[HPforGrownups] Re:Back to Slytherin House - Choosing

[Sharon Hayes]

No: HPFGUIDX 176208

<SNIP>   montims:
> People didn't
>   like my suggestion of using this "righteous anger"
>   to combat real life
>   injustice, but I can't understand how people who get
>   so exercised by the
>   iniquities of the fictional world, and its possible
>   parallels with Naziism
>   or the much more historical (is this correct?)
>   Antebellum South of America,
>   and the dastardly use of Unforgivables, will not use
>   that horror and
>   indignation and vigour to condemn Real Life
>   iniquities - torture and
>   genocide, oppression, capital crimes, slavery (of
>   people, not fictional
>   house elves), etc, etc...
>
Sharon:
Why would you assume that? It is the people who express their righteous anger 
at the horrors in fiction who would be most likely to be the ones to also do so in 
real life, at least in my experience. Most people have never experienced 
'righteous anger' at all in their lives, unless it concerns themselves. Anyone who 
can understand the horrors in HP and experience indignation on behalf of the 
characters is already 90% towards doing the same in real life. I teach moral 
philosophy to first year university students and most of them have no idea what 
the world is really like, what horrors are being perpetrated in countries far away 
(and at home). Once they are faced with it, they almost always take it on board, 
understanding that feeling moral outrage about what is happening in, say, 
Sudan, gives them cause to act to help alleviate suffering.

But that's just my own experience and the context is a university classroom in 
Australia -- so probably can't generalise too much. Whether reading HP helps 
people develop the same sense of moral outrage is another question. I still think 
it would depend on the person's prior experience.