Fantasy Humans Aren't Really Humans

there's a moment just prior to the battle of helm's deep where king theoden of rohan laments the situation his people have found themselves within the days have gone down in the west [Music] behind the hills into shadow [Applause] how did it come to this and you know i found myself asking that same question how did it come to this how is it that against the urakai of isengard or the orcs of mordor humanity has found itself on the brink of extinction now i must acknowledge my own bias this year i am a human supremacist but when we look at the characteristics of rohan and gondor and the other major human kingdoms something just feels a little off here and this feeling i have isn't isolated to middle earth the kingdom of kryta in tyria the kingdom of stormwind and azeroth the kingdom of ferelden and thedas it took me a bit to put my finger on it but the humans that make up these nations well i'm not entirely sure they're humans they certainly don't act like those of our world the differences are usually subtle and they can vary in their extent from alternate world to alternate world but generally these humans seem to be less aggressive less militaristic less ambitious savage and cruel they are capable of great violence and war but usually only in the defense of others or for some higher more noble purpose bigotry sexism intolerance religious strife these elements might still be present but they seem tamer and less destructive on human society as a whole it's like someone kind of smoothed over the rougher edges of the human experience there are exceptions to this of course the human kingdoms and empires of westeros the empire of man within the old world these certainly come to mind but for the most part the humans and what we might consider fantasy worlds just seem to act better than you might expect them to now if the humans of our world acted like this it would be hard not to see it as a badly needed miracle but the problem is these more enlightened kinder more tolerant humans they don't have the luxury of living in our modern world in fact most of the time they exist in a much darker and dangerous one a world in which they're not the only sentient species fighting for dominance and if you're forced to compete with orcs goblins the char well that's a scenario in which having the more savage and cruel elements of human nature on your side might not be a bad thing it feels strange to argue in favor of this but if rohan or any of these fantasy kingdoms had reacted to the mere existence of orcs in the same manner that any powerful kingdom from our world would have with blind fanatical hatred calls for extermination in the name of god and ruthless military campaigns against them no matter how little threat they posed well maybe in the long run rohan would have been better off i guess my point is if that army of urukai bound for helms deep if they found themselves rerouted to our world and were forced to fight an army from the carolingian empire the roman empire the assyrians or the horsemen of attila the hun or genghis khan well i don't think a single urakai would make it out of there alive and if any of those armies from our world made it to middle earth i don't think it would take long at all before all the goblins and orcs started telling stories about how terrifying those humans are maybe if cyrus the great was the one to invade mordor it might have been sauron locked up in his tower mumbling to himself how could it have come to this but that of course is just my opinion do the humans of middle earth and other fantasy realms feel like humans to you would the medieval and ancient nations of our world be better prepared against orcs and goblins is there some obscure piece of lore related to eru alutar that completely invalidates everything i've just said let me know in the comments below and until next time this has been a templin dispatch [Music] you

Channel: The Templin Institute

Views: 193,114

Keywords: Templin, Institute, templin institute, fantasy humans, lord of the rings, warcraft, warcraft humans, lord of the rings humans

Id: rRoAfD6bCQ4

Length: 4min 55sec (295 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 30 2021