Tolkien & The Apocalypse

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Eönwë

Well, there may be something in these Mayan prohecies. They say that we'll be suffering from a lot of earthquakes around that time, and look what's happening now.
I don't actually believe them, but I find it a bit disconcerting.

Life is disconcerting. Tolkien's world provides a mechanism for foretelling, but our world does not. Even the physics mind experiments of time travel (requiring wormholes or black holes and incredible energies) only let you move forward in time...which really isn't true either as, as I understand it, time just kind of passes more slowly for you relative to those you leave behind.

Anyway, this means that information from the future is not available to us. If it were, we would have avoided some of our more blatant stupidity, and I would have purchased Google stock.

I think that Tolkien definitely knew a bit of Mayan mythology.

It's possible, but did he believe that in 2012 the world would end?

[Eönwë]

Originally Posted by alatar

It's possible, but did he believe that in 2012 the world would end?

I don't know... any clues from listening to the CDs backwards in your secret underground bunker?


edit: Hm... I really was quite young in those days... (those days being two years ago)

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Eönwë

I don't know... any clues from listening to the CDs backwards in your secret underground bunker?

I've tried listening to them both clockwise and counterclockwise, and so far nothing's clear, except that now my CD player is broken.

edit: Hm... I really was quite young in those days... (those days being two years ago)

And yet we're all still here. Can't wait until it's 2013 and I can revisit this thread and use the 'stick out tongue' smiley.

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

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.

[Lalwendë]

Don't want you all to wet the bed or anything, but...drumroll...it's now 2012!

So, do you think the Notion Club Papers are about to be located? They were found in a sack of old paper after the Oxford summer exams in 2012. And...the New Bodleian is currently undergoing an extensive refurb and rebuild. What might they find? My hope is that if any old Tolkien papers are found that deal with time travel they will pass them on to Steven Moffat as a massive hint.

[Nerwen]

Just a note: these "Mayan prophecies" are more in the nature of urban rather than actual myths...

[Nerwen]

In case my meaning isn't clear: the ancient Mayans did not *really* predict a 2012 apocalypse, and as far as I know the belief they did is of recent date– I think Tolkien would have had to be able to see into the future to know about that in the first place!