[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I'm wondering how many posts it will take to get from this discussion of science and kabbala to mention of Deepak Chopra's body-mind medicine, quantum healing and consciousness as a means of considering this enchantment/advancement contrast.

It has already done that...
*thanks for the cookie*

So back towards the original question then...

Originally Posted by Hookbill

Without the memory of Sauron's fall and the fact that Isildur bore it, would Narsil be just another elvish blade?

It probably would. Though it being an old elvish blade would make a difference in contrast to a newer one - or one made by plain men.

But this is an interesting question indeed. When you buy "electronica" you're always told the product you consider is on the cutting edge of technology, the newest of the new, but when you go and buy wine or whisky they tell you the producer has been around from the middle-ages and nothing in the production-process has been changed since (which is not true but that's another matter).

So why are some things better old than new and vice versa?

Let's make further comparisons.

How does it feel to be in a house which has been there for a thousand years compared to a house that has been built just last year? There is a marked difference there. But what is it?

How does it feel to look at a spoon at the museum someone used five thousand years ago compared to one you bought from Ikea last fall?

How does it feel to write with a typewriter from the eighties (with the correction-memory of twenty characters) compared to using your Microsoft Word with your PC?

How would it feel to lose your mobile phone and go back depending on a lined telephone stationed in your home?


So is it just pure utilitarianism? When you want to get something accomplished you pick the state of the art thing but when you just need to get kicks out from something you turn to the old ones?

And here the idea of enchanted things comes to the fore. An enchanted thing is better than it's modern-day equivalent because unlike other old things, it's vested with powers or history advanced technology can't beat. So it looks like an argument saying old things can do the things you want to do with them better than the modern ones?

Or should we bring forwards this general idea of a "fall from grace" here? So in the earlier times everything was better and now all is crap? People used to live in paradise but now they are estranged from that holy or primordial union with God / nature / natural relation with the world... what have you?

That's a tough one.