On Harry Potter and His World

[LordShiva]

I don't know. But please change your flag. I like to locate my posts by my flag, and your presence in threads complicates things

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by LordShiva
I don't know. But please change your flag. I like to locate my posts by my flag, and your presence in threads complicates things

Same here.

But you can check me and my posts by my new and distinctive avatar (pun intended - Krishna indeed is an avatar).

[Nubclear]

An analysis of the Federation in Star Trek also reveals that it is an evil imperialistic (albeit incompetent) civilisation a-la the British Empire.

[Locutus]

As Imran said, one of the absolutely key themes in the Harry Potter series is that of discrimination and prejudice. Not only is this obvious from reading the books, Rowling has been very outspoken on this issue in interviews and on her website and the like. The constructs of 'pure-bloods', 'half-bloods', 'muggle-borns' etc are merely inventions of certain people who consider these terms important (see Rowling's website), just as the Nazis created an elaborate system to separate Aryans from other 'races' and to decide who is and isn't a Jew based on ancestry. There is absolutely no evidence that these distinctions actually exist in the HP world, that magical ability is in any way based on bloodline (although obviously there is some kind of correlation since some families produce far more wizards than others). The entire premise you've based your essay on (including the timeline of interbreeding) is merely the self-proclaimed pure-blood's point of view.

[aneeshm]

Let me quote her site, to which you linked:

Section: F.A.Q.
Why are some people in the wizarding world (e.g., Harry) called 'half-blood' even though both their parents were magical?

The expressions 'pure-blood', 'half-blood' and 'Muggle-born' have been coined by people to whom these distinctions matter, and express their originators' prejudices. As far as somebody like Lucius Malfoy is concerned, for instance, a Muggle-born is as 'bad' as a Muggle. Therefore Harry would be considered only 'half' wizard, because of his mother's grandparents.

If you think this is far-fetched, look at some of the real charts the Nazis used to show what constituted 'Aryan' or 'Jewish' blood. I saw one in the Holocaust Museum in Washington when I had already devised the 'pure-blood', 'half-blood' and 'Muggle-born' definitions, and was chilled to see that the Nazis used precisely the same warped logic as the Death Eaters. A single Jewish grandparent 'polluted' the blood, according to their propaganda.

This is no way invalidates the model I made for the caste-like structure of the houses, nor does it invalidate the selection structure elucidated in post #13.

[Dr Strangelove]

Well, does this flag business really matter. After all you're both definitely muggles, so who cares to tell you apart?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by aneeshm
And Imran - one of the more important issues is the dehumanisation of muggles, which is rampant even within the "good guys", so to speak. How do we deal with that?

This is only true for the Dursleys, who are very clearly just extremely bad, close-minded, bigoted people and deliberately portrayed as they are for literary effect. For the most part the "good guys" do not dehumanise muggles. In fact, the "good guys" that we know well like the trio, Hagrid, Dumbledore and the Weasley family have a tremendous amount of respect for muggles in general.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Locutus


This is only true for the Dursleys, who are very clearly just extremely bad, close-minded, bigoted people and deliberately portrayed as they are for literary effect. For the most part the "good guys" do not dehumanise muggles. In fact, the "good guys" that we know well like the trio, Hagrid, Dumbledore and the Weasley family have a tremendous amount of respect for muggles in general.

The dehumanisation I'm talking about is a bit more subtle. You brought up the Weasleys, so let's run with that.

Arthur treats Muggles and Muggle technology as you or I would treat a curious toy. For him, it's all a plaything of children, not serious. He would find it difficult to understand how vital all these things are to us. This treatment - of the reduction of greatest achievements of muggles to nothing or to the status of toys - is precisely what you accused me of doing some time back.

And the fact that such an imbalance of power - magical people can afford to treat muggles and their world as nothing more than the playing of children - would inevitably lead to either the extermination of muggles or a two or three tiered system emerging in the long run? What of that?

[aneeshm]

And what of the two important things I mentioned earlier - about the evolution and selection of magic in the population, and the caste-like structure of Hogwarts houses?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by aneeshm
The caste analogy is very valid.

The house system determines who sleeps and attends classes with who, nothing in the books suggests that it has a significance in the wider wizarding community.

Moreover, in no way is any house superior to any other, which is the defining element of a caste system. Hufflepuffs most certainly aren't anyone's servant -- in fact Cedric Diggory (a Hufflepuff) was one of the most popular and respected students in the school and Hogwarts Champion for the Tri-Wizard tournament. Another key element in a caste system is that the lines between castes are determined by family, whereas the Hogwarts houses cut through family lines (as with the Parvati twins). It's also explicitly stated that there are both "good" and "bad" Slytherins (Slughorn being an example of a (more or less) good one). So your analogy is quite flawed.

