A Little Story

This is a little story. I'll start it, and you continue it in the comment section. Don't let it die!!!!

It was no ordinary feast. The guests knew this. All of the Elves and Dwarves made merry amoungst themselves. All at the expense of one poor creature.

To Add to the Harry Potter Confusion

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It's my attempt to write a story with a plot line somewhat similar to the plot of HP and the sorcerer's stone (as I understand it, I haven't actually read it): a boy is taken from his home to be schooled in the ways of magic, learns the magic (with all the technichal details included in the book), and then uses it to battle evil. I have tried to go as close as possible to what makes HP attractive, while at the same time, make the good magic implicitly sacramental and the bad magic explicitly occultic. But I haven't gotten to the technichal details yet, so you can read just for fun...for now.

If I were George Lucas...

Wishing to disestablish the Force as a god in Star Wars, I invented this
historical retelling of general JedI history.

The Force has its origin in a small plant that is native to most plants in the
galaxy. When this plant is eaten, it greatly accelerates and strenghtens the
bodily functions of the eater, especially the nerve impulses to the muscles,
enabling the eater, through special muscle-use techniques, to project electric
fields into nearby objects and thus manipulate them in ways that seem
telekinetic. The relevant chemicals in the plant must be eaten on a daily basis
for the powers to be retained. These chemicals can be synthesized, in which
case only a person previously exposed to them by eating them or having a mother
who ate them while pregnant can eat them without being poisoned.

Because of the widespread habitat of this plant, amateur JedI-societies sprung
up independent of each other in many places. Some worshipped the Force, and
their “sacred” texts had some of the earliest JedI advice and techniques, hence
the value placed by all the JedI on them; some did not worship the force. Some
used the powers classified as Light, some used the powers classified as Dark.
When Palpatine was planning his takeover of the Republic, he sold government
offices in order to gain money for his plans. The office of state historian he
sold to a Force-worshipper who falsely made this religious Force the official
recorded religion of the JedI according to state records.

For thousands of years, there was no actual JedI Order. The small JedI
societies had no knowledge of each other; many did not even have any knowledge
that the chemicals they ate each day by tradition were the source of their
powers and/or intelligence. During this time (Referred to by JedI historians as
the Glorious Dark Ages of the JedI), these societies were merely amateurs.
However, many of the greatest JedI intellectuals wrote during this time, and
JedI achieved prominence as poets, artists, educators, and even religious
leaders of many denominations. (Cerea, Ki-Adi-Mundi’s planet, was especially
known for its high number of JedI who were also Catholic priests. ) During
this period, light saber combat was not one of the prime functions of the JedI.
The weapon was originally invented as an amusement for the JedI boys’ club in
Maputo, Correlia, and became an inter-planetary toy sensation. It went out of
regular children’s toy stores a few years later, but that was enough time for
many jedI-empowered families to have one in their possession. Because of the
durability of the toy, many became family heirlooms.

One of the less desirable consequences of eating the Force-plant .is that bad
habits are formed much more easily and the brain is somewhat perverted so that
anger becomes especially attractive. This means that JedI must get angry as
little as possible, especially in combat, when they are the most susceptible to
anger becoming irresistible forever; if they do not control anger, they run the
risk of being perpetually angry. In fact, in some jedI, certain kinds of anger
are so dangerously habit-forming that avoiding them is a moral obligation. Some
JedI, known as Dark JedI, are immune to this effect. Plo-koon, Kyle Karhun, and
Palpatine’s master were some of these.

The force does not grant longevity! The ancient Yoda was actually half-elven
and immortal. According to his family history, he, Mace Windu, and Quigon (they
were half-brothers: Yoda was so short because he had a hobbit-father, Mace and
Qui-gon had human fathers) were descended from Middle-Earth elves who left
Middle-earth after the rounding of the world (see the Silmarillion) but whose
boats took a wrong turn on the Straight Road to Valinor. Yoda and his cousin
Palpatine (who was also of elvish descent) were mortal enemies due to the fact
that Palpatine fell for the Dark Side due to an encounter with the maddening
rhythms of Aztec music. As part of Palpatine’s assaults of Yoda, Yoda caught an
artificial aging disease that made him older but no closer to death.

Yoda was the one actually responsible for the organization of the JedI into an
organized system. When Yoda was about 20 years old, Palpatine, who had already
gained his hatred of Yoda, organized a convention of JedI from all over the
galaxy. Hoping to form them into a mob and then seduce them with Aztec music,
his plans were foiled when Yoda was accidentally invited to the convention.
Yoda managed to keep a few of the JedI present from becoming Sith.

