Historical Value - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

littlemanpoet · 06-03-2002, 11:08 AM

Lots of good anecdotes on this thread. They all point to the same thing: we are all (sadly) "Children of the Seventh Age", and what a sad Age it is. The Fourth Age may have seen the rise of humans and the loss of magic, but the Seventh Age has seen the rise of the Machine and the loss of humanity even among humans. We have lost touch with working the land - part of what I think made those teens stop being sullen - we're no longer connected to the natural world. We have turned our children into products: productive citizens. We indoctrinate our children to be proficient on all our machines so that they can keep the wheels of our uselessly spinning society, spinning on - in the meantime they lose their childhood with the kinds of responsibilities and play natural to it, and receive in its place a stunted adulthood with crazy expectations built into it and no chance of being fulfilled by them because humans cannot be fulfilled by living for machines. In other words, I really think Tolkien served us well as a prophet. Too bad there's no solution other than "machino-clasm". Throw them out! [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Sorry. I'm a little out of sorts because I'm currently doing the work of three people for this entire week as I try to learn a new mechanized inventory system. 12 hours per day. [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img] [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img] [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img]

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06-03-2002, 11:08 AM	#1
littlemanpoet Itinerant Songster Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: The Edge of Faerie Posts: 7,066	Lots of good anecdotes on this thread. They all point to the same thing: we are all (sadly) "Children of the Seventh Age", and what a sad Age it is. The Fourth Age may have seen the rise of humans and the loss of magic, but the Seventh Age has seen the rise of the Machine and the loss of humanity even among humans. We have lost touch with working the land - part of what I think made those teens stop being sullen - we're no longer connected to the natural world. We have turned our children into products: productive citizens. We indoctrinate our children to be proficient on all our machines so that they can keep the wheels of our uselessly spinning society, spinning on - in the meantime they lose their childhood with the kinds of responsibilities and play natural to it, and receive in its place a stunted adulthood with crazy expectations built into it and no chance of being fulfilled by them because humans cannot be fulfilled by living for machines. In other words, I really think Tolkien served us well as a prophet. Too bad there's no solution other than "machino-clasm". Throw them out! [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img] Sorry. I'm a little out of sorts because I'm currently doing the work of three people for this entire week as I try to learn a new mechanized inventory system. 12 hours per day. [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img] [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img] [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img]