[Diamond18]

There's nothing wrong with technology in and of itself. It's all about how you use it. God didn't give us creative natures for nothing, so I don't think that making lesser imitations of nature is so terrible. After all, Tolkien described his stories as sub-creations. Lesser versions of the story that is "real life".

So while technology can be and is used for bad, it's just plain silly to call technology evil. Death, destruction and woe have been around almost forever, which is long before the internal combustion engine. Yes, things like atomic bombs are curses and should never have been invented...but would a person being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance curse the engine that runs the vehicle?

Everything always comes right back to the souls of Men (or Elves or Maiar or Valar or what-have-you). Scapegoating machines is erroneous. Cain didn't need an automatic rifle to kill Abel...his own hands worked just fine.

Anyway, that reads like a little sermon, I know... But anyway I'm just saying that I disagree about who is most prone to evil. I think it is the ignorant and uninformed who fall into darkness more easily. I know that isn't the way it was in Tolkien's world...but it is in our world. All the really evil people have their minions, their ignorant masses. Hitler brainwashed the youth to think his way. Osama Bin Laden didn't fly any planes into the World Trade Center, he got other people to do it for him.

And when you think about it...that is like Tolkien's world, in a sense. The strengths of these "bad guys" lay in their minions...their mindless hosts who have no will of their own and knew only the will of their master. It's always the Orcs and Uruk-hai the heroes must face.

I'm sorry if this has become a ramble... To sum it all up: One powerful man with a host of ignorant men at his command is a lot more dangerous than one powerful man with a new-fangled machine.