In reading the Harry Potter novels, I have found myself very interested in squibs. A squib is a non-magical person born to magical parents.
The Harry Potter novels divide people into two groups: magical and non-magical. Magical people are witches and wizards. Non-magical people are called muggles. Every person is born either magical or non-magical, meaning that magical ability or the lack thereof is innate. If a person is born a muggle, there is nothing that he or she can do to procure magical ability.
Muggle parents sometimes produce magical children. Unfortunately, magical parents sometimes produce non-magical children, but this appears to be rather rare. Nonetheless, it does happen. A non-magical person born to magical parents is called a squib.
Magical people -- witches and wizards -- tend to look down on squibs. But they shouldn't, because being a squib is not a matter of choice.
It is interesting, though, the way J. K. Rowling introduces squibs -- she does so in a way that actually invites us, the readers, to look down on them. The first squib we meet is Argus Filch, the castle caretaker at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Filch is not a sympathetic character. He hates Hogwarts students and is always trying to catch them breaking school rules so that they can be punished. Filch would like very much to bring back the severe punishments of older days, such as whipping students, chaining them up, and hanging them by the feet or the hands. The fact that Filch is a squib is discovered when Harry Potter finds that Filch has been consulting a book of remedial spellwork in a futile attempt to master basic magic. This discovery seems to explain Filch's hatred of Hogwarts students -- he is jealous of their ability to do magic. Nonetheless, it almost seems that being a squib is a punishment for Filch's nasty character.
But then, we meet another squib, Arabella Figg, a much nicer person. Arabella lives inconspicuously in the same neighborhood as the Dursleys. Petunia and Vernon Dursley, Harry's aunt and uncle, are very reluctantly raising Harry. Harry's own mother and father, Lily and James Potter, were killed by the evil Lord Voldemort when Harry was one year old. Lily Potter was Petunia Dursley's sister. The Dursleys are muggles with a very anti-magical bias, and Harry's parents were a witch and a wizard. The neighbor Arabella Figg takes on the task of watching over Harry as he grows up in his aunt and uncle's muggle home, not knowing about his magical background. Arabella has been commissioned with this task by Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, and she fulfills her role admirably. She does what she can to watch over Harry surreptitiously and make sure he is safe.
Arabella Figg even courageously serves as a witness in Harry's defense when he is accused of using magic illegally as an underage wizard at age fifteen and threatened with expulsion from Hogwarts. Harry must appear before the Ministry of Magic for his trial. His defense is that he was using magic in the face of life-threatening danger -- to protect himself and his cousin, Dudley, from two attacking dementors. The Ministry of Magic, however, does not want to believe it possible that dementors could be operating outside their control and appearing in a muggle town. Arabella Figg, having witnessed the dementors' attack, is brave enough to give testimony on Harry's behalf in court despite the risk of incurring the displeasure of the Ministry of Magic.
So we now have a very sympathetic squib, Arabella Figg, to contrast with the highly unsympathetic squib, Argus Filch. Both were born to magical parents, but they themselves lack magical ability. Argus Filch uses his knowledge of the magical world to become bitter and jealous over what he cannot have. Arabella Figg uses her knowledge of the magical world to serve as a bridge between the two worlds, magical and non-magical, and to be helpful. She seems to take a stance of "I will concentrate on what I can do, not on what I can't -- and there is much that I can do."
It is also worth mentioning that Argus Filch is terribly ashamed of being a squib and tries to hide this fact. Arabella Figg, on the other hand, freely acknowledges that she is a squib. For Arabella, being a squib is a simple fact about how she was born, not something to feel ashamed or or to hide.
Now--who might be the squibs of our world? I think that Martha Beck, author of Steering By Starlight, and her husband provide a good example: they are very high-achieving intellectuals, and they have a son, Adam, with mental retardation. In fact, I think that something like squib-hood happens when high-achieving people give birth to an average child or a child with a mental or physical handicap.
I would also say that a kind of squib-hood happens when society values certain kinds of intelligence above others, so that those who excel in the valued intelligences are held in esteem while those who do not are frowned upon. I am referring here to Howard Gardner's idea of multiple intelligences. These intelligences include the two that are most valued in one of the first social environments that children enter--our schools:
- Linguistic intelligence
- Logical-mathematical intelligence
But people who are not strong in those two intelligences may excel in one or more of the other intelligences:
- Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence--dancers and athletes
- Existential intelligence--those who connect closely with life's larger meaning
- Interpersonal intelligence--those who excel in relating to others
- Intrapersonal intelligence--those who excel in self-understanding
- Musical intelligence
- Naturalistic intelligence--those who relate closely to nature
- Spatial intelligence--those who excel in the visual arts
So we might ask ourselves how we view and treat the squibs of our world.
Dementors are horrible non-human creatures that appear in the Harry Potter novels. Dementors serve as guards at the wizard prison of Azkaban.
Physically, dementors are repulsive. They are draped in black cloaks, but what is under the cloaks is not clear. However, one can often see the dementors' hands, which are bony, moldy, and grasping. One can also hear their rattling breath, which smells of death and decay.
