[HPforGrownups] Identifying with Muggles in Potterverse

[Ffred Clegg]

No: HPFGUIDX 158252

Quick_Silverwrote: 
 
>I got the impression from Quidditch though the Ages 
>that the wizarding retreat was more gradual then a schism. A lot 
>people seem to have this view that the Statue of Secrecy was a huge 
>change forcing massive social changes on wizarding society but the 
>impression I got was that it was simply the formal declaration of 
>something that appears to have been ongoing for at least three 
>hundred years. 

Or even longer. I think that the WW was de facto entirely seperate as far as "civilised society" went from before the time Hogwarts was founded, (though things would have been more fluid for poorer folk), and that once wizarding folk became aware that their abilities were inherited, they began to associate with one another rather than with Muggles - at the most basic level, a lot of the things on a wizard's weekly shopping list were things that wouldn't be purchased by Muggle households! I'd see the Statute of Secrecy and the formation of the Ministry as being socially far more important for the internal dynamics of the WW than for the relations between wizards and Muggles.

>But doesn't that become Patronizing to their culture? 
>I mean you speak of the contribution that "their" nation has made to 
>the world but they would argue that muggle England has made many 
>contributions to the muggle world. This seems like a "cultural" 
>minefield for me because it seem to me that you're saying that 
>Hogwarts should basically be teaching the wizards something that 
>will help them be assimilated into the muggle world. 

Well said. We literally don't (and probably never will) know just what cultural resources the WW has, they could be equally or even more rich than anything that is available to us - what potential there might be for magically enhanced music or theatre, for example.
 
We also don't know that the WW has the same political geography as the Muggle world, though there are strong hints that it doesn't.
 
cheers
 
Ffred