Choice and Essentialism/Understanding Snape)

[Renee]

No: HPFGUIDX 154004

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

> > Gerry:
> > 
> > But Voldemort could help it. He is unable to love, but he does know
> > right from wrong. He hoodwinked almost the entire school when he was a
> > boy. He could have gone on doing that and have had a brilliant career
> > at the MoM. He would have been hugely popular, could have married a
> > trophy wife and had a couple of children en nobody would have known
> > that inside he was an egocentric cold fish, only caring about himself.
> > He had these possibilities, yet he choose differently. 
> 
> Pippin:
> Exactly. And we do have a character who is just such a cold fish, who
> speaks of love in terms of power rather than feeling, who seems to
> understand the need for emotional support only intellectually, and yet
> is regarded  as a good man, indeed the best of them. Albus Dumbledore. 

Renee:
If you call Dumbledore a cold fish, how do you interpret the tear he
sheds in his office at the end of OotP - is it of the crocodile kind,
or is it genuine? In other words, is Dumbledore a hypocrite, or does
he mean what he says?

Dumbledore does indeed seem to see love as a power rather than as an
emotion (a force that inspires people to act instead of the proverbial
warm fuzzy feeling), yet I don't see how this would automatically make
him a cold fish like Voldemort is. When he says "I cared about you too
much. I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth,
more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the
lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted
exactly as Voldemort expects *we fools who love* to act," (emphasis
mine) he sounds anything but cold to me. He does stay calm, yes, but
that isn't the same. 

It looks like we're dealing with the old question again: does the
absence of a big show of emotion signify the absence of emotion
itself? Extravert people often take introvert people for cold, but
that doesn't mean they're right. Different people just have different
ways to express themselves. 

Renee