It’s not easy being green…

Because I just can’t let it die. (Yes, it’s Harry Potter again. Shut up.)

But first – apparently I have a separated-at-birth Internet twin from Urbana, IL. Dude!

Okay, so Slytherin. So… it’s been months since I read the last book, and our friends in green and silver are still niggling at the back of my mind. Because it’s Just. Not. Fair. It’s not! It’s like, after all that trouble Rowling took to hammer home “War is bad”, “War isn’t simple”, etc., after all those careless deaths and hero-troubling doubts, we’re still allowed to take home, “Wars get started because there are some people with no redeeming qualities, and they do bad things.”

Bah! Blagh! AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRG, I say*!

First, I find it extremely troubling that Rowling has explicitly drawn partial comparisons between Voldemort’s takeover and Hitler’s rise to power, because, if we look at the complex historical factors that helped to motivate the latter in the real world, the wizarding world version is dangerously oversimplified.

This, by the by, is another reason why I am fascinated by Rowling’s portrayal of Snape. So many films and novels go the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too route of casting rich, upper-class people as the racist villains: not only do we get to feel good about own tolerance, we also get a legitimate moral reason to look down our noses on people who are better off than we are! Yay! But, in real life, when you look at the strata of society who are drawn to neo-Nazism – or who were drawn to original Nazism, for that matter – sure, you see plenty of recruits from the bourgeoisie and the hoity-toity. But the numbers come from the working class. Because a lot of people turn to hatred when it seems like there’s nowhere else for them to go.

That was a big factor in 1930s Germany. With the treaty of Versailles, the victors of the First World War hamstrung Germany financially. At the time, economist John Maynard Keynes even warned politicians that their policy would lead to another war, or at least the deaths of “many millions of German men, women, and children”. Germany’s government was no help: to “solve” their citizens’ lack of funds, they simply printed more money. Inflation was rampant – workers got breaks after they were paid so they could go spend their money before prices doubled. People burned cash to heat their homes because it was cheaper than firewood.

It’s comforting to believe that there was something fundamentally “wrong” with the generation of German people who allowed the Nazi government to come to power. That way, since we’re not monsters, we don’t have to worry about our own ethics. Likewise, it’s nice to read stories where people who wear silver and green can be dismissed as inherently bad people. After all, it’s our choices that show us who we are. We chose Gryffindor or Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw because we’re good people, not the other way around.

But what does that say about how to prevent racism and genocide? Do we just keep a knowing eye on “the likely suspects” until they shout “Avada kedavra!” or take their Dark Mark? Why isn’t Dumbledore showing the same interest in Pansy Parkinson or Crabbe or Goyle as he does in Harry? Why does he wait until the Malfoy kid has frickin’ spent the whole school year trying to kill him before he suggests that, you know, there might be a place for you outside the Death Eaters? How can anyone expect the same kids whose dignity he grinds into the dirt at the end of the first book to chipperly agree to fight against their families in the seventh?

I can buy that there are people whose inherent characteristics make them more likely to acquire and act on baseless prejudices. I can even buy that some people are so cowardly, selfish, or ambitious that a society based on tolerance and freedom will never be able to offer them enough personal benefits to win them over from one based on bigotry and control. But I can’t buy that a child’s convictions on the subject at age eleven are sufficient grounds to give up on them. We wouldn’t let a math teacher stop teaching children how to add and subtract just because they appear to be stupid; why should we condone adults who don’t teach children how to behave because they appear to be bad?

In the seventh book, we learn that the Cruciatus curse appears to be the only thing Crabbe and Goyle were ever good at. Hello! If you don’t want them to be Death Eaters, find something else they’re good at before the Carrows approach them! If you didn’t explain your morals to Pansy Parkinson, how do you expect her to adopt them? And, if you boot out a whole house based on the question of one kid, how do you expect any of them to ever trust you again? So what is this? It’s wrong to characterize people based on the traits of their parents, but it’s okay to judge them based on the culture they’ve come from?

