Every home has its vacation practices. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, one of our kids binge-watches the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We spend 12 days with Frodo Baggins as he battles Uruk-hai and the Orcs while he struggles to get the band of energy from Mount Doom and opens offers while consuming the Christmas bacon.
As we watched this past Christmas, I was once more struck by the humor at the center of these fantastical films. They use complex current technology to lionize a simpler, low-technology past.
And we, my community but also the wider market, are unconcerned about the sarcasm. We admire the systems, we wallow in the justice of the anti-technological communication.
The English writer J.R. Tolkien, who wrote the books whose stories the movies are based, came of age as cars and tractors were beginning to take the place of horses. He was distressed by that. Tolkien has been described as a man who loved plants but detested systems.
Director Peter Jackson’s shows are honest to Tolkien. Animals and plants are revered, manufactured items disdained. At one point in the second movie,” The Two Towers”, walking, talking branches called Ents kill an evil dragon’s basic shop.
Subtler gestures of anti-technology mood appear. The nice guys are swordsmen and archer, hand-to-hand warriors who defeat through skill and courage. Just the bad guys wage warfare with machines – harpoons, battering ram and siege towers.
But to take the battle for Middle Earth to living, Jackson used computer-generated pictures, motion record and other state-of-the-art filmmaking technologies. Despite all the technological advancements that artists have made in the years since, the three films were ahead of their time and still hold up well now.
Had Tolkien lived to see the pictures, would he have appreciated Jackson’s craft? It’s reasonable to assume that he wouldn’t had. But Hollywood did. Each of the three received an Oscar for physical effects. ( All told the trilogy won 17 Oscars. )
It is interesting to note that homo sapiens is a species with a history of being mesmerized by the technical effects while embracing the anti-technology storyline. We are creatures of first-rate knowledge, assuming the check is F Scott Fitzgerald’s” the ability to carry two opposing ideas in mind”. We enjoy the simpler recent while enthralling high technology and the positive effects it has had on the present, including great films.
It’s equivalent to how some city residents regard crops. Their best farmer is basically a smaller landholder who farms the method today’s farmers ‘ great-great-great grandfathers farmed. These people celebrate the rich, affordable food that modern agriculture offers, but they also romanticize an earlier, less successful agriculture. If they’re aware of the contradiction, it doesn’t concern them.
Many of us engage in these psychological managing maneuvers. They might serve as a defence mechanism or a way to deal with the incredible speed of technological change. We are moved by that rate as we long for the past while embracing the tangible advantages that modern change brings. That’s apparent, the benefits of technology are many and gleefully seductive.
I don’t want to say that every technology is great, that every technologies should be embraced irrationally or that it shouldn’t be allowed to run wild unchecked. No one is advocating common usage of nuclear weapons, for instance. Productivity-boosting systems can put individuals out of work, the public’s anguish over what AI will do to work is evident. Although some chemical problems are mistaken, we don’t want any of them in our drinking water.
I’ve been reading Walter Isaacson’s The Code Breaker, which chronicles the development of CRISPR gene-editing technologies. CRISPR has the potential to significantly improve the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of a wide range of illnesses, as well as promoting more creative farming practices with less negative effects on the environment. But it raises serious problems, from “designer infants” to “off-target changes” creating unexpected and unwanted biological changes.
According to Isaacson, Jennifer Doudna, the Nobel Prize-winning author of the book, had a dream about gene-editing getting into the bad hands. Adolf Hitler visited her and was curious about everything that the woman co-created. Oh, and in her vision, Hitler had the experience of a pig.
When a technology is developed, it is more likely to be used, whether it is for good or bad. We want advances to have advantages over the negatives. We tell ourselves, with some explanation, that there are dangers to not using tech, too.
But that doesn’t stop us from daydreaming about a magical less-complicated lovely past, especially when it’s served up as just high-tech filmmaking can deliver it, full with wonderful effects, intriguing plot twists, excellent acting, stunning scenery and a haunting score.
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. I wish you a prosperous 2025.
Urban Lehner, a former long-time Asia editor and writer for the Wall Street Journal, is DTN/The Progressive Farmer’s editor emeritus.  , This , content,  , initially published on January 2 by the latter news business and then republished by Asia Times with authority, is © Copyright 2025 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.  , Follow , Urban Lehner , on Twitter: @urbanize