A Credo For George

Mon Feb 25 09:24:39 UTC 2002

No: HPFGUIDX 35706

Marina wrote:

> George fidgets in his chair, stares at his shoes, and wishes rather 
> desperately for a dry martini. 

Well, I *did* offer him a nice hot cup of tea, but for some reason 
he just didn't seem interested at the time.  Silly boy.

A huge thanks to Marina for helping George to cut those apron strings!
I'm feeling ever so much better about George now.  In fact...

I'm with George.

Although George *will* have to forgive me if I occasionally toss a few
theories over to those guys out there on the Big Bang Battleship.  I
may like my Snape all SweetGeorgiany, but I still love my Ewwwws as 
repulsively Ewwww-y as they can get, and my Neville just as Bangy as 
can be -- and I've still a lingering fondness for Bloody Ambushes, as 
well.

As none of those really have all that much to do with Snape himself, 
though, I will assume that while George may whole-heartedly 
disapprove, he will nonetheless refrain from putting me to the stake.

As for my quibbles about the word "visceral," I do think that this 
gets into the realm of...well, of quibbling.  There are levels of 
viscerality, to be sure, and the distinction between a truly visceral 
response, an emotional one, and one based in moral principle or 
cultural upbringing is one that I don't think it is even always 
possible to make with any degree of accuracy -- which is why the 
word "squeamish" can be applied to so many different types of 
hesitation or balking or disgust.  As Marina wrote:

> Some natural inclination, some visceral push is needed in order to 
> get the moral faculty to engage.

Indeed.  But if I may describe the distinction I was trying to make, 
I do see a difference between ones immediate emotional response to, 
in this case, enforcing dominance over another through pain or 
terror, and the secondary response of moral repugnance at having 
witnessed or committed such an act.

In my own experience, at any rate, these aren't necessarily the same
response, and they don't come at quite the same time.  Both certainly 
feel visceral -- both hit you right in the gut, so to speak -- but I 
do tend to think of the first response as the "visceral" one, while 
mentally labelling the revulsion that strikes a moment later as 
the "reaction of principle."

In a perfect world, of course, there would never be the slightest bit 
of disconjunct between the two.  But people aren't always perfect, 
and their instincts aren't always pretty.  Sometimes they can be very 
ugly indeed.

Um.  Am I revealing far too much about myself here?

Elsewhere, Marina wrote:

> See, there's cruelty and there's cruelty. A predilection for 
> reducing people to quivering globs of jelly through dark threats, 
> deadly insults and viciously clever mind games is not the same as a 
> predilection for reducing people to quivering globs of jelly 
> through pulling their intestines out through their left nostril. 

Isn't it?  This may be where we disagree.  I tend to think of the 
distinction as more one of degree than of anything else.  Sadism is a 
predilection for taking pleasure in holding others in ones power, and 
I don't think that it changes all that much in its fundamental 
emotional dynamic when the cruelty enters the realm of the physical.  
What changes, I think, is the recognition of the severity of trespass 
against the other person involved -- which I tend to classify as one 
of those instinctive reactions secondary to, and often following just 
a heartbeat behind, the first "visceral" reaction.

You know, I went through a stage during my teenage years when I got 
pretty appallingly mean myself.  My balk threshold was far lower than 
physical torture, of course, but it was not nearly as low as I dearly 
wish now that it had been.  I remember once walking into the girl's 
bathroom in my school, only to discover that someone to whom I had 
just been quite verbally vicious was sitting there in a locked stall, 
sobbing.  I mean, she was really bawling her head off in there.  She 
was beside herself.  I'd obviously really hurt her.  And I felt 
utterly repulsed with myself.  It was one of many occurrences that 
eventually got me to thinking that maybe my behavior could stand more 
than a bit of self-examination.

And yes, that revulsion did feel visceral.  But it wasn't the *first* 
visceral response that I had.  The first one was pure and simple 
pleasure.  I *liked* the fact that I'd made her cry.  I *liked* the 
feeling that my words could have that sort of power: the power to 
wound, the power to hurt, the power to strip someone so utterly of 
their self-control that they would actually have to hide away 
somewhere to weep.  It can be really exhilirating, you know, that 
feeling of power.  It doesn't feel bad at all.  It feels *good.*  

Yeah, I know.  That's horrible, isn't it?  But there you have it.

