Bruce Charlton's Notions

This is a slightly topical post - for once, and I am not setting a precedent (nor am I inviting further topical references in the comments!); because it has been triggered by JK Rowling's rather courageous persistence in making blunt and true public criticisms of the trans extremes of Leftism. 

Similar situations are common, and always have been common - I merely reference 'Rowling and trans' because she has neither backed-down nor apologized - and because she is as famous as anybody in the world at present. 

Note: I have written extensively about JK Rowling on this blog - because I regard her Harry Potter series as a work of genius in its genre. 

It is - of course - proximately A Good Thing for anybody to speak the truth, any truth, in a world of lies; and to do so requires courage. 

For this JKR is to be applauded. But...

The mindset of a moderate Leftist like JKR is interesting. She can see clearly that for the trans agenda to enable and excuse (multiple instances of) rape of women is an evil. She can perceive that rape is morally of far greater seriousness than the imposition of lies about sexuality. She is prepared to say so, despite extreme pressure. 

But...

JK Rowling makes her criticism from a Feminist perspective; and both the trans agenda and feminism are aspects of Leftism: feminism early, and trans coming more recently. 

Nonetheless it is a fact that both feminism and trans share the same political history, have the same ideological roots, and employ the same nature of justification. That is both are utilitarian: both feminism and trans claim to make more people happy, more of the time - both claim to reduce human suffering and diminish injustice. 

Yet both lack metaphysical roots, because feminism and leftism are free-floating ethical systems - they assert their goodness, their justice etc; but with no transcendental basis for doing so. 

Trans is a plain lie and a value-inversion - and a far more extreme form of Leftism - but both feminism and trans originate in exactly the same mind-set, motivations and assumptions. 

JKR has (apparently) not reflected on how it is that such an obviously insane evil as trans has arisen, how it has been internationally been adopted; how trans is supported by all major institutions in government (world and national), finance, corporations, and the mass media. 

Trans is now part of employment and criminal laws; and is coercively enforced worldwide - as Rowling is currently experiencing. 

How does JKR suppose this situation has arisen? A situation where almost everybody among the Establishment - most of whose opinions she endorses, and whose general assumptions she 'passionately' shares and expounds, and who are (or were) her personal friends and associates - has unified so unanimously around such an extraordinarily wicked lie? 

In essence, Rowling (like so many other dissident, 'sensible' Leftists) sees and deplores one or another particular symptom of evil; but shows no serious interest in understanding the underlying cause which has led to this happening. 

Quite the opposite - she endorses almost everything about Leftism - except a few specific points where her own 1990s feminism clashes with nearly-everybody-else's 2021 trans-ism.

Rowling is the one who is out of step ideologically - almost everybody else in Leftism has followed the internal oppositional logic of Leftism through to the trans conclusion. 

And therefore the net effect of her dissent is to support the Leftist System that creates and sustains exactly the evil she deplores. 

Because - where else could the trans agenda possibly come-form - except Leftism? This discernment, this conclusion, is not "rocket surgery": it is about as obvious as anything could be - unless one is self-blinded by exactly that same ideology...    

JK Rowling deplores a real and extreme abuse and moral inversion. Well done! However, she argues from Leftism, without apparent awareness that this evil abuse is a direct and logical product of the assumptions of her own Leftist ideology. 

Just as feminism grew from opposition to traditional sexual roles - first opposing inequality of opportunity, then inequality of training and experience, then inequality of outcomes... But it did not - could not - stop there. 

Feminism soon evolved into denying obvious innate differences in men's and women's nature, disposition, motivations and abilities. And this has been the situation for decades - in all major corporations, institutions, organizations - in government and the media; and apparently Rowling is quite happy with it.  

From this feminism's false and dishonest denial of difference between men and women, it was but a short-step - just another short false and dishonest step! - to asserting that men and women were inter-convertible; and crushing anyone who says otherwise... Exactly as the feminist Establishment has, for the past generation-plus, crushed anyone who asserted true-and-obvious functionally significant sex differences. 

Leftism is 'progressive': it never stands still, it cannot stand still - because it has no structural basis for standing still. 

This is because Leftism is oppositional, critical, subversive - it is not aiming at any particular social end point but at a state of 'permanent revolution'.

Therefore Leftism will always lead to value inversion - that is, to extreme, insane and evil lies - because there is nowhere else for Leftism to go!

Rowling is thus engaged in the futile gesture of trying to stop the cancerous subversions of Leftism at a particular point that rationalizes some specific ethical values which she personally regards as primary.

Implicitly, thereby, JKR operates on the basis that Leftism is the only acceptable and moral ideology. 

Unfortunately, but inevitably, that deeply pro-Establishment, pro-System, pro-Left message is what is communicated by JKR's highly-particular act of courageous dissent.

And this pro-Establishment Leftism is precisely why JK Rowling (and other dissident Leftists of her ilk) remain able to dissent; why their dissent is given so much publicity, and is so widely disseminated by the mass media - and why she has not been excluded by The System; as is anyone who denies the assumptions of Leftism is excluded.

Courage is a virtue; but courage on the side of evil and therefore against God's creation is not something that a Christian can endorse. 

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It is striking that - although men make up the great bulk of geniuses in most fields, there are plenty of women among the genius novelists and some poets (but no playwrights) - two of my current favourites are JK Rowling who wrote the