Reply to post: Re: --->Götterdämmerung.

The Death of the Gods: Not scared of tech yet? You haven't been paying attention

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: --->Götterdämmerung.

"Sorry for pedantry, but "Götterdämmerung" is not the death of the gods, but rather their twilight. The difference is important, because the words "twilight" and "Dämmerung" mean both the dim light after sunset and the dim light before sunrise."

No need to be sorry at all, that was an interesting and illuminating post and I am pleased that you amplified my point about LotR, which I didn't spell out.

I think Tolkien is an unreliable witness about his own work. But I would mention that while the symbol of a ring is new in Wagner, the idea that technology destroys the soul of the user is very ancient. In Genesis, the tree was originally simply the Tree of Knowledge; many of the ancient scholars seemed to have believed that the search for secular knowledge led to perdition and we were all much better off when we were wandering around nude as hunter gatherers before all this agriculture and building pyramids got started. [I oversimplify].

Personally my wife and I are only alive because of secular knowledge and I am rather unconvinced by their argument. The history of technology is one of overreach followed by retrenchment (such as learning structural engineering by building bigger cathedrals till they started to collapse). As the guy who taught me to ride motorbikes put it, if you haven't ever fallen off you haven't ever been going fast enough.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon