Tolkien, Technology, and... War

[Estelyn Telcontar]

There's a wonderful passage in The Hobbit that gives a comment about the Goblins and their love for technology and weapons. From it, we can assume that Tolkien connected technology with its negative destructive effects.

Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones... Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design.. It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them...

[mark12_30]

I think the Fell Beasts (and flying dragons as well) indicate Tolkien's dislike for Terror From The Air. Although the good side has eagles, the effects are quite different. I don't think he was fond of airplanes.

[Lyta_Underhill]

Also the idea of waste, such as the needless building of a bigger mill (at the expense of much of the natural landscape) in the Shire, when there was no need. This small event in the larger scheme took autonomy from the small and gave power to the outsider over the people themselves, thus echoing the rise of industry and the faceless conglomerates. There was also much senseless waste of human life in the Great War of attrition, when the generals' strategies were often, "throw as many men as possible at them and hope they run out before we do." The Germans attacks on Verdun were designed specifically to draw the hordes of French defenders to their doom in the defense of a national treasure. The Germans knew that the French would endure unthinkable human loss before they would give up Verdun. Senseless waves of young men dying in an impossible assault on Gallipoli before they realized how impossible it was...there was more human life lost through sheer waste in World War One than in any subsequent war, as far as my limited knowledge goes. I haven't read the "war-machines" version of the Fall of Gondolin, but I have read accounts of the Somme, and I imagine they would not be so different as one might think.

Cheers!
Lyta

[Kuruharan]

Technology makes war easier and more impersonal; I imagine it's easier to drop a Tomahawk (or whatever missile) from an unmanned Predator than to cut someone's head off with a sword. In his books, Tolkien seems to portray war as a necessary evil (see ), but technology, as I said, makes war easier and more likely.

While I agree with the general drift of your argument, at least as far as it pertains to Tolkein’s view of technology, I disagree with the idea that technology makes war any easier or more likely. Technology does not have anything to do with making human beings more or less violent. Our blood-spattered history seems to indicate that as a group we have a natural inclination to violence.

I also disagree that technology makes war essentially easier. It makes the process different, and it is certainly more destructive. However, it has its own kind of difficulty. I seriously doubt that you could get anybody who has actually had “their boots on the ground” to say that it was particularly easy for them. Even flying around in some planes can be just as physically demanding (in different ways) as running around hacking at somebody with a sword. Technology also creates layers of complexity and economic expense. In an economic sense I’d say that it is perhaps more burdensome for a modern nation to wage a real war than it was in the past.

One key difference between modern and (for lack of a better word) archaic warfare is its continual nature. Back in the good old days you’d set to for a day or so, or you’d settle in for a nice little siege. Once that was done then you’d likely have a little breather before continuing on to whatever was next. And then most everything stopped at the end of the campaigning season. Now, the war stops for no reason. It is fought under all conditions. In fact, it comes to resemble one long never-ending siege. This is on several levels more difficult and demanding than the good old days.

There was also much senseless waste of human life in the Great War of attrition, when the generals' strategies were often, "throw as many men as possible at them and hope they run out before we do." The Germans attacks on Verdun were designed specifically to draw the hordes of French defenders to their doom in the defense of a national treasure.

This type of thinking was not a peculiarity of the modern mind. It has always been some part of this kind of activity (and in spite of the stereotyping, it was not the only thing that the generals in World War I were thinking about).

Senseless waves of young men dying in an impossible assault on Gallipoli before they realized how impossible it was...

Not to be too picky (a sure sign that a picky comment is coming ) but Gallipoli is not the best example of this. If the thing had been better executed from the get go it might have turned out quite different. Even as it was the Turks were getting to the point of withdrawing. The project was an attempt at outside the box thinking by Churchill in an attempt to find a way around just throwing men at the enemy. He was trying to hit the enemy in their vulnerable underbelly. The commanders on the scene just sort of botched the thing from the beginning, and turned it into just throwing men at the enemy. If they had only managed the whole offensive as skillfully as they conducted the retreat…but anyway, I badly digress.

My essential point is that mere technology does not make humans more or less warlike. The problem has always lain with the human beings wielding the technology.

[Lhunardawen]

Originally posted by Kuruharan
I also disagree that technology makes war essentially easier. It makes the process different, and it is certainly more destructive. However, it has its own kind of difficulty.

I agree. I think the more appropriate thing to say is that technology in warfare causes more deaths in a shorter duration of time, as dropping a bomb can kill more people in a while than using swords and bows for a number of, say, hours (or probably even days). Efficiency, that would be the word.

[Son of Númenor]

I see what you are saying Lhunardawen & Kuruharan, but your definition of 'easier' does not seem to be in line with Symestreem's. Surely it is 'easier' to lob missiles from miles away than to engage the enemy in close-range combat, & easier to use nightvision to scan enemy terrain at night than your own naked eyes.

