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I just wanted to say the #LordOfTheRings has pretty cool stuff to say about trees. Next thing I know I read a goddamn college textbook on environmental ethics and now I'm sketching the entire goddamn history of environmentalist thought in order to explain where Tolkien exists in a goddamn continum.

Speaking of "goddamn" did you know that there is hermeneutical debate whether Genesis enjoins humanity to treat nature as a resource or a sacred trust? Really you have to look at the original Hebrew because "rada" - "dominion" more apprioriately means conveys "the ideal of just and peaceful governance" than "to tread down", signifying care rather than exploition. Of course Tolkien as a Roman Catholic growing up in England would have read the Douay–Rheims translation (1582) which was itself a translation of Latin and oh help I just thought it was cool that tree people blew up an industrial center. 😩