Wizard supremacy(was:Re: Nel Question #4: Class and Elitism)

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 125701


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Tammy" <elsyee_h at y...> wrote:
> 
> <SNIP> 
> As for the separation of the two, it's necessary. Muggles would
> constantly be looking for magical solutions to their problems, if 
they
> actually managed to accept it. In all likelihood, it would return 
to
> the days of witch trials, because we don't like something we can't
> understand. Magic is the core of "things you can't understand." 
> 
> -Tammy

But of course, that brings up many ethical and moral problems, 
doesn't it?  Saying muggles would "look for magical solutions to 
their problems" really begs a lot of questions.  Particularly it 
begs the question of what is wrong with looking for magical 
solutions to problems.  I would have to say there is nothing, per 
se, wrong with looking for a magical solution to a problem, any more 
than there is something wrong with looking for a scientific or 
technological solution to a problem.  If wizards are capable of 
curing muggle diseases with potions, for instance, then don't they 
have a moral duty to share their abilities with the rest of 
humanity?  What is wrong with looking to wizards to provide magical 
solutions to sickness, for instance?  How is that different from 
looking to physicians to provide scientific solutions, which might 
as well be magical as far as the average person understands them?

To put it even more strictly, let us suppose wizards are capable of 
curing cancer (we know they don't suffer from it, at any rate).  I 
grant you there is nothing in the books that says this, but let's 
suppose for an example.  By holding themselves apart and denying 
muggles the cures they can provide, are they not guilty of a grave 
sin of ommission, in effect murder by implied consent?

By the way, this also shows up a weakness inherent in the idea of 
muggleborns and half-bloods.  If magic really could save their 
relatives, it is inconceivable that a muggleborn would let the 
statute of secrecy stand in the way of giving his mother a potion, 
for example, or that a half-blood wouldn't heal his nephew's broken 
arm because of some danger to wizardkind.  

JKR doesn't explore these questions and I, who am usually very hard 
on the author, really don't blame her.  If you take a hard look at 
all these issues the world construct she has built comes down like a 
house of cards.  In order to preserve some degree of believability 
it is essential that she not get too close to the interface between 
magical and non-magical worlds.  And I think that, more than any 
discomfort with mixed messages, is why she deals very little with 
muggles and muggle relations in her books.

Lupinlore