[HPforGrownups] Re: Hermione and Marietta

[Marion Ros]

No: HPFGUIDX 155002


I posted this as a reply on SisterMagpie's LJ, but I'll post it here as well.


"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you" (Friedrich Nietzsche)

This is where my objection to the whole Marietta thing comes from. I don't care if Marietta *deserved* to be punished. I don't care what the consequenses would be or if she was aware of them. I care about the fact that civilized people should not act as uncivilized people. If you are civilized, you do not torture, rape or disfigure people. If you want to be a Hero, on the side of Light, One of the Good Guys, you do not hex *anybody* with a permanent disfiguring hex for *any* reason. Civilized society might make rules and laws to protect society, and anyone within that society who would break those laws might be punished, but that is where the law comes in, and justice. If you go and lynch somebody because they've made you upset or broke an unwritten rule of conduct you are no longer entitled to the epithet 'civilised person'.

I saw a documentary not long ago about awful things which happen in (American) prisons (not that these things are *only* happening in American prisons; it was an American documentary). 
I saw (security camera tape) prison guards strap an inmate in a chair and beating him around the head with batons. I saw inmates that didn't move quickly enough to the taste of the guards being cattle-prodded down and kicked by three or four guards. I saw pictures of inmates who were so sprayed with pepperspray that up to a third of their bodies were covered with second and third degree burns. 
Did these inmates *deserve* to be beaten, sprayed, kicked and cattle-prodded? We're talking about thieves, rapists and murderers here.
But that is not really the question.
The question should be, what separates the inmates from the guards if the guards are allowed to behave as beastly, as cruelly, as immoral as the inmates?
What separates civilized justice from barbaric revenge or even sadistic pleasure from domination?
What separates the Side of the Light from the Forces of Dark if the posterchildren of the Light are allowed to dole out disfigurement with impunity?


Marion

PS Betsy, JustCarol and SisterMagpie, when I read your posts my heart lifted from depression: there is hope for humanity yet :-) Wish I could be as eloquent and as dead-on *right* as you three. 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]