#and also your worldview is beyond my comprehension. why would you actively try to make other people miserable?

[rustedleopard]

In reference to this post.

@twothpaste​ The especially rich thing about people who justify their cruelty by saying that “The world is screwed up anyways” and “People who are kind are actually stupid, I’m just seeing the world as it is and acting accordingly” (or whatever excuses they conjure up so they can act like an asshole with no sweat off their conscious) is that it’s self-fulfilling.

Like, yeah, sure there are things in the world that are terrible and unavoidable like natural disasters and disease. There’s no amount of “being nice” that can make cancer stop existing. But people’s actions are controllable and if you’re being a terrible person, then you’re part of the reason why the world is terrible. What you do impacts the universe around you, and there is nothing you can do to isolate your actions from the rest of the world, so if you’re being a dick then: Congrats! You’re feeding into your stupid worldview and making everyone else around you miserable, you Ouroborus motherfucker!

[asgardian--angels]

for @maylovely because you asked about why some people don’t see melkor as evil. i didn’t want to hijack your post with this super long thing. this is something of a summation of many different metas i’ve never gotten around to writing but i hope it even begins to express my thoughts on the matter (as nothing i write is ever comprehensive enough...). i’m not trying to disagree, because every person in the Silm fandom views the story differently. Hope this helps you maybe understand where some of us are coming from though? 

OK HERE GOES

I think it comes down to a couple things: what source material you’re looking at (just published Silm, Unfinished Tales, HoME, etc), and what perspective you view Middle-Earth from. I am definitely in the camp that believes Melkor isn’t evil, because to me Tolkien designed a world with no ultimate good or evil, that everyone is a mix, and furthermore, what is ‘evil’? Evil is a human (out-of-universe speaking) construct used mostly to judge other humans. In-universe, evil is used to represent that which actively works against the freedom of the Children of Iluvatar and seeks to mar Arda away from the vision of the Valar, which supposedly is also the vision of Eru himself. These are both extremely flawed ways of thinking when looking at Melkor, because 1) he isn’t human, and 2) defining evil as something that threatens your existence as you know it is super anthropocentric and does not tell a complete story.

To explain:

I know you tend to focus on the elves in the Silmarillion. A lot of people do. We’re going to obviously gravitate to groups of characters that act and think like us. Thus, you and others are looking through the eyes of the elves as they view the acts and deeds of Melkor - of Morgoth, as they call him. If one is looking through a purely mortal lens, then yes, the things Melkor does is the epitome of pure evil and you’re both goddamned terrified of him and absolutely loathe him with a burning passion (I know you don’t, but I’m just saying, if you were an elf). He threatens everything you know and hold dear. He’s tortured your kind and keeps them as slaves. He spilled the first elven blood. By every definition there, yep, evil. That’s valid, that’s fine! Obviously we are supposed to view Middle-Earth and its stories through the eyes of mortals. No one’s rooting for Sauron to get his ring back, not even me.

But I choose to see things from the perspective of the Ainur, and that which is even greater than the Ainur - Eru and the Great Music, and when possible, even beyond that to question what is the nature of Ea and the Void and hell, where did Eru come from anyway? Loads of fun, never many answers. But looking at the story from this POV changes a lot, especially how one thinks of Melkor. Melkor is the greatest Vala, the most powerful Ainu, he who was given the special gift of the wisdom of all other Valar combined - that is, while each Vala governs a specific element of Arda and can only comprehend that one small piece of reality and the great plan of Eru, Melkor can see it all. This is HUGE. One could argue his worldview is actually the most accurate, if you can sift through the resentment and shame and abandonment issues that cloud it. He knows more of Eru’s design than even Manwe (so why isn’t he king? ‘i’m not bitter,’ melkor says, bitterly with a bitter expression). Thus, it is fair to say that his treatment in Arda by the Valar is unjust. This is a really big topic, I’ll tl;dr it. They cannot possibly understand his role in Arda because it’s beyond their sphere of influence. Only Melkor can know what Melkor’s purpose is, even though he can know all of theirs.

