system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Tolkien] Undoubtedly this has been asked before, but why has there never been any appreciable intellectual development over thousands of years?

Military examples: swords and siege equipment. Civic examples: lack of sewage, and heavy reliance on agriculture and domestication. Political examples: lack of a conceivable philosophical alternative to feudalism. Social examples: rampant speciesism and universal cis-heterosexuality...
gpt
Because Elves are immortal. The people in charge have been in charge pretty much forever and run things the way they want to. And it's pointed out numerous times that their civilization, as well as the dwarves (a tech-savvy group) are in decline. We never get to see them at their peak, where they were apparently very impressive. As for humans, you are looking at it the wrong way. Humans on our Earth have existed for 200,000 years and we've only seen appreciable technological and societal development in the last 3-4 thousand (recorded, at least). By all accounts humans in Middle-Earth seem to be pretty on curve, especially given that they live in a much more dangerous world in societies that have survived near apocalypses several times already. Hell, Gondor was created from the surviving people of Numenor, an advanced human civilization that was destroyed. They are effectively post-apocalyptic.