Decay and destruction in Tolkien's Silmarillion, vs. reality [closed]

Question

Tolkien's Silmarillion is a wonderful story permeated by a sense of decay and downfall. The ancient world of the elves passes away and many wonders of the world are no longer in existence. Time is passing, the magic stops being in existence, and is just passed on as legends or myths, until finally humans take over. My feeling is that this story is incredibly beautiful and sad, and also, to use a very cold term, aesthetic. Looking at the real world, I recognize a similar pattern. So many species of the natural world are destroyed or simply vanish. The "wild" is no longer in existence, pockets of true wildlife survive because some people have invested lots of money to protect it, but frankly, it seems merely to be a matter of time until the Serengeti is finally being dug up for diamonds. In the west, we have already achieved the goal of destroying nature almost completely. Looking on, I do not feel that this is in any sense aesthetic - yes, it is sad, but not in the same way as in Tolkien, if one could stop watching, one would! - it is really just a very "plain" sense of sadness.

I was wondering whether anyone could explain why there is such a difference in perception (assuming that this is a shared feeling). I have several theories:

• It's just me, my perception is wrong, ours is a similarly beautiful and aesthetic story of decay, I just don't get it.
• The world is thriving, I just don't get it.
• The real world is in danger as a whole, which is at variance with Tolkien; there, it's just the elves going away (and humans are staying, so it is essentially a story written from the pov of humans).
• In the Silmarillion, the decline is really caused by the bad guys - Tolkien has a pretty clear concept of who or what's bad, whereas in the real world, the only honest answer is, "we're doing it ourselves, with our own hands". Our (my) feeling of guilt covers up all other feelings.
• It's our world, our reality, whereas Tolkien's is a story; the difference being that we can shut the book and feel sad and happy at the same time; but we cannot ignore our own future.
• Tolkien would stop being aesthetic if he described in merciless statistics how all the magical species of plants and creatures just died, which he doesn't. He's focusing on a few, and does it in poetic language.
• It's the language, darling. A good writer could make me feel the same about our real world.
• We're the orcs, actually.

Answer 1

The core of all of Tolkien's work, his entire Legendarium, is the idea "The magic goes away." The world as a whole is not necessarily diminished, but the magic that makes it special is in continual decline. The world is becoming merely natural. This decline is due entirely to individuals who again and again choose to do evil.

In the earliest days, the immortal Valar — actual demi-gods — walk the Earth in the Springtime of Arda. Magic and beauty are everywhere and nowhere is the world subjected to decay. But Melkor chooses to do evil and Arda is marred.

Next come the Elves, lesser beings, but still immortal and of great beauty. They flourish in Middle-earth and are called to Valinor to live in an immortal land that recalls much of Arda in its Spring. Yet even in Valinor the Elves rebel, elf killing elf and the survivors returning to Middle-earth to fight and die. Only the strongholds of the Elves of Beleriand — Doriath, the Havens, Gondolin, Nargothrond — still retain a glimmer of the magic of the Springtime of Arda.

But Melkor remains and overwhelms the Elves, aided in no small part by treachery of elf against elf and by some mortal men. The Valar finally put paid to Melkor, but in doing so, ruin Beleriand entirely. What's left of the Elves either depart the world forever or retreat into Eriador, eventually building tiny refuges like Lothlórien and Rivendell which are faint echoes of Doriath and Gondolin which themselves were echoes of Valinor. Loyal Men are given Númenor, itself an echo of the Elvish realms.

The elves continue to diminish and Men arise. Númenor becomes enormously powerful — powerful enough to force Sauron at the height of his strength and in possession of the Ring to humble himself without a fight and be taken prisoner. But even before then, Númenor had fallen into evil and Sauron tempted it to take the last step downward that led it its destruction.

A few men who had not chosen evil survived, returned to Middle-earth and built Gondor and Arnor, faint echoes of lost Númenor. Through the Third Age, elves continue to decline and Men grew in some respects, but continued to lose those bits of the magic of Númenor that had survived.

The War of the Ring marked the final end of magic, of the supernatural, of clear, physical echoes of the Springtime of Arda in Middle-earth. Men waxed, and on the whole the kingdoms of Men thrived but we are left with an entirely natural world where magic exists only in memory.

Note that the world that remains — our world — is not necessarily lesser. (Honestly, who'd want to actually have to live (even if rich) even in Minas Tirith, with little medicine, repeated famines, poor heating and no cooling, little education, poor food, and warfare? (And no internet!) And nearly everywhere and everyone in Middle-earth was worse.)

Each diminishment was the direct result of a creature choosing evil.

Our world is what is left. It is relentlessly mundane. The magic has gone away. And it's our fault.