Darkness Rising 

In the darkness the stranger dragged Frodo’s little frame banging each creaky stair along the way. After ducking through the narrow doorway he deposited his charge onto a scratchy straw mattress. “Are you afraid?” was the first thing the sweaty stranger uttered as his heavy boots thundered across the worn planks. His heart pounding in his throat, the only words Frodo could squeak out were, “A little”. As the looming figure swept hastily through the dank air dousing each candle with his filthy fingers, he scolded Frodo, “Not frightened enough! I know what hunts you.” 

The hunters from the Tolkien world of Middle Earth may have once been fiction. Then and there, it was a world of sinister forces bent on destroying most, and dominating the rest. Driven by a delusional Dark Lord, the seeping despair of Mordor seemed inevitable. Here and now, the veneer of fiction is worn precariously thin. Like butter scraped across too much bread. Sinister, dominating, and delusional forces are wreaking actual havoc. Frodo timidly lurks inside each of us as we naively peer through the computer monitor into the depths of Mordor itself.  

Before anyone in Middle Earth feared the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, there was a shadow in the east. But too many were too busy being normal in the light to fear the abnormal darkness they couldn’t see. Like the people of Middle Earth, there is a darkness looming. Lurking. Creeping. No, Mordor is not the Dark Web. Mordor isn’t even distant. Mordor isn’t rising. It has risen. It is here. Mordor is your email. Or your favorite website. Mordor is a text message, or even a phone call from your son or daughter.  

You see, back in the 1900s when the internet was born, security wasn’t an afterthought. Nor was it a forethought. In the 1900’s when the internet was shiny like a new penny, when people planted gardens and helped a stranger. Work was where you went. And home was where work didn’t dare go.  

Now the new millennium has dawned. Work has invaded home. People don’t help strangers, or plant gardens. The internet has a patina. Or a mold. Or a fungus. Or a crust. And internet security is still mostly unthought. It’s sad that the millennial dawn did not bring the hope, or relief as promised. Dawn brought chaos. The Internet brought chaos.  

Since the internet was raised without rules or boundaries, like the Dark Lord Sauron, it is we who must change if we hope to defeat it. Our insistence that we can continue to do things the same way day after day is like carelessly giving a lift to a hitchhiker. Maybe it’s like thinking there will always be toilet paper at the store. Or that store-bought tomatoes are as good as those you used to grow in the back yard.  

At the end of Frodo’s story, the darkness of Mordor actually arrived at the shire. In the story of your world, you can’t really see the darkness. But the darkness can see you. In Frodo’s world, the antagonist was the aggressor. It’s usually the aggressor who has the upper hand. Oh, Frodo eventually won. But because he started too late there was a lot of pain between his home under the hill, the Mount called Doom, and back again.