Geez the elves musn't be very intelligent huh.???

T

thehobbitftw

Rivendell
They are immortal and this elite race yet in all these years thet have not yet invented a motor car or gunpowder lmfao.
 
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Since they came to Middle Earth. It has taken us 6 thousand years (according to NASA's callender and other scientific facts) and it has taken us humans that long and a lot of failures to come to this point. Besides that it wouldn't be fantasy if the elves were driving cars around. It would be thriller sci-fi.[;)]
 
Don't you think that a group of immortal individuals would be able to progress a lot quicker/more efficiently than Men? We humans have to expend a lot of energy training subsequent generations, whereas an immortal elf has all of his or her past experience and failures to work from.
 
Remember it was Saruman who was all about the machines. The elves were more into the wisdom and arts that would better the spirit. Tolkien didn't think much of technology it would seem.
 
After all, Gandalf HAS invented something very like gunpowder, but he seems to have kept it to himself. He uses it to make his fireworks and apparently not for any other purpose. He obviously thought that gunpowder used for warfare would be inhumane. Its proper use is for entertaining hobbits.
 
"On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."
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Actually, Darkstone has the original British version, with "whilst", while my version came from the American publication and has "while". [;)]
 
And clothing, and ropes, and boats, and food that seems almost magical!! I guess for its time, they're as cool as a car. Could a Middle-earth car run on water? Solar? hmmmm.....
 
*glares icicles at its publisher* That's one of my pet peeves: some publishers feel Americans aren't capable of understanding British English. [mad]
 
It's not as egregious as the first Harry Potter book or anything, but there are a few places that H2G2 has some wording changes.

But actually there is a whole separate addition to the American version of Life, the Universe, and Everything from the original. When they're at the flying party, the one screenwriter who won the award for "Most Gratuitous Use of the Word 'F***' in a Serious Screenplay", in the American version instead won the award for "...Use of the Word 'Belgium'...". It then goes into a whole explanation about how 'Belgium' is the most offensive word in the galaxy (which was taken from another part of the radio series), with Arthur trying to figure it out but being clueless as usual.

Some people seemed to think it was some kind of American censorship thing, though the American version of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish contains the aforementioned 'f'-word unedited, so I don't know. But the 'Belgium' sequence is pretty funny, so I think it worked out ok, whatever the reasoning.
 
If creativity is a field, then copyright is a fence. Thanks to the internet today's large intellectual property dinosaurs will soon be extinct!

Anarchy is order, government is chaos!!
 
I might suggest what is so clever about spending an hour of a day of one's life in a smelly run of the mill manufactured car in a jam getting taxed and paying high petrol prices for the privilage on the way to work and back? And besides, I don't know if Tolkien mentioned this, but the Noldor horses could actually gallop faster than any modern motor car. Shadowfax probably could.
As for gunpowder, perhaps Elves did have a form of gunpowder but they prefered to use it for firework parties. They couldn't think of any other use. Not sure I can, is there one?
 
Just because we have all of this technology and such, it doesn't mean we are better than other forms of life. Elves probably had totally different interests based on coming from such a different culture.

Think of it this way... gunpowder existed for centuries in China, and was used for fireworks until westerners got a hold of it and decided to use it as a weapon. Hell, Einstein didn't split the atom with the intention that it become a weapon that destroyed lives.

I'm probably just reiterating what others have said in this thread, but ultimately, the point is that we have to learn to see outside of our limited scope in order to truly grasp possibilities. The way of the Elves is one possibility. The way of Humanity is another possibility. They don't necessarily have to be seen as competing with each other over who has the nicer lawn.
 
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