Harry Potter: House Elves

The fourth Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, has a lot to say about house elves. Hermione discovers, to her dismay, that house elves are basically slaves. They work for no pay and never have vacations. What is more, house elves claim to be happy with their lot. They are horrified when Hermione suggests that they should be paid for their work. We are good, self-respecting house elves who would never accept pay, they exclaim. We are happy to serve . . . and serve . . . and serve . . . and serve.

I believe that J. K. Rowling wonderfully captures here the master's fantasy about his slaves or servants. What an ideal picture - the happy and grateful servant who just loves to serve the master. On the plantation: I treat my slaves well. See how happy they are. In the 1950s and 1960s (oh, do I remember this): Our Negroes down here are happy. We're good to our Negroes. Don't y'all northerners come down here stirring up trouble. Well, black people had to be "happy" if they knew what was good for them. They had to smile at white folks and "know their place."

The happy house elf is a fantasy. This creature exists only in the fantasy world of the Harry Potter novels. Real-life slaves and servants with second-class citizenship are not happy about it.

Harry Potter: Time Travel

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban, Harry and Hermione travel backwards in time to save the lives of Sirius Black and the hippogriff Buckbeak.

Here is what happens. Harry, Hermione, and Ron find themselves, all exhausted and Ron with a broken leg, back in the infirmary of Hogwarts, having done their best to save Sirius and Buckbeak. But it is apparent that everything that needed to be done to accomplish this has not been done. Professor Dumbledore arrives and urgently instructs Harry and Hermione to use Hermione’s time turner to turn back time, relive the last three hours, and accomplish the remaining things necessary to save Sirius and Buckbeak. Professor Dumbledore further instructs them that, as they relive the events of the last three hours, it is vital that they not be seen,

As Harry and Hermione turn back time and retrace their steps, they see themselves living through the same events the first time. They see their first-time selves doing all the things that they actually did the first time they lived through these events. And they take great care to stay out of sight of their first-time selves. So their first-time selves are not aware of their second-time selves, but their second-time selves are able to see their first-time selves and stay out of their sight.

A very interesting thing happens at a crucial point in these three hours. The first time around, Harry needed to chase away some very dangerous creatures called dementors. He tried hard to do the spell necessary to summon a patronus spirit, who would dispel these monsters. But he simply couldn’t manage this advanced spell. Right at the crucial moment, though, a patronus spirit did appear and dispel them. Harry could see that the patronus had been summoned by a figure on the other side of the lake, a figure who looked remarkably like himself and whom he took to be his father, even though Harry’s father had been dead for twelve years. Harry believed that someone his father or his father’s spirit had come to help him in his hour of need.

The second time around, at this same crucial point, Harry finds himself on the opposite side of the lake, very close to the spot where he had seen the figure whom he took to be his father. He feels very excited because he knows that any moment his father, who died when Harry was only one year old, will appear and produce the saving patronus spirit. Harry is very eager to see his father. The moment when the patronus is needed is now here. But Harry’s father does not appear. And as things grow more urgent – with the patronus needed NOW – Harry has a sudden realization. He hadn’t seen his father from the other side of the lake – he had seen himself. Harry steps forward, pronounces the spell, and summoned a beautiful patronus spirit in the form of a stag, who quickly dispels the dementors. Harry himself summoned the saving patronus.

Harry later told Hermione that, the second time around, he knew that he could summon the patronus because he had already done it – that is, he had watched himself do it from the other side of the lake the first time he had lived through those three hours. I find this fascinating.

It reminds me of something that Elizabeth Gilbert says toward the end of Eat, Pray, Love. At this point, Elizabeth looks back on herself as she was before her travels to Italy (eat), India (pray), and Indonesia (love). She had felt trapped in a marriage that wasn’t working and that was asking her to be someone very different from who she was at her core – in other words, to deny her essential self. She felt tearful, distraught, and even despairing about this. At the end of the book, Elizabeth has come into her own. She has followed her own inner urgings, she has become much more balanced, and she is ready to commit herself to a deep love relationship that supports who she is.

Elizabeth imagines her stronger and more confident self as a living entity even in the past when she felt so trapped and despairing. At that earlier time, she believes that her future self was beckoning, was speaking to her soul, was calling her to follow her heart. She attributes key thoughts that came to her at that difficult time and inspired her to follow her heart to this future self. Her future self saw what Elizabeth could and would be and drew her to live into that vision.

