After reading the Unfinished Tales and the Silmarillion, you do indeed have an entirely different perspective on Tolkien. The functioning term here would be "doom." One could say he is simply pastiching the old Icelandic gloom-and-doom sagas, but I tend to believe he is channeling his own feelings about our modern age.

I found this quote once in his official biography:

"Our myths may be misguided, but they steer us however shakily to the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil."

You can't put it any plainer. Here's a quote from LotR, even used in the DVD of the Jackson movies:

"You have your own choice to make, Aragorn. To rise above the height of all your fathers since the days of Elendil...or to fall into darkness with all that is left of your kin."

I don't think that quote is just artistic license either, but his own apocalyptic attitude about modernity and the domination of rationalism in our Huxlian "tech-civ" Mega-hive. Most important in all the Tolkien prequels is the sense that bad stuff can stay in the system causing problems long, long into the future...that there is some critical mass of bad karma/wyrd that can and will take on a life of its own--to haunt generations to come.

This mentality is not widely regarded on this side of the Atlantic. For example, if we look at how America treats Billie Holiday, you'll see how we always paint a smiley face on an incoming avalance of bad. Holiday was the grandaughter of a slave (bad), grew up poor in broken families (bad), had been sexually abused (bad), became a drug addict and died before her time (bad)...but of course now she's worth millions to the record companies and she's a beloved jazz singer (good!). Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad--then out comes the smiley face--good! Tolkien, on the other hand, only goes through one or two iterations of bad before he lowers the Very Bad hammer. He doesn't spin doctor bad to good. Just the opposite. This is, in general, a European trait, and one of the main points of division between us and them: they embrace the doom, we plaster everything with smiley faces.

It's rather sad and pathetic to consider Brazilian/third-world biofuel as some sort of "next step." It won't be. Capitalism will not run on biofuel. Why? Very simple (almost too simple): Biofuels will be far too expensive to develop and deliver. Do we destroy rainforests to have soybean and sugar crops with abysmal EROEI? Or do we wise-up beforehand?

The global capitalist system exists simply because we have (correction: had) a huge carbon energy pool, i.e., oil, which allowed this colossal growth -- far in excess of what any previous base energy resource allowed. Energy is a base resource that cannot be allowed to start climbing in price and complexity. Modern global capitalism gets its "lift" from cheap oil, and when that's over, good-bye lift, hello ground. I keep talking -- and getting roundly ignored -- hence my growing assurance that when the lift ends, we will not glide, but go nose-down into that ground -- after we waste precious time and resources on all the boondoggles in alternative energies.

Reading the Philip Pullman teen fantasy book, "The Golden Compass," he has a part where he describes how the Oxford kids choose up sides for their kiddie wars. The groupings and alliances are quite complex--and totally human IMHO. Hey, we're a herd species. We build groups based on affinities--and we always will. All this political correctness bosh about multi-race and multi-culti is a hopeless mess. When all is said and done, we're going to be clannish.

Once the Industrial Rev is over, once the cheap oil is gone, we'll be back to feudalism, and warring and killing will once again be closer to the old territorialisms of our distant aboriginal ancestors: largely symbolic and relatively harmless compared to today's genocidal, apocalyptical war scenarios. Today we're locked into a vicious cycle of unnatural forced peace and phoney harmony...suddenly overturned into horrendous mass genocide. I'd rather go back to nobody loving/accepting anyone they don't want to...and clans feuding, fighting, killing, personally.

I honestly think we'll always feud and fight and kill: your group against mine--hopefully never too many of us. But modern McMedia-driven top-down multi-race/multi-culti only postpones and builds up the pressure on the inevitable. And when I get the question, "Why does race matter so much to you?" I simply reverse the question and ask it right back: "Why DOESN'T race, ethnicity, clan, matter to you?"

Have you ever noticed how so many peoples have warriors as heroes, while the modern Western intelligentsia worship "men of peace?" Odd that. The Sioux venerate Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. They were freedom fighters--fighting imperialist consolodation efforts. Odd how we--I mean we of white diaspora--don't have any freedom fighter/warrior heroes. We love Jimmy Carter and Ghandi and ML King Jr. Maybe that's because we're still the oppressors and we have terrible consciences and really just want to further consolodate our gains....