Knowing that the Sith would attack eventually, their anger being
uncontrollable, Yoda re-made the lighsaber into a more potent weapon that only
people with the electric sensitivity of JedI could handle safely. The lighsaber
was forgotten and thrown away among non-jedI. Yoda also established a
Christian monastic order of warrior-monks, the JedI Order, whose Temples on many
planets (especially Courescuant) became renowned centers of learning. The
amateur JedI societies continued to exist, and some amateurs (such as Qui-gon)
rose to become professional full time JedI warriors and instructors, though not
actual monks or nuns. Such amateur rise was rare, although many amateur JedI
became renowned in the militaries of their own planets.

The JedI Order rose to great Intergalactic prominence when it conducted the
defense of Nubia when Nubia was attacked by the sith in the battle that started
the Great Sith war. The Galactic Republic, originally consisting of only three
planets, was founded in this time, and the JedI Order was given an official
place in the government to prevent government corruption. The order had an
excellent relationship with the bishops of Courescuant.

When the Republic experienced a grand expansion of membership about 30 years
before Star Wars Episode I, the religious order was disbanded and the JedI were
made an official funded branch of the Republic. It never lost it Christian
character, however, merely its monastic status. This federalization gave the
state historian (who remained so in the days of the Empire and the New Repbulic)
the leverage he needed to spread lies concerning the religion of the JedI. Many
of the incidents recounted in the movies are, in fact, false and his invention.
The others can be explained by the principles outlined above.

Star Wars…You asked for it

A. What about Star Wars would you like to know? B. On the other hand, what
could I tell you that you wouldn’t know already? C. Or are you asking for an
opinion about Star Wars? B-cause of B, I will A-sume that you do not mean A, so
it Ceems that you mean C. Because Ancient Greek Phil. usually wants a
moralization of some sort, he shall get it. Is Star Wars a good thing, and for
whom and under what conditions?
Before writing, I did some reading on Wikipedia. They classify Star Wars as a
“space opera,” meaning that it is a melodramatic, comic-book sort of story with
exaggerated technologically advanced forms of conflict. You could visit
Disciples of Diotima and read the article ‘Between the Charbidys and Scylla of
Emma and Godzilla’ to get my views on comic-books. You could also simply accept
it on my word that comic books are an excellent way to instill basic morality or
immorality into the minds of little boys and other people who are fortunately or
unfortunately like them.
And, in Star Wars, many of the basics of morality (and it’s very difficult to
capture all of them in one story) are presented excellently. Especially
calculated to indoctrinate virtues of valor, obedience, patience, patriotism,
distributism, and the like, while at the same time instilling a horror of
treachery, anger, hatred, over-mechanization, laziness, greed,
over-centralization, and injustice, the story definitely achieves this part of
the end of being a good story without directly such preaching such ideas. I
don’t think I need to give examples of such moral instillations; the very genere
covers some of them and the others are more or less obvious features of the
somewhat simple general plot. For the observer enamored of action, the lessons
will be swallowed along with the moves and the chicken in the Tatioone market.
But I don’t think that is really what you want to know. Of course there is
good and evil in Star Wars in a very general sense, and nobody would object to
their children or themselves learning it. In swallowing one virtue from Star
Wars, is there not the danger of swallowing other less good things contained in
it. This is art, not life; we can pull out the tares and not damage the wheat,
but if we harvest the wheat we might get tares too.
And the tare said to be contained in Star Wars is the religion/ethics of
relativistic pantheism. Is it really in Star Wars?
(Here follows a quick summary of relativistic pantheism. RP is the belief that
all things are not separate from the god. By definition, this includes the
denial of individual free will and the denial of good and evil. It is generally
the religious system of non-Christian religions, including Hinduism (which
substitutes desirable and undesirable fatalistic consequence-punishments for
good and evil), Taoism, and Buddhism (which substitutes passionlessness and
passion for good and evil). Star Wars seems to moderate the ethical
consequences this claim (more on this later) by positing two sides to the same
pantheistic deity, dark and light, much as Zorastriansim and Manicheanism posit
two equal gods, one good and one evil, without giving any real reason to follow
one god and not the other. By the way, the Christian justification of being
good and not evil is that evil does not exist except as a good thing deprived of
a quality it ought to have, thus making pursuit of actual evil not only
undesirable, but impossible.)
For Star Wars to in fact be a story in which one could swallow relativistic
pantheism along with virtue, worship or acknowledgement of such a deity has to
be portrayed as desirable (not good, as there is no “good” in relativistic
pantheistic metaphysics or ethics) and true (it could be portrayed as good but
not true, as the statement “Buddhists are often good people” does, or true but
not good, as Sartre portrays atheism in ’Nausea,’ but neither of these would be
dangerous for the Christian.). Now, I cannot remember whether or not the Force
is ever explicitly treated as a god in the films (I suspect that if it is, it is
by Yoda on Dagobah). Whether it is explicit or not is irrelevant for the
viewer, however. For the unaware viewer, if the Force is treated
non-explicitly as a god, they will swallow it anyway. Making the treatment
explicit would make the viewer aware and would render the series preachy, thus
weakening both the moral and the theological messages. For the aware viewer,
non-explicit treatment can still be seen as paganism (its subconscious influence
on the viewer is debatable), yet give the viewer freedom to imagine around the
non-explicit difficulties.
The most significant argument in favor of a non-explicit treatment of the Force
as a deity is in the jedi’s source of morality. Christians, as noted above,
treat good and evil as existence and its deprivation, thus goodness comes from
the Essence of God and evil comes from “nothing.” Whether or not Star Wars is
compatible with this system of morality is at best unclear. What is clear,
however, is that the main source of morality for all the characters is the
light-dark dualism of the Force. G.K. Chesterton says that the denial of
morality is allied with the exaltation of less-than-moral rules, such as manners
and conventions. By emphasizing the Force-conventional-code (for the light and
dark sides are not sufficient to determine good and evil under God, and thus
have only the status of laws/conventions/etc, not objective good and evil) and
ignoring the God-Morals, the jedi, whether or not they actually believe the
Force is god, are undermining God’s ethics and setting up The Force in God’s
ethical place. Obi-wan even goes so far as to say in Episode III, that “Only
the Sith deal in absolutes,” thus lending even more credence to the idea that
the jedI are pantheist-relativists (the Sith, in this system, would be seeking a
thoroughly evil version of what the JedI want to be mostly good.)
Another argument is the JedI’s use of eastern religious meditation techniques
that, in the real world, are related to demonic possession even though those who
practice them. There are other similarities to such eastern religions in Star
Wars, thus making the idea seem all the more true, if not explicit. And, though
all of this, the Star Wars characters posit no God in addition to the Force,
thus letting and even encouraging our religious impulses in our imagination add
the character of worship to the use of the Force. I think it is plain enough
that Star Wars can be dangerous to the morals of the viewer, especially the
uninformed viewer.
There are, however, three ways to counter this.