Dementors affect the entire environment when they are present. Everything grows cold and black. The cold is not only external but seems to enter a person's very heart. The person, then, finds all joy seeping away, leaving only blackness, hopelessness, and despair. It becomes impossible to remember any happy memories, and one feels as though one will never ever be happy again.
The worse thing about dementors is that sometimes, as a punishment for a particularly bad human, a dementor is allowed to perform the dementor's kiss. The dementor puts its mouth, or a round hollow where its mouth would be, over the human's mouth -- and sucks out the human's soul. After the dementor's kiss, the human continues to exist, but devoid of his or her soul and of his or her personality. There is no full description of what existence is like for one who has been kissed by a dementor, but such an existence is clearly a hollow one, utterly lacking in joy, purpose, meaning, or humanity.
Humans are not completely defenseless before dementors. A witch or a wizard can use a patronus spell to produce a patronus spirit. This is a protective spirit - often in the form of an animal - that will chase the dementor away. Harry Potter's patronus takes the form of a stag. Hermione Granger's takes the form of an otter.
As I see it, the dementor is a personification of depression. The dementor, like depression, kills all joy and meaning in life. The ultimate end of untreated depression is, indeed, a soul-less existence -- and this is so unbearable that many people with severe depression actually kill themselves.
Suicide used to be considered a terrible sin, but how much compassion we should have for someone suffering from severe depression. We now know that depression has physical causes -- it is not a moral failing of the depressed person. The severely depressed person finds himself or herself simply unable to find ANY joy or meaning in life -- to a such a degree that existence becomes excruciating. Rather than blaming a person for killing himself or herself, we might do better to ask ourselves what unbearable degree of pain that person must have been feeling.
I believe that J. K. Rowling does a wonderful service for us in at least three ways with her description of dementors in the Harry Potter novels. First, if we can make the dementor/depression connection (which seems quite obvious to me), we can feel something of the horror that a severely depressed person must feel. As we identify with Rowling's characters and feel their horror in the presence of dementors, we get a small taste of what a severely depressed person may be feeling. This can lead to real compassion for the severely depressed.
Second, personification of an inner state is very salutory. When depression is roiling around vaguely and horribly inside us, we can hardly get a firm grasp of what is happening to us. But if we can find a way to put depression outside ourselves by picturing it -- so that we can look at it squarely -- then we can begin to find a way out.
To look at depression objectively, words help and pictures help. I first understood my own moderate (not severe) depression when I read a magazine article describing depression in my thirties. Until then, I had thought that something unique and probably shameful was wrong with me. But this magazine article described what I had been feeling in clearly articulated words. I now had a name for this condition, a description of its characteristics, and the knowledge that others suffered from it, too. Objectifying depression in this way was a wonderful revelation and set me on the path to healing.
As part of the path to healing, I found that pictures were very helpful. I often drew pictures of depression, thus putting it outside myself where I could look at it. This, too, helped to objectify depression -- depression was not something that I was, but something that I felt or experienced. It was a feeling or an experience, not a core part of me. This is an important function of the dementors -- they are a picture of depression.
Third, Rowling tells a story that includes vanquishing the dementors by using a patronus spell to call forth a patronus spirit. Each person who suffers from depression can find his or her own patronus. What chases away the dementor, the depression? Sometimes it may need to be medication. It may also be a deliberate change of thought, an activity, a mental picture, or a story we tell ourselves.
So, with the dementors, J. K. Rowling gives a picture that allows us to objectify and look at depression outside ourselves, and she tells a story that can help us to find a way out of depression and to have compassion for those who are severely depressed.
I really like Ned Sublette's books, The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square and The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans. Ned Sublette is a truth teller with a very pointed way of telling the truth. One truth he tells often is the truth about black slavery and servitude in the South. He gives the most poignant definition of slavery I have ever read or heard on page 216 of The World That Made New Orleans.
At this point in his book, Ned Sublette is talking about the possibility that Thomas Jefferson had sex with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered children by her, an accusation indignantly denied by many historians. Although no one knows for sure whether Jefferson did or did not have sex with his slave, Ned Sublette believes that he very well could have done so. Here is what Ned Sublette says on page 216 of The World That Made New Orleans:
Of course he could have. Whether Jefferson exercised his option or not, he could have sex with Sally Hemings whenever he wanted. The matter of her consent was irrelevant, because she could not refuse.
Because that's what slavery was.
I find that sentence so poignant: Because that's what slavery was. Ned Sublette goes on to say that the word rape really doesn't describe the reality of sex between a master and a slave. Why not? Because a slave does not possess her own consent. That is slavery.
And finally, Ned Sublette says that if Thomas Jefferson were tried in a court of law for the crime of rape with a top-notch attorney, he would be acquitted because there is no definitive evidence. But if he were a poor man with a court-appointed attorney and quite a bit of circumstantial evidence, he would likely accept a plea bargain, which would involve a guilty plea and a reduced sentence. And then Ned Sublette ends his discussion like this on page 217:
But then, no one has accused Jefferson of a crime. After all, you can do with your property as you like.
Yes, slaves had no recourse. They could not be raped - after all, they did not possess their own consent. They could not complain about their treatment - after all, an owner can do with his property whatever he pleases. Ned Sublette is right. That was the unbearable, horrifying truth of slavery.
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.
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.
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.
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!
