The secrecy motif/magic & muggles

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 180004



> a_svirn:
> And yet the magic civilisation reproduces itself genetically, not 
> just "transmit their culture across the generations". You can't be 
> inculturated into the WW if you lack the magic gene. If any 
> group's "separatism" is based on genetics it has very much to do with 
> eugenics: they include those with the required hereditary trait and 
> cull all those who lack it. (In other words all those who comprise 
> what you call for some reason "the dominant culture".)


Pippin:
This is broadening the definition of eugenics far beyond what is
generally meant by the term. For example there are strains of
Hinduism which do not accept converts; the only way you can
become a Hindu in their eyes is to be born one. Your only
acceptable mate is another Hindu. But It's absurd, not to 
mention anachronistic,  to say that their aim is eugenics; 
it has nothing to do  with improving the heredity
of the human race or breeding out bad qualities. It is more like 
they think if it is your destiny to be a Hindu, or marry a Hindu,
you would have been born one, or so I understand. 

We have no canon that the wizards, even the purebloods, 
ever thought that separating themselves from Muggle society
would make them a superior race. In fact it's the purebloods who
seem opposed to the separation since it deprived them of Muggles
to exploit.

The wizards who pressed for separation  did not 
want to be part of a persecuting society. The irony is that
they became a persecuting society themselves.

Here, btw, is a fascinating article about how
a deaf community  in Russia formed around a residential
school, and how it became, in a sense, invisible...

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2005/is_2_34/ai_68660113

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Pippin