1. Be informed. I just informed you.
2. Do an implausible re-interpretation of Star Wars so that you can understand
it in a Christian way. I have done this, and I can show you that too. Later
3. Find a way in which Star Wars portrays the pantheistic system as
insufficient. An example would be a connection in the movies between the false
ethical/religious system and the fall of the Republic. This would make it
appear that no matter how pagan the jedI were, they end up being more or less
wrong, though honorable. I can try to do this, though I might have to watch the
movies again.

Lessons from the Valaquenta

I. On Humility

One slight oddity in the Valentaqua is Tolkien’s treatment of the Four Elements, earth, air, fire, and water. He does NOT associate one with each temperament. The oddity consists in who is associated with what element. Obviously, Manwe is the angel of the air, Ulmo the angel of the water, and Aule the angel of the earth. Under this system, air, not the traditional fire, is treated as the highest element. What could be the significance of this?
The closest there is to being a spirit of fire in the Valentaqua is Melkior, the devil. Described by Tolkien as the greatest of the Ainur, Melkior is also the spirit of the highest element, fire, the element associated with creation, existence, and God in the Ainuirnidale. He, the highest angel, is the fallen one, and his very height is that by which he fell (remember: he searched for the secret fire in the Ainuirindale, and, failing to find it, tried to create his own things and fell from grace).
This is a good explanation for why Melkior fears Elbereth, not Manwe, most of all the Valar. Elbereth, the woman of the stars, is the closest to a fire-angel of all the Valar. Yet she does not make things with her fire in the same way that Melkior aspired to do; her things are real and natural, not the evil parodies that are orcs and trolls. By staying within the bounds of God’s creativity and goodness, Elbereth, though a firey spirit, humbly escaped Melkior’s self-inflicted doom.
Sauron, the greatest of Melkior’s servants, is falls in much the same way as Melkior. Sauron, it is said, was a maia of Aule, and thus would have been skilled in the art of making, Through this, the desire for making is portrayed as a great temptation to pride and evil from its height that comes with affinity with Creation, a fact that is reinforced throughout the whole book (Feanor is the greatest example) and even in the Lord of the Rings proper. Such an idea is consistent with Maritain’s evaluation of the art of making: he gives it a dignity approaching the art of thinking and warns that he who would aspire to the highest and most creative form of making, abstract art, must beware of the extreme temptation to pride.
The crucial difference between Sauron and Aule is obedience and humility: Sauron’s ring is something that anyone is loth to give up, (including himself), but Aule obeys Iluvitar when he is caught making the Dwarves out of season. Aule is also uninterested in using what he makes, but makes for the joy of making, a humble activity. One last parallel is that Aule’s creative work would have used fire to achieve its ends.

