Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lorecast, the show that explores the background about Tolkien's ability to read people, to understand humanity, to see not only individuals and how individuals work, but we together as a

collective seem to operate. And I would guess that this is a result of him not only being an

extremely intelligent individual, somebody who is both very smart, thinks very clearly

and also highly educated, but also somebody who lived through momentous times,

multiple world wars, political changes, technological advancement, all sorts of things

that we continue to live through today, and if you are paying attention, you will start to notice

the patterns and the trends, the ways that people

react to these changes, the things that make things better and the things that seem

to make things worse.

He seemed to have a hyper awareness of the nature of human beings and the way that we operate,

and also a longer view of things, not just the way we operate

in a specific situation, but the reasons why those things either work or they don't.

The reasons why some people come out as being more wise in the end, and others, well, they

seem like fools.

That is not something you can judge based on five minutes after a conversation. It's usually something that you determine later.

Now, what am I talking about here? I'm talking about chapter 14, fire and water. Because in this

chapter, we have the events of Lake Town being attacked by the dragon,

but not just the attack by the dragon, not just the defense and the reactions of the people

in order to either fight back or protect the town or evacuate.

Not just that, but the human reaction of seeing something dangerous on the horizon

and how they choose to respond to it.

Now you could draw all sorts of analogies about real-world situations, the nature of soldiers

...