Are computers and other digital storage devices prosthetics for our memories? Are movies and video games a prosthetic for our imagination? Is social networking a prosthetic for human connection and interaction? 

dwarvesarecool:

thingsthatshouldberesearchpapers:

Ugly, mindless minions of evil, or victims of Elvish prejudice and racism? 

The Lord of the Rings as an Elvish propaganda tool

Analyze the story of The Lord of the Rings as if it was a cultural history passed down by the Elves and disseminated amongst other “good” races (humans, hobbits, etc) wherein they demonstrate their racism toward orcs, their cultural animosity toward the kingdom of Mordor and their fear of technological advance which may threaten their domination of Middle Earth. 

Ideas to Explore:

• Their portrayal of Saruman, a controversial but undeniably progressive scientific thinker, and how it reveals their superstitious beliefs toward technological advance.
• Compare the portrayal of Orcs and Uruk Hai to similar portrayals of people of Middle Eastern and African descent in stories of the Crusade-Era Europeans. 
• Their xenophobia demonstrated through the horror expressed when Saruman mated orcs to humans to produce Uruk Hai (and their gruesome portrayal of the act), an evolutionary advance for both races that would have united Middle Earth in blood-ties and kinship.
• How the Elves establish Orcs as the “other” because of their appearance in order to make systematic oppression and hatred morally acceptable and right to the “good” populations of Middle Earth, where “good” is established by how similar the race looks to Elves (i.e. Humans look the most like elves, so they’re the most “good,” hobbits look like elves but are very small, so they are accepted but infantilized at the same time, dwarves only kind of resemble elves so they have animosity toward them, etc.)

Hypothetical Research Paper #3

 Keep in mind, that even though the Uruk Hai is stronger than the average man, and smarter than the average orc, they were bred not as an advancement of a species, but for war. In the movies, right as the Uruk Hai breaks free from the birthing pits, it strangles the attending orc. And you saw what happens when orcs get into disputes, they usually tend to slaughter each other. I feel as if the Uruk Hai are just big orcs, they were made for purpose, to be a barbaric fighting machine. They show no love for the basic things what would constitue kinships.

Good point as far as the actual Tolkien-written story goes, but I’m just proposing a hypothetical perspective of the series. If the Elves were the ones telling this tale they’d tend to make the orcs, Uruk Hai and everything related to Mordor out to be brutal and warlike as their cultures are so radically different. Again, this is a hypothetical perspective. Tolkien obviously meant for Mordor to represent the pure and complete evil side of nature and for Middle Earth to represent the good, a dichotomy featured in almost 100 percent of fantasy literature. 

(via lorgar)

Ugly, mindless minions of evil, or victims of Elvish prejudice and racism? 

The Lord of the Rings as an Elvish propaganda tool

Analyze the story of The Lord of the Rings as if it was a cultural history passed down by the Elves and disseminated amongst other “good” races (humans, hobbits, etc) wherein they demonstrate their racism toward orcs, their cultural animosity toward the kingdom of Mordor and their fear of technological advance which may threaten their domination of Middle Earth. 

Ideas to Explore:

• Their portrayal of Saruman, a controversial but undeniably progressive scientific thinker, and how it reveals their superstitious beliefs toward technological advance.
• Compare the portrayal of Orcs and Uruk Hai to similar portrayals of people of Middle Eastern and African descent in stories of the Crusade-Era Europeans. 
• Their xenophobia demonstrated through the horror expressed when Saruman mated orcs to humans to produce Uruk Hai (and their gruesome portrayal of the act), an evolutionary advance for both races that would have united Middle Earth in blood-ties and kinship.
• How the Elves establish Orcs as the “other” because of their appearance in order to make systematic oppression and hatred morally acceptable and right to the “good” populations of Middle Earth, where “good” is established by how similar the race looks to Elves (i.e. Humans look the most like elves, so they’re the most “good,” hobbits look like elves but are very small, so they are accepted but infantilized at the same time, dwarves only kind of resemble elves so they have animosity toward them, etc.)

Hypothetical Research Paper #3

“This is a leaf”

Can we understand abstractions of objects because we’ve been told their meaning by the people who applied the symbol in the first place or because we ascribe symbolic meaning to the abstraction independent of outside influences, using our own recognition of real-life objects?

When do humans start to understand the concept of their own name and how does that interpretation manifest itself in a person’s relation to their self-image and identity?

When do we achieve autonomy over our identity and begin to conscientiously alter it to fit our self-image?

How does that system evolve over a person’s lifetime?

Things to explore

• nicknames
• legal name changes
• the influence of surnames
• children who share names with parents
• the influence of a child’s namesake

Hypothetical Research paper #2