Melkor and Sauron's goal

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

So in Middle Earth, there is a choice, or in some cases a compulsion, to evil. What fuels such choices or compulsions?

Tom Shippey argued in The Road to Middle-earth that evil in Professor Tolkien's work was a result of "some combination of external prompting and internal weakness"; I would interpret this metaphysically as the "Morgoth-element" - evil is within or without all things.

That being said, it seems to me that Professor Tolkien did to an extent characterise how such choices were motivated. Morgoth's is quite straightforward - pride leading to a desire for lordship and mastery.

Regarding lesser evils, I wonder if it is related to Sauron's apparent self-delusion that Eru had "simply abandoned" Arda and didn't really care about it.

Returning perhaps to the Morgoth-element, I would suggest that evil tends to be the expression of varying degrees of the "nihilistic madness" I often mention: a desire to control and, when control fails, to destroy.