The Cursed Ring
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The Cursed Ring is a structure of ideas which Danish author Peter Kjærulff believes to found to be behind Plato's "The Ring of Gyges" (mentioned in Plato's Republic), Richard Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" and J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings". The following is a summary of Kjærulff's view, as presented in his The Ringbearer's Diary:
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[edit] A structure of Ideas
In our world, there exists a structure of connected ideas that represent a logical yet destructive and false comprehension of reality. The ideas can be clearly mapped (and are so in The Ringbearer's Diary), and their influence traced to different levels of the human consciousness. Having existed for many thousand years, this mechanism is responsible for a pattern of life, in which the underlying notion, that human life is deeply meaningless and the human being inherently destructive, has led human kind to create a world marred by the abyssal scourge of repeated and continued warfare, on the global scale as well as on the personal interhuman level. As mentioned, attempts to unveil this Ring have been made by Plato, Wagner, Tolkien and many others.
These ideas cover up the human consciousness in a way that makes our true identity invisible, because an alternative and false identity is built on top of it. This is why, e.g., Tolkien's Ring, when used, makes its wearer invisible.
Many of the ideas of 'The Cursed Ring' are already known, but the new thing is the discovery of 'The Cursed Ring' in its entirety. This discovery goes hand in hand with a detailed mapping of the human consciousness.
[edit] The Ideas
At the center of the Cursed Ring lies the deep notion that the human being is utterly and desperately alone (as also suggested by Tolkien's "One Ring"). Other ideas of the structure are e.g.: "The male is the master of the world", "The woman is a more divine being than the man", "Parents have godlike status with respect to the child" - or vice-versa. Each idea forms a smaller ring in the general spiderweb-like structure of "The Cursed Ring", and the number of rings totals 20, in a pattern that exactly matches Tolkien's famous 'ring poem'.
The ideas can be likened to rings, because they confirm themselves; if you believe that it is not possible to communicate with the other sex, there's no need to challenge the assumption, because "it is not possible to communicate with the other sex". The belief lies deeper than our reasoning. When believing in such an idea, and living according to it, life becomes truly miserable. The ideas reside at different levels of human consciousness, and all the ideas in the cursed ring have this self confirming ability.
[edit] The true human consciousness
The human being is profoundly loveable and wonderful. We are able to create a harmonious world, without any type of brainwash, dogmatic beliefs or self-destructive behaviour - all people, in different ways, can experience the wonderful feeling of getting into contact with oneself. When mankind does that on a larger scale, that which we find within us will make us create a world based on the good, on truth, on beauty and on love. That's what people want because that's what is most natural to us.
[edit] The exposure of the Ring
Once exposed, it is possible to work directly against the ideas of the cursed ring. The message therefore of the book is that the victory over the Ring and its evil power is not only accomplished symbolically in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Return of the King" - it is most certainly within reach also in our real world.
Some readers as a consequence see "The Ringbearer's Diary" as a message of great hope.