II. On the priorities of the Valar

From this furious dichotomy of angelic good and angelic evil, the task of the Valar and their opposites emerged. The Valar are precisely those Ainur who loved the material world so much that they wished to enter it, the evil versions entered it to twist it.
From this love of the world, the Valar became spirits of protection. Their society-structure reflects in one significant way the most marital society the human world has ever known: Dark Ages Northern Europe.
In the company of the Valar, the feminine characters do the productive work of growing plants and tending animals. Most of the masculine characters are limited to functions of war and worship: Orome and Tulkas are warriors, Manwe and Ulmo are wise councilors, Mandos tends the dead souls, and Lorien…inspires? This is exactly the structure in the Dark Ages society mentioned above. Aule makes, of course, but his skill in making is strangely out of place sometimes: it causes the elves to make the tragic silmarils, it makes the Dwarves out of turn, and it does not provide anything of use to the war. In some places, Aule is the only Valar that comes of looking in any way foolish. Doubtless, he has a magnificent aeon of glory while in Valinor, but in summary, making, unlike military virtue or practical productiveness, is not something that is always a wise indulgence.
This allusion to the Dark Ages society illustrates the grand peril in which Middle-earth is caught: it prevents even the Angels from forming a society bases primarily on the arts of peace.

Appendix to the Dracula article

In house of mirrors, where shining bloody knives
Kaleidoscopically dance on eyes edge
Swift-bearing madness while women’s sharp kiss
Threatens to deaden high madness’s ledge
The bearer of death, the holder of knife
Stands keenly intent on murder within,
With blood perfuming, raining, his like-life
Mouth-piece, in, (ugh), within, a wooden coffin.
Of all within the thin, thin shell of man’s
Veneer of city, house, and manners’ ways
There’s naught that saves from such a demon bland,
The mold of his body in his own grave.
There’s naught of man’s, but God, the God Who died
Gives life by blood; as Bread He does reside.

A Bit Concerning Dracula, Evil Fellow.

When I told our Ancient Greek Philosopher that I was reading Dracula (this was last summer) he thought I might be going insane. Thank goodness AGP's not a real psychologist yet. Besides being an engrossing suspense/supernatural story, Dracula is also filled with worthwhile elements that make it more than just recreational reading. By putting his characters in the presence of the threat of a vampire, Bram Stoker, the Irish author of Dracula, edifies us by implanting in us a horrific and true vision of evil, by giving us a respect for the aids God gives us to combat it, and by presenting to us a marvelous work of character artistry.

Count Dracula of Transylvania first presents himself as a cultured aristocrat, the world-wise descendant of proud (and sometimes cruel) kings of the bleak Hungarian wilderness. He hides, of course, his trademark secret: he is a vampire.

Now, what exactly is a vampire? Intending all the horror the name implies, Stoker calls them "undead," a term clarified in greater degrees of horror as the novel progresses. Dracula, and later his female victim, have, in short, already died, but their bodies remain horribly incorrupt, doomed to involuntarily wander the world in search of bloody humans to devour until the vampires themselves are killed. They are empty and corrupt, dissolving into dust as soon as the evil powers stop sustaining them, just as evil itself is a frightful nothingness, an absence of the goods proper to a thing. The vampires do not need blood to live, they merely cannot resist it; this compares with addiction to sin: the addict does not need to continue to sin to live, but he cannot stop. Dracula can only sleep on cemetery soil blessed by a Catholic priest, and some of his actions are twisted allegories of the life of Jesus (such as the fact that he sleeps on a boat for three days before rising again in England); such parodies of the sacramental system are common in the occult, a faith of which the pre-dead Dracula was a definite and voluntary member. And of course, there is the drinking of human blood, both in the blatantly sickening scene in Transylvania where one of the characters finds the ruby blood of a small baby coloring the count's lips during a vampiric sleeping period and in the subtle fear in the scenes as the vampire's first English victim gradually has her life drained from her by an unseen intruder. As if this was not enough, Stoker directs our horror not only at evil in general, but the particular evil of sensual vice by having Dracula behave in a seductive matter toward his victims. Dracula embodies both evil's fascination and its emptiness.

