Harsh Morality - Combined answers

[delwynmarch]

No: HPFGUIDX 121093


Valky wrote:
"No Del, it is the frame of reference you're using that is 
oversimplified. You speak of morality in a human character as though 
it should be some automated machinery turning cogs in set process. "

Del replies:
No, I'm not the one doing that : that's the way things are presented
in the books. More precisely, anyone who doesn't see that Harry and DD
are right is evil. I've always claimed that morality is highly
dependent on many things, including past experiences and emotional
circumstances. But in the books, those things don't matter. The fact
that Percy was overstressed and badly hurt by what his father told
him, the fact that Seamus and Marrietta were stuck between conflicting
loyalties, the fact that Harry looks so much like Snape's past
tormentor, all those things are presented as not mattering, not being
any kind of excuse, and those people are presented not only as wrong
but even evil for making the wrong choices they made. I happen to
disagree strongly.

Valky wrote:
"Harry is a young boy with an emotional need for acceptance, his 
reaction to many years of emotional rollercoaster from isolation to 
acceptance and back to isolation again doesn't lend to a conclusion 
that he is morally hypocritical, a judgement like that is IMO 
indifferent to the degree of being cruelty. A person in pain is just 
that, a person in pain, if we are looking for logical perfection in 
human emotion then we are going to find ourselves dissappointed."

Del replies:
I'm not the one asking for logical perfection in human emotion. I'm
not the one arguing that teenagers (by definition very highly
emotional people) should always make the right decision, and that if
they don't then they are evil. I'm not the one arguing that adult
characters whose heart fills with fear at the simple name of LV should
instantly lay those fears aside and unhesitatingly accept a single
second-hand testimony and a small bunch of highly circumstancial
evidence as the proof that LV has been resurrected, and that if they
don't, then they are not only wrong but evil.
 
Valky wrote:
"If JKR says that a real Love became an option in Toms Life and he
chose against it, and that he clearly knew at the time his choice was
evil and that Love was good, irregardless of his tormented past. Then
I, for one, will definitely believe her."

Del replies:
Except that this is not what she said. She said LV never loved. This
means that even as a baby, or as a toddler, or as a small child, or as
an older child, or as a teenager, he didn't love. And I happen to
categorically refuse the idea that kids can *choose* not to love. They
can *pretend* not to love, but they cannot in any way force themselves
not to love. Loving is as natural for a child as breathing. So when I
hear of a child who never loved, I just know that there was something
seriously wrong with that child *to start with*.

Del