Sportsmanship/legitimacy

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 151943

> Betsy HP:
> What they *did* do was increase 
> > Harry's personal glory.  
> > 
> 
> 
> Jen:
> You know, as a mother myself I can quite honestly say that 
rewarding 
> my child for showing such strength of character would be FAR more 
> important to me than rewarding him for following the rules at the 
risk 
> of discarding any sense of humanitarianism and care for other 
human 
> beings...why should that be ANY different in this situation?
>

Alla:

I agree with you, Jen. 
I read this as a message that saving lifes ( even if the danger was 
only perceived) is more important than caring about winning by all 
means.

Rewards of course do not always follow good deeds in RL, if ever. 
But IMO she is saying here that such good deeds SHOULD be rewarded 
and at least in Potterverse she has a freedom to sometimes reward 
the characters for the good deeds they do ( and I do agree with the 
argument that we don't know precisely that points for moral  fiber 
could not be awarded. For all I know they can and should be awarded 
to anybody who shows moral fiber and will be in perfect accordance 
to the rules of TWT for all I know. )

Dumbledore IMO does the similar thing in PS/SS. He awards the points 
to Neville for moral courage and JKR did say that she specifically  
wanted to make a point of how important moral courage is.

Was Neville standing up to his friends stupid? Yes, I would 
definitely say so, since he was an additional obstacle on their 
quest to "save the stone from Snape" for all they knew. But for 
Neville they could have gotten there faster.

Neville IMO did not help them one bit, he just deterred them for 
nothing, except for doing what he believed was right.

I think Harry doing what he thought was right is by far more 
important than winning the competition.

Neville IMO really really did not think that he would help 
Gryffindor win House Cup, when he tried to stop the Trio.

Does it mean that he should not have gotten the points? I think it 
was a just reward and as long as Neville back there and Harry here 
did not expect to be rewarded, I have absolutely no problem with it.

And here is the example from RW that sometimes saving the lifes of 
your competitors even at the expense of strictly following the rules 
gets noticed.

Such example is the Pierre de Coubertein medal for true 
sportsmanship that gets awarded on the Olimpics.

Here is the brief story from Wikipedia about one recipient of this 
medal.

For some reason his actions remind me of what Harry did, even if in 
Harry's situation the danger was only perceived.


"Lawrence Lemieux (born on November 12, 1955 in Edmonton, Alberta) 
is a Canadian sailor, who competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in 
the Finn class. Lemieux was on course to win a silver medal when he 
noticed Joseph Chan and Shaw Her Siew of Singapore who had fallen 
out of his boat and was injured. Chan was struggling to stay afloat 
amid the currents. Lemieux abandoned the race and saved his 
competitor.

This action caused Lemieux to slip from second place. He finished 
the event in 22nd place. At the closing ceremonies, IOC President 
Juan Antonio Samaranch awarded Lemieux the Pierre de Coubertin Medal 
for Sportsmanship.

Lemieux has since retired from sailing and is now a coach."

Of course, nobody awarded him the second place in the race, which he 
abandoned, but he did not leave without recognition and that 
recognition IMO was rightfully his, just as Harry's points for moral 
fiber were IMO rightfully his.


JMO,

Alla,

who knows that in this time of the day she has a tendency to babble, 
but posts anyways.