Morality and Harry Potter

[Geoff]

No: HPFGUIDX 191830

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at ...> wrote:

Steve:
> Below you will find a quote that I found on the YouTube site of a young atheist. The original said 'religion', but in this case I will change that to 'law' because it applies just as well, and because I don't want to get in to a argument about religion. 
> 
> In this case, 'law' will mean law in the legal sense, but also in the sense of rules and regulations and similar. 
 
> Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told.
 
> (Law) is doing what you are told regardless of what is right.
 
> Many have argued that Harry was a nasty little boy who did nothing but flout the rules and get into trouble. If he were a good boy, he would have stayed in his bed and let the adults handle it. 
 
> Let the adults handle it for better or worse, though we know, without Harry's help, it would have always been for worse. 
 
> As I have strongly counter argued in the past. Harry may not have obeyed the rules, but he always did what was right. 
 
> He could not stand by and leave it to others, when it was clear that 'others' simply did not comprehend the source of the true danger, and they also seemed very adverse to listening to reason. 
 
> To some, Harry's behavior was criminal. He disobeyed rules, he broke laws, he flouted authority at every turn, or so it seemed. 
 
> To paraphrases Thomas Jefferson, 'the law is but the tyrants will'.
 
> Harry did what was right, rather than what he was told. Would we really rather Harry did what he was told even when his conscience knew it was not right?  
 
> An old argument, but I still, as always, side with Harry. 

Geoff:
As do I, Steve.

Edmund Burke is quoted as having said: "All that's necessary for the forces 
of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing."

This quote is found in various forms if you Google it, but the gist is clear.

As a Christian, I hold that there are moral absolutes which always apply, 
and which often cover our interaction with other human beings: the sanctity 
of life as shown in the commandments which speak of murder, perjury and 
sexual misconduct. I do not believe that one of them is that, when evil 
threatens, one stays in bed or turns a blind eye and leaves things to the 
"powers that be". This does not only cover Harry but also adults. In the last 
few weeks, we have seen adults -  especially in Syria - who want to see 
justice and fairness prevail have taken up "arms against a sea of troubles". 
Should they have sat at home while their homes came down round their 
ears?

As we see in the quote above, Harry did not always obey the "rules" but, 
outside the absolutes to which I have referred, many were the product of 
other decisions, Take, for example, the way in which Harry was treated 
in OOTP.  Fudge was unwilling to accept that Voldemort had returned. 
Why? Maybe cowardice; he was afraid to face the facts and felt that by 
denying it, the event would go away, as shown in his campaign to 
ridicule Harry and Dumbledore. Or was he obsessed with retaining his 
power base? A very telling fact here is Umbridge's attempts to silence 
Harry, even admitting to sending Dementors after him partly because 
she obviously considered that Fudge needed to be supported and 
proved to be right at every turn.

Those who argue that Harry was a nasty little boy need to remember that 
Harry's life and welfare was affected by a fair number of nasty large adults 
who had a range of their own agendas. As someone has already said in a 
reply, if the Potterverse actually existed and Harry had stayed in bed, the 
result would have been, to modify a chapter heading from C S Lewis' "The
Last Battle": 'Night Falls on the Wizarding World'.