Kevin's Watch

The land appears to be a place going backwards rather than forwards. Skills and knowledge are lost, even the wheel is absent. the population diminished. No monetory system or books. when we consider the time passed since Berek and the new lords, the sunbane and now progress cant be dismissed, the dark age of the land is gettting longer and deeper.

Well it's funny you should post this jackgiantfriend, because I was thinking the very same thing just a couple of days ago.

But then didn't Troy's army use carts in the 'Forced March'? Or maybe I'm getting mixed up with rafts!

kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... dvancement

Lots of similar thought here.
(I hope my link works)

Something I think worth posting here rather than on the other thread - the idea of "going backwards" (progress and regress) assumes general agreement about the direction. On general knowledge we probably agree, but what if my worldview thinks technology to be ultimately detrimental, rather than helpful, to humans? In that case a reduction of technology is progress, and an advancement of technology is "going backwards".

I wonder why Thomas Covenant stopped wearing a watch. When he went into town to pay his phone bill he was meticulous in his mechanical habits: the tough jeans, the laced-up boots, a sleeveless shirt, wallet and money, and maybe most importantly, his penknife - but no watch!

At the end of the first Chronicles when Covenant blasts apart Foul's Creche I remember something about 'boulders the size of houses'. Is this the raw material of Mithil Stonedown? If so, then it demonstrates that the Land is locked in a time-loop, ultimately to Foul's benefit than the denizens of the Land. Which is rather depressing, I think.

Unless the answer to breaking the eternal loop can be found in the Legends of Berek, Damelon, Loric, and Kevin, This I find very exciting - don't ya think!

I think there's a...hmmm...philisophical? certainly a practical difference between regressing/decaying and being repeatedly bombed back to the stone-age by an enemy who just keeps getting tougher.

Vraith wrote:I think there's a...hmmm...philisophical? certainly a practical difference between regressing/decaying and being repeatedly bombed back to the stone-age by an enemy who just keeps getting tougher.

In this case I quite agree.

The only thing I was pointing out is that people in our time use the word "progress" as if it were something objective that we could agree on, when in fact it isn't. Such usage implicitly contains the idea that we are better than our ancestors; that life today is "better" than it was a generation, century, millennium, or age of the world ago. But you can't speak about what is "better" without first agreeing on what is "good".
Technology is a prime example of something that people assume makes things "better" - and is something worshiped to an inordinate degree in our time. Yet a thinking person knows that it is used for both good and bad, and it ought to be obvious that an improvement in technology is ambiguous in terms of making life "better".

Things like technology and monetary systems by no means make life better (a really vague concept) - on the whole I think money in particular makes human life decidedly worse, despite its benefits. The easy transfer of wealth enables concentration of wealth in a few hands on a global scale.

But in the case of the Land, the closest thing to the ideal was in the first series. SRD created a lot of beauty and made me care about the Land - something absent to a much greater extent from the second and third series. The Giants, the Bloodguard, Mithil Stonedown at peace with gravelers working away, Revelstone as a good and normal place in good and normal use, etc. The Sunbane as an impersonal enemy and the machinations of the Insequent leave me cold in comparison with that.

Heh, I was actually refering back to the original question about going backwards. But despite that, I agree with most of what you said, in some ways. In particular, the...dare I say Eden-like?...nature of the old days; almost as if it was nostalgia as real instead of a slightly wimpy longing.
OTOH, I like the turn towards the impersonal, the switch from manipulations to machinations. I think it only makes sense, I think it's intentional. Have you ever noticed how the "great" movies about war all focus on individuals/small groups of soldiers? Specific battles/objectives? It's because [among other things] anything else exposes war as just an uncaring machine, that spews blood, gore, and death with the same nonchalance as I light a smoke, whichever side you're on...or even if you just happen to be there. And there's an aspect of OUR machine-ness...or maybe it's just overload...a single close-up death makes us weep, a distant shot of thousands of bodies doesn't...at least, not without a dramatic set-up. Massive power simply IS cold, impersonal.
As I see the novels, because they have more space than a film, they are showing us BOTH sides of it.
It helps, of course, that I'm not a Linden-hater. No one has convinced me yet that she is not a deep, exceptionally well-built, well-developed character.
It also helps that, for me, the lack of a Foamfollower makes me ache more for the Land, rather than less.
And it also also helps that I am absolutely certain in my own mind that the necessary set-up and plot-ness of the first two Final Chron's is going to explode into all the "lacking areas" so many are upset/bored about in the next two books. [except for those who really DO hate Linden...she ain't going away, she ain't turning evil and ending as "Foul-wife" or whatever.]

