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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?

#381

Post by schmeckleberg »

hguant wrote: post #334
antifa wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Middle Earth had such strange land mass distribution, which is geologically impossible I would love to watch a YouTube video explaining the geology of Middle Earth and the geology science explaining why it's impossible.

>geology science explaining why it's impossible. Mordor is...it just doesn't work. It's a hard scrabble plain with a large inland sea bounded on 3 sides by jagged, abrupt mountains that are entirely isolated from any other ranges, and form right angles with each other...oh and the surround a cone volcano that just emerges from the ground. Any one of these things (minus the, I repeat, NEAR PERFECT RIGHT ANGLES formed…

The Carpathian Mountains and Transylvania would like to have a word with you...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpathian_Mountains

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

#382

Post by stonemetal12 »

boringg wrote: post #341
timoth3y wrote: post #190

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…

There just wasn't any need - they had a world filled with magic. Why would you ruin the natural world for industrial gains? In fact the Orkai and the white wizard was quite industrious with their forges and their war machine production and the natural world pushed back. That and I don't see the start up world being that different from a risk perspective just the outcomes are different. And maybe middle earth was stil…

Filled with magic, is overstating the magical capabilities of the world.

Gandalf, one of the most powerful wizards in the world can't even throw fireballs at his enemies. He has to gather pine cones set them on fire, then throw the pine cones. Most of the humans were magicless and could have used a tractor.

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

#383

Post by jdmichal »

klik99 wrote: post #313
Angostura wrote: post #241

I highly recommend "The Last Ring Bearer" for people who like to have a bit of fun with Tokien. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer Eskov's version of the story describes Mordor as a peaceful constitutional monarchy on the verge of an industrial revolution, that poses a threat to the war-mongering and imperialistic faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude has been described by Saruman as "crafting…

Honestly this reinterpretation is not that far from themes that exist in LOTR, given that it was partly an allegory of the wars. It's just making Mordor not represent fascism. Reminds me of something I learned last week when I was thinking about how the Harry Potter goblins are (probably unintentionally) built from second-hand racist stereotypes. Apparently the Dwarves of Middle Earth represent Jewish faith and the E…

On the topic of Harry Potter and reimaginative fan-fiction, there's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, in which Harry is reimagined as a science- and technology-savvy rationalist.

http://www.hpmor.com/

It also, IMO, has better and fairer treatment of the houses than the canon, which I felt was pretty reductive. (Gryffindor good, Slytherin evil, the other two may as well not exist.) I think the books would have been better to have, say, Hermione in Ravenclaw, Ron in Hufflepuff, and Harry in Gryffindor. The only thing that would have had to been dropped was the silly "Gryffindor wins the house cup every year" bit.

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

#384

Post by chx »

peeters wrote: post #359
Psyladine wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last sentence is Tolkien admitting he aborted the project. He wrote The Hobbit as something of a children's tale in a bout of inspiration, and the LoTR when his publisher was weirded out by the alien nature of the silmarillion, asking instead for "more fun stuff with hobbits." This can best be seen in the history of middle earth, his son's chronicle of the writing process for his father's work; volume VI covers t…

> Anyway he wasn't trying to build english myths when he wrote the books he is famous for, that was more a young & ambitious college student's feverdream. If that feverish worldbuilding formed the ultimate setting of LoTR, would it not be relevant in evaluating that world?

It didn't. A few ideas from BOLT survive in the Silmarillion but it is certainly not a setting of LotR. Remember that neither Hobbit nor LotR originally was even in the Silmarillion universe it just sorta grew to be there. Fitting the Hobbit in actually is quite difficult.

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

#385

Post by chx »

_0ffh wrote: post #181
chx wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not read my expanded answer above

Maybe it's fair to propose that the abandoned attempt may have had a major influence on LotR?

Not all. Look up the history of LotR itself, Trotter the hobbit and so forth.

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

#386

Post by pjscott »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #356
throwaway4aday wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the predator-prey cycle is the correct explanation. Pre-industrial societies have enough problems with food production and disease limiting population growth, add in the equivalent of sapient wolves and it's a miracle that there are any intelligent populations left in Middle Earth at all. I think you could add to your reply to the parent comment that the reason the Orcs don't take over and establish their own…

> The Shire is truly an anomaly Probably has a magical bubble around it. Seems like Gandalf’s little terrarium tbh.

It doesn't have a magical bubble. What it does have are some excellent natural defenses. The eastern border of the Shire is marked by the Brandywine river, which is wide and hard to cross, with only one bridge in the area. (The Shire was attacked by orcs and wolves once, during a particularly cold winter when the river froze over -- no magical bubble!) Past the river is is Buckland, which is much more dangerous than the Shire and acts as a buffer zone; the Bucklanders put a lot more effort into defense than the Shire hobbits do. After Buckland there's a twenty-mile-long protective wall, with its two gates guarded at all times. After that there's the Old Forest and the Barrow Downs, which are both exceptionally hostile places for travelers to pass through, way worse than most of Middle Earth.

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

#387

Post by yyyk »

usrusr wrote: post #170
yyyk wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I get you. We were talking about possible internal conflict within the Orcs. Not sure Sauron gets their automatic allegiance, and if he does not, that's all the reason we need. As for humans, I don't have a good explanation there at all.

I was referring to the second paragraph. Orcs usually don't pay taxes to Gondor.

That paragraph referred to humans. For Fantasy races we can always come up with an explanation/excuse, but there should have been more humans along the route.

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

#388

Post by pjscott »

xg15 wrote: post #146
Barrin92 wrote: post #16

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.

This. Also, there are a few moments scattered throughout the book where the hobbits get to eavesdrop on conversations between Sauron's orcs and we gatch a few glimpses of Mordor's internal organisation. The tone of those conversations always struck me as surprisingly "modern" compared to the "epic medieval" style of the rest of the book: Orcs apparently have ID numbers, they complain about arrogant bosses, at some po…

Considering how worried the orcs were about informants reporting them for sedition, it sounds less like a modern military and more like one of the militaries where commissars shoot anybody who retreats. Add on to that the fact that Mordor's population is almost entirely enslaved, and it sounds rather like Stalin's USSR but with more competently-run agriculture.

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

#389

Post by stjohnswarts »

timoth3y wrote: post #190

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…

Because the author was very much in love with forests and nature and didn't care at all for modern cities and technology?

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

#390

Post by stjohnswarts »

danjac wrote: post #238
timoth3y wrote: post #190

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.

Many new world burgeoning civilizations got wiped out/stunted by natural things like droughts and the land being farmable and able to maintain large populations.
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