Dumbledore's Unspeakable Word (going OT)

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> wrote:
> 
> Pippin:
> The thing I don't get, Kneasy, is how you knew you'd wonder for ever
> after. That doesn't sound like instinct. That sounds like your
> forebrain talking, and your forebrain isn't just you, it's stuffed 
> with messages from other people. Language itself is a message 
> from other people.
> 
> I'm not a neuroscientist or an expert on baboons, but from what I've
> read, the more complex a human  decision is, the more likely it 
> is to get bounced to the forebrain and thought about. I don't think 
> baboons do much of that, not having much language or forebrain 
> to speak of.

Kneasy:
As for how I knew I'd wonder - if you saw a vehicle overturn and come
sliding down the road on it's roof with the driver still inside and you gave
it a wave and drove on past, wouldn't you wonder afterwards that maybe you
could have helped? That you might have been able to make a difference?
Perhaps you wouldn't. Takes all sorts, I suppose. Must be nice to be so
sure about things.

What complex decision?
The distress was caused because I never made a conscious decision,
let alone a complex one.
It was event -> reaction like I was a bloody clockwork mouse. 
That is really worrying when you try to analyse in retrospect - even though
I hope that I'd make the same decision even if the pros and cons had 
been weighed up first.


> Pippin:
> Anyway, to bring this back to HP, if fifty gazillion people are going
> to buy a book, I would rather it said, "Love thy neighbour" than 
> "Kill the !@#$%!"  or even "Life is a mystery and makes us do 
> incomprehensible things." *That* sounds like a cop-out.  But that's 
> just me.
> 

Kneasy:
'Life is a mystery' - belongs right there in the Dept of Mysteries, then.
Because life is a mystery and has probably caused more speculation
than any other subject. And just because Harry and the Room have got
it (assuming I'm right) doesn't mean that there'll be a full and frank 
explanation. There won't be. There isn't one.
Love on the other hand is just one of the incomprehensible things
that life presents us with occasionally, an add-on extra, not an essential.

> Pippin:
> By the way, which of the 15 or so  definitions of 'life' do you
> have in mind?

Kneasy:
Definitions 1, 6, 12, 12c in the Shorter OED - they overlap to an extent but
in combination would be a fair approximation of what can be regarded as 
'life-force'.