The revulsion...well, the revulsion came a heartbeat later.  It 
certainly came in force when it did come, but it was the secondary 
response, not the primary one, and I don't think that it derived so 
much from pure instinct as it did from a more intellectualized 
extrapolation.  ("If she's crying like that, then I must have 
really hurt her *badly.*  And it wasn't justified at all for me to 
have done that.  She's never really done a thing to me, and she 
wasn't threatening me...and, well really, there was just no valid 
reason to do that at all.  *I* sure as hell wouldn't like it if 
someone made me that unhappy.  Gee, you know, as fun as this 
sort of thing unquestionably is at times, and as personally 
gratifying as I might be finding it, maybe it really *isn't* the way 
that I want to be behaving towards other people.")

Now, obviously there's a considerable difference in degree between 
intimidating others through verbal cruelty and waging a war of terror 
by means of torture and murder.  But then, there's also a 
considerable difference in degree between taking relish in making 
someone flinch with a carefully-aimed quip and reducing someone to 
a snivelling mess with an all-out verbal assault.  And yet in my 
experience, there was no *qualitative* difference between the two.  
The pleasure I took back then in making others flinch was exactly the 
same (if somewhat less intense) than the pleasure I took in making 
people cry.  It was the same thing, really.  All that had really 
changed was the severity of the injury, recognition of which made me 
take stock and actually start to *think,* rather than merely 
continuing to do what I have to admit was, at that stage in my life, 
something that I not only found instinctive, and not only intensely 
pleasurable, but also a great deal of *fun.*

So, um.  Now that nearly 4,000 perfect strangers know all about what 
a rotten person *I* am...

Marina wrote:

> Now, at the time Snape joined the DE's, his moral faculty must've 
> been taking a nap (since George maintains that Snape wasn't 
> ignorant of what he was getting into). *Something* must have 
> happened to make him sit up and start analyzing the philosophical 
> implications of the DE agenda, and I believe that this something 
> was his instinctive revulsion at murder and physical torture. 

Based on his current canonical behavior, specifically his seeming 
disinterest in making even the slightest attempt to curb his 
psychologically sadistic impulses, I tend to suspect that his 
revulsion was not altogether instinctive, although as I said before, 
this is largely a matter of definition.

The ramifications of murder are far more severe than the 
ramifications of verbal cruelty and require more in the way of 
justification.  Psychological abuse shatters people's self-
confidence, erodes their self-esteem, and places them gratifyingly 
under your power.  Killing people indeed places them most 
unquestionably under your power -- but it also makes them *dead.*  I 
don't really think that it requires much in the way of instinct to 
perceive a difference between the two actions and to begin to wonder 
whether you truly have any justification for the latter at *all,* 
other than your own selfish desire for personal gratification.

So in short, I wouldn't be surprised if murder had indeed been one of 
the big wake-up calls.  I think that I just tend to frame the dynamic 
somewhat differently than you do.

But I also see a strong possibility that it could have been a change 
of belief about the justifications themselves, rather than anything 
at all about the severity of the acts that he was committing, that 
might have led him to reconsider.  Even if you believe that physical 
cruelty is wrong, you can still rationalize its commission by resort 
to ends-means justification, and in this way comfortably avoid 
altogether any introspection about whether or not you actually *like* 
what you're doing.  (What does it matter whether or not you *enjoy* 
it?  It simply Has To Be Done, and that's all there is to it.)  If 
you reach the conclusion that your pragmatic justification is 
logically flawed, however, then all you're left with as a rationale 
for your behavior is that you happen to enjoy it -- which is far less 
defensible for anyone with any degree of moral integrity.  

It seems quite possible to me that Snape really did at one time 
believe in all of that purity of blood nonsense, as well perhaps in 
the notion that the status quo was so deeply corrupt (Prank, anyone?) 
that it needed to be overthrown by any means possible.  Any number of 
things could have set him to reconsidering those beliefs, and without 
them, he wouldn't have had any legitimate justification left for what 
he was doing.

Pleased to see, by the way, that you share my preference for viewing 
Snape's old DE companions as people he really did like.  That's my 
own weird little personal Snape fetish, you know.  

> This is exactly what George is about, after all -- the idea that 
> Snape has put principle over sentiment.

Indeed.  

<smiles down at shiny new badge>

> There; I hope that cleared the waters somewhat. 

It did!  Thank you!  And do apologise to George for me, will you, for 
the...er, catechism?  Now he seems afraid of me, and there's really 
no need for him to be.  I'm actually a very *nice* person these days.

-- Elkins, who doesn't like to contemplate what her own life might 
have ended up like if some Evil Dark Wizard had approached *her* at 
the age of sixteen or so.