So what is it? Like all Valar, he governs a realm, that which he thought of himself in the Song. His is even more expansive than his kin, to match his knowledge of the other elements. Fire, ice, rock. The core materials of Arda. More than that, decay, upheaval, entropy. Change. He is the Vala that maintains Earth’s dynamism. That’s his job. It’s a big one, and Eru made him fit for it. He needs the knowledge of how all things on Earth work. Now, Melkor is ruled by fate and his nature, and he cannot fight this, nor should he. Would one demand Ulmo live on land, or that Orome never hunt again? The rules are the same, and yet, he is treated differently. This is because his duty conflicts, in the limited perspective of the other Valar, with the intent of Eru, which is the maintenance of Arda as a paradise, eternal, unchanging. Melkor’s work destroys their creations, and thus it must be wrong. This is their biased point of view, for they cannot know Eru’s true intent. So you have the Ruling Powers all against Melkor, even his own brother, and they pass this on to the elves, starting them off with that viewpoint, and no one except Melkor (and his chosen few, Mairon included) actually freaking understands that his job is necessary and he’s just doing what he was made for. The Earth cannot be stagnant, change - even cataclysms - must occur for life to grow and evolve. It threatens that which exists, but offers opportunity for adaptation and survival, and a new place for those in the future. In the long run, Melkor’s work would help the creations of the other Valar, particularly Yavanna. It would never wipe out the Children of Iluvatar, just force them to evolve, become wiser, more wary, skillful, and hardy. However, the Valar and the elves see it only from the present - our creations and livelihoods are threatened, he wants to see it destroyed. He is Evil. No, he is the Earth. Impartial to that which inhabits it. The Earth doesn’t care whether you live or die. You are utterly meaningless to the Earth. Your life holds no value. You adapt to this inevitable change, or you go extinct. Not its problem. No one’s asking the Earth to halt continental drift or sea floor spreading, are they? No one can prevent volcanic eruptions or avalanches or mass extinctions, they are a necessary term and condition of dwelling here on Arda. The fact that this force has a face and a voice suddenly makes it subject to our moral code, which is, Don’t hurt us!! Sorry, doesn’t work like that. Melkor’s a force of nature, the biggest one in fact, and since he was made he’s been shamed and ridiculed for being who he was simply because no one else had the capacity to understand his role.

During the time of the elves, a LOT happened. Melkor was fundamentally changed by the silmarils. I put forth the argument that throughout his time here, he’s attacked sources of holy light, the most powerful thing in creation apart from the Flame Imperishable, not (only) because he was petty and bitter and wanted to get back at his kin, but because as a force of entropy, he can’t help but be attracted to them. Bringing things from a high energy state to a low energy state is sort of his gift. The silmarils messed him up. Everything in his life went downhill after he stole them. He’s suffered from a lot of internalized issues forever - what I’d talked about above, but also everything concerning his right to Arda as king and how he was wronged there (I am, also of the belief he does have standing for that claim), and a nice slew of fear (being the only Vala to be able to even feel that emotion - scary imo) and abandonment issues and self-loathing. When he took on the burden of the silmarils, these things intensified and weighed on him. His fear turned into extreme paranoia to the point where nearly all of his actions were driven by it. He was willing to go out of his way to try and secure his safety through torturing for information (not a great success rate there), making rash decisions, and literally cowering in his tunnels like a naked mole rat. He predicted his impending doom and was clawing at any way to avoid it until he fell into such a pit of despair about it that he just gave up and let himself be taken. He was just so tired. But to stay on topic - I just view all of his actions in the First Age from a non-human perspective, as he would, seeing people and individual lives as meaningless and inconsequential (Sauron’s biggest mistake actually, as that became his undoing multiple times. Also, hint, the other Valar don’t really care as much as they claim to about the cost of mortal lives). He acts on the scale of Gods, not Man. To me, from this perspective, he is not evil. I’m not saying from a different perspective he can’t be. We don’t really know for sure Melkor’s true goals and intentions, seeing as no one ever cares to ask him. I have plenty of firm theories, and they concern themselves with Arda, Ea, and the Void, and no where in that list is included Iluvatar’s children.

Whatever Melkor’s done, it is a part of fate. He has not rebelled, he has not broken any rules, everything he’s done has been within the realm of Eru’s intent - and everything Eru’s done in response to Melkor has also been to drive this ultimate plot forward exactly the way it must. The Valar more than any other being are driven by their nature, they have far less, so to speak, autonomous choice. They cannot change. If they did, the world would go topsy-turvy, and that includes Melkor most of all. The others physically cannot see that, illustrated by their audacity to claim that the world doesn’t need him and they can just boot his Vala butt out of Arda. The paradise of the Valar, stowed away for their eyes only (and the elves who were Good Children) cannot last forever, and then it will be Melkor’s time to return. Nothing is meant to last forever. So Melkor may have done things that to the human perspective, were evil and atrocious, but to sum it up, everything happened just how it was supposed to, Melkor’s job is to do things you don’t like and is thus doomed to never getting appreciation, he really is under no obligation to give a shit about the Children, and really the elves killed way more people than Melkor ever did. Melkor’s documented direct casualties can be counted on a hand lol. He concerns himself with Arda, his creation, his charge, not with the little people that are holding onto the skin of the world demanding it stop being itself. Add onto this the corrosive power of the silmarils, basically making the most powerful and potent being under Eru go a bit cuckoo for cocoa puffs in his later years, and that to me is why Melkor isn’t evil. If one insists he is, then he is a necessary one. No two ways about it.