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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 1320399" data-attributes="member: 6533">Hmm, I think this is a fairly tough stance to take on Tolkien.  I certainly don't think that Tolkien feels the world is getting inevitably worse, by the end of the books things are much better and the fact that things have gotten worse since the end of the second age is mostly a testament to the glory of the second age not the inevitability of decline.By the same token it would be impossible to argue that Tolkien portrays a world where history marches on to an inevitable better tomorrow, and in that sense he certainly doesn't work with the current traditional technological myth.Tolkien certainly has a beef against technology that burns resources without stewardship but there are plenty of fairly 'high tech' cultures that seem to do all right in his world, and most of the major foundational characters are craftsmen and tool users.I honestly have a problem with the idea of humans being the tech race, most of human history is not noted for rapidly advancing and widely and well distributed technology.  I have to agree that it depends on the individual culture.If you have gnomes and dwarves who create pretty stable community politics and create great records then I would guess they would pull it ahead.  Their 'natural' lifestyle would have to put them into contact with more substances and weird engineering delimmas and their long lives and many generations would give them significant advantages.Also, I do like the idea of ReichsElves cruising through Halfling land on their Unicorn Panzers singing "Aelfland Aelfland uber alles..."</blockquote>

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