[Angry Hill Troll]

Going back to the original discussion on the thread a little, one quote that popped into my head (and I can't quite remember for the life of me where it appears, probably in ROTK) that someone asks Gandalf whether everything in ME will fade or be corrupted, and Gandalf says simply "That is its fate."

Thinking about this statement a bit, Gandalf has just spent 2000 years combating Sauron, trying to preserve all that is fair (or at least something that is fair, as his statement to Denethor about he (Gandalf) also being a Steward indicates), even though he knows his effort is ultimately "futile" in the sense that nothing he manages to save is destined to ultimately endure. Furthermore, he never seems to act as if he's consigned to a futile task (melancholy, as Elrond and Galadriel both appear at times)

Since it seems that Gandalf in many ways represents Tolkien's ideals, it may be interesting to speculate on how Gandalf's statement reflects or embodies Tolkien's own view on the Long Defeat, and on the necessity and rationale behind fighting an unwinnable struggle.

BTW, I'm not sure that the religious or Catholic view would necessarily imply the concept of the Long Defeat. Certainly one of the tenets of Christianity is that Man will always be flawed, and a utopia cannot be achieved without divine intervention. But it doesn't seem clear (to me, anyway) that this implies that the world must necessarily get continually worse, just that it has severe limitations on its ability to get continuously better. The religious view antithetical to the Enlightenment, is certainly not the only one which has ever existed in Christianity (Scholasticism comes to mind), and if one looks closely either at the historical record of world history or religious scripture, one sees that in times past, things have often been extremely problematic. It's just that we tend to be more preoccupied with the problems of our own time.