Something I'd like to see in the Books (Long)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 83126

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Wendy" 
<hebrideanblack at e...> wrote:

> Second, and more importantly, I think you're spot-on in your 
> comments about role models - and it's exactly that 
"subconscious  insight" which disturbs me. IMO, we've seen a lot 
of *very* poor  role-modeling so far in this series, and I would be 
disturbed to see Harry begin to pattern his own behaviour on that 
of, say,  Dumbledore, or Arthur Weasley, both of whom seem to 
be put in the category of "good role-models." There are a lot of 
examples I could use, but I'll point out just a few:
> 
> Dumbledore's handling of the point-giving at the end of PS/SS. 
I 
> don't have a problem with him giving the points to Gryffindor, 
but I  think that awarding those points as he did, in the middle of 
the  leaving feast when the Slytherins thought they'd won, was 
terribly  bad form, not to mention bad strategy for improving 
house relations. <<

Pippin:

I don't want to start this debate again, but read carefully, and 
you'll see there's no indication that anybody but Draco and Harry 
were surprised. Harry was incommunicado in the hospital wing 
after Ron and Hermione made their visit. A lot coud have 
happened meanwhile.

Whenever someone makes an unexpected announcement from 
the Head Table, the questions and comments fly.  Not that time. 
Instead Rowling remarks on the silence. I can never figure out 
why the first Slytherin loss in seven years is taken as a sign of 
Dumbledore's anti-Slytherin leanings, anyway.   How do we 
know that Slytherin never made a last minute save themselves?

 Just because Harry and Draco didn't know what was coming 
doesn't mean that nobody else did, including the rest of the 
Slytherins. Suppose they knew that Dumbledore was going to 
award last minute points. Do you think it would have stopped 
them from hanging their banners and cheering themselves as 
loudly as they could? Draco is rather famous for not getting it...he 
probably couldn't make himself believe that Slytherin were going 
to lose anymore than Harry could make himself believe that his 
vision of Sirius was a trick.


Wendy:
> As for Arthur Weasley, he is portrayed as a lovely guy, right? <

Pippin:
No. Harry thinks he is  a lovely guy, and he is, compared to say, 
Lucius Malfoy or Vernon Dursley. Does a person have to be 
perfect to be a role model? Arthur is a pretty good guy despite his 
faults, which is all we have a right to expect from a decent 
person, IMO. Most of us can't be perfect, so what could a 
perfect role model provide us with, except a reason to despair of 
ourselves?
. 

Wendy:
> 
> And, as I pointed out in my earlier message, I'm most 
disturbed  about the use of Obliviate - it seems like that spell 
gets tossed  around frequently and we've yet to heard a single 
word about the  ethics of altering someone's memory. <<

Pippin:
cough*Lockhart*cough <g>. 

Wendy:
>>At worst, it's seen as okay for  Wizarding folk to change 
someone's memory for whatever reason, no questions asked. At 
*best* (and I use that term loosely), it's only okay to use Obliviate 
unrestrainedly on Muggles. Which again brings  us to the very 
ugly question of basic human rights.<<

Pippin:

Now you've touched on something interesting. The wizards 
isolated themselves from the Muggle world back in 1750 or so. 
The idea that individuals have rights and governments exist to 
secure them was scarcely accepted in those days. The French 
and American revolutions were yet to be fought.

 In those days, and to this day in many non-Western societies,  
human rights were vested in the *class*, rather than the 
individual. Women were considered to have different rights than 
men, peasants had different rights than nobles,  and so on. 

The wizards seem to live  in a society where humanist 
revolutions never took place. They don't think of people as 
having equal individual rights; instead it's maintaining their rights 
as wizards that concerns them.  Wizards have a right to exist free 
of interference from Muggles, Muggles have no right to know 
about wizards,  therefore it's okay to modify Muggle memories. 

Harry, who has grown up in a society where the concept of 
individual rights is accepted, assumes  that any decent 
wizard would treat an Elf as an equal...and yet we see that it isn't 
so. Even decent wizards like Sirius think that House Elves are 
inferior. 

IMO, one of the reasons Hermione's attempts to lead the House 
Elves into revolution has failed is that she takes the concept of 
individual rights for granted and doesn't see that the House 
Elves have to be educated to understand it first.


Pippin