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This is pretty much it but it's larger than that. It's not just "magic", it's the whole nature of Tolkien's world. The world has a creator-all-powerful God and
by bernawil 4y ago
This is pretty much it but it's larger than that. It's not just "magic", it's the whole nature of Tolkien's world. The world has a creator-all-powerful God and everybody in it knows it. He created all sentient creatures in it for his own entertainment. Everything that "is", is however he wants it to be and that's the nature of things, there's no Science to "discover". The world was flat like a thousand years ago until some men interfered with God's entertainment and he sank their island and reshaped the world round. Nobody doubts this too. There's many immortal beings out there you can ask firsthand (the Elves). Oh and those also know (or know someone who knows) the lesser gods that know the God. He's real.
Men in the world of Tolkien don't have any reason to "innovate" or even inquire about the world, really.
- klik99 4y agoI was just joking but this interpretation is a great metaphor for our modern world. A meme (not the 4chan kind) going around lately is the history of the modern world is us as a society knowing less - as opposed to esotericism which is a belief that sometime in the past all the knowledge existed and then we forgot it, it got fragmented, and we find the origin, the center, then we can be free or make gold out of lead or whatever. Scientific revolution, postmodernism etc starts from the assumption we don't know anything and we can't know anything - instead of an origin, knowledge permeates everything. So if we have a fantasy world where there are actual immortal beings and magic really exists (even though rare as mentioned by another poster) then how can you ever start with the assumption that nobody in the world knows? If you want knowledge, it's a matter of finding the right person or the right ancient scrolls or artifact.