It’s as though the future self saw what Elizabeth would do: those growth-producing steps were already formed and Elizabeth simply had to live them out. Similarly, the action of summoning the patronus was already there, and Harry Potter simply had to step into it. In Harry’s case, he had literally seen himself do this action and knew he could do it because he had done it – but he still had to choose the step of actually doing it.

This, of course, brings up the question of whether Harry could have made a different choice and done something other than what he had seen himself do when he was watching himself from the other side of the lake. I believe that the novel suggests that Harry could have made a different choice. What Harry knew to have happened did still have to be actualized by a real choice and a real action. If Harry had chosen differently in the second live-through of the events, I believe that the outcome would have been different. Professor Dumbledore, after all, did strictly warn Harry and Hermione that they must not be seen as they relived those three hours; he did not assume that they would not be seen just because they had already lived through the events the first time and had not seen their second-time selves. (The reason for this warning is that it would have been too shocking to Harry and Hermione for their first-time selves to see their second-time selves. After all, there is no telling what you would do if you walked into your home one evening only to find yourself sitting on the sofa in your living room!

Now, back to Elizabeth Gilbert’s idea about the future self. I find this, too, fascinating. Perhaps I have a future self who is calling me to be the fulfillment of my heart’s deepest desires about myself. This future self has been calling to my frightened self whose life goal rises no higher than to make it from here to the grave as painlessly as possible. This is a far cry from a much more worthy life goal: to live passionately, to love deeply, to give freely. I think it is very helpful to be aware of this future self and to make conscious choices in line with this future self’s voice.

Connecting with Compassion

My last two posts were about a negative view and a positive view of choice and behavior. I find that I am extraordinarily drawn to the negative view. It seems to have quite a hold over me. I find myself feeling beaten down by the idea that there is some innate badness at my core that spoils any "good" I might do and makes my every action "bad." Therefore, it is best that I find an isolated niche in this world where I can do as little harm as possible. As fear-based, as life-destroying, as nuts as this view is, I find it quite gripping.

Now, let us apply Karen Armstrong's idea about the neocortex to this. I discussed Karen Armstrong's idea about the neocortex in my previous post.

First, I would like to consider the progression of creation. We have non-animate entities: the mineral kingdom, if you will. We have the elements: earth, air, fire, water. I think of rocks, particularly - very much there, enduring, being. All four elements are beautiful, all are powerful. This speaks of something important at the heart of God - beauty, power, endurance, being - and the capacity to support and provide a home for life.

Then, we have the non-sentient life forms: one-celled organisms, plants, insects. And we have life-forms where I am not sure how sentient the creatures are: reptiles, amphibians, fish, birds. Here, I would add to the heart of God abundance, diversity, proliferation, and more beauty - a sort of divine extravagance.

Hmmmm - God is creative, extravagant, beautiful, and joyful.

Next, we arrive at the mammals, particularly the higher intelligent mammals: horses, whales, dogs, cats, chimpanzees, and others. These animals, it seems, do not have the capacity of self-reflection, but do they perhaps have the beginnings of compassion? I know that rhesus monkeys who are deprived of food and made to see that they will receive food as a reward for giving a painful electric shock to another rhesus monkey, will refuse to give the shock (especially if they have previously experienced such a shock) even though this means enduring hunger. These monkeys will refuse to cause pain to another monkey, even though this means that they won't be fed. Here we can add to the heart of God love and loyalty.

And then we arrive at human beings with our neocortex - self-reflection, reason, compassion. Karen Armstrong says that the precarious situation of today's world comes from the use of our reasoning powers (our neocortex) in the service of our selfish survival instincts (our hypothalamus). This gives us weapons of mass destruction (created with the reasoning power of our neocortex) to use in keeping ourselves on top (a survival goal of our hypothalamus). Nonetheless, we also have the capacity to align ourselves consciously with the compassionate heart of God.

God - compassionate, creative, extravagant, beautiful, joyful.

SO - here is a solution to my impulse toward the innate badness view. The solution is to acknowledge the impulse, to recognize it, to stand aside from it, and to choose something else. To choose compassion for myself. To choose to act for good in the world, knowing that I make a difference, whether that difference is immediately apparent or not. Every compassionate thought, word, or act makes a difference.

