Harsh Morality - Combined answers

[slgazit]

No: HPFGUIDX 121091


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

> Salit wrote:
> "I think that JKR models her WWII much after our own WWII. And that one
> without a doubt was a black and white affair. Either you supported the
> pure evil personified by Hitler (aka Voldemort) or you did not."
> 
> Del replies:
> I beg to differ. The majority of civilians in France chose a middle
> position. The proportion of French civilians who became either
> collabos or resistants is small, because many didn't feel very
> involved in what was happening.

Unless I am quite mistaken, WWII affected many more people than just
the French (whose behaviour during the war was hardly something to
brag about). I grew up in Israel in a kibbutz formed by holocaust
survivors and my parents families were relatively lucky, having
managed to escape the Nazies (one to British Mandate-ruled Israel, one
to London). Very few of my extended families were killed. Most kids in
my class were not so lucky. Their extended families were decimated. So
many had no grandparents, uncles, etc. The adults carried the
emotional (and some physical) scars. And these were the lucky ones who
got out (and most of the adults endured harrowing years in hiding or
concentration camps, and have seen their entire families destroyed).
It would not have helped any of them if they just put their head down
and cooperated. They were doomed because they were Jewish.

So of course my perspective on the matter is quite different than the
French or yours. If you don't resist evil, you are just aiding it, and
deluding yourself that it will leave you alone if you act nicely. 
No doubt JKR will describe many wizards in the upcoming book(s) who
will choose to hide their heads in the sand and demonstrate that they
are good low abiding pure blooded citizens. I think the example of
Regulus Black was given to show that all that and more would still not
help them in the end, or if it does, it will change them and make them
evil.

> Salit wrote:
> "During more peacefull times people can proceed without making real
> choices, but not in war. Then you are either for me or for my enemies."
> 
> Del replies:
> It's very interesting that you should say this, because I see the
> situation of the WW in OoP and of France during WWII as quite similar,
> in that there was no war going on officially, and the enemy wasn't
> easily definable (is that a word?). France capitulated in 1940, and
> after that it officially wasn't at war anymore. The Germans
> established a *French* government, which rendered the "me or my
> enemies" issue meaningless.

As I said, as a Jew of European origin my view on this is quite
different... If you were born of the wrong stock it would not have
mattered what you did or who you were, you'd still be killed.

In the potterverse, the same would apply to Muggleborn wizards.
Hermione, who actively fights against Voldemort would be a target, but
so would the average Joe, such as Justin Fletch-whatever, who never
did anything more aggressive than work hard in school. Cooperating
passively with Voldemort will be the same as letting him have his way
with them.

> And it's only
> History, it's the outcome that determined which of those two groups of
> patriots ended up being the "true" ones. If Germany had won the war,
> the resistants would have been deemed traitors, and the collabos would
> have been celebrated.

Are you suggesting that there was no moral difference between the
Nazis and those who opposed them and the only reason we denounce the
Nazis is because they lost? That Hitler was just another one in a long
list of dictators trying to rule the world? Megalomaniac tendencies
don't make one a monster. Napoleon Bonaparte was not a Hitler despite
similar expansionist tendencies. What made the Nazis unique was their
pure blood racial ideology which in their view gave them the right to
perform genocide and mass murder on a scale never before seen, and
whose society was technologically advanced enough to have the means to
execute it. Jews (or Gypsies) were not the only targets. Russians and
others were considered sub-humans too (though not to the extent that
they needed death camps, as they were more usefull as slaves)...

If you can't see the difference between the Nazis and their supporters
versus those who opposed them, except through the prism of who won, I
really don't know what else to say to you...

> Similarly, the Fudge administration in OoP is a non-DE group leading
> the public into a pro-LV situation, and those who want to fight LV end
> up having to fight their own government. If they win, they will come
> out as the true heroes, but should they lose, they would be marked as
> traitors to their country.

The point is that the collaborators make it possible for the real
enemy to take control and because they usually don't quite hold to
their extreme ideology, they serve as a fig leaf to evil to hide the
real intentions of the people they support. Morality is not something
that is relative and determined by the winner, or by who gets the good
headlines in the paper.

> Salit wrote:
> "He thinks he did the right thing based on the information he had on
> hand at the time. That's the best any of us can do..."
> 
> Del replies:
> Ah, but this is not enough, is it :-) ? Many characters in the
> Potterverse do the best they can based on the information they have,
> but if they make a choice that doesn't lead them to follow DD, then
> they are wrong. That's basically what Lupinlore was explaining : it
> doesn't matter that people do their best, it's what they end up doing
> that matters, no matter how honest they are or how good their
> intentions were.

I disagree again. Results surely matter. But intentions - and the
willingness to learn from mistakes - matter even more. None of JKR's
good characters are infallible. They have all been guilty of lying,
stealing, insensitivity, greed, you name it. It's the fact that they
are willing to lay these petty traits aside when faced with a hard
choice, and they are willing to grow and learn, that sets them apart.

> As for DD, since he is the epitome of goodness, he *cannot* do wrong.
> Whatever he did was necessarily right and good. In theory.

JKR made out Dumbledore to be the epitome of goodness, but she
definitely did not make him infallible. In her world Dumbledore cannot
mean wrong, but he can (and does) do wrong, as he himself readily admits.

Salit