[the_old_crowd] Re: Death and magic

[Charme]

> SS replied:
>
> Perhaps DD meant that for LV there is something worse then being dead
> and that is living in a world that doesn't function on his hate
> filled twisted philosophy. To lose the battle for the philosophy of
> WW to
> love and honour and have to stay alive to watch that world grow and
> flourish, but never be able to understand it. Would be worse then
> dying, which would be swift painful moment and then over for all
> time.
>
<snip>

>>
>
>>SS Replied:
>
> JK described the Dementors as the manifestation of depression, not
> just feeling a little off, but clinical depression, which leaves you
> without any desire for life in anyway. This normally requires drug
> therapy, if you look at the dementors kiss, it could be seen as the
> drug treatment therapy, which leaves you completely dead, yes you
> function but you no longer have any responses to life at all, you
> don't even feel the depression. Which at least before the drugs
> you
> did feel tired, sleepy, angry, tearful, after the drugs even that is
> removed, you just seem to spend a great deal of time smiling sweetly
> and staring straight-ahead.
>
<snip>

Charme:

Ah, philosophy talk.  I *like* it :)

You're totally on the money in my book, SS, WRT what you theorize is behind 
DD's "something worse than death" comment to LV. Has anyone else noticed 
that LV has in effect tried to erase his own humanity throughout the years? 
He wants to appear as something greater than human, even to the point of 
killing his own father and family and changing his name. He admits this much 
in CoS - he wasn't going to keep his filthy Muggle father's name. This leads 
us to your point about watching a world that in LV's case, he would never 
completely understand or experience.  I apologize in advance if the rest of 
what I am going to post is OT, but it might (?) spur a whole new discussion.

To your point about the Dementors:

And what is the lack of desire for life?  It's the lack of *hope*, which is 
the virtue that permits us even in terrible times to rise above our despair 
and strive to attain peace and happiness. Where does all this lead?  Well, 
boggarts deceive by appearing as a wizard's worst fear.  Dementors deceive 
by "draining" a wizard of his/her happy memories, thereby making the wizard 
believe there is no hope. LV deceives by manipulating a wizard to follow him 
by fear, fear that there is no other recourse than to follow him, again no 
hope.  By becoming LV loyalists, Death Eaters are actually emulating LV's 
desire to deny his humanity, or to appear more than human. Funny, I also 
think the reason they are hooded when they apparate in the graveyard (GoF) 
isn't all because they don't wish to reveal themselves to each other - I 
rather think they wish to appear less human almost as uniform and inhumane 
as the Dementors. The perception of the absence of humanity could equate to 
the absence of hope.

Charme