Choices and Our Brains: A Positive View

In my last post, I wrote about a view which would say that some people are innately bad so that even their "good" choices become "bad" by virtue of their innate bad nature. In this post, I will present a much more positive view as expressed by Karen Armstrong in her latest book, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.

First, I would like to mention that Karen has studied the religions of the world, and has found at the core of each an understanding that the heart of God or the Transcendent or the Universe is compassion. Karen has so many wonderful and right-on things to say about compassion.

Let me begin with Karen's definition of compassion. I will quote her definition from page 9 below, with the addition of bullet points to make the elements of compassion stand out:

But "compassion" derives from the Latin patiri and the Greek pathein, meaning "to suffer, undergo, or experience." So "compassion" means

• "to endure [something] with another person,"
• to put ourselves in somebody else's shoes,
• to feel her pain as though it were our own,
• and to enter generously into his point of view.

Karen explains that compassion is natural to human beings. We feel good when we behave compassionately, and life flows more smoothly and positively when we treat each other with compassion.

Karen also explains the uneasy co-existence of two parts of our brain:

• The hypothalamus (a very ancient part of our brain located at its base and stemming from our reptilian ancestors)
• The neocortex (a more recently evolved area of the brain)

Karen says that the hypothalamus is concerned with feeding, fighting, fleeing, and reproducing - in other words, with survival. It is ruthlessly selfish. It strongly pulls us to consider ourselves and our own safety and well-being first. It also evolved to handle conditions of scarcity, so the hypothalamus will prompt us to continue hoarding even when we already have more than enough.

The neocortex, on the other hand, says Karen, allows us to reason, to think about the world and ourselves, to stand aside from and consider the instinctive reactions of our hypothalamus, to make choices about our behavior. The neocortex allows us to align ourselves consciously with the Heart of God, of the Transcendent, of the Universe - which is a Heart of Compassion.

What this means, says Karen Armstrong, is that we have a choice: to behave at the level of our hypothalamus, that is, instinctively and selfishly with concern for our own survival, or to behave at the level of our neocortex, that is, compassionately. Karen stresses that the pull of our survival-oriented hypothalamus is strong, so we would do well not to castigate ourselves for our feelings of fear and anger and our impulses to selfish behavior, but rather to accept them with compassion for ourselves, realizing from whence they stem. We do not, however, have to choose selfish behavior. We can calmly acknowledge selfish impulses, stand aside from them, and choose compassionate behavior.

In other words, IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF BEING INNATELY BAD. It is a question of choosing instinctive and selfish behavior associated with the hypothalamus, or choosing conscious and compassionate behavior associated with the neocortex. This is very hopeful!

Choices versus Nature: A Negative View

Recently I watched a film about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer made two statements that struck me deeply. First, he said that it was worse to be a liar and to tell the truth than it was to be a lover of truth and to tell a lie. Second, he said it was worse to be evil than to do evil. I find these statements extremely discouraging. I imagine a liar who decides to behave differently, to tell the truth. The liar does so. But it doesn't count. The liar's decision to tell the truth is still bad because the liar's innate badness makes the liar's every action bad. Whatever "good" the liar may do becomes "bad" by virtue of the fact that a "bad" person has done it. The liar has, therefore, no hope. The liar simply cannot do good. This is horrible.

I have had several experiences in my life that put me in the position of this liar, or bad person. I'd like to look now at three of them.

The first one happened in the 1980s. I was engaging in some Christian work that I was considering devoting my life to. I will keep the nature of this work vague; I don't want to be specific about it here. At one point early on, one of the leaders of this work told me that I had a number of faults that I needed to correct. I took what she said very seriously and made strong efforts over the next weeks to do things differently. I made many very specific and deliberate behavioral choices to follow the pointers this leader had given me. I don't think I could have been more dedicated to making the desired changes.

Nonetheless, when this leader spoke to me again after several weeks, she told me that I was worse than ever. She said that I stuck out like a sore thumb - that everything I did, even the way I walked and sat and carried myself, showed glaringly that I was not 100% for Jesus.

In other words, the good things I had done absolutely did not count. They were worthless. Actually, they were worse than worthless - they were actively bad. The good things I had done were bad because I was innately bad. So I simply could not do anything good. Anything "good" I might do became bad by virtue of the fact that I, a bad person, had done it. My badness automatically made my every action bad.

