Choices (was re: Levels and contradictions in JKR's writing)

[Matt]

No: HPFGUIDX 138532

--- Pippin wrote (responding to Lupinlore):
> The contradiction is not in the narrative, but in the 
> interpretation people have put on it. People have taken 
> Dumbledore's words to mean, "we are what we choose to be."
> [But] Dumbledore never said "Our choices make us what we 
> are." He said, speaking of  Harry's choice not to be in 
> Slytherin, that it "makes you *very different* from Tom 
> Riddle.  It is our choices, Harry, that show what we 
> truly are."  [I]t is never stated anywhere that 
> Dumbledore or JKR thinks choice is the *cause* of the 
> differences.  The emphasis is on examining people's 
> choices in order to determine who can be trusted, not on 
> the idea that we are solely what we choose to be. 

The only difference between the two interpretations is the
philosophical question of free will.  If one assumes that people's
choices (colored as they may be by perspective and experience) are
ultimately made of their own free will, then Dumbledore's statement
must mean that our nature is simply the sum of our choices -- he
cannot be saying that there is some inner nature, born of history and
experience, that dictates our choices.  

I think the free will assumption is unavoidable in Dumbledore's case
(if not JKR's).  If Dumbledore were not a free will proponent, why
refer to "choices" in the first place?  He could simply have espoused
some more or less sophisticated version of the platitude that actions
speak louder than words.  

-- Pippin continued
> Indeed, if the latter were true, then looking at the choices 
> people have made in the past would be a very poor way to 
> decide whether to trust them, because they could easily 
> choose differently next time.

That is a valid objection only if you read Dumbledore's statement as a
practical, rather than a moral, observation.  I think it is quite
clearly the latter.  Dumbledore is not saying "I trust you, Harry,
because even though Voldemort 'put a bit of himself in you' I can see
from your choices that you are a good person."  Instead, he is saying
"What Voldemort put in you *cannot* make you good or evil; only what
you choose to do with it can.  Look how you chose what you thought was
right when you were sorted: That is the sort of thing that makes you a
good person."

There is a parallel here with Dumbledore's discussion with Malfoy on
the tower.  While on the surface he is explaining to Malfoy why he
(Dumbledore) does not believe Malfoy will kill him, in fact he is
working feverishly to *convince* Malfoy that he has a choice in the
matter -- not just on the practical level of "what will happen to me
if I don't do it?" but on the moral level of "haven't I already sold
my soul?".  When Malfoy says "you don't know what I'm capable of,"
Dumbledore confronts him with his own choices just as he did with
Harry in CS not -- despite what he literally says -- to show that
Draco is incapable of murdering him, but to tell Draco, in essence,
"whatever you have done in the past, you can redeem yourself by simply
making the right choice now." 

I think, however, that there is a different way of resolving the
contradiction that Lupinlore sees in Dumbledore's view of Voldemort. 
What Dumbledore is doing is not -- as Harry believes -- trying to show
Harry that Voldemort was "evil" even as a child.  (As Jen and others
have pointed out, if Dumbledore had thought Voldemort irretrievably
evil then, he would not have unleashed him upon Hogwarts.)  Rather,
Dumbledore is allowing Harry to study the way that Voldemort acts,
because those known acts are good clues to unknown acts (past or
future).  Of course Voldemort could choose to change the way he acts,
but that power of choice does not mean that there will be no patterns
in his actions.  

Example: Dumbledore concludes from Voldemort's past actions that he
does not trust others and likes to act alone.  Does this mean he
always acts alone?  Of course not: otherwise what are the Death Eaters
for?  But this does not make the information about his tendency to act
alone useless.  Because that tendency is based on lack of trust, it
suggests, for instance, that Voldemort has not confided to his Death
Eaters the details of his horcruxes, and that someone hunting them
down therefore is unlikely to be facing an army of Death Eaters. 

-- Matt