Having a few friends and relatives who are fascinated by such things, I've been hearing about the End of the World in 2012 for some time now (and I find myself amused by the fact that they have it down to a particular date, that being the winter solstice). Several of these same people were expecting the end of the world in the Y2K hysteria -- one literally spent a fortune preparing for it, and wasted it. I cannot help but wonder why some people who very much believe the world will end at these times also think they can survive the end, if they make adequate preparations (the woman who wasted the fortune had also made plans to have hers sons in law shoot anyone who came looking for food or shelter, as she couldn't bring herself to pull the trigger, especially if the beggars were neighbors or relatives
). I wonder if the doomsayers pay attention to the fact that many such prophecies are only predicting a major change, not a literal end -- or if an end, only an end to the old way, which also means the beginning of something new. But alas, people never do readily embrace change, do they?
I somehow doubt that Tolkien was ever thinking of his work as prophecy, merely that he included versions of those things in which he believed within his own mythos.
For some reason, thinking of this all brought to mind a poem by Arthur O'Shaughnessey:
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.