Do we live in Middle-earth?

[Feadolena Nolfare]

I agree heartily with Gandalf that the characters and themes from Tolkien's writing are patent in our everyday lives [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

...With one exception. Middle-Earth evolves in a particular way: quality of existence has a definite downward trend.

Well, I take that back. Not so much downward as diluted; in the First Age and before, entire areas of land were markedly good or evil. But by the time of LotR, most of the places are just ordinary places with ordinary people, neither all good nor all evil. One can imagine that with the defeat of Sauron and the departure of the Elves, this line would become even more blurred.

However, anyone who has studied history to any degree will tell you that neither a downward trend nor good/evil dilution is taking place in the real world. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Not that it isn't an intriguing idea... the "bending of the World" in Akallabeth remains my favourite snippet of Tolkien literature [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Speaking of bent worlds, I find the parallel universe theories to be mightily intriguing, but I am begging off judgement until I get some more reading material on the subject.

It is my personal opinion that the Mediterranean is roughly to the world of Greek mythology as Europe is to Middle-earth. The latter is based loosely on the former, and encompasses the concerns of it, but should not be taken as literally the same place. It's the land seen through the lens of myth.

Which in no way diminishes the messages conveyed in Tolkien's writing.