[HPforGrownups] Identifying with Muggles in Potterverse WAS: Re: DD at th...

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 158265

 Ken:
>
> Thanks for the kind words. I hoped for rather more support on this
> here than I seem to be getting. Maybe this group is not nearly as
> heavily populated by literature majors as I always imagined.

Magpie:
Heh--well, I'm one.  I just think of Hogwarts as being a joke on school on a 
child's level and don't think JKR has fleshed out that part of her world.  I 
find that easier to believe, actually, than the idea there's a lot of stuff 
going on that we just never see in this small world.  She could easily throw 
in another joke on Muggle culture at any time, but it would probably come 
across as just that to me, a joke on Muggle Culture. She's told us, I 
believe, that Hogwarts has no higher education as well.

As a person I'd miss that aspect of Wizarding education--I'd also miss 
another thing Hermione says wizards lack, which is logic.  Her own challenge 
to Slinkhard's text in OotP is a non-sequitor yet of course there's no 
actual rebuttle to it either.  There's no discussion of philosophy or ethics 
in places where I think it really matters at Hogwarts either.  An education 
that's practical in the way Hogwarts' is doesn't encouarge, imo, the same 
kind of thinking as the study of literature or philosophy might.  Or history 
if it's coming from different sources.

We know that Wizards have little understanding of basic science given 
Arthur's wistful desire to know "how Muggle airplanes stay up"---something 
he could learn.  He lives in the same universe, so obviously physics still 
exist, even if there are a few different things he can do other people 
can't.

I think that's also why Hermione's line about "books and cleverness" always 
jars me.  Not because she says it, because I think it fits her character and 
I get what she's saying in the scene.  But that it seems like such a 
commonly held belief in the WW at times, as if "books and cleverness" refers 
a lot of important things.  I know I have read theories that this is part of 
the point Rowling is making, that Ravenclaw, for instance, is inferior 
because they represent the intellectual, as in knowledge for the sake of 
knowledge, which is a bad thing.

Ken:
> All the discussions here about magical bullies and helpless Muggles
> have given me some cause to think about the Separation and I have come
> up with a theory. Unlike many here I do not think I would routinely
> feel helpless or fearful when dealing wizards and witches, assuming
> that they really existed. In all honesty I probably would just drink
> the mead and have a laugh over the toffee. These wizards and witches
> are not like those of folk tales. They are just like us but they have
> a talent to do magic instead of, in my case, calculus. So I don't
> think I would be fearful in their presence any more than I am in the
> presence of real people who are younger, bigger, stronger, quicker, or
> more atheletic than I am. We depend on our common culture to prevent
> normal interactions from turning into violent ones where we might be
> at a disadvantage.

Magpie:
As somebody who's spoken a lot about wizarding bullying of Muggles, I do 
basically agree with this.  When I think that I would feel "unsafe" around 
wizards I don't think of feeling unsafe in general.  I mean that if I were, 
say, friends with a Weasley twin and then saw him having a big laugh over 
picking on a Muggle with magic because he deserved it, it would make me feel 
less safe around that twin.  Or maybe "not safe" isn't the right term 
either, but I would definitely take note of it and remember it, not trusting 
that this is something he wouldn't do.

That's just the same as with Muggles, though.  I can be friends with men, 
but if I saw a man rough up a woman for fun that would become an important 
of his character for me.  Same with any person who revealed that they liked 
that kind of thing.  Your scenario for how the breach occurred due to this 
sort of thing makes sense to me.

-m