I want to stress that the leader in question was known as a good judge of character, as a deeply spiritual person, and as a dedicated leader in this work - not a mean or spiteful person. What could I conclude other than that she saw through to an innate bad core within me that poisoned everything I did and made it bad.

The second incident happened in the early 1990s. Again, I will be intentionally vague about the nature of this event. What I will say is that I made some mistakes in trying to become friends with a person whom I will call X. X became upset with me. As I listened to X and considered my behavior, I saw how I had been thoughtless and even self-serving. I acknowledged this to X and asked her forgiveness. I mistakenly assumed that we could then resume building a friendship, but I was wrong. My efforts toward this goal seemed pushy to X. Finally, I "got it" that I needed to back away, which I did with apologies. Yet X was really, really angry with me and did not seem able to forgive me for a long time.

X is a committed Christian, a woman of prayer, and a spiritual person. It is highly important to X to live according to Jesus's teachings. Yet X did not forgive me for about a year. She remained actively angry with me. What I concluded from this was that I was so bad that I fell outside the scope of Jesus's teachings, at least as far as X was concerned. Jesus says that we are to forgive - but I was an exception. My badness was so ingrained that even a deeply committed Christian like X could not be expected to forgive me. And I am really serious about X's commitment to Jesus - she truly is committed to Jesus and to her Christian faith, and I respect and admire her very much. I could not take lightly the fact that such a person had so much trouble forgiving me.

The third incident has its origins in something that happened in the early 1990s with a person who is very important in my life and whom I will call Y. Y and I worked together on an activity that places people into certain categories which reveal elements of their character. In my case, one of the elements of the category into which this activity placed me was a tendency to lie. There was also much more to my category than that one element, and I actually forgot about it after some time. But Y did not.

Years later, recently in fact, Y and I had some discussions about truth and lies. I mentioned that there are some select situations in which I would not tell the truth. Y and I also had some conversations in which she doubted what I told her and I doubted what she told me. In the course of all this, Y told me that ever since the above activity of the early 1990s, she has known that when she is with me she is dealing with someone who tends not to tell the truth.

Y and I have talked more about all this and have resolved the difficulties we were having in believing each other, but I am concerned that Y may still keep in her mind a caution about me because the above activity put me in the category of liar.

This third incident is a little different from the first two incidents. The leader of incident one and X of incident two are people who aspire to and live out very high standards and whose opinion about my badness I could not lightly dismiss. While Y is very important to me, I do not put Y into that same very high category. I guess I've had the opportunity to see more of Y's faults - and Y has certainly had the opportunity to see my faults as well. Also, it seems that the leader and X saw a core badness in me, while Y labeled me as a liar based on a category that an activity had placed me into. In other words, the leader and X were evaluating me themselves, while Y was relying on an external means of evaluation.

The similarity among the three incidents lies in the fact that there seemed no escape from what each evaluation said about me. In the first incident, I simply could not do anything good because my core badness made everything I did bad; the leader could look into me and see this. In the second incident, my core badness placed me outside Jesus's teaching about forgiveness - even a close follower of Jesus could not be expected to forgive the likes of me. In the third incident, my placement into the category of liar was a done deal and whatever I said forevermore was suspect because I could not be counted upon to tell the truth - at least in Y's mind.

When you think that you are or may be innately bad, you need to decide what to do about it. It seems to me that you want to diminish the effect of your badness. How to do this? Well, the ultimate way is to kill yourself. If my innate badness makes everything I do bad so that I simply cannot produce any good, then it does seem that I should remove myself from the world.

Barring suicide, one might try to live as isolated as one can from others. There are two ways in which I have actually done this. One is that I have never inflicted myself as a spouse upon anyone nor have I inflicted myself as a parent upon anyone. I live alone - I am not part of a family. The other is that I have stayed out of visible leadership roles at any church or any religious or spiritual group. Suppose that I were to become, say, a reader on Sunday mornings. And suppose that I were to behave in a way that hurt someone else. What if I were to snap at someone or speak impatiently to someone. That person might be even more hurt because he or she had been spoken to in this unkind way by someone who had a church leadership role as a reader. I absolutely would not want to risk this.

My next post will present a more positive view on this issue.

