Tolkien, Technology, and... War

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

A very interesting and pertinent thread symestreem.

I think that the current discussion about “good and bad” technology is perhaps a bit misleading, insofar as it is trying to approach a subtle and complex aspect of Tolkien’s world (the status, use, view, role of technology) through the simplicity of binary terms (good vs. bad, right vs. wrong). I have no doubt that there are in LotR “good and bad” uses of technology, but I think that there might be another way to approach this. To quote (now for the third time in this thread – first by Son of Númenor and then by Saucepan Man) an important passage from the Letters:

There is the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare. Unlike art which is content to create a new secondary world in the mind, it attempts to actualize desire, and so create power in this World; and that cannot really be done with any real satisfaction. Labour-saving machinery only creates endless and worse labour. And in addition to this fundamental disability of a creature, is added the Fall, which makes our devices not only fail of their desire but turn to new and horrible evil. (Letter 75)

I am quite conscious that Tolkien himself is approaching technology here in terms of its “evil” so I’m not trying to eject that idea from the discussion. What I do want to point out is that he opposes to technology not “good” technology, but art. As has been pointed out in this thread, the forces of good in Middle-Earth depend upon technological advance as much as do the forces of evil, and yet somehow these instances of engineering or fabrication are somehow OK. I think that this is because the “good” instances of technology are undertaken not in the spirit of domination and manipulation, but for creation and co-operation.

The best three examples I can think of for this form of art, and their technological counterparts are: Caras Galadhon and Barad Dûr; the Old Mill and the New Mill; the Three Rings and the One Ring.

Caras Galadhon is a marvel of engineering – to construct an entire city in the treetops is beyond even our own 21st century technology. And yet is stands in stark contrast to the tower of steel and stone that is Barad Dûr, which is something very much in the realm of possibility now. The difference is that the city of Galadriel is built in cooperation with the natural surrounding – even in homage to it. The city creates a place or space for the people to live in and amongst their natural setting without asserting dominance or control of that setting.

The Old Mill, we are told, was entirely sufficient to the needs of the hobbits. It ground enough wheat to meet the requirements of the Halflings and existed in harmony with the natural surrounding. It added to the lives of those who used it and allowed the basic function of life to go forward. Like the flet building technology of the Elves, it allowed the hobbits to live and thrive, to make a space for themselves, in their natural surroundings. All of the arts of the hobbits do so: agrarian, brewing, etc. The hobbit hole is another great example of this: a house that is literally in the earth, not towering over and dominating it.

And the Rings. The Three were made to preserve and enhance what already was there; like art, they were an attempt at creation and co-operation with the natural world. The One, as we all know, is about domination and control.

To paraphrase Hamlet, the purpose of art is to hold a mirror up to nature; the purpose of technology, according to Tolkien, is to dominate nature.