unselfish love vs. sacrificial love (was: Harry's protection)

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 113208

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Tonks" <tonks_op at y...> wrote:

Tonks:
> 
> Agape love also involves choice.  One can love as Dumbledore has 
out 
> of affection and feeling.  One can also with affection or separate 
> from it,  CHOOSE to love.  And the choice to place another's 
welfare 
> above your own without regard to feelings, is the type of love that 
> allows one to love one's enemy. This is a very, very rare form of 
> love.  I also think that it is a form that we will see of Snape.  
> Snape does much of his protection of Harry out of duty to 
> Dumbledore, but there might come a time when he does more than his 
> duty.  

Geoff:
I would agree with that. As a side comment, you might notice that I 
referred to this in my post as "selfless" love; I would specifically 
distinguish between this and "unselfish" love as having different 
aspects.

There is an interesting take on this in that selfless love, although 
normally rare, will surface in a crisis situation. If you look at the 
way in which people help in, say, an event like a serious accident or 
a terrorist attack or the way in which, in the UK, people in places 
lik the East End of London reacted in the bombing raids of 1940/41, 
this wish to help, even at personal risk, comes to the fore and folk 
who are normally retiring or wary of risk will do incredible things 
at such times. Neville comes immediately to mind as an example in HP.

The Wizarding World is in a crisis situation even if top officials 
are refusing to see the problem. Some of the folk in our saga have 
recognised this and are reacting accordingly. So we see Harry and 
friends doing things which may be badly thought out, foolhardy and 
even counter-productive to the safety of those they are trying to 
protect. But their actions are not being taken out of any other 
choice but to place others' welfare first.

Desparate times demand desperate measures and those measures may well 
include agape.

Geoff
Enjoy Exmoor and the 
heritage West Somerset Railway at:
http://www.aspectsofexmoor.com