[Lalwendë]

Investing valuable resources in building complex constructions, as I've already said, suggests a culture which has a sense of permanence and optimism, whereas a culture which senses it is transient does not invest its resource in fixed objects and constructions. We see the same with the builders of the great medieval cathedrals - they felt their culture would endure for ever. Likewise the builders of the monumental waterfront in Liverpool - they felt that the sun would never set on the empire.

Funnily enough, there are more things in culture than books. Older socities may not have had literature, and there are still cultures today which do not have literature. To suggest that we can't learn anything about them because they do not hold the written word in the same way we do is cultural supremacism.

In fact, even Tolkien's work bears out what I've said. Contrast the Gondorians who have a culture existing for thousands of years, they have been shapers, builders, creators of monumental architecture which is permanent, with the Rohirrim who are newly arrived, living an uncertain existence - they are not builders, they have a sense of transience. And contrast Faramir's sense of hope when he looks to the West and thinks of Numenor and remembers a cultural memory of promise and even paradise, with Theoden's words on his death. He doesn't go to a place he simply goes to his ancestors. Even so, the Rohirrim are not strictly pessimistic, more that they simply live for the now, whereas the Gondorians live for the past and for the future, not in the now. Even Tolkien knew the significance of transient versus permanent cultures.

Look at the modern world. I would only take a mortgage if I felt assured of my permanence but if I felt insecure I would instead rent, and be transient.