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Old 06-17-2008, 09:51 PM   #1
Hot, crispy nice hobbit
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Pipe The art of keeping silent

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein

The "father" of post-modernism would probably shrugged at the current worldview embraced by US academia. (He probably would not even bother to shrug) It is however one thing to rand about technology and quite another to wince at pseudo-sophism in literature. (I won't even call that post-modernism)

It is hardly rampant technology that encroached upon the environment. It is simple economics. One simple example is that of industrial development in 3rd world countries. Rather than manufacturing a "green" vehicle in a technologically advanced country (where environment-friendly technology is more readily available), a multi-national corporation would rather chop down a few hundred hectares of tropical rainforest and build a dozen of low-cost factories in a rural undeveloped country with virtually zero environmental policies.

The governments of undeveloped countries would naturally be pleased with the arrangement, as would the families of factory workers. This is the realistic view of the world with nothing to do with literature. It is doubtful, however, that Tolkien had such things in mind when he described the devastations in "the Scouring of the Shire".
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Old 06-17-2008, 11:12 PM   #2
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"Guns don't kill people, people do." (NRA)

"Technology isn't to blame of the state of the world but people using it are."


Somehow I disagree strongly with the first declaration and agree with the second one even if my reason tells me I should treat both accordingly.

How is the reason of those thinking the opposite: guns good, technology bad?

A typical European "leftist intellectual" then? Not able to admit his own shortcomings and blaming others?

Maybe... well I try to argue against myself now... (typical leftist rhetorical-posture?)

And what has this to do with Tolkien?


I think the most important thing is the cohesion of the society, the prevalent trust inside a community - and the way it defines itself as a community - the way people see the world and the options open to them as well as those honourable and/or discraceful or outright bad ways to behave in it.

Let me make an example.

Had I a gun I would never ever dream of killing anyone. In Finland there are something like second most guns per capita around the world but only something like 1/100 kills with a firearm compared to the U.S.. But still Finns are the "second most violent" (well, third, fourth or something) nation in the world. People here kill each other by a knife, an axe, or by a fist (or a foot)... basically when they are drunk...

But.

The guns in Finland are hunting-guns owned by the rural people, about 10 each... and we have no gun-culture where people carry guns when they are walking down the street or one in their bedroom-drawer just in case. And we are not afraid of each other constantly and all of the time. We trust each other - looking at the statistics that's a bad guess but still it's the one we tend to make - and that's good...

There is a difference as to how a culture defines how some things are used.

The question of technology seems to follow that line of thought. If the leading idea of what the technology is for is fast money / immediate gains for me, it's certain we have the world we have right now. If the general attitude towards the technology would be "let's see how it can help us to sustain a balanced planet" all would be different.

So in a funny sense the conservatives and the leftists join hands in here. A global capitalism that the media (owned by the mega-rich) and the top-politicians (owned by the mega-rich) shows us encourages us to think that it is a game where everyone needs to guard his own and try to make a maximum profit whether it be wealth, sexual experiences, power, a newest brand-items or quartiary profits etc...

It's easy to see how Tolkien would have reacted to that...

More than guns or technology themselves this crazy desire for individual fulfillment - based on unnatural models drawing from a thwarted basic assumption of competition of one against each other (like those of the beauty-queens, athletic-heroes, so called "reality-tv"; or those ridiculous ideas of Hobbes the new right so happily endorses) and of personal experiences as the meaning of life as the primordial human condition - has really poisoned the western societies today.

And Tolkien would howl and whine today for these developements.


Try a test.


Not the one whether Tolkien confessed the same religion you do - or was a christian anyway - or whether his ideas of gender-roles fit your own. Or whether you still think in chivalric terms about things like friendship or courtly love (typical conservative notion of an idolised past that has actually never been) or if you distaste Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera...


But would you change extra money for more free time?

Would you walk to your school or your working-place? And if you live in a suburbs and use a car everyday - would you acknowledge the way of your living is the downfall of us all and do something about it?

Would you live without the telly, sitting with a friend / friends in a tavern every night rather than watching TV?

Would you love rather than gain?


I think I know what Tolkien would have answered...
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Old 06-18-2008, 12:41 AM   #3
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It is hardly rampant technology that encroached upon the environment. It is simple economics. .
How one can divorce technology from industrialism is beyond me, for they have walked together in lock-step -- these twin sons of different mothers of invention --from Blake's Satanic Mills to the current denuding of the Amazon. Tolkien's aversion to technology is directly linked to the industrial pollution that billows in its wake (in his letters he often complains of fumes and reek).

In letter #328, Tolkien describes "the horror of the American scene...polluted and impoverished to a degree only paralleled by the lunatic destruction of the physical lands which Americans inhabit." Don't worry that Tolkien had only disparaging words for the U.S., he also described Britain as "this polluted country of which the growing proportion of inhabitants are maniacs."

