Motivations for Joining DEs (Was: Bullying)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 140960

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> wrote:

> Nora:
>  Particularly as the essence  of the Dark Arts is domination...
> 
> 
> Pippin:
> Where did that come from? I didn't think there was any consensus
> on what the essence of the Dark Arts is, either in the books or
> outside them -- the term seems to be applied to any magic of 
> which the speaker does not approve. 

Extrapolation.  All of the Unforgivables destroy a person's 
subjectivity, for example.  Imperio destroys the free will.  Crucio 
reduces a person out of consciousness into an animal state, as pain 
also destroys the mind.  And AK is the ultimate disenfranchisement.  Or 
take the graveyard ritual, wherein there are body parts used, and the 
*forcible* taking of things needed for it from others.

I agree that we have a definite lack of consensus, but I'm also fairly 
convinced that Rowling has a good idea of 'what is dark' and what 
isn't.  Dumbledore does, methinks.  And at least in my fairly non-
relativistic read on the morals of the Potterverse, there are things 
that are objectively Dark.

This is not to say that all magic which involves the domination of 
another person/use of them as an object is Dark, necessarily--we get 
into the really shady stuff like Obliviate here--but there is a common 
thread of a certain high-handedness to the things labeled as Dark.  
Horcruxies are the ultimate example of that: how nice of someone to use 
a person's death to help make themself immortal.

-Nora thinks, in short, that Voldemort's attitude is also perfectly 
Dark: power rules over cooperation and permission