I, too, was wondering this recently. It really does seem to be regressing in terms of lore. It also brings up the question (connected to the other thread), why hasn't anything been done to replace this lack of knowledge? Sure, they don't have magic, but they certainly could replace that with technology when people started to notice that their grandparents had it better than they did.

Let's look at the various ages of the Land.

From the time of Berek's High Lordship to the Ritual of Desecration, the Land was definitely progressing in lore. The RoD was obviously a huge setback, but progress resumed (albeit from a lower base, and slowly) with the new Lords.

From the time of Lord Mhoram until the first appearance of the Sunbane, lore continued to be accumulated, but in a different direction, made easier - too easy - by the destruction of the original Staff of Law. After samadhi Sheol first subverted the Clave and the Sunbane first appeared, the direction of development of lore became perverted and decadent rather than simply backward. Also remember that the ur-Viles weren't exactly idle - they made Vain during this period.

Spoiler

Finally, for most of the period from the end of the Second Chronicles to the start of the Last Chronicles, the Masters have imposed ignorance on the people of the Land, after the initial period of progress when Sunder and Hollian were directing the recovery from the Sunbane.

That the Land doesn't have a monetary system is not necessarily evidence of a lack of progress. The communal societies of the stonedowns, woodhelvens, Loresraat and Revelstone in the First Chronicles arguably didn't need money - they probably had some form of non-monetary exchange, and given what we know about the culture and spirituality of the people of the Land at the time, they probably would have considered it small-minded to worry about calculating whether the non-monetary exchanges added up to exact material reciprocity.

Another way of posing the question is: would you consider the society ruled by Kasreyn and the gaddhi in Brathairrealm to be more enlightened and progressive than the society led by the Lords in the First Chronicles?

DrPaul wrote:That the Land doesn't have a monetary system is not necessarily evidence of a lack of progress. The communal societies of the stonedowns, woodhelvens, Loresraat and Revelstone in the First Chronicles arguably didn't need money - they probably had some form of non-monetary exchange, and given what we know about the culture and spirituality of the people of the Land at the time, they probably would have considered it small-minded to worry about calculating whether the non-monetary exchanges added up to exact material reciprocity.

Well said. And as rus said above, it is not for us to put our expectations of what we think progress means onto another culture.

And regarding TC wearing a watch... I don't remember, did he ever have one? Lots of people don't wear them, including myself. And that includes many years before I had a cell phone to tell time.

Keep in mind, too, that a lot of technology is developed in order to help with the almost universal goal of survival. Whether that be survival in war against a foe or against nature. The people of the Land in the first chronicles are able, through various earthpower disiplines, deal with surviving in nature very well, and until Fleshharrower came with his armies, I doubt they had much in the way of war.

Relayer wrote: Well said. And as rus said above, it is not for us to put our expectations of what we think progress means onto another culture.

Well, I didn't quite say that, but almost. If I thought something to really be progress - that is, to really be an improvement, I would do my best to propagate those expectations of what I see to be progress - of what I see to be true. If one propagates the idea that truth is purely individual, iow, that there is no truth overarching all of us, then they do, in fact, propagate expectations that we not put our expectations onto others.

The Land has changed.. Initially it was a beautiful place, inhabited by wonderful, interesting people who were noble, virtuous and humble. As a reader that is what drew me in.

There is a LOT about the life of the Land that we don't know about.. But there is a clear progression that the conditions of the people of the Land are getting worse. But it seems they are routinely surviving and attempting to rebuild after a series of disasters that have crippled them over and over.

However without these almost routine disasters there is no telling what would have developed or been invented over the thousands of years.. It can be argued that such disasters have been necessary to prevent the Land turning into a society too much like our own, as with the time disparity they would have had enough time to increase the population, invent currency and various means of transport, who knows..