Enchantment or advancement.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

So, its economics + labourers' attention + technical knowledge if we are using objective measures of worth. If we argue that worth lies in the eye of the beholder, though, just as meaning lies in the reader's mind, ( ) then that's a subjective measure where some prefer enchantment or others advancement.

Objective measures of worth / value?

How would you count for it? I mean Karl Marx spent the first sections of his Capital to analyse the different meanings and scopes of "value" coming up with more fuzz than a definitive answer...

There is the "use-value" of a thing (how well a product does the thing it's made for - or more modernly: how well it answers the needs of the buyer) and the "market-value" of a thing (how much people are ready to pay for it because they think it worth it), but also the "surplus-value" (how much is it acceptable to charge "from between" by the owner of the production-system) and all that stuff...

How would you determine the objective worth or value of a thing produced in a human society? A cheap thing can be good, inattentive labour may bring forwards decent results and much attention may end up in poor quality - and sometimes someone makes it well without knowledge and a cognisant person may make bad stuff if he has a bad day or something...

And can we approach a thing like quality from purely objective measures in the first place?

But I'm not sure it's up to a "subjective measure" either, but more like to a culturally relative measure which changes by times and cultures - and fashions - which people live themselves into and believe it's them who decide about the value of things...

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Objective measures of worth / value?

How would you count for it? I mean Karl Marx spent the first sections of his Capital to analyse the different meanings and scopes of "value" coming up with more fuzz than a definitive answer...

There is the "use-value" of a thing (how well a product does the thing it's made for - or more modernly: how well it answers the needs of the buyer) and the "market-value" of a thing (how much people are ready to pay for it because they think it worth it), but also the "surplus-value" (how much is it acceptable to charge "from between" by the owner of the production-system) and all that stuff...

How would you determine the objective worth or value of a thing produced in a human society? A cheap thing can be good, inattentive labour may bring forwards decent results and much attention may end up in poor quality - and sometimes someone makes it well without knowledge and a cognisant person may make bad stuff if he has a bad day or something...

Oh, if we are talking philosophers, they can determine with determination until the cows come home and still not have a clearly determined answer.

But if we are talking economists, and accountants, and CEOs then clearly they do daily come up with operational definitions of worth/value, as they are the ones who decide quantities of raw goods and materials to be used--ie, the planned obsolescence of the item being manufactured--salaries, bonuses, tax write-offs and, largely, market prices. (And when they're wrong, there goes the company, unless it is large enough to 'merit' a government bailout.)

Originally Posted by Noggie

And can we approach a thing like quality from purely objective measures in the first place?

Hmm. Maybe I'm confused. I didn't think we were necessarily discussing quality here but emotional attachment. The two are related but not equivalent, methinks.

Originally Posted by Noggie

But I'm not sure it's up to a "subjective measure" either, but more like to a culturally relative measure which changes by times and cultures - and fashions - which people live themselves into and believe it's them who decide about the value of things...

Now this is something we can agree on--cultural relativity--a third item which needs to be discussed.

Originally Posted by Eönwë

Yes, craftsmen can skimp while machines can't, but they can also create great works, not just as the product itself but as a work of art. Machines cann't make art. They can only create what they've been told to do.
That is why a machine could never create a weapon with a "soul" like Gurthang.

Yes, that's what I meant. There is greater variability in quality with craft, as you say, than with machined objects, which are standardised to a certain level of achievement. Although, someone programs the machine to do what it does and therein lies the potential, I think, for the question of art to be applied to the machine process. But likely in rare cases.

Originally Posted by Eönwë

And when I say craft, I separate it from craftsman because the crafting I mean is like a long time ago, when crafting was your life's work, and everything you made had your name on it, so if you ever produced a product that anyone hated, your reputation would be damaged. Now peole can just change their company name to avoid this, but then it was the craftsman who personally associated themselves with the product.

But many of our ancient relics don't have the makers' names engraved on them. They are anonymous (now at least, although Tolkien supplied names to his crafts). And anyway, isn't this like branding and logos are now? People buy products because of the logo, both for the cache of the name and because of the supposed quality that implies.

Originally Posted by Noggie

This I think Tolkien was very much aware of: the machine gun, the artillery... faceless killing by mass-produced machines of destruction detached from the suffering and somehow also from the guilt of doing so. A most moral issue!

yes, this is said to make killing in our time 'easier' psychologically, yet one has only to read about the terrible slaughters that occured during the Crusades, those purportedly glorious battles of the Middle Ages, to know that the crusaders killed happily and willingly. And for Europeans who weren't lucky enough to be able to trek to the Holy Land to do the killing, they happily turned to killing Jews--men, women and children--in their local towns and villages. They were 'morally detached' also no matter where or how their weapons were made.

But I don't think Tolkien was discussing actual, historical warfare. I think much of his writing leans towards the kind that we can easily associate with symbolism, so that magic becomes a believable quality, where it wouldn't be in an historical account.

My, I have run on. And now must do a Monty Python battle act--"run away! run away!"