Fortunately, Stoker places God himself in dramatic contrast to the evil of Dracula. While the use of the somewhat random, spiritually meritless objects like garlic seems to be reminiscent of the simple superstition of the Hungarian peasants, other objects carry God's power and anti-demonic wrath. As long as the dead victim has the crucifix on her chest, for example, she is unable to rise to become a vampire, a precaution that is voided when an unknowing beggar steals the crucifix. The most powerful weapon against the vampires, however, is Jesus himself in the Holy Eucharist. Whenever Dr. Van Huelsing holds the envelope containing the "Sacred Wafer," neither Dracula nor his victims can approach, and one of his victims is actually burned when the Eucharist touches her skin. (Dr. Van Huelsing does commit the a Eucharistic sacrilege at one point, but he had good intentions and may very well have not known that what he was doing was wrong.) Stoker sees the solution to such great evil in the redemptive power of God and the avenues of His power.

And finally, by putting his characters in such difficult situations, Bram Stoker is able to show off his own skills as a writer and use them to further accentuate his theme. Dracula, unlike some villains, is appropriately one of the least interesting characters in the story. Much more fascinating are the American cowboy, brilliant and sensitive Dr. Van Huelsing, and the conversion experience of the local psychologist. Stoker even has the style to make believeable in writing one of the most difficult sorts of scenes to pull off, that of grown men breaking into tears under their stress.

In short, Bram Stoker is an excellent author and Dracula is an excellent book.

Quick Question

Just wanted to know your thoughts on the Inheritance series, especially compared to The Lord of the Rings. Put the words that represent your thoughts in the comments box.

The Thomistic Metaphysics of Ainulindale

0.5 Intro to Ainulindale

Ainulindale is Tolkien's version of the creation story, in which Iluvitar, (God), creates the Ainur (angels), and then, through them, creates Middle-earth using something analogous to music. In it, Melkior, (the devil), falls through his pride and desire to make things of his own.

1. God, Angels, Knowledge, and the Residence of Essences

“There was Eru, the One, Who in Arda is called Iluvatar, and He made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of His thought, and they were with
Him before all else was made. And He spoke to them, propounding to them themes
of music, and they sang before Him, and He was glad.”

“Iluvitar said to them: ‘Behold your music!’ And He showed to them a vision, giving to them sight where before was only hearing; and they saw a new World
made visible before them.”

“No theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in Me, nor can any alter the music in my despite.”

“’I know the desire of your minds that what ye have seen should verily be, not only in your thought, but even as ye yourselves are, and yet other. Therefore I
say: Ea! Let these things be!”

Obviously, Iluvitar represents God, and the Ainur His angelic creatures. This ought to be, and probably is, common knowledge among Tolkien’s followers. What
is probably less known is the incredible combination of relatively obscure
Thomistic metaphysics with the obvious drama of the text.

First, it can be inferred that Iluvitar and the Ainur are spiritual, not
material, beings. Obviously, this is the first impulse of the reader. Second,
Tolkien calls the Ainur the offspring of “His thought.” If Tolkien intended the
Ainur to be material beings, why would he specify the “thought?” And if the
Ainur are spiritual, Iluvitar must be as well.

When constructing his philosophy, St. Thomas faced a problem concerning
spiritual beings: how they know things. They obviously do not perceive, as
humans do, for they have no bodies and thus no senses, yet God knows all things,
and the angels are obviously quite intelligent. St. Thomas states that
(1) God knows all things, even the contingencies of free human wills, as author,
not as perceiver, and
(2) communicates this knowledge to His Angels. (Existing and performing the act
of creation continuously, for God is outside of time, God holds even our wills
in existence, even when they make evil choices.) This knowledge (3) further
constitutes the essences of all things that are or are yet to be, even the free
creations of human art, thus making all artistic creation a form of discovery,
for God knows all things, even essences, and his knowledge of these essences
would play a role in the things that possess these essences. (1) and (3) are
supported by the statement “No theme may be played that hath not its uttermost
source in Me [the themes are the things by which things are made, and God would
of course know those things from all eternity}, nor can any alter the music in
my despite.” (2) is supported by the fact that He communicated the themes to
his Angels, and then revealed to them that the things were real; they did not
perceive the world without His specially granting it to them. These things, of
course, were made real, as Iluvitar so gloriously states when He decrees “Ea! Le
these things be!”

