[MD] Boromir's pursuit of the Ring, can't let go

[John Carl]

Power.  It's all about the power, baby.  How much power can I gain in the
world by putting on the ring?
Plato's story about the Ring of Gyges is a good introduction to a social
morality dilemma:  How moral would you be if you could socially manipulate
others with no repercussions?

Tolkien's fable explores more deeply.

John's rollercoaster brain is taking up the same song only postulating it
the Ring of SOM.  An analogy for the power available to the rulers of the
world.

SOM is Objectivism.

Objectivism is power.

By manipulating others as objects in an equation, I realize a power to take
away any intrinsic value from them and reassign according to my own.

If I work for the power company and cut off a customer's power and light
because they don't pay their bill,  it's nothing personal on my part.  It's
my job, which I'm doing objectively.

I've removed my self from the equation.  My self has become invisible to the
process.  Objectivism confers the power of invisibility.

Objectivism allows me to get rich.  Technology allows me to bomb villages
with drone smart bombs that aren't smart enough to swerve around children.
 Objectivism is power, the power of invisiblity. To smite and walk away
unseen.

There's an interesting link leading away from the Wiki page on the ring of
Gyges, a link toward a topic that would never have occurred to me without
the link to name it - the name of the link is "the online disinhibition
effect".  At first glance, it seems the same invisibility to social
consequences that grants power in the realms of the outside world, creates
the same effect in the world of online interaction.  You can do anything,
say anything and then disappear.  You can slip on the ring and be invisible
at any time.  But the ring/weapon/tool in this case is, In fact, a positive
force rather than a negative.   The net exhibits the same powers within a
mirror world context where the effect of the artifact is that *unless* you
slip it on, you won't be seen.  And the power that this ring wields isn't
realized in isolation from others, from the fact that my invisibility is
relative to other's visibility.  This power stems solely from communal
co-experience and  shines brightest when everybody uses it and all are
visible to each other.