Note that, like caste, your house is chosen for you by a hat, instead of birth. But the damning part is that people almost inevitably get the house of their parents.

We do not know how the hat chooses a house. In fact, somewhere in the books (IIRC towards the end of book 5 but I'm not quite sure about that) the suggestion is made that the hat doesn't choose at all: after all, it was Harry's choice to go into Gryffindor, not the Sorting Hat's.

[Solver]

Arthur treats Muggles and Muggle technology as you or I would treat a curious toy. For him, it's all a plaything of children, not serious. He would find it difficult to understand how vital all these things are to us. This treatment - of the reduction of greatest achievements of muggles to nothing or to the status of toys - is precisely what you accused me of doing some time back.

That's because of ignorance. These things aren't a toy to him because he's consciously reducing the achievements. They are toys because he has no idea what the actual function of these things is. If you saw some piece of alien technology, not knowing what it is, it'd seem to be merely a curious thing to you, too. It might be an amazing small, portable and powerful energy generator, but you wouldn't know that.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by aneeshm
Arthur treats Muggles and Muggle technology as you or I would treat a curious toy. For him, it's all a plaything of children, not serious.

I would strongly disagree with that. He views muggle technology the same way we view pre-modern technology. Most of us don't look down at the Great Pyramid and Angkor Wat and the irrigation and infrastructure systems of the ancient Egyptians and Khmer as silly child's play, despite the fact that we can do so much more impressive things today. Rather we are impressed what those ancient people could accomplish without the tools that we have at our disposal today.

That's exactly how Arthur Weasley views the muggle world: there is nothing childish about it for him, he's constantly impressed and amazed at what muggles can accomplish without the tools he has at his disposal: he couldn't figure out how to survive without magic if his life depended on it, just as modern man can't survive without his modern technologies. The difference is that modern man doesn't have the opportunity to view ancient Egyptian or Khmer society at work first-hand, while Arthur Weasley *can* experience muggle society. I think quite a few modern history buffs would be just as giddy at the prospect of traveling back in time and seeing how our ancestors lived as Arthur is at the prospect of traveling the tube. I know I would be...

And the fact that such an imbalance of power - magical people can afford to treat muggles and their world as nothing more than the playing of children - would inevitably lead to either the extermination of muggles or a two or three tiered system emerging in the long run? What of that?

We know that the magical community has been around since the start of civilization -- there was apparently an active magical community in ancient Egypt -- so after at least 6,000 years the system you describe still hasn't appeared. Just how long do you think this sort of thing would take?

The contrary is the case: in the reality of the books the wizarding community is spending a huge amount of resources (especially considering their tiny size) in creating an elaborate system to avoid any kind of interaction between the wizarding and non-wizarding communities, in the form of the Ministry of Magic.

I'll grant you that if the HP world was a reality more contamination between the two societies would be unavoidable and a caste-system could very well arise (and if it did it would've happened millennia ago), but that's why it's a fantasy...

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Locutus
I would strongly disagree with that. He views muggle technology the same way we view pre-modern technology. Most of us don't look down at the Great Pyramid and Angkor Wat and the irrigation and infrastructure systems of the ancient Egyptians and Khmer as silly child's play, despite the fact that we can do so much more impressive things today. Rather we are impressed what those ancient people could accomplish without the tools that we have at our disposal today.

That's exactly how Arthur Weasley views the muggle world: there is nothing childish about it for him, he's constantly impressed and amazed at what muggles can accomplish without the tools he has at his disposal: he couldn't figure out how to survive without magic if his life depended on it, just as modern man can't survive without his modern technologies. The difference is that modern man doesn't have the opportunity to view ancient Egyptian or Khmer society at work first-hand, while Arthur Weasley *can* experience muggle society. I think quite a few modern history buffs would be just as giddy at the prospect of traveling back in time and seeing how our ancestors lived as Arthur is at the prospect of traveling the tube. I know I would be...

That helps his case. Arthur essentially views muggle technology as the work of primitives, in your analogy.

[Locutus]

Primitive technology != childrens toys.

Are the ancient Egyptians inferior beings compared to modern ones just because of their lack of technology? Ancient Egyptians are not less human than modern man and most of us do not consider them inferior.

And while initially the Europeans that colonised the Americas and Africa might not have been very respectful to the natives, we are today learning to live together in peace with societies that still prefer to shy away from modern technology (though in some parts of the world better than in others), proving that it's most certainly not inevitable that if one society can completely overpower another it will actually do so.

[Kuciwalker]

Are the ancient Egyptians inferior beings compared to modern ones just because of their lack of technology? Ancient Egyptians are not less human than modern man and most of us do not consider them inferior.

They may not be inherently inferior, but there is definately an implication of superiority when you think of people as "primitive."