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An interesting thread, even so it some time created too much heat.
A view remarks:
Melkor never wanted chaos. Has plans had an order of there own. The chaos resulted only in the fact that his plans did not harmonise with that of Eru. (At least not at fist, if we look to the discribtion of the end of the music of the Ainur, we see that Eru's themes had gained at that point a flexibility that made them take up the music of Melkor into their own fabrication, a win - win - situation even so the Melkor party seemed not to understand that.) Thus the question if Sauron in the second age spreaded chaos or tried to establish order doesn't matter at all.
And Melkor never wanted any evil things to exist, evil was only what arrived out of the friction between Melkors theme in the music and that of Eru. Nonetheless Melkor did chose willfuly to be in oposition to Eru (ceeping his own theme up after Eru tried to mend the music), which is an evil deed.
For me at least it seems clear that Tolkien wrote his legendarium in such a way, that being in opposition to Eru would be an eroding state. It brought Melkor down from the being with the highest potential benath Eru himself to a faint shadow of its former self that could be brought down be pure physical force, and that the Valar (with Eru's agreement) even could banish from Ea (without a great destruction that they had feared ealier in the history of Ea). Sauron it brought down from one of the Maiar of highest rank to a ghost unable to make his will effectiv in the physical world at all. Saruman as a last example it brought down from being the highest of the order of the Istari to the same state as Sauron, a ghost with out any influence.
The point is, that the more you become fixed in the state of opposition to Eru, the more you lose your own abilities (and creativity might be the most important ability in this). Melkor as the prime example does become even nihilistic, he tries to destroy everything that comes from other ideas then his own (which in the end is the whole Ea, since he was nowhere alone in its creation). But even if Melkors motives at the end of the first age were nihilistic, his actions were not fully so. He still used the creations of others to further his cause.
Ainu like Sauron did know that Eru exists and that Melkor is a created being of their own order. How could they follow Melkor at all? Well, Melkors ideas were not evil, they were just diffrent. And remember that Eru smiled at first. Melkor was created as a (sub-)creator. For lesser Ainur to tune their music to his would be okay at first as ist was for other Ainu to follow some of the other later Valar like Ulmo or Aule. It seems from the example of Gandalf that it was even okay to wander with your music from one leader to the next, and way should it be other wise? Only after Eru had shown his distast for the theme of Melkor, to play it further would bring them in oposition to Eru.
Now one important motive that Melkor had for changing the theme of Eru, was to make his own role in the music more important. This selfish motive seems to be the one taint that anybody who joined him shared (evil in Tolkiens legendarium is none coopeartive). And we see this over and over again when charachters of evils attitude are at the point of no return, it is their selfishness that kicks them over the brink.
The unanswered (and by tzhe way also unasked) question of this thread is: Is there a difference between being loyal to Melkor and being evil?
If we look to the music of the Ainur alone the answer seems to be no. But if we take all the letters and stuff that we have on Saurons motives, that doen't seem to be true to me any longer. In essence you might be in opposition to Eru but not loyal to Melkor any more, even so Melkor might have been the rout course of your opposition to Eru. That is Melkors theme was not based on the opposition to Eru, it just became that by chance. But what an Ainu played could be not in tune with Erus theme and not in tune with Melkors theme.
Respectfuly
Findegil
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