Quote:
Originally Posted by Morthoron
As far as newer technology as opposed to old world craftsmanship, I think we all know Tolkien sided with the latter. Saruman's use of gunpowder is referred to as 'devilry', and Dwarves like Thorin bemoan the loss of skills held by their forefathers. There is a certain glamor to the notion that what was made in previous centuries surpasses modern jerry-rigged contraptions, although the chances of entire cities burning down like London in 1666 have been mitigated by advances in engineering. It's all a matter of opinion, I suppose.
|
I do agree with this. It looks like Tolkien was the conservative here - and not without justification when looked from one angle.
It's just self-evident to anyone of us that you can find coats and shoes of your grand-parents that are 50+ years old and are perfectly fine - but the coat you bought from the mall last year is already breaking down - there are an infinity of examples here.
We should also make a difference between modern technology (and science) and the capitalistic market economy which aims for maximum sales compromising quality for selling more. We who buy crap happily are the fools here.
But what you talk about devilry is one of the basic things people do. Everything people are used to before their twenties to thirties they tend to look as natural and everything developed after that they look as "devilry" or as something "un-natural" and to be avoided.
At the same time it's true we have lost some skills we had in earlier times. It was both fun and terrifying when there were news in Finnish media in the end of the nineties that we had to go for the US and Canada to look for expertise on building many-family wooden houses (like wooden block of flats). We Finns! The people of the primordial forest who have lived all alone looking after just our own things and everyone having all the possible skills there would be - and who have built everything from wood from the times immemorial! And now we people of the forest didn't know anymore how to build big houses from wood! That was a shame...
So skills do vanish. How many of you remeber the telephone numbers of your friends and relatives by heart? I used to remember a couple of dozen phone-numbers back in the eighties but now I mainly just (still) remeber some of those I remembered back then... The cellphone remembers the newer ones for me. But I do not.
The so called "Gregorian chant" was invented around 600 AD in view of even the most uneducated guys in the backrow being able to sing along after one strophe. Nowadays only a trained musician can do that as the melodical phrases are just too long for our modern capabilities.
But as you imply, we're pretty happy about some advances and new skills we have learned. Blood transfusion or cancer treatment could be cases in point where we wouldn't like to be treated in a way people were a thousand years ago. Any wannabe mother should also think how she would like to give birth; in a modern hospital or in a medieval envirovment?
So a matter of opinion to be sure, but I'm not sure how relative that opinion is...
The prof was for the conservative ideas and that was his world. And we should see the grandeur in that world-view. People long ago were really good at some things we can't think we could excell today - but we do and see many things better our ancestors did as well.