(Corrected) right & wrong in the Potterverse

[fourfuries at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 25474

CORRECTING THE PREVIOUS INADVERTENT POST

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., usergoogol at y... wrote:
> 
> > >Draco is that person that we would all like to be if there were 
no 
> > >EternalGod/BhuddhaNature/AbsoluteTruth/Ultimate Justice to 
> > >fear.  
> 
> To this, I must take offense, as a moral atheist. I believe, that
> people, without any of those above things, can be kind, merely
> because, it is a logical thing to do. (If your kind to people,
> people will be kind to you.) Also, doing mean and violent acts is
> not comfortable to do if you feel a sort of "mutual feelings," or,
> empathy.  {SNIP} Sorry if I was OT, but I was just offended by the
> (sadly popular) claim, that people will only be good, if they fear
> being punished. Some people are good just because they are plain
> nice.


"Heh, heh, heh, heh.  Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the 
fly...".

There is no need for offense at the notion that people 
behave "better" when there is something at stake, be it reward or 
punishment. In fact, we agree that logic is at the heart of moral 
decision making.  Where we disagree is whether anyone would ever 
behave well if they perceived no reward for their good behavior, or 
whether they would refrain from bad acting if there were no threat or 
fear of punishment.

To keep this on topic, consider all the times that Harry and Ron 
refrain from certain acts because they fear being expelled. They time 
their late night excursions to avoid discovery, use an invisibility 
cloak, bite their respctive tongues in front of Snape and generally 
stay just inside the "law" for one reason only:  they fear being put 
out! Draco, on the other hand, has no fear of expulsion, and does 
exactly as he pleases, breaking far fewer rules than Harry.  So who 
is good and who is evil, no one?

Or, more to the point, can we say that Voldemort is evil, if there is 
no objective and absolute standard by which to judge?  In the absence 
of some enduring standard of truth and good behavior, isn't 
Voldemort's view that "there is no right and wrong, only power and 
those too weak to use it" the effective standard of behavior?  Why is 
Dumbledore's "leadership by kindness" of any greater value than 
Voldemort's "leadership by terror"?

Clearly, Voldemort's brand of leadership is more dramatic and, in the 
short run, more effective.  There is no way that Cornelius Fudge 
would have second guessed a Voldemort style Hogwarts Headmaster.  
Why, he barely could control himself in the face of Lucious Malfoy in 
CoS and PoA.  Not only that, Voldemort believes himself to be fair, 
kind and full of grace, as evidenced by the dueling with Harry, the 
promise and fulfillment of a new arm for Pettrgrew, the mercy 
and "forgiveness" he showed the returning Death Eaters, the justice 
he intends to meet out on Karkaroff and Snape, and the rewards he 
intends to bestow on the LeStranges and his "true" follower, Barty 
Crouch Jr.

The "sad" fact is that people always perceive themselves as kind, 
good or at least justified in their willful acts.  We all tend to 
serve our own self-interest.  That self-interest may be informed or 
uniformed, enlightened or unenlightened, but it is always directed at 
personal justification and gratification.  So the question is not 
whether people need incentives to be good, the question is whether 
there is an objective standard by which to judge.

Now, as an atheist, you may say that good is what the majority of 
society will agree is good.  Unfortunately, the majority of two 
recent societies thought that the mass execution of Jews and the 
arbitrary enslavement of Africans was okay, so majority rule cannot 
be the standard if minorities are to have any rights at all 
(remember "Blacks today, Blondes tommorrow!").

So we teach our children through literature, art, music, philosophy 
and religion that "what goes around, comes around", in order to 
inculcate them with a self-policing mechanism for their otherwise 
self-indulgent inclinations.  Again, Dumbledore says that goodness 
and rightness are functions of observing self-imp-osed limits on the 
actions we COULD take ("it is our actions..".  Voldemort recognizes 
no such limits, nor any such standard.

If there is no Absolute Truth, or if we are merely incapable of 
discovering it, then all that remains is "power, and those too afraid 
to use it."  I prefer t delude myself into thinking my right actions 
are admired by an eternal and impartial judge, or that, at the very 
least, "what we do echoes in eternity."

4FR (thrilled that these questions can be debated online)