The point of it all.

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 191625



--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, sigurd at ... wrote:
>
> Dear List
> 
> I have a hard time seeing "a plea for toleration" as the mainspring in Harry Potter. I think that might have been an idea slapped on after the fact by Rowling to sound good; kind of like Miss America candidates always wanting "World Piece."
> 
> The assertion of "plea for tolerance" creates all sorts of other problems, not the least of which is the definition for tolerance. The classic definition of tolerance is "living with something you hate." This would mean in physical terms, forgoing a root canal for a very painful toothache and living with the pain. 


Pippin:
You might undergo an intensely painful root canal procedure, not because you love suffering, but  in hopes of  avoiding a future toothache and saving the tooth. As for the definition of tolerance, I prefer this:

"
it is crucial for all  of us to give new meaning to the word `tolerance' and understand that our ability to value each and every person is the ethical basis for peace, security and intercultural dialogue.

A peaceful future depends on our everyday acts and gestures. Let us educate for tolerance in our schools and communities, in our homes and workplaces and, most of all, in our hearts and minds."

- Federico Mayor, Director General of UNESCO from his address at the dedication of the Museum of Tolerance, Feb. 8, 1993. 


I think Harry learns a lot about trying to see value in others, even if they don't see value, or the same kind of value, in him. 

One complication he deals with is that we humans value things differently depending on whether we see them as precious in themselves or as items for exchange. 

Normal people resist putting an exchange value on those that they love; this is what Voldemort cannot understand. To him it is folly that Lily wouldn't stand aside, and he honestly cannot imagine that Snape, who is no fool,  would go on loving a woman who is dead and can't give him anything. 

The reader, who presumably cares enough about Harry to have read through seven books about him, finds that Narcissa puts only an exchange value on Harry. She saves him, but only because of what she expects to get in return: the life of her son.  We don't like that -- it offends our sense of proportion because  Harry saved her son for the sake of their common humanity, which Narcissa (still!) does not recognize.  Nevertheless an exchange value is still a value, and preferable to indifference. 

Pippin