I wanted to respond more about the mention of Tom Bombadil. He’s my favorite character as well, yet always absent from adaptations, like the BBC radio play and films. The character confounds utilitarian re-interpretations of the text. He’s one character who does not advance the plot, yet he has a power.

I would like to see you place the character of Tom Bombadil in the context of the Office. You have a little theory of power relations and communication going, but have left poor Tom out once again. What is the type that possesses power (has stakes on the table) yet chooses not to take advantage? According to your definition he’s clueless. But Tom is not clueless, he’s enigmatic, thwarting our means-ends analysis. Somehow he falls outside it, but where?

The languages you list in your analysis of The Office are either delusional (protecting the ego of the speaker, or denying power, or missing it completely; PostureTalk & GameTalk) or a mask for power (BabyTalk & PowerTalk). The only language of truth is StraightTalk, because it lays bare both the facts and unmasks power. This language issues unambiguous commands, and is usually avoided by interposing a managerial class responsible for delivering orders in the delusional languages. This view of language is at odds with “idealists” who think power relations can be distinguished from language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicative_action#Critiques_of_Habermas.27_Concept_of_Communicative_Action

But what language does Tom Bombadil speak? The power and knowledge gap between Tom and the clueless Hobbits is enormous. Presumably Tom does not speak the language of delusion, even though his words are dream-like. But neither is it PowerTalk or StraightTalk. Is it BabyTalk? I don’t think so.

The key moment of communication is when Tom takes the ring, plays with it, and then returns it. That is how we know for sure Tom is not like the other characters, all of whom are wrapped up in the power of the Ring. What sort of communication is that?

I would say it is the communication of a disruption of the logic of the book. It creates an outside to the logic of the Ring, one that is never explored or explained. Your analysis of The Office depends on a stable structure of value -the stakes;’ money- around which games of power develop an interiority where players can succeed or fail in comprehending and playing the game. Tom is both inside and outside the game; he exists in the world of the Ring, but somehow the Ring has no value for him.

A cop-out would deny Tom appears within “the organization.” But your managerial theory can be broadly interpreted. We all are contained in networks of human inter-relations in which there are winners and losers, people giving and taking orders, with values at stake. If we interpret it broadly enough that it encompasses all human relationships to power, where does Tom fit in?

I’ll probably figure out something more basic a year or more from now, by which time this piece will be buried

I wonder though whether “dabbler” is also unstable; caring about something and not knowing if you care is a pretty unusual state, leading to people who can make a distinction but are not conscious of it being wound up or happy without apparent cause! You can imagine the dabbler being aware that they care about something, just not sure what. This is likely to lead to experimentation, going through all the distinctions they know, which I presume is why you call them dabblers. The connoisseurs have only one thing to teach them; metaphor/poetry not terminology, so they can understand their own value structures better.
Given time and opportunity they will likely become connoisseurs themselves.

What you call the explorer is probably the weirdest of all the categories; the secretly envious! That category is what makes the pretenders worthwhile, if it even exists, people so “secretly wish” they were as discriminating as you. I’d probably call it them audience or sycophants or something, because they’ll show deference to something they don’t in the slightest get.

The category you call the unenlightened I’d call the explorer instead, as they are the people with no mental set of permutations to follow, only a newtons-method style analysis of their own preference. As such they are likely to be stuck on local maximums, with the connoisseurs suggesting they come to the next hill up.

Naturally that relationship could be extended to have a whole range of higher hills in different places, but that would start making the model multidimensional, so it’s probably best to leave it there!