[agentultra]

Oh definitely, indeed. "The Machine," as he describes it in his letters, is the real villain... one you cannot even fight in any real way; it's always present and within all of us.

We only get a hint in the stories that Middle-Earth is only one slice of the world at large. Mordor only seems to have diplomatic access to the states and countries outside of Middle-Earth. And he invites their armies to join with his to plunder this resource-rich and relatively undefended realm.

But there is scarcely any mention of these other countries even in the Silmarillion and the other short stories since. They didn't need much detail because the story takes place around the small people standing against the forces arrayed around them.

It's very intentional. Painfully so sometimes, which makes it a bit of a challenging work to enjoy.

When it comes to world-building for telling stories, it seems like "simulating," is a time consuming and possibly fruitless endeavour. Fiction is fiction. Coming up with the salient histories and facts to give your story a sense of time and place is an intentional, designed artifact... and you only need enough to get the point across!