Quote:
Originally Posted by skip spence
Come on man, you are much too serious, I'm sure Tolkien would tell you the same.
I guess the problem is you are too sure of yourself.
I mean... We all know that Tolkien was a tinkerer, he was trying to make everything fit together as the world grew and was enrichened. Which is why I said that Bill and Bert and Tom don't really fit into the latter, more developed Middle Earth, for some of the reasons you've touched, I understand that.
It's just, your reading that Orcs are some allegoric Alfa-preditor of our society is a bit much really.
EDIT. I do enjoy your speculation though, so please take no offence!  |
They aren't an Allegory, nor are they an Alpha-predator.
They are simply a predatory species, one of many, which happen to coexist alongside man. Technically they are a mixed-predator, where some of their sustenance comes from predation, and some through self-production (but that still does not correct the problem).
As for taking this "too seriously..."
Tolkien tended to do that himself. In addition to p. [I]x[I] of
Morgoth's Ring there are half a dozen places in
Letters where he talks about the
Sciences Internal to Middle-earth, and that these would be just as discoverable as those in our world.
Tolkien admitted his ignorance in these areas. But that doesn't mean those of us who are not ignorant of those Sciences cannot then look to see how they might function given the quote on p. [I]x[I] of
Morgoth's Ring. We needn't be
IN Middle-earth to do this, any more than we need to be
ON an exoplanet to begin learning things about its composition (or any one of thousands of other means of indirect observation and Science).
The simple fact is:
Orcs have to eat. Orcs need to build houses. Orcs need to have children.
These take resources. Those resources take space to produce (space that we have objective measure of, and can predict what we would see given a certain type of population).
As for being "Sure of myself...."
Well... No... I am sure of the numbers I have. But I remain very unsure of many aspects lacking others who are formally trained in the specific sciences who are also as familiar with Tolkien. And, unfortunately, the few who are currently have so little time to devote to it (Such as Dr. DJ Lundt, who did an excellent Meteorological Study of Middle-earth - yet after speaking to him about it, we discovered that he had two major flaws in his study that would have affected localized weather patterns, or generalized weather patterns should the Valar have intervened; as they did in a few events).
Currently, all I have at my disposal who have a science background of some sort (whether hard or soft) is a Medical Doctor who specializes in Genetic Pathologies (helpful for how Morgoth could have managed to affect or corrupt existing species to create the "monsters), a collection of Zoologists, Ornithologists, and Biologists at a couple of Zoos in the USA to help with habitat and population distributions (which includes humans), a Physicist, who only has a couple of days every few months to work on problems dealing with some very esoteric aspects the nature of matter and energy in Middle-earth, and...
Myself, who has formal training in Art History & Comparative Religions and Myths (having studied with Joseph Campbell in the 1980s - this covers Theology, Myth, Sociology, Anthropology, and Religious History), as well as more recent training in the Cognitive Sciences, and Computational & Systems Biology (both interdisciplinary fields, which cover from Linguistics, to Computer Science, Biology, and Neuroscience - The latter of these fields is called "Cybernetics"). I do not yet have a graduate degree in these, as I had to drop out my senior year at UCLA due to old injuries I have causing severe health problems that could still cost me my legs. Otherwise... I would not have the time to devote to this study, and would instead be up to my elbows in epithelial cells and intestinal linings (I was studying how to create synthetic intestines, and gut-tissue).
The goal we are looking for is a Unified Theory to explain Middle-earth, and the associated specific disciplines that would explain its structure. We have a working theory, explained in another post.
As I said in the post no one seems to want to pay any attention to. A LOT of people tend to either not understand what this means, and thus they either simply reject it, or they miss the relevance of certain issues.
MB