[HPforGrownups] Is morality too simple....? :^)

[Aberforth's Goat]

No: HPFGUIDX 19846

 Craig wrote,
 > I think as humans we think a lot in binaries and tend to put good
> and evil on a sliding scale.  I think this leads to easy rhetoric
> and propaganda, but also an unduly immature view of motivation and a
> poor judgment on character.

<snip>

> Yes, there is a convenience in the shorthand of lumping Voldemort,
> Pettigrew, Quirrell, Lockhart, the Malfoys, Fudge, Crouch Jr., and
> even Snape under the rubric of evil, but it does a disservice to
> understanding the complexity of who they actually are.

Thanks for those thoughts Craig! I'd say that anyone with a dash of common
sense will have to agree that we don't experience a person's basic moral
character in terms of binary certainties. It doesn't take more than a little
charity to see good traits in a bad people--nor more than a little realism
to see bad ones in good people.

However, that leaves a second question open: is the above an epistemological
or an ontological problem? Is it that all of us *are,* fundamentally, mixed
bags--or merely that no one (ourselves included, perhaps) can perceive us
the way we really are (or really are becoming)? Are people morally
ambiguous? Or do they just look like it from the outside--or is that
ambiguity just a phase in a moral development which will finally place them
either in one camp or the other?


These questions get us into deep water, of course--and I've no intention of
snorkling in where angels fear to tread (water)! However, I think various
literary genres tend more readily toward one side than the other. A
whodunit--ala Agatha Christy--tends to divide humanity between good guys and
bad guys (although we may not be able to tell them apart until the last
page). A more psychological novel--a Hemingway, for instance--tends to leave
a lot more room for ambiguity. (I'm not saying there aren't exceptions!)


I think Jo's world seems (so far) to lean toward the worldview of the
whodunit. People line up either with our team or their team. We may have
trouble seeing whether they're good or bad (take Sirius), or they may change
polarities (take Quirrel), but in the end they manifest themselves either as
good or as bad.

We don't yet know which side various people will end up on. But I don't
expect there to be much ambiguity in the end. Pettigrew and Snape look like
obvious candidates for last minute switches or revelations--but when HP 7
reaches its dnouement, I think even they will have been herded either to
the sheep or the goats.


Speaking of which: Baaaaaa!


Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray)

P.S. To be honest, I wish I didn't have that feeling, and I'd like Jo to
prove me wrong. Indeed: perhaps I have too little faith in Jo's aesthetic
vision. Any thoughts?
_______________________


"My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practising
inappropriate charms on a goat. It was all over the papers,
but did Aberforth hide? No he did not! He held his head high."