Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

[dicentra63]

No: HPFGUIDX 38520

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> wrote:>

Dicentra: 
> >>>I'm afraid that I'm not in agreement. First, talking in terms of 
> "rights" is misleading, inaccurate, and inadequate. "Rights," 
> properly used, is a term used to describe the relationship 
> between governments and the governed. A government grants 
> rights to individuals; these rights draw a line between the 
> government and the individual that government is not allowed to 
> cross.<<<<

Pippin: 
> So, when the Declaration of Independence says, "We hold these 
> truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they 
> are endowed *by their Creator* with certain inalienable rights, 
> that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of 
> happiness..." it's being misleading and inaccurate? Er....I prefer 
> the term "revolutionary". :-) 

Dicentra:
The Creator is a governing entity, and He grants rights to the
governed.  I also claim the DoI's meaning as falling under my umbrella. 

::Dicentra tries to stake her flag *right next* to Pippin's and they
get into an elbowing match. It stops before there are injuries.  Both
flags are sticking out of the same hole, leaning in opposite directions.::
>
Pippin:  
> I don't believe that we can, as humans, approach the Ultimate 
> Good. Rowling does not attempt to symbolize it for us in the 
> Potterverse, and this is, I think, why we are having so much 
> trouble grappling with the question.  This does not mean, I 
> hasten to say, that I don't believe an ultimate good exists, either 
> here or in the Potterverse. Yet it is beyond our grasp, almost 
> beyond our imagination, though perhaps we come closest to it  
> when we give of ourselves.

Dicentra:
There might be a problem with semantics, here, and I think I'm the one
who sinned through inexactitude.  My use of the term Ultimate Good is
not Platonic or neo-Platonic.  I'm not looking for anything in the
realm of ideas that is so detached from human understanding that words
fail it entirely.  I mean Ultimate Good as What The Novels Say Is The
Opposite Of Evil.  I'm trying to find the measuring stick you use to
say that something is good or evil.  I guess that's how this
discussion started. I'll try to be more precise.
> 
Pippin:
>  But our ability to give ourselves is sorely limited. It's tough to
love 
> our neighbors, it's harder to love our enemies, in the Potterverse, 
> as  we see time and again, it's almost impossible to love the 
> stranger.  Love is too narrow to embody goodness for me, at 
> least as we experience it in the Potterverse.

Dicentra:
We certainly don't see it very clearly, except in Lily's sacrifice;
Dumbledore expressly identifies Love as what protected Harry from AK.
 But as Eloise says, the love that protected Harry wasn't Lily's
affection for him, but her willingness to give of herself to protect
him.  (Didn't you say essentially that?) It was the tangible act, not
the emotion, that did the trick.  

Pippin:
> Crouch loved his 
> wife, and she loved her son, yet that relationship led them to do 
> evil, because they didn't consider anyone but themselves. 

Dicentra:
This business with the Crouches is fascinating: can you really call
what Mrs. Crouch did self-sacrifice (she was on the verge of death
anyway)?  What possessed Crouch Sr., who obviously knew his son was a
DE (hence the Imperius) to go through with the switch?  Did Mrs.
Crouch think her son was guilty and didn't care or did she honestly
believe she was undoing an injustice?  Too much to cover here... maybe
we can cover this switcheroo in the "Dissin' the Slyths" thread. :D

Pippin:
> That's 
> where I see "rights" coming in to the Potterverse, because, to 
> me, "rights" defines the relationship between ourselves and the 
> stranger, and Harry is the ultimate stranger.

Dicentra:
OK. We might be getting somewhere here.  If by "rights" you mean
another person's humanity--the fact that the other person has needs,
wishes, feelings, and *worth* equal to one's own, then I can buy that
definition.  I just can't bring myself to *use* the term because of
its legalistic overtones and because the word gets used to end
arguments. ("I have the right to play my stereo as loud as I want,"
i.e., go [censored] yourself if you don't like it.)

What if we used "humanity" or "intrinsic worth"?  Does that cover all
the necessary territory?
> 
Pippin:
>  What is it that allows Harry  to give to others beyond his capacity 
> to love? Lily gave her life for Harry because she loved him, but 
> does Harry love Pettigrew? I don't think so, but he spares him. 
> Pettigrew's life has no value to Harry, as he says, but his right to 
> live does. Harry does not want to see Remus and Sirius become 
> violators of that right. Dicentra might say that he doesn't want 
> them to become predators. The trouble I see with that is that they 
> are predators already--in the most literal sense, in fact. Sirius 
> eats rats, Werewolf!Remus will prey on humans if he can. What 
> is the difference between killing a man and a rat, morally, unless 
> we say that there is some intrinsic value to a human 
> being--some right to live?

