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Originally Posted by Eomer of the Rohirrim
I would particularly like to know if this theme is ultimately religious. I know almost nothing about Catholicism, Christianity or religion in general. Is it anything to do with the Garden of Eden?
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I think it is simply a sense of malaise.
People of any age experience longing for the past, and feel nostalgia. This takes the simple form of reminiscing about Chopper bikes and when Tucker was in Grange Hill, but at a deeper level it manifests as us really believing that the world is changing for the worse, and you only have to pick up The Daily Mail to see how many people think this way. I think it is one aspect of being mortal that as we age, we look back. Getting older means getting more worries, and we naturally think back with regret to the times when we did not have such burdens.
We also forget the bad things which have been and gone. Today we talk of how young people are 'feral' and run away from chavs but I remember the cries in my own youth of 'bring back the birch', and how anyone with a mohican was looked upon as possibly of criminal intent. The cycle will repeat itself backwards over and over, so that you can imagine a grown man in the Medieval period tutting about the new fashion for pointy shoes and how it was a herald of the downfall of civilisation.
I think Tolkien was just reflecting what we all feel as we get older. He himself was plunged into adulthood at an early age when he went to fight in WWI, and we can see this in his early writing which was even then tinged with sadness; maybe if this had not happened to him his writing would have been more hopeful, or maybe not? That melancholic music and literature (The Smiths, vampire fiction etc) can be so popular with young people suggests that even at a young age the malaise can set in?
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Originally Posted by Boromir88
It's the basic concept of the Business Cycle. It's always going to happen, there's no stopping it.
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Ah, but you haven't got Gordon Brown in the US...
Still, I think that the human malaise can be cyclical. Just as we are moping about chavs and feral children, we can also be uplifted when we hear a child using good manners, or saying something amusing. We might yearn for The Shire but how many of us would put up with 'knowing our place' as Sam does?
Progress is bittersweet. On the one hand we are now able to go anywhere we please by car but on the other, we will soon destroy our own world by exercising this privilege, and maybe this is where our malaise comes from. So many of our pleasures are relatively fleeting, and the only lasting joy is to be found in the memory of them, like looking at holiday photos.
I think I need a drink now...