[Mnemosyne]

Bethberry, I believe, mentioned "planned obsolescence," which is for me a huge reason why the old that is strong does not wither in this day and age. Because economies are so consumption-based, one has to buy the same thing over and over again to keep all of these stuff-producers in work. It's actually in manufacturers' best interests to create technology that will conk out one day after the warranty expires, just so that you'll buy a new one. I am clinging desperately to my grandmother's old ice-cream scoop (which was mass-produced, but in those days when mass-produced ice-cream scoops were new and thuse could afford to be of a good quality), which has lasted nigh on fifty years. You're lucky if the store-bought ones last six months. Because things are so cheap and abundant, quality doesn't matter anymore, which I think is the Hordes of Darkness' side of things: Really Really Awesome Weapons are unnecessary if you've got enough brute force to overwhelm the good guys. We can't forget that even with such heroic figures as Aragorn & co. the West would have been screwed without Frodo and the Ring.

The other thing about modern firearms is their great "equalizing" effect. In order to be proficient at the sword or the bow, you had to spend hours upon hours of training, have great physical strength, etc. But a firearm creates all of that power for you, which is great news for a petite like me. All I have to do is know how to aim, hold steady, and not jerk the trigger; laser sighting makes the "aim" step even easier. Suddenly anyone can kill anyone, and there's no more need for these great heroic figures who can fight for a day on the Pelennor and come out mostly unscathed.

The ease of cheaply-made, available-for-all stuff may make our life more convenient, but it's not as fascinating as all those great tales. No wonder all of Tolkien's heroes use old stuff.

[Hookbill the Goomba]

Perhaps this all comes down to power, or perhaps, perceived power.

Having a gun can, as Mnemosyne pointed out, give almost anyone power. A sword, while still dangerous in any hands, is always more dangerous in the hands of a trained swordsman. (To an extent, someone who has practice with a gun will be better at aiming, to be sure, but a gun in the hands of a novice can still create fear, and that's the main point of it).

But where enchantment is concerned, I think it goes beyond swords. It was the thought of Beren that got me on this line of thinking. What stops him from being killed on his journey towards Doriath? What makes Thingol think twice about killing him? His sword? No. The ring of Felagund.
We are never told if this ring has magical powers, exactly, but it certainly has some power. Perhaps it is of a different kind. The respect or memory they held for its previous wearer make it more than a ring. Although it cannot kill, it stops them in their tracks. Few blades could do that.

If I may take an example from Doctor Who.
In the Ninth Doctor's final episode he confronts The Daleks. The Doctor has no weapons or means of stopping them. But the Daleks are still terrified of him. Not because of what he has in terms of threat, as such, but because of their memory of him and what he has done to them in the past. The oncoming storm.

Now, back to Middle Earth.

A similar thing may be seen with Anduril. More than just an elvish blade, it is THE sword, the one that cut the Ring off Sauron's hand. Moreover, it was wielded by Aragorn's forefathers. It aided in Sauron's first fall, it should aid in his final fall. From a narrative stance, this is quite appropriate.

Another good example could be the Malorn tree that Sam plants in Hobbiton. It is special not only in its uniqueness (the only Malorn west of the mountains, east of the sea), but in the memory it instils in Sam. Of Lorien and Galadriel. I'm sure Gimli would have had a fair few things to say about it.

[Mnemosyne]

And let's not forget about the goblins in The Hobbit remembering Glamdring and Orcrist from Gondolin! Talk about long memories!

[Kent2010]

Hookbill

In some cases the names become stories and it is the stories and significances that give them power.

I agree. The name is significant. A name attaches an identity, a story. The Ringwraiths are not named, their personal identity has been lost, and they are in absolute servitude to Sauron. The same can be said about the Mouth of Sauron, his true name has been forgotten and "The Mouth of Sauron" is just a title, a position, not an actual name.

The Ents names (their Entish names) Treebeard says he can't tell Merry and Pippin because his name is constantly growing. The Ents' names are essentially their life stories.

Speaking of 'enchanted' swords I wonder exactly when do these magical weapons get named? Do they get named upon being crafted (was it the Japanese who named their swords?) or were they named after accomplishing a great deed? Was "Narsil" really some special/enchanted blade or was it because of the name, the story, attached to the blade? Names can create stories and those stories can form part of the legend, or the magic.

What about why the Elven Rings were given names but not the other rings of power? 'The One Ring' is afterall a title, not a name.

Lalwende

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?

I think people do make that assumption and it can be a dangerous one to make. The ideas of "progress," "advancement," "reform,"...etc is what is new, not the belief things were better in the past and now we're all 'falling from grace.' Mass crime, prostitution, scandals, corporate greed, adultery and the whole lot has existed for a long, long, time. It wasn't until about 160-170 years ago when people thought the problems got so bad, reform needed to happen. That's where progress, and the ideas of "reforming the person" to rid the world of its evils, took off.

What's interesting is technology and mass production was seen as the way to get out of the "savage" curses of the past. The first dagguerotypes (I believe about 1820s?) were seen as magicians. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables is I believe an excellent book which tries to argue that through technology, and interesting enough...nature, we can achieve progress and escape the dark, often dirty, past. This argument was the new idea in the world, not society had fallen from its glory days, and needed to be restored to its glory days - Society needed to make its own new glory days.

We get a revolution of ideas through history, and I think WWI brought out a new side to technology and mass production that people never thought was possible. That side left a huge black mark on technology, and using technology for "advancement."

In my opinion it's not technology, the sciences...etc, that is evil, it's how we decide to use it. Didn't Tolkien say something similar about magic in his books? It can be used for healing, preservation, protection, but also domination and destruction.