Decay and destruction in <PERSON>'s Silmarillion, vs. reality
<PERSON>'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. 72
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 <PERSON>, 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 <PERSON>; 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 - <PERSON> 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 <PERSON>'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.
* <PERSON> 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. 72