[[QUOTE]QUOTE=Nogrod]]So beating technology requires technology, but if you use it to defy your technological opponent, you will be consumed in the fight? [QUOTE]
[QUOTE=littlemanpoet]
This seems to be what Sauron, Saruman, Denethor, and Boromir (until he repented) thought, except for the last phrase of your question. The strategy of the Fellowship was, in fact, to not use the technology, and to destroy it.
I agree with this common reading myself, but what striked me in davem's message, and seemed to be opening interesting ways of interpreting the whole issue, were these sentences:
[QUOTE][QUOTE=davem]Tolkien stated that 'magic' is an aspect of the Machine, a seeking after technology to control & coerce things/people, hence the Ring is the ultimate Machine within Middle-earth, & the other Rings are lesser Machines. All technology (which in Middle-earth includes Rings, Palantiri, etc) is 'evil' in that its purpose is to remake the world in the user's own image - even if that was not the intent behind their making.
So was it just an accident, that Gandalf kind of just happened to have the powers' he used to change the events in LotR? Were Imladri's & Lorien's being able to stay so long as to have their part in the making of the new world, just due to their being nice elves?
So how about, if all this was really a work of "machines" (we really would need to define now here, what the word 'machine' means, or change the word!), the work of a world that was becoming, using all these heroes as it's own tool? So, in the end, the Great Victory over the bad principle led straight to the hands of technology & "machines"? Navigating past Scylla led straight to the hands of Charybdis? Elves and Maiar needed rings to fight rings, and thence disappeared from the world that those rings primarily were the first sign of (with Palantiri)?
I'm not suggesting, this is a fool-proof interpretation, or even the most fruitful one. But certainly it gives some food for thought! At least to me it has given that.