You may be thinking, Sure, but shouldn’t we still recognize that the Gryffindors are better people, because they didn’t need this moral coddling? Yeah, the same way we recognize the kid who “gets” math problems without help is smart. But the point of enforcing a moral code – to me, at least – is to ensure people behave in a socially cohesive** way, not to provide a basis for judging people better or worse than each other.

I guess maybe I’m a little behaviourist***. I don’t really care what’s going on inside the brain of a Malfoy or a Snape: maybe, no matter how he behaves, he spends the rest of his life still thinking racist thoughts. He has the free will**** to act in any way he pleases. Just because his motivation – which I ultimately have no way of judging – may or may not be one I can approve doesn’t mean I shouldn’t find a way to encourage him to do the right things.

Even supposing all the Slytherin kids are cowardly jerks who could never in a million years be convinced to fight for what’s right, that doesn’t mean they’re valueless. There are other virtues besides fighting for what you believe in. Yes, we need people who are brave enough to do so, and they are surely to be admired for their courage. But you can’t approach life as a never-ending war. What about the artists, inventors, scientists, philosophers, and humanitarians of peacetime? What about the more mundane people who set up health care and keep our sanitation system running? I don’t know if William Shakespeare would have fought for Hogwarts or if Edward Jenner would have been in Dumbledore’s Army, but I still think Sonnet 116 is beautiful, and I don’t know where we’d be without the smallpox vaccine. Some important people didn’t “fight with Gryffindor”: Werner Heisenberg helped advance our understanding of the universe, but he headed the Nazi atomic bomb project. Richard Wagner was an acknowledged anti-Semite whose music inspired Hitler – but his Ride of the Valkyries isn’t any less majestic, for all that. Furthermore, the list of brilliant conscientious objectors and anti-war activists is long: Bertrand Russell, A. E. Eddington…

Conversely, Joseph Stalin fought valiantly against the Nazis, but thousands of his countrypeople were murdered under his regime. Oppenheimer and his fellow physicists toiled endlessly on the Manhattan Project and helped to win the war for the Allies, but the fruit of their efforts was millions of dead civilians.

Personally, I don’t think any human being has the right to judge any other except in terms of modifying one’s behaviour to obtain one’s desired results, given theirs. Though I disagree with him on most things, I do like the bit of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity where he argues that, since the soul must live in the body, one can never pass moral judgement on a person (ie on their soul – the part that’s “them”) in the physical realm, because you have no idea how a person’s body affects their soul. The example he uses: maybe your “goodness” really has more to do with your good digestive system than with “you”. Maybe your enemy’s “evil” personality is actually strongly due to the fact that he has stomach problems. Lewis has some very pretty imagery of a person’s corporeal trappings “falling away” to reveal the true “them” underneath. Now, given that I’m more of a functionalist/materialist myself, I don’t quite follow Lewis in this, but I do agree with his main point: we lack the ability to attribute any given person’s behaviour to “them” rather than environmental factors, genetics, etc.

The part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that filled me with the most moral outrage was not the Muggle-borns losing their wands in the Ministry or people dying in the Battle of Hogwarts. It was Dumbledore saying to Snape, “You disgust me.” Because, while I understand it on a character level – “You made the same mistakes I did, and I can’t tolerate that” – it seems to me that such a “you bad, we good” attitude toward Slytherin is what ails the Wizarding World in the first place. And our own.

* Actually, knowing me, I probably say something more like, “Your mom!” But that’s beside the point.

** OK, clearly you can’t make up moral codes on the basis of social cohesion alone, because, of course, Nazism or apartheid are both socially cohesive, provided everyone follows the rules. But I’m talking about what a moral code should do here, not what a moral code should be. Necessary, not sufficient, people!

*** “You’re a little like Watson!” “You’re a little ‘him’, too!” “We’re both a little like Skiiinnnn-er…” “Admitting it is not an easy thing to do – ” “– but I guess it’s true –” “ – between me and you, I think – ” “ – everyone’s a little behaviourist, some-tiiiimes…”

**** Or not – but that’s a whole ‘nother blog entry.