Game of Thrones: why hasn’t Westeros had an industrial revolution?

> But isn't it another idealogical exaggeration in a different direction?

Yeah, probably! It's just.. an interesting angle, really!

I'll quote from the second foreword to LotR[1] (written in 1966) (excerpt somewhere from the middle), because I like it and it's somewhat relevant to all this (tl;dr: just read the second paragraph)

As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical. As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit. The crucial chapter, "The Shadow of the Past', is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in the war that began in 1939 or its sequels modified it.

The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.

Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

(I've been listening to the LotR audiobook during my walks in the woods etc. recently. Recommend+++.)

edit p.s.: it wasn't me who downvoted you. fwiw, while your tone was somewhat condescending, i thought your comment did add to the discussion.

[1]: e.g. http://www.thetolkienforum.com/showthread.php?16713-LOTR-The...

> It makes fairly subtle references to writers non-Russians have likely never heard of (the brothers Strugatskie, Lev Gumilev, Griboedov), and so builds a large argument which can come across as vapid and pretentious.

fwiw, I don't speak Russian, but I've read 'Roadside Picnic' (and am somewhat familiar with what else they wrote), know of Griboyedov, etc. I'm sure I've missed many references and nuances, but the article did deliver a consistent overall message/point to me.

> I got most of the references and thought the author went a little too far.

I probably agree, it went a bit over the top, but knowing where he's coming from (i.e.: I understand his defensiveness), it was OK for me. Some of the references to lore/history/etc were.. more 'cute' than argument-building. :)

You're claim has minimal basis in history. The number of sadists tormenting their serfs is surely non-zero, but also not systemic. For one thing, lords DEPEND on their serfs for their well being. Their serfs economic output is crucial.

The wealth produced by capitalism that allows rising standards of living is a historical aberration. For nearly all of human history Malthusianism was correct and most people lived on the brink of starvation.

Feudalism was no different from any other pre-industrial social structure, a parasitic rentier class taxed the peasantry to support their lifestyles. This was true from the god kings of Sumer, Mycenae and Mexico, the cultured, civilized, literate empires of China and Rome and the warlord kingdoms of Europe and India.

Most of human history was a boot stomping on a human face and if we're not very lucky this Dteamtime will end too.

Feudalism is terrible for the people (well, at least more than capitalism), and I'm not suggesting otherwise (in fact, I was warning against inadvertently going back to feudalism by trying to build a "trust-less" economy). But feudalism wasn't absurd, either. It was very logical.

In fact, most systems where power is concentrated in the hands of the few, while the majority is exploited by the powerful make more sense. It is the crowning achievement of the West that we've been able to slowly and excruciatingly build large democracies based on trust in the system. While (very) far from perfect, these democracies are closer to the humanist ideal than any other system in human history.

There were several factors playing in favour of the serfs. First, there was competition between the feudal lords, if one neglected his responsibilities too much and treated his subjects to harshly they could flee and find themselves another patron. What prevented a Silicon Valley wage cartel type race to the bottom was the emergence of cities and a merchant class entirely outside the feudal system. A serf who settled in a city had no master at all. The story of the Middle Ages is the struggle between the feudal system and the forces outside it, first the church, then the cities.

Also, the church launched a peace movement, just because someone had to keep up the public peace; in 9th century Europe warlordism had spiraled out of control. Ultimately, they were successful in restricting private war between the nobility and mitigating the impact on the general population.

Living conditions for the peasantry in the Middle Ages could have been worse. They didn't have cars and flatscreens, fridges and washing machines, but they had more holidays than the American worker today. And no back-breaking commute.

Actually, trust goes much deeper than a crude lending example, which is used merely for demonstration. First, banks can't break your legs; they really don't have the resources to do that (not now, and not when the lenders were warlords and used the loans to buy armies).

The use of violence, or the threat of it, in a capitalistic society is much more complicated. The direct wielders of violence, say, the police, need to do as they're told. Money can't be the only incentive, because all sides have it. In our society, the police (more or less) have faith in the judicial system, and believe they're doing the right thing.

This system of trust permeates everything in modern Western societies.

It is left as an exercise for the reader to compare this mindset with those of software engineers at startups. 3 pages, 12 pt. font, due Friday.

Yeah, I thought about that too. As they say, necessity really is the mother of invention...

Also, some of the Targaryen kings tried to revive the dragons using magic.

The example reminds me of a web page presenting the Awesome Unpredictability of Chaotic Systems that left me underwhelmed. You'd click on a pixel in a flash object and it would start moving in a lemniscatish path defined by some differential equations. The lesson to be drawn was that this system, easy to define, makes it "impossible to predict" the position of the particle at any given time, in the sense that tiny changes in the initial position led to rather wide gaps between the particles at time t=t_1 (maybe two particles released at the same time from adjacent pixels end up across the lemniscate from each other at some later time).

The lesson I actually drew was more like so:

Hm, if you release a few particles into this system you'll quickly notice that they all seem to be traveling along the same rough lemniscate. The lemniscate is a tiny minority of the entire space, so learning the differential equations lets me substantially improve my predictions of where the particle will be at any moment. ("It's probably near the lemniscate" is much more precise than "it's somewhere in space".)

If the difference between the best winter and the worst is a 40% longer duration (admittedly, not pleasant) and 15 degrees centigrade... there's plenty of room left for real variation. ;)

I am reminded of the history-shaping long seasons in the Pern and Helliconia series of books. Those embed what are ostensibly fantasy stories in a science-fictional universe; the seasons are explained by orbital mechanics.

In both series, high technology from the science fictional context eventually plays a disrupting role in the fantasy world. You don't see a lot of that these days. I would slap my thigh with unrestrainable jollity if GRRM ends ASOIAF that way.

There still has to be some internal consistency, if too many things happen on just a whim of the author the story falls apart.

In effect, the long term direction of the Discworld books, especially since the start of the watch sub-series is basically "What if the industrial revolution happened in a (mostly) traditional fantasy world?".

Actually that was the reality fracturing and being put back together (sort of) by the history monks - its why you have Elizabethan theater next to an 18 century opera

Replacements need to come from somewhere or he'll run out of characters to kill off.