[Pitchwife]

Now, what is this? I'm away from the Downs for just a few days, and when I come back I find this thread has gone to Far Harad and back (or not quite back)!
No chance to address even half of what has gone on in the meantime, but anyway, let me see, where were we? Oh yes: alatar stated the obvious, i.e. that we're animals, and Hakon made a much disputed post which I liked very well, the point being that it's us humans who label certain actions as good or evil.
alatar, in response to the question you raised in your first post in this thread, I think the difference between us and other animals as regards good and evil is not premeditation, but rather reflection. Chimps, dogs, cats etc. may kill, rape (?) or act altruistically, but as far as I know they don't reflect on the ethical value of their actions. They don't ask themselves, 'Ought I to do this?', and they don't think 'I really shouldn't, but heck, I'll do it anyway because I happen to feel like it'; hence, they don't feel guilt or bad conscience. (Dogs, who have been domesticated and lived in close contact with humans for a very long time, sometimes act like feeling guilty when we catch them doing something we don't want them to, but that's more because they feel our displeasure than realizing there was anything wrong with what they did. We're their externalized superegos, so to speak.) Nature may be red in tooth and claw, but she's always innocent, because she doesn't think about what she's doing. (I realize gendered pronouns have become a hot topic in some recent posts, but sorry, I can't call nature 'it' - and that's not just because of grammatical gender in German. Make of of it what you will.)
Or rather, she didn't, until we appeared on the scene. However we may try to disengage ourselves from nature, rise above her, remodel her or destroy her - as animals, we'll always be part of her: the only part of her (as far as we know) that's aware of itself and thinks about itself, its part in the whole and its actions. And labels some of those actions good and others evil.
Hakon said, We label what we dislike about our race as a whole evil, which, to me, has the ring of truth - but what precisely we label as good or evil says a lot about us and our state of maturity or immaturity. Insofar as we're Mother Nature's obedient children, good is whatever ensures survival, whether of ourselves or of our species, evil whatever endangers it. Insofar as we're teenage rebels against her we label the instincts that connect us to her as evil. Insofar as we're adults accepting our place in the whole, it's the same as before, only it's not just the survival of our own species but of the whole ecosphere. (Damn Hegel and his dialectics, but sometimes he does have a point.)
- By the way, I just realized (though I'm not sure if anybody else will, as my thoughts are jumping around quite a bit at the moment) this might be a connection back to the original Eddings theme: evil only cares about the individual; good involves the sacrifice of the individual for the species as a community; next stage of good would be realizing that the community includes all species on this planet. -

(Aside to Gwath: I never said (or meant to say) that good and bad are nothing more than terms developed to indicate certain patterns of behavior. Not merely indicate, but evaluate (as should be obvious from the above).)

(Aside to Alfirin: sadism is an interesting point, but I think what we (i.e. those of us that ever feel that way, which, if I may guess, is much more than would ever admit it but much less than would ever act it out) actually take pleasure in is not really the pain and suffering of others but our own power to inflict it on them; therefore, the people who are most likely to act on a sadistic impulse are those who have been victimized themselves in some way or the other and feel powerless in every other respect - in other words, individuals asserting themselves in the only way available to them.)

OK. Back to Tolkien.

davem, much of what I wanted to say about Eru permitting Frodo to fail or not has been taken care of by Aiwendil, but nevertheless: if Eru was determined to stop Sauron, he would have found a way to do it whether Frodo failed or not, wouldn't he, or otherwise what a poor excuse for a God would he be? Which means that Frodo always had a chance to fail - and indeed fail he did, except that he let Gollum live to save the day (with or without a Divine Nudge). Everything else would reduce Frodo to a remote-controlled puppet and/or divine providence to a failsafe.

The really interesting thing in this context is that while only Gandalf among the good guys may truly know the outcome of things, among the bad guys both Saruman & Sauron know it too - yet they actually try to bring about a different result.

Not sure about this (not even about Gandalf, on second thought). Remember the Ainur didn't see the end of the Music and the later ages of the world. There was the Second Prophecy of Mandos about Dagor Dagorath etc., but do we know when exactly it was made and who was told about it? Saruman may or may not have known, Sauron almost certainly didn't - so I think they can be excused for thinking they might get away with what they were doing.
À propos Saruman, these words of yours made me think of him, and the difference between him and Gandalf:

Of course, if one doesn't (or can't) believe in Eru/God then one suddenly becomes responsible for the greater matters, because one's choices can (one believes) change the world

To be sure, for Saruman (and I mean before he got power-crazy) believing or not believing in Eru was not the question - he knew; but he didn't trust in Eru. The way Saruman thought, he, as the head of the Istari, was responsible and in charge, and the only way he could think of to counter Sauron was to find the Ring before him. Saruman would never have laid down his life and trusted the Higher Power to set things right, as Gandalf did in Moria.

Finally, alatar wrote:

Bilbo (or was it Frodo?) thinks that the Shire could use a good awakening, a thinning or dethatching, via a brood of Dragons descending upon the place. He, in essence, would like to 'select' for a specific type of Hobbit, one that is 'awake' and looking upward and not just down at the earth, whose thoughts were more lofty and long range.

It was Frodo. And wouldn't he have made a lovely little dictator of the Shire if he could have claimed the Ring and got away with it? Setting up schools for hobbit children, I'd suppose, with Quenya and Sindarin compulsory as foreign languages and everybody studying the Quenta Silmarillion in the original Klingon. 'Selecting' and bossing around people for what he thought their own good. There was a little Sauron in him after all.