Sivin Kit's Garden

True Heroes in The Lord of the Rings

Here's an excerpt from the article from Morris Institute for Human Values (a link I got from Jason Clark),

"Little children amuse us as they learn new skills by declaring, "I do it myself!" We applaud their desire to leave behind infant dependency and to grow into more and more independence.

But we never outgrow dependence entirely. When an adult always says, "'I'll do it myself," this isn't either amusing or admirable. It is literally megalomaniacal: the insanity of thinking you're much bigger, and more powerful and wiser than you really are. "