[Raynor]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

My last observation relates to the depiction of change. The beauty the Valar create is unchanging. The perfection of this beauty lies in large part to this quality. It is due to Melkor's hatred that change, decay, destruction, rot enter.

Does change necessarily have to be evil? There are cosmologies and philosophies which don't depict change in this way, isn't there?

I wouldn't ascribe perpetual constancy to the valar. If anything, universal entropy was something that Melkor would have strived for, considering his sheer nihilism:

Originally Posted by Notes on motives in the Silmarillion, Morgoth's Ring, HoME X

Melkor's final impotence and despair lay in this: that whereas the Valar (and in their degree Elves and Men) could still love 'Arda Marred', that is Arda with a Melkor-ingredient, and could still heal this or that hurt, or produce from its very marring, from its state as it was, things beautiful and lovely, Melkor could do nothing with Arda, which was not from his own mind and was interwoven with the work and thoughts of others: even left alone he could only have gone raging on till all was levelled again into a formless chaos. And yet even so he would have been defeated, because it would still have 'existed' independent of his own mind, and a world in potential.

Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it.

Life is the ultimate engine of negentropy, and the valar are givers of life, well, at least fea-less life; they also delight in creativity, and that is also a facet of change, a most active one Sure; they are the most formidable sub-creators, and they also love the creations of the elves, in languages and all else. Sure in Middle Earth, we have the sleep of Yavanna, which encompasses almost all of the planet (save Melian's realm), but this is simply a moment in time, waiting for the coming of the Secondborn. Neither is perrenial constancy something that occurs in Aman; for one thing, the valar themselves change, in role, strength and abilities (such as becoming more tied to their bodies and losing some of their thought transmitting capacities); the elves too age (even the istari aged, though not very visibly).