Well it only really contradicts itself in the context of D&D! LOTR orcs are *extremely* technologically sophisticated, and have excellent medicine, a highly regimented chain of command and a rigorously artificial imperial structure!
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Replying to @loudpenitent
Okay but you can't say he also didn't make Orcs dumb thugs when it suited him - he even gives them a Cockney accent (which carried over to WH40K) The internal division between Orc "subspecies" is right there with Saruman's Uruk-hai bickering with their "Mordor-orc" commissar
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent
In part that's because he was doing a little bit of "REAL England is small villages in the countryside" mythologising, and Orcs being a heavily industrialised people come from the big city. GW caught that and modernised the stereotype a bit.
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Replying to @Teknogrot @arthur_affect
Eh, kiiiinda? Tolkien's attitude to industry is, imo, a little more complicated than people give credit for, because many of his forces of Good are profoundly industrialized. Gondor, the Noldor, the Dwarves. What they aren't is capitalist or the negative side of industry.
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Replying to @loudpenitent @arthur_affect
They're the kind of industry that lasted until after the second world war, the small country workshops where one craftsman carefully built a single spitfire over a period of months. It's worth reading into the problems the USA had integrating the Merlin engine into the P-51.
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Replying to @Teknogrot @loudpenitent
Technically this isn't industry, this is artisanship, which is precisely characterized as the opposite of industrial labor that industrial labor replaced
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Teknogrot
Well, sure. I just don't know if we're not supposed to see these cultures as having engaged in Industry, as well, given the sheer scope of their labors. But that's also more detail than LOTR really gives to the economies of either side's logistics, imo.
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Replying to @loudpenitent @Teknogrot
I think it's really clear industrial capitalism is Tolkien's idea of the One Ring, it's everything he's against At its core it's this idea of a genius mastermind in an armchair having a vision to change the world and then making a bunch of ignorant cogs execute it
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Which is what he's disgusted by, this severing of the work of the mind and the work of the hands So those who toil do so with no connection to what they're toiling for and those who give the orders never think about the details or the costs
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Every time he portrays the work of creation positively it's in direct contrast to this The admirable craftsman is the one who truly loves and pays attention to his work from beginning to end, who, like the original Creator, notices every sparrow that falls
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(This is the direct theme of the work everyone says you need to read to understand his writing philosophy, Leaf by Niggle)
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