2. What is “The Flame Imperishable?”

“I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your
powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he
will.”
“He [Melkor] had gone often alone into the void places seeking the Imperishable Flame; for desire grew hot within him to bring into being things of his own, and it seemed to him that Iluvatar took no thought of the Void, and he was impatient of its emptiness. Yet he had not found the fire, for it is with Iluvitar. But being alone, he had begun to conceive thoughts of his own unlike those of his brethren.”

“And I will send forth into the Void the Flame Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World, and the World shall be; and those of you that will may
go down into it.”

A school of the philosophers called the Stoics also spoke of a airy flame, the logos, the source of reason, a pantheistic deity that performed the function of
being the soul of the universe. (The Logos that St. John speaks of in the
gospels is a variant on this concept, The Word as the source of reason, but not
a pantheistic deity, of course.) Souls, the stoics stated, were material, made
of air and fire, and by moving throughout a substance, they gave the substance
its cohesion and its proper level of life: nonliving, plant, animal, rational,
and logos. Is the Flame Imperishable the same as the Stoic logos? No, for two
reasons.

Melkior was not stupid, just proud and impatient. The logos would not be found in void places, for the Stoics believed that place was not material and did not exist, so therefore it could not possess logos. In Thomistic metaphysics,
however, God is present in all places by His power that gives places their
existence and power of having things placed within them.

If this doesn’t convince you (and it shouldn’t, for one could believe in logos but not the stoic theory of void places), it must be remembered that Iluvitar is not a pantheistic deity, as the Ainur are the offspring of His thought, not His
thoughts themselves, and Arda is itself separate from them. (If they are
separate, they cannot both be part of God, for God is entirely simple and has no
parts.) How then to explain the remarks of “Yet he had not found the fire, for
it is with Iluvitar,” and “I will send forth into the Void the Flame
Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World, and the World shall
be,” remarks that seem to imply that whatever this thing is, it is part of the
world, and of God as well.

In Thomistic metaphysics, God is perfect Existence (but existence is not God). By His power, all things participate in His existence without actually being
Him. Hence, the Flame Imperishable, which seems to represent existence, is “At
the heart of the world” not “Is the world” and “Is kindled within the Ainur” not
“is the Ainur,” but is “with” Iluvitar.

One ending note: Melkor seeks for the Imperishable Flame, but everywhere else, Existence is called the Flame Imperishable. Why the change of order? By
putting Imperishable first, Tolkien accentuates the imperishableness of the
flame. The Flame, like the Ring, grants imperishability, yet imperishability is
not its prime function, just as one who seeks the ring for immortality becomes a
parody of a human, just as Melkor is elsewhere said only to mock, not create.

So ends my post on The Ainulindale.

Chesterton?

Who was the other person who voted for Chesterton besides me?

By the way, I voted for Chesterton because his writings cover a wider array of topics and his style is better. That being said, in terms of a single achievement, he has nothing that comes even close to Tolkien.

To Spell Check or Not To Spell Check??

I have heard about many complaints on the subject of the
automatic "spell check" from an English major I know. He first
of all says it is ineffective and misleading. So, should we use it?
When I think of the spell check, the first thing it (for me) appears
to symbolizes is the laziness of the American culture by means
of technology. One could easily type any way they want and then
just run through it with the spell check. The problem with that is
the spell check has the possibility of giving the wrong word. So
our glorious technology isn't infallible after all. However, when
it's use is correctly monitored, it can be a very useful tool. Now,
of course, it would be much better if one knew how to spell the
word in the first place. But we humans are imperfect, so we need
a little (a lot!) help.

Having said all of this, I will tell you what I do. When I write
something, I make the best effort to spell everything correctly.
Then I simply use the spell check to be sure. I think if one uses
it correctly, there's no reason to object to the spell check,
unless you resent the fact that you can't spell perfectly (by the
way, I used the spell check to write this article :-) ).