[Crackpot Comments in brackets.]
From MJSL 10.11
Hello James,
I am pondering your question about the end of the Anglo empire. Intrinsically, I don't believe that industry is evil unto itself, although it is certainly a step in the direction of transhumanism.
[Our standard historians and old school “gee whiz” science-fiction writers devoted most of their work to demonstrating how the Industrial Revolution saved humanity from the pits of tribalism, and theology in favor of a menu of isms bestowed by technology. As a science-fiction writer who came of age in the clearly dystopian ruins of the “once great medieval city” of Baltimore, I tend to note the counter points. However, the only reason why I did not lose my teeth by 30 and my life by 40, was modernity. I am only permitted to point out the spiritual evils of this matrix due to its physical boons.]
It reminds me of Treebeard telling the hobbits of how Saruman has a mind of metal and wheels, and how he is using his foul orcs to consume the forest.
[I have always thought that Tolkien’s orks were industrial men and his dark lords technocrats.]
Industry is a byproduct of the high middle ages, where urbanisation emerged. A brilliant book on the topic is "the shield of achilles" by Phillip Bobbit. He discusses how a change in military strategy affects a change in political structure and vice versa. The most important of these innovations is of course gunpowder.
[Note, however the title of his book, and that the Shield of Achilles, which describes a pre-ancient yet modern city provides a Homeric hint that humans were once industrialized in a forgotten deep antiquity.]
The high walls of byzantine eventually fell to the cannons of the ottoman and rendered that form of castle obsolete. interestingly, the siege of minas tirith is a clear tolkien imagining of the eastern roman empire being bombarded and beseiged by the eastern menace. I believe tolkien as a catholic was retelling the middle ages how he believed it should happen - with the sons of rome leading a successful crusade against the scourge of islam. If the power of the ring is in fact, coercion, then what is what coercive than the house of submission to god?
[That is a very good point and his clearly North African corsairs invading Gondor make this point. The charge of Ney’s horse at Waterloo seems to have been the inspiration for the charge of the Rohan in his novel and that seen was the final defeat of valor by gunpowder in Europe. Perhaps Tolkien somehow new that the technocrats and media manipulators and academics that his friend C.S. Lewis warns about in the Abolition of Man were going to bring Hither Asiatic submission ideology, along with hordes of invaders, to Europe?]
After this defining moment, castles had to be redesigned as star fortresses, requiring mercenaries or standing armies at a huge expense to the ruler. No more could a baron or earl defy his liege and hide inside his castle and withstand a siege. With the ability to destroy walls, castles became obsolete. with muskets, training and arming a knight for his entire life only to be killed by a hastily trained peasant also went away. As the villagers (villains) moved off the farm and into the city, they began to pay tax directly to the king. In return the king protected these burgs (and the burghers within) from the nobility.
These trends, along with the reformation of Martin Luther, led to the 30 years war, where the system of states were tested against each other and one became the dominant form. The kingly states of the anglos and nords were more effective tax collection systems and could thus field better armies and fortifications than the disorganised confederacies of the holy roman empire and other medieval systems. From this point on, the ball was in the anglo/norman court. The military advantage gained by these reforms, along with the babylonian money magic brought to england by the ashkenazi crypto fiends fleeing the east, allowed them to come to dominate the world.
[England also had the advantages of semi-isolation, Atlantic access, being a target of Nordic migration and of suffering less during the Little Ice Age from 1290s through 1816, which is almost the exact date of the failure of Ney, bravest of the brave, under Napoleon. An interesting alternative Anglo-dominant history wold have been Ogedi Khan surviving long enough for the Mongols to reach the Atlantic but not take the British Isles.]
There were several cycles of this innovation in strategy and legislature that lasted approximately 90 years (the same time approximately as four generations or a fourth turning), in the form of epochal wars. The winner would always be the system which could provide more material wealth and thus more bodies and equipment to throw at the enemy. It is little wonder that this culminated in a struggle between liberalism, fascism and communism (which was really a proxy of the liberals - the bolsheviks being funded and supported since the time of marx by the international banking cabal). It is also little wonder that the ethno nationalists, despite being superior in the field, were eventually worn down by the global empire of the anglos.
[One way or the other, whatever race of folks piloted the beastly machine of nations to win these wars, it is the beast that wins and its caretakers, who feed it with money, will have disproportionate influence over this Leviathan. I call this The God of Things. The simple fact that moving freight in America always has, still does and always will, take priority over moving people, demonstrates our worship of stuff unto damnation. Indeed, the forced and managed migrations of people in America, which is the pinnacle of Anglo-modernity, are merely the means by which the managerial “wraith” class gains possession of property through proxy actors, like Sauron and Sarumon using orks to conquer.]
To be continued in ‘Did the Right Side Win’
