Roots the values that truly made them great before again we're seeing how a concern for the physical can become an obsession with it with mortality with gaining control over it and if the physical is all that matters then to Tolkien that comes with a number of underlying moral assumptions that change how we interact with the world this concept finds its roots in tolkien's Catholic theology where the physical well-being of others is important but it's a very materialistic way of understanding the good and it can become damaging when people neglect spiritual well-being in favor of the physical you know wealth Prosperity success and pleasure they're positive things but they can easily enable brutality utilitarianism and the destruction of the natural world all of which Sauron goes on to embody greed lust envy and gluttony four of the seven deadly sins which while technically not part of the Catholic Canon they're innately concerned with physical well-being over spiritual they're about our attachment to this mortal world with the tricky thing being that they're so much more tangible we're so much more sensitive to these right it's so much easier to think that these are the only real things you could even draw a commonality between the valar's lack of intervention in Middle Earth and God you know much like sarawon was frustrated with how they neglected the mortal world a lot of people feel God if he exists can't care about this world and tolkien's looking at that and going yeah I I can see how you reach that why you'd be so much more concerned with the physical well-being none of this is to say that Sauron is some kind of misunderstood good guy he's not but it does key into how Tolkien imagines Evil coming to be when we over emphasize certain elements of our well-being and then we slip beyond that from concern into Obsession even if it's a soft Obsession Tolkien emphasizes how physical power in the material world using the one ring this way isn't what truly defeats evil but instead small acts of empathy and kindness Bilbo sparing Gollum and Frodo showing Mercy to him they are what actually get the ring destroyed and they are acts that are in a sense spiritual fundamentally this concern for the physical economic well-being of others can turn into an obsession with mortality with the physical world and gaining control over it and that is shown repeatedly to be a problem including in the elves Tolkien describes the forging of the Rings as the closest the elves ever came to falling to evil and magic and Machinery contrary to Common belief Sauron didn't actually make all of the Rings on his own he did it with the help of this guy Keller brimbor who we do actually see in rings of power in fact Keller brimbor made the three for the elves in secret Naya Nina and Villia and these Rings don't turn you invisible instead the chief power of the Rings was the prevention or slowing of Decay the preservation of what is desired or loved or its semblance even wondered why Elvis lands looks so much more beautiful than the rest of Middle Earth it's because of the three rings holding back the Decay and wages of time Saron used their obsession with the physical world the glory and Grandeur and beauty that they have created against them they wanted the peace and Bliss and Perfect Memory of the West and yet to remain on the ordinary Earth where their Prestige as the highest people above wild elves dwarves and Men was greater than at the bottom of the hierarchy of Eleanor they thus became obsessed with the fading and decay of the physical world their efforts all really are kind of embalming even though they also retained that old motive of their kind the adornment of the earth and the healing of its hurts in forging the Rings the elves were tempted by getting more power over the physical world and in a sense pouring themselves more into it it left people like Galadriel vulnerable to the one ring and we see that in Fellowship you know this is in its own way Pride this is Envy in a way much like Sauron the elves play so much importance on the physical world and their glory in it that they neglect their spiritual health that's an obsession with their own mortality in a way their connection to the mortal world because we know that the elves who have stayed in Middle Earth are far more diminished than the elves who have gone and sailed West or have never left felinur in the first place these guys are faded even though they have managed to keep up these Grand kingdoms they're more distant from the Valar than ever and they refuse to travel West and in some cases they're even banned from doing so now of course Saron took a much darker path towards tyranny with this concern for the physical world and a desire to control it but both of these begin in that morally complicated place of wanting to assert yourself and tie yourself to the world becoming obsessed with it and forgetting the spiritual values and spiritual life that you have inside you over and over there's the sense that becoming too attached to the physical world to the things that we lose when we die warps our perception of what really matters that it can lead us to prioritize the wrong things to do wrong to those who we might call Ken spiritually but not physically to damage a world we have a spiritual responsibility for but what feels like a physical entitlement to use a course thematic element in tolkien's Mythos is how evil cannot create only corrupt that nothing is evil in the beginning it has only turned so Tolkien toys with the idea of Orcs being the tortured forms of elves that trolls were a mockery of the ants that bellrogs were originally Angelic beings called Maya just like Sauron that nothing evil is original this too is a very Catholic idea that we hold the image of God inside us but we do have that Temptation towards evil and we see this coming out in Sauron and Saruman even melkor as well I really love understanding these elements of tolkien's world view because I think it gives us a much deeper understanding of the text it gives it a depth that few stories really have oh and if you didn't know I have two books on writing and World building volume 1 and volume two if you like my writing and World building content then this codifies refines and expands on what we discuss and it is well it's way easier to reference in a bunch of videos isn't it I talk about Lord of the Rings a fair amount in both and they cover entirely different topics but if you only want to get one then get volume two I think it is better and it is far prettier look I don't know how much rings of power is going to take from all of this but I hope that they take some of it I really love the deeper ideas and themes in tolkien's work we'll just have to see you know in the meantime How concerned are you with the physical world I don't know let me know down below stay nerdy and I'll see in the future

Channel: Hello Future Me

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Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, lotr, lord of the rings, hobbit, rings of power, rop, galadriel, elves, rings, mithril, silmarillion, power, nerdrotic, sauron, halbrand, tar miriel, celebrimbor, elrond

Id: n5RhieGEB4s

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 24 2022