Quote:
Originally Posted by Nogrod
Let's make further comparisons.
How does it feel to be in a house which has been there for a thousand years compared to a house that has been built just last year? There is a marked difference there. But what is it?
How does it feel to look at a spoon at the museum someone used five thousand years ago compared to one you bought from Ikea last fall?
How does it feel to write with a typewriter from the eighties (with the correction-memory of twenty characters) compared to using your Microsoft Word with your PC?
How would it feel to lose your mobile phone and go back depending on a lined telephone stationed in your home?
So is it just pure utilitarianism? When you want to get something accomplished you pick the state of the art thing but when you just need to get kicks out from something you turn to the old ones? 
And here the idea of enchanted things comes to the fore. An enchanted thing is better than it's modern-day equivalent because unlike other old things, it's vested with powers or history advanced technology can't beat. So it looks like an argument saying old things can do the things you want to do with them better than the modern ones?
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?
That's a tough one. |
I think the inference Tolkien makes is that there was indeed a 'fall from grace', and things turned to crap afterwards. Even Aragorn is a temprorary restoration of the faded greatness of the Edain. Whether he would admit it or not, Tolkien gravitated to the stoic Elvish sense of conservatism, even while admitting that the Elves were hopelessly stuck in the past to their detriment.
As far as newer technology as opposed to old world craftsmanship, I think we all know Tolkien sided with the latter. Saruman's use of gunpowder is referred to as 'devilry', and Dwarves like Thorin bemoan the loss of skills held by their forefathers. There is a certain glamor to the notion that what was made in previous centuries surpasses modern jerry-rigged contraptions, although the chances of entire cities burning down like London in 1666 have been mitigated by advances in engineering. It's all a matter of opinion, I suppose.