[QUOTE=mhagain][QUOTE=davem]Of course, one cannot rule out Elvish influence on the thinking of the other races. Elves are basically a backward looking race - the past for them was superior in every way than any possible future. They did not think in terms of 'evolution' towards a better future, but of 'devolution' from a better past - the further one moved away from the past the worse things got. Hence, the weaponry & technology of the past was, to their minds, innately superior to anything that could be developed in their own time. Even the 'technology' they did invent - Rings of Power principally - was designed to preserve the past, not to move them forward as such, because moving 'forward' was 'A Bad Thing' & took you further & further from 'perfection'.
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Originally Posted by davem
Now that's a very interesting point. The same is also pretty much true of the other thousands of years since the first age, and it does seem that "invention" and "technical advancement" were doomed not to happen until the Dominion of Men began, for just the reason you've stated.
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Yes - you guys got it exactly right. The Elves put so much focus on preserving their noble, tragic past that eventually their nostalgia trapped them - they couldn't move forward because their world was stuck backwards. They stay in a fixed condition for thousands of years without any real changes, and eventually they just faded away, like the world they were tying to preserve. Men are the opposite - though in many ways their triumphes and failures in the past are mostly lesser and worse than the Elves, ultimately they succeed in the long run because they are generally able to accept these wrongs and move on and continue. Men look forward to what they can do about a problem whereas Elves merely look backwards on it for the rest of time.
I think a similar historical parallel would be China. Initially, they were generally far more advanced than the people of Europe in almost every way and made many of the world's greatest achievements. But they advanced only up to a certain point - and when they reached it, they just sat there for hundreds of years in a relatively unchanging state. By the time Europeans came into contact with them, they had advanced up to the state of China and had actually surpassed them in some ways. This was part of a general trend in world history - the gradual shift in power and culture from the east to the west.