this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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They absolutely are people. They clearly show intelligence and sapience. They may be people with morals that are opposed to the other species and they may be at war with them, but dehumanization (depersonization?) isn't the answer.
Their entire species was created as a magical weapon. The funny thing they're really supposed to represent the cruelties of industrialization. Tolkien was not a fan of what England did with technology.
Sure, but that's irrelevant. The only questions are: are they sapient? And do they have free will? If yes to both, i.e. they can choose their own way, especially once Sauron's magical control is gone, then they are people.
Saying they aren't people because someone created/bred them for a specific purpose kinda feels like the people who argue certain dog breeds were bred for X or Y and therefore they should be culled/banned/etc. It simplifies the living creature too far and doesn't allow them to branch out from what they originally did. It's essentially genocide on the orc front.
They don't have a meaningful level of free will from what I understand. That's part of the process of creating them. They only act within certain boundaries or else resort to raiding and eating... everything. And everyone. Occasionally each other.
You're imposing an enlightened modern viewpoint onto a universe with explicitly different rules. In Middle-earth, there actually IS such a thing as absolute evil, unredeemable and not possessing what we would call a soul, and the orcs are plwced firmly in this class of being. Their sapience is not relevant to the morality of killing them when they are evil.
I understand that this doesn't map onto the real world very well, but the real world also doesn't contain immortal beings who are within a few degrees of separation from the creator Eru Ilúvatar himself, who have literally spoken with either him or his greatest servants the Valar. It's hard to deny the rules of good and evil when you have them firsthand from the creator of the universe.
My point is simply that you have to define the frame you're arguing within. If your frame is the real world, then you are correct and orcs should be treated the same as any other living being. But if your frame is the subcreation of J.R.R. Tolkien, you must acknowledge the stated realities of that world.
They are constructs, imitations of life, animated by the evil will of Morgoth and his foul apprentice Sauron. They're no more people than ChatGPT is people.