Edit: I did not mean to imply with the above that war has become easier in an economical or humane sense, but merely in the sense that it requires less men & women to risk their lives, requires less tactical 'gambling', & has become more efficient strategically (for the United States & it's allies, anyway ). War is & has always been a horrible way to waste resources & lives.

But anyway, that does not seem the initial purpose of the thread.

Here are a few quotes from the Professor himself that shed some light on the issue at hand:

Well the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter - leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing more triumphant: the Machines. As the servants of the Machines are becoming a privileged class, the Machines are going to be enormously powerful. What's their next move? (Letters, 196)

Worthy of Morpheus himself.

Unlike art which is content to create a new secondary world in the mind, it attempts to actualize desire, and so to create power in this World; and that cannot really be done with any real satisfaction. Labour-saving machinery only creates endless and worse labour. (Letters, 75)

How I wish the 'infernal combustion' engine had never been invented. Or (more difficult still since humanity and engineers in special are both nitwitted and malicious as a rule) that it could have been put to rational uses - if any... (Letters, 64)

Unfortunately I have no time to write my own thoughts on the subject, but I will be sure to do so later.

[Kuruharan]

Surely it is 'easier' to lob missiles from miles away than to engage the enemy in close-range combat, & easier to use nightvision to scan enemy terrain at night than your own naked eyes.

Not necessarily. The difficulty lies in a different area, I am specifically thinking of the development and maintenance of such weaponry. I have an uncle in that line of work and it is quite hard in its own way, and expeeeensive!!!!!

Certainly it is easier to simply push a button. It is the process to get you to the point of pushing a button that can be difficult. And even modern warfare consists of much more than just sitting back and pushing buttons. It is hard, nasty, and quite dangerous work for your average infantryman, just as it has always been.

My thinking in this area is rather in line with the quotation you provided from Tolkien:

Labour-saving machinery only creates endless and worse labour. (Letters, 75)

[symestreem]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

While I agree with the general drift of your argument, at least as far as it pertains to Tolkein’s view of technology, I disagree with the idea that technology makes war any easier or more likely. Technology does not have anything to do with making human beings more or less violent. Our blood-spattered history seems to indicate that as a group we have a natural inclination to violence.

Yes... I was referring to the 'ethics' of war'. Sitting in an air-conditioned office, pressing a button and hearing a computerized voice say 'Target destroyed' will give you a lot fewer nightmares than running a young boy through with a sword. Technology has the frightening potential to isolate you from the consequences of your actions, and that is something we never see in Tolkien's books. People always seem to pay the price or reap the rewards.

[Kuruharan]

Sitting in an air-conditioned office, pressing a button and hearing a computerized voice say 'Target destroyed' will give you a lot fewer nightmares than running a young boy through with a sword.

You are right that modern technology can gain physical distance, for some, from the things they do in war. However, they still know what they are doing, and at some point they are likely to see some evidence of their handiwork.

I’m not sure that it really makes a whole lot of difference because people have always done things like this. I don’t believe that technology changes humanity from being what it essentially is.

[Esgallhugwen]

Imladris, I never said a child was incapable of using a sword I just said its possible a gun would be easier to use and easier to kill someone with. It would also take less training time (in my opinion) you tell the kid to pull the trigger at so and so and BANG! its over with. I learned to use a gun in less then 5 minutes, whereas a sword would probably take longer to master, the least amount of time would be a couple of hours or a couple of days just to get the basics.

I myself have not learned to weild a sword (yet) so my opinion might be slightly naive.

I realize that contemplating about destroying a nation is not something you can just decide over night, however it seems to me that the threat is used more openly, warning other nations that are totally not involved that if they decide to go through with dropping the bomb that they too could be destroyed as a result.

So I suppose in reality that I strongly agree with Tolkien about how these new technologies allow us to destroy ourselves faster than ever imagined before in our most terrible nightmares.

Imladris you are right about how there can still be honour, I have mis-communicated, again. I used honour in the wrong context, or perhaps I was thinking of a different kind of honour.

Yes, of course theres always honour among comrades in arms, but I was refering to opposing sides, they just seem to want to blow up one another in hate not just for their countries honour to protect their country but to take ove another nation in hateful defiance.

[Lhunardawen]

Originally posted by Kuruharan
You are right that modern technology can gain physical distance, for some, from the things they do in war. However, they still know what they are doing, and at some point they are likely to see some evidence of their handiwork.

As some people might perceive the pictures of the bombing of a certain place to be more horrible than, for example, the Helm's Deep scene from TTT (pretending it happened in real life). Aside from the fact that you have seen something blown up to smithereens, it hurts to know that there are actual people affected. But some people tend to be insensitive, just as long as they get what they want. Tolkien might as well be angered with these people more than with technology itself.