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Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

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Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#371

Modern science differs from Middle Earth knowledge in having the willingness to admit ignorance. No scientific law, concept, theory or idea is sacred. I don't think Middle Earth Christianity, Islam or whatever other premodern traditions of knowledge would agree in those two views. Everything that was important to know about the world was already known and written in the Bible, Qur'an or the Vedas. How on earth there…

Middle Earth doesn't have Christianity, and indeed the books really lack any real discussion of religion. God exists and so do angels, but there are no clergy or real religious rituals.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#372

Why didn't Frodo hop on one of those big eagles and fly the ring to Mt. Doom?

Because the great eagles were proud and would have been tempted by the ring, and even if they weren't the Nazgul have their fellbeasts and Orcs have bows so they would have been attacked.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...are we just going to ignore the fact that Middle Earth also has wizards and mind-controlling rings? I don't mean this dismissively, I just think more imagination is called for. If Mordor couldn't have arisen via normal plate tectonics, then geology must work differently on Middle Earth, or there must be other magical forces at play. (If I remembered anything significant about LoTR I would suggest a more specific t…

> geology must work differently on Middle Earth This is where a lot of people get stuck. They see the enormous effort put into world-building Middle-earth and can't help but see a gaping geologic hole. Yes, geology must work differently, but how? It frustrates people to see entire languages and histories fleshed out in minute detail on one hand, but on the other "rocks just do different, bud" on the other.

Tolkien was a linguist, not a geologist or economist (his anti-industrial and pro-monarchical/religious perspective were a resistance to the changes occurring in his time), so it's no surprise that he spent so much time on the linguistics.

His formative encounters with industrialization were the horrors of mechanized warfare in WW1, after which he retreated to the cloistered worlds of academia, religion (he was a devout Catholic), and the rural countryside of England. The perspectives and protagonists of his stories reflect that personal arc as well.

He was overtly trying to give England back a pre-modern mythology that he felt it had lost, because he felt that it was a better vehicle for introducing Christianity to children than the comparatively stark biblical stories.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#374
If you want to figure out why the Industrial Revolution didn't happen somewhere imaginary, you might want to consider those places on Earth where it was imported instead of having happened. That is: comparing to the UK is less interesting than comparing to countries that at that same time didn't transition. I am no historian and Western; as such my view on what happened around that time in Asia, Africa, South-America, Australia is limited. (History class here focuses on the Industrial Revolution). But if there was no IR in any of those areas, surely those would be a better model for investigating the main question.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#375

The article presents an engineering answer to s sociological question. The reason technology did not advance in Middle Earth is because innovation was not rewarded. Innovation and experimentation were punished. Mine a little too deeply? You awaken a balrog that kills you an everyone you have ever known. Want to expand into that verdant area across the river? You didn't expect giant spiders, did you? Build a disruptiv…

Yea I wonder if the purpose of this article is to promote capitalism while using a cringey comparison to distract from it. I hope those brain cells were put to good use.

Anyway, middle earth was a setting built to tailor and flesh out the stories in them. Combined together these -are- productive value that people pay for in good times, it seems.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#376

The article presents an engineering answer to s sociological question. The reason technology did not advance in Middle Earth is because innovation was not rewarded. Innovation and experimentation were punished. Mine a little too deeply? You awaken a balrog that kills you an everyone you have ever known. Want to expand into that verdant area across the river? You didn't expect giant spiders, did you? Build a disruptiv…

Most of those can be avoided with a bit of foresight. Take Balrogs, for example: by the Third Age there weren't all that many of them left, and on the off-chance that you do run into one, you can lure it into a trap made from one of those extremely deep pits that Dwarves are so fond of digging. Just make sure the pit is narrow enough that it can't spread its wings (if they have wings) and be careful that the pit doesn't have water at the bottom to break the Balrog's fall -- you may need to use bilge pumps. Perhaps consult with someone who managed to beat one in a fight; Glorfindel is still around, and making regular visits to maintain friendly relations with the Elves is just good business sense. And of course you should make sure that certain key sections of tunnel can be collapsed; you'll want this anyway to deal with the nameless monstrosities older than the world itself that you start running into at a certain depth.

The other threats are analogous. Giant spiders? Creepy but overrated. Someone with decent aim can one-shot most of them with a thrown rock, as demonstrated by a Mr. Baggins of Hobbiton, and their territory is a fairly small portion of Mirkwood. Dragons? Definitely an issue, but one that can be mitigated by storing your treasure horde in a maze of tunnels too small for a dragon to crawl through -- or, better yet, use multiple geographically isolated hordes. And again, the ability to collapse certain sections of tunnel would be both technologically unchallenging and very helpful here. Arguably it was the Dwarves' lack of innovation that led to them having such persistent dragon issues.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#377

The industrial revolution is in the book, it's the actual antagonist of the story. Tolkien was a devout Catholic distributist and Hobbingen was his ideal Catholic community of self reliant Hobbits who answer to wizards and kings, not to factory floor managers and administrators.

It is so disheartening that I had to scroll halfway down the page to find the actual correct answer here. I don't understand how this couldn't be immediately obvious to anyone who has actually read the books. Ironically, if Tolkien were still around I'm 100% sure he'd see the Jackson/Amazonification of LOTR as another real-world manifestation of the same forces that turned Orthanc into a huge weapons factory and near…

I was about to write the same thing. When I saw the title, my first thought was "because Tolkein would have had that happen over his dead body, and that's kind of the whole point." I thought this was common knowledge, especially among nerds.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#378
post #238

The article presents an engineering answer to s sociological question. The reason technology did not advance in Middle Earth is because innovation was not rewarded. Innovation and experimentation were punished. Mine a little too deeply? You awaken a balrog that kills you an everyone you have ever known. Want to expand into that verdant area across the river? You didn't expect giant spiders, did you? Build a disruptiv…

How is that different from real world history? Grow some crops? An invading army will come and steal and trample them. Mine for coal? A coal heap will bury your town or you'll die in a collapse. Start a trading enterprise? Your ship will get raided by pirates or you die of tropical diseases.

[deleted]

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked the idea of The Last Ringbearer , but I found the writing pretty awful, like something written by a teenager for an English assignment. > Mordor then made its second mistake ... although, as it always is with strategic decisions, that could only be judged post factum: had the move worked, as it had every chance of doing, it would no doubt have been recorded as brilliant. > That was when the Mirror first made…

I would consider that a fault of the translation rather than the original writing, though not knowing Russian I couldn't say for sure. Translating literary works is a necessarily imperfect art, and as I understand it this translation was done on the translator's free time without compensation, so I'll take what I can get!

Translator is not to blame, since he's not a professional translator. Not even sure if he is a native English speaker. He did a translation because he was a fan of the original book in Russian, and I'm grateful to him, since otherwise I would not be able to read it.

It's a pity that Tolkien Foundation actively battled any attempt to publish this book in English. Has that not been the case, I'm sure some publisher would appoint a professional translator to do a much better job at it.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#380
post #238

The article presents an engineering answer to s sociological question. The reason technology did not advance in Middle Earth is because innovation was not rewarded. Innovation and experimentation were punished. Mine a little too deeply? You awaken a balrog that kills you an everyone you have ever known. Want to expand into that verdant area across the river? You didn't expect giant spiders, did you? Build a disruptiv…

How is that different from real world history? Grow some crops? An invading army will come and steal and trample them. Mine for coal? A coal heap will bury your town or you'll die in a collapse. Start a trading enterprise? Your ship will get raided by pirates or you die of tropical diseases.

> How is that different from real world history?

It's not different from the vast majority of real world history.

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