I was looking at the TV Tropes site for some research and I ran across this entry on the Lost Technology trope. It reminded me that Tolkien's LOTR assumes that the current technology can never ever be as good as technology was in the Golden Age, thereby leading to the decline of civilization and so on.

Considering just how much Tolkien and his imitators influenced the British and American Neopagan movement, that's pretty important to remember.

There may have been some grand and glorious lost technology back there in the mists of ancient and forgotten time. But overall, humans today have more wonders at their fingertips than any of our ancestors.

I can't emphasize this enough.

Today is the Age of Wonders. Especially for a technopagan. I mean, come on. I'm typing this on a keyboard that isn't even connected to my computer. My computer has a WiFi link to through a repeater station to a wireless router. The wireless router is connected to a local cable system, which uses a microwave uplink to carry signals upline to an internet backbone.

Which means my words and thoughts have no physical connection to the internet, yet you can still read them. And we take this for granted. At the touch of a button, I can publish my ideas to more people I can possibly meet in my lifetime.

And if they don't read English, the internet can translate.

That's pretty amazing.

Even if I don't grow any veggies, I have access to a pretty much unending supply of food. My house keeps the sun out of my eyes and the hot air at bay. Throw sex in there and I've pretty much covered the purposes of civilization up until about five centuries ago.

And you know something? I've got sex too. Not to mention hanging out with folks who like to philosophize almost as much as I do.

We aren't falling, we're climbing. Our story ends in better days.

We just haven't finished writing it yet.

See you in the next chapter.