Good moral core (Re: Dirty Harry/Clean Harry)

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 117155


> Alla:
> I agree with you about free will, I guess I am just thinking that 
> free will has to come from somewhere too, initially at least.

Neri:
Sure it comes from somewhere initially. There is nature and there is 
nurture. A child is born with certain genes and interacts with his 
environment. But then at some point free will appears. Once it did, 
the chain of cause and effect sort of breaks down. It must be, or the 
choices of the child would be uniquely determined by his nature and 
nurture, and then it's not free will.

> Alla:
> OK, let me try to rephrase my question again - how does Harry KNOW 
> which decisions are right? What helps him: higher power? generation 
> memory? What?

Neri:
I think I still don't understand your question. Harry is a sentient 
being with free will. He is surely capable of making decisions for 
himself, without the help of higher powers, generation memory and so 
on. How do you know, in your life, which decisions are right? OK, you 
might tell me that you frequently don't KNOW for sure which are the 
right decisions, you just do your best to choose right, and sometimes 
you get it wrong. And so does Harry. 

So are you asking why is Harry special? Why is it him and not 
somebody else who has the power to vanquish the Dark Lord? Well, my 
thoughts (especially after OotP) are that he is NOT that special. He 
just happens to be the one taken to fill the position. I mean, 
whatever the-power-the-dark-lord-knows-not is, whether it is Love, 
Sacrificial Love, Humanity, Life and so on (take your pick) it seems 
absurd to think that only Harry has it. Certainly many others also 
have this thing. It is abundant enough so the guys in the DoM could 
fill a whole room with the stuff. But fate, circumstances, and the 
Dark Lord himself marked Harry for the position, and now he's stuck 
with it. But at least he gets to be the hero of the story (not many 
benefits in this). 

I mean, it is like asking why is Harry the seeker of the Gryffindor 
team. He is because, out of all the candidates available at the time, 
he happened to be the most suitable for this position (or at least 
McGonagall and Wood thought he was). He has the abilities, but 
winning the match still depends on him making the right choices at 
the right moment, and he still can't do it without the six players in 
the other positions. And if it were Dean Thomas, not Harry, who was 
chosen for the position, then we would have asked why is it Dean. But 
SOMEONE got to be the seeker, and someone also got to be the LV 
nemesis (or there's no story) and it just happened to be Harry. 

Neri