Harry Potter: Our Choices

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry is struggling with doubts about whether he has been placed into the correct House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

This warrants an explanation of the Hogwarts Houses. Each Hogwarts student is a member of one of four Houses: Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. The House becomes something like the student's family while the student is at Hogwarts. Each House has its own common room and dormitories, and the Houses compete throughout the school year for the honor of winning the annual House Cup. Upon arrival at Hogwarts for the first time, students are sorted into their Houses by the Sorting Hat: each student places the Sorting Hat, a large floppy pointed hat, upon his or her head, and waits for the hat to call out the name of the appropriate House.

Each House is associated with a particular character quality: Hufflepuff with loyalty, Gryffindor with courage, Ravenclaw with thinking, and Slytherin with craftiness. Unfortunately, Slytherin has seemed to attract witches and wizards who have gone over to the dark side and become evil.

Harry does not want to be placed in Slytherin. When he places the Sorting Hat on his head upon arrival at Hogwarts for his first year, the Sorting Hat whispers that Harry would do well in Slytherin, but Harry keeps murmuring, "Not Slytherin, not Slytherin," and the Sorting Hat then places him in Gryffindor.

Harry has lingering doubts, however, that perhaps he should have been placed in Slytherin after all. His doubts are increased in his second year at Hogwarts when he learns that he is a Parselmouth, that is, a person who can speak Parsletongue, the language of snakes. This is an extremely unusual ability, most often associated with dark wizards.

Harry eventually expresses his doubts to the Headmaster of Hogwarts, Professor Dumbledore. Professor Dumbledore explains to Harry that, when Harry survived a fierce attack by the powerful evil wizard Voldemort at age one, an attack in which Harry's parents died, some of Voldemort's powers had been transferred to Harry, including the ability to communicate in snake language.

Professor Dumbledore further explains that this does not make Harry an evil wizard. I quote the conversation between Harry and Professor Dumbledore, from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, pages 332-333, below.

"You can speak Parseltongue, Harry," said Dumbledore calmly, "because Lord Voldemort - who is the remaining ancestor of Salazar Slytherin - can speak Parseltongue. Unless I'm much mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar. Not something he intended to do, I'm sure."

"Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?" Harry said, thunderstruck.

"It certainly seems so."

"So I should be in Slytherin," Harry said, looking desperately into Dumbledore's face. "The Sorting Hat could see Slytherin's power in me, and it -"

"Put you in Gryffindor," said Dumbledore calmly. "Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have many qualities Slaazar Slytherin prized in his hand-picked students. His own very rare gift, Parseltongue - resourcefulness - determination - a certain disregard for rules," he added, his mustache quivering again. "Yet the Sorting Hat placed you in Gryffindor. You know why that was. Think."

"It only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, "because I asked not to go in Slytherin. . . ."

"Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle [the Hogwarts student who became Lord Voldemort]. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

That final sentence is very important: It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

What makes a person evil? Choosing to do evil again and again over a period of time.

What makes a person good? Choosing to do good again and again over a period of time.

Harry Potter: Loyalty

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the governors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry ask Professor Dumbledore to step down as the school's Headmaster. Dumbledore agrees to do so and says something very important.

"'However,' said Dumbedore, speaking very slowly and clearly so that none of them could miss a word, 'you will find that I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me. You will also find that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it'" (pages 263-264).

These are powerful words. The first part - "'However, . . . you will find that I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me'" - indicates that you can't get rid of a person's spirit as long as others carry that spirit within themselves. This works for good or for ill.

I would say that the following people are among those who have not truly left this world: Jesus, Abraham, Mohammed, Buddha, Joan of Arc, Therese of Lisieux (who promised to spend her heaven doing good on earth), Dorothy Day. Of course, the physical presence of the human being who was Jesus or Abraham or Joan or Therese has left this world. But the spirit that moved them has not. That same spirit lives in others, who are loyal to them and to their spirit. We can call this spirit the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God or the Christ Spirit, if we wish. Or we can call this spirit the spirit of goodness or the spirit of loving sacrifice or the spirit of service.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, this works not only for good but also for evil. There remain also in this world those who are loyal to the spirit of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Benedict Arnold, the Marquis de Sade, Judas Iscariot. This keeps alive the evil embodied by these men.

The second part of Dumbledore's statement - "'You will also find that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it'" - indicates that help is always available, even in the darkest of times. The Bible makes a similar promise, but I find it hard to believe this promise. Some people have to face difficulties that are more than they can handle, help is not given or at any rate not recognized, and the person crashes. A prime example of this is seen in teenagers who have endured intense bullying at school and have finally killed themselves. Help was not given. The pain was too great to bear.