Dicentra:
Actually, I wouldn't say that Harry doesn't want them to become
predators.  I don't know that Harry sees killing Pettigrew as
intrinsically evil.  He doesn't seem to interpret Sirius's desire to
kill Peter as selfish. (If it were selfish, Sirius wouldn't have
yielded to Harry's intervention).  Harry is standing in his father's
shoes--the father who rescued his own enemy from death to preserve
these same two people from having blood on their hands many years ago.   

Remus and Sirius are not human predators: Remus doesn't prey on
anyone--the werewolf does, and it does it against his will.  Sirius
eats rats because Padfoot is a carnivore AND because he is sacrificing
comfort to be as close to Harry as he can.  Predators in the natural
world don't kill unless they need to. (The exception to this is
felines, who injure beasties and play with them until they're dead.
Bad Kitty! [I like cats and own one, in case that sounded like
gratuitous cat bashing.])  I doubt very much that Padfoot killed any
rats except to eat, which nature accepts as OK.  Human predators kill
not from need but from greed.  The dehumanization of other people
enables them to do so.  So Sirius and Remus don't fit the definition
of predator in this sense.  They knew they didn't stand to gain
anything from Peter's death except finality, and they didn't see Peter
as less than human--just as a human who had done something Exceedingly
Evil.  Maybe you could say they were willing to sacrifice their clean
hands to enact justice?  
> 
> Dicentra says:
> No one in the Potterverse upholds someone's right to have 
> unpopular or evil ideas and counts it as courage or morality. 
> (This theme does, however, show up frequently in 
> American television.) I don't see it as the issue JKR is 
> addressing.
> 
Pippin cites:
 
> Dumbledore:" --without Pettigrew, alive or dead, we have no 
> chance of overturning Sirius's sentence."
> *"But you believe us."*
> "Yes, I do," said Dumbledore quietly. "But I have no power to 
> make other men see the truth, or to overrule the Minister of 
> Magic."
> 
> Dumbledore, as McGonagall pointed out way back at the 
> beginning of Book One, does in fact have such power, or would if 
> he chose to use it. He's too noble: that is to say, he doesn't use it 
> because he has "a highly moral character." (dictionary definition 
> of noble)

Dicentra:
How would he do it in this case?  Imperius?

Pippin: 
> Then in GoF, when Dumbledore has failed to convince Fudge 
> that he should contact the giants: "You must act as you see fit. 
> And I--I shall act as I see fit." 
> 
>  Dumbledore allows Fudge liberty of conscience, even though he 
> believes Fudge is dangerously wrong. 
> 
Dicentra:
Yes, he does indeed allow Fudge his moral autonomy, but not without a
fight.  However, I don't see JKR holding this up as an example of The
Kind Of Virtue That Will Eventually Defeat Voldemort, either.

Um, is it possible we're actually on the same side, or at least close
to it?  

::Looks at the flags; tilts hers upwards a bit. Pippin's reacts by
rising a bit, too.::

See?  They're practically pointing in the same direction.  OK, we
started with the concept that the difference between the Good Guys and
the Bad Guys is that the Good Guys recognize a difference between good
and evil whereas the Bad Guys do not.  Then we went to "what the sam
hill do Good and Evil consist of anyway"?  Then Pippin said
"respecting others' rights" might be what separates Dumbledore from
Voldemort, in part at least.  Dicentra complained about the use of the
term "rights" as inadequate and proffered self-sacrifice vs. predation
as the litmus test.  Eloise tried hard to resolve the two points of
view, but Dicentra stubbornly refused to use the word "rights" because
it tastes like broccoli to her.  Then Eloise got confused, Pippin
continued to defend "respecting others' rights" as the litmus test,
and then Eloise jumped on Pippin's post and went on to pull together a
good working definition of Love as a principle of action rather than
an emotion. Dicentra, encouraged by Eloise's post, tried again to make
her point clear, and realized she was invoking ideas she didn't mean
to.  Then when reading Pippin's latest post, Dicentra realized that
Pippin wasn't necessarily using the term "rights" in the way that
makes Dicentra want to hurl, and that "recognizing others' humainity
or intrinsic worth" was the point on which they could agree.

So in Eloise's words, which just might tie all this together:

"When the strong exploit the weak they are denying the bond, they
imply that the weak are less than human, that they do not deserve the
same privileges that the strong accord to themselves. Hasn't much of
the worst evil that mankind has perpetrated involved precisely the
deliberate de-humanisation of others?

"So what am I saying? I suppose I want to suggest that love, in the
sense of the active embracing of our common bond with the rest of
humanity, is the highest moral good and that it is manifested in our
relationships with the weak and the stranger. Conversely lack of love
is manifested in exploitation and predation. In the Potterverse,
Dumbledore, in his own strange way, represents one and Voldemort the
other." 

Does that sound about right?  

--Dicentra, laughing because she and Pippin are arguing the same side
of the "Dissin' the Slyths" thread