OOP: The unknown power

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 119190


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dungrollin" 
<spotthedungbeetle at h...> wrote:
 
Dungrollin:
 
> That's exactly the paragraph that I was talking about in the bit
> you snipped.  The point I was trying to make was that the 
> phrase `sacrificial love' is never used in canon (just like
> `life debt' and `wandless magic'), and JKR has never
> (to my knowledge - please correct me if I'm wrong) used it in an
> interview.

Geoff:
No, but it is implied. DD says, "Your mother died to save you. If 
there is one thing Voldermort canot understand it is love."

The juxtaposition of those two sentences gives a pretty good nod in 
the direction of sacrificial love.

In GOF, Voldemort acknowledges that sacrifice was part of the 
equation...  

"You know that on the night I lost my powers and my body, I tried to 
kill him. His mother died in the attempt to save him.....

...His mother left upon him the traces of her sacrifice...."

Dungrollin:
> Indeed.  What do we mean by love, and sacrificial love, at that?  I 
> would disagree that lifeboat crews are a good example.  Do they all 
> *love* the unknown people they're risking their necks for?  Not 
> slushy love, definitely, but IMO not love at all.  And in order for 
> it to qualify under `sacrificial love', it would have to be
> the love for these strangers that *causes* them to risk their 
> necks.  I might just about stretch to `compassion' in a few
> cases, but that's not the same thing.

Geoff:
Which brings me back to a point I have been banging on about in the 
past at various times. In English, we have not managed to cope with 
the linguistic problems of the four Greek words which C.S Lewis 
called the "Four Loves" - eros, philos, storge and agape. The 
lifeboatmen I know personally go out because they feel a call - for 
want of a better word - to go and help, save, rescue those who are in 
a particular need. They do not "love" them in the sense of wanting to 
have a physical relationship with them, they do not have the same 
feelings towards them that they might have to family members but they 
are fellow human beings who have a need which can be met by the 
actions of these men who know that with the risks that they take on 
some shouts, they might not come back.

This is the sort of love/compassion/sympathy/empathy which leads 
people to jump into rivers to save drowning strangers; it is the 
motivation behind folk who exchanged places with strangers in Nazi 
death camps and went to the gas chambers in their place. It is also 
the motivation which drove Lily to stand between Harry and Voldemort 
and it is that same motivation which drives Harry to prepare to stand 
up to Voldemort in PS when he thinks that Snape is getting the Stone 
for him.

Dungrollin:
> As for your last two sentences, they're not fact at all,
> they're your opinion, and in relation to the RW I disagree 
> completely.  (Imagine the big smiley that I'm too stuffy to use.)

Geoff:
I'm glad you didn't use a big smiley. I think I would have completely 
misunderstood it. BTW, only one of my sentences is labelled "in 
fact". My last sentence was an extrapolation of that indicating where 
the outcome might well lead us.

I stand by what I said. If there is no sacrificial love to 
counterbalance as I indicated above, we finish up with the excesses 
of dictatorship as practised by Hitler or Stalin or currently Mugabe 
or in Sudan where no compassion or humanity is shown - exactly the 
Voldemort attitude. The world becomes one of "dog eat dog" because no 
one can trust anyone else and the coterie of folk round "the leader" 
are quite happy to climb on everybody else's faces to curry favour to 
reach the top of the heap and the devil take the hindmost; I suspect 
Lucius Malfoy drops neatly into that group as an example.

Dungrollin: 
> Sacrifices don't have to be made with love in order for them to
> make the world a better place.  Small acts of kindness, compassion 
> and empathy are not worthless because they are done out of a sense 
> of obligation rather than love.  

Geoff:
 If they are done out of a sense of obligation, then they are done 
almost as duties. I would query whether they are really acts of 
kindness etc. Snape saved Harry in PS out of a sense of obligation - 
did he feel kindness or compassion or empathy?