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It is doubtful, however, that Tolkien had such things in mind when he described the devastations in "the Scouring of the Shire".
Perhaps not, but I think his description of the ugly brick mill belching forth smoke, the defoliation of Hobbiton and the mean shacks erected in place of traditional Hobbit holes bears a striking resemblance to any shift from agrarian, pastoral lifestyle to a more industrial, 'technologically advanced' society.
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Old 06-18-2008, 03:33 AM   #4
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Great thread. You know, I think it's perfectly healthy to be uncomfortable with certain aspects of Tolkien's work, just as it is healthy to be uncomfortable with certain aspects of Pullman's work (An entire village of horrible, drunk, smelly Slavs! So much more progressive that J.R.R.T., Mr. Pullman!).

What I don't understand is the utter dismissal of a genuine work of art and a reductive reading that merely dismembers the material.

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The University where I graduated from... has now been so thoroughly saturated with the post-modern worldview that a post-graduate English lit. syllabus has more to do with marxism, absurdism, feminism, class and racism, lesbianism, and a horde of other isms which, in and of themselves, are fine discussion points and pertinent to current world affairs, but are more applicable to sociology, psychology or poli-sci.
I don't agree with you on Star Wars, but I think you're pretty spot-on here. I'm a feminist, but this was one of the several reasons as to why I decided against getting a PhD. And don't get me started on how those who are genuinely interested in Tolkien are often treated in academia...
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Old 06-18-2008, 04:42 PM   #5
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Actually technology comes before industrialism, if one takes the stance that technology is the knowledge of developing and using tools for survival. Of course, people can survive with much less than sticks and stones. (much like beavers and chimpanzees) But the inconvenient truth is that nature is not divine, and that technology (thus industries) keeps the human race surviving.

A comet may wipe out all 99.99% of lifeforms on Earth, and the single-cell lifeforms left would probably be less bothered about saving the rainforests and whales than humans. And yet while things last, people would enjoy living in an unpolluted environment. This, sadly, can only be maintained at the cost of either less material comfort (thus less industries), or the invention of more restorative technology. As always, it seemed to boil down to simple economics.
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Old 06-18-2008, 05:57 PM   #6
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Actually technology comes before industrialism, if one takes the stance that technology is the knowledge of developing and using tools for survival.
Absolutely.

Etymologically technology comes from the old Greek tekhne (skill, "know-how", knowledge) and logos (truth, wisdom, knowledge, language, discipline) and thence can be tracked back to the Greeks. And surely it's an older phenomenon dating back to the stone-age or what have you...

It seems self-evident that there can be no industrialism without technology. But the question remains whether there could be an alternative present with technology without industrialism...

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Originally Posted by Hot, crispy nice hobbit
As always, it seemed to boil down to simple economics.
That's a question of the viewpoint. Interpreting subsistence as kind of economics backs the argument and those engaged in the technology like to bring forwards the idea that wealth could be produced in "nature-friendly" ways. In Tolkien's times that was pure fantasy - and I'm afraid it's that in our days as well.

Anyhow. Leaving subsistence aside economy can be put on the second place, or third, or fourth...

Then it becomes a question of values.
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Old 06-18-2008, 06:26 PM   #7
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I'm afraid I can't agree more... (Economics may be considered the balance of values). I suppose Tolkien did have ideals of regenerative technology. This is instanced by the presence of the elesser, the green elf-stone of Celebrimbor/Feanor wielded by Galadriel which made things grew beautifully in the Lorien. At the end of the Scouring, Samwise also used the soil of Lorien to restore the Shire.

I guess if there's a restorative technology in modern days, it would be Botox, though I won't really want to know what goes into its making...

"Like butter spread on too much bread..." - Bilbo, on the effects of plastic surgery

On another note, something had really gone wrong with arts for arts sake. Maybe a scouring of US academia should be in order...
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Old 06-18-2008, 07:08 PM   #8
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(Economics may be considered the balance of values)
It can indeed! But how do we pick our vocabulary is always a political choice... or at least value-carrying one.

So do we call the equilibrum of values the truth, the right, the peace on earth, God's will, the at last enlightened humankind... or economics...

This world of ours throws economics to our eyes 24/7.

But we're not obliged to use those terms.

Like in the schools the board of education talks of students as "customers" and schools as "providers of educational services" today... Who decided that we should talk that way? We ourselves?

What would have Tolkien thought of that? What if he had been told that he would have to make haste in the university, concentrating only on a narrow field to graduate in minimal time possible to be "efficient" from the point of economics, and not just study all those futile old languages which are not to be turned into instant profit by the markets?

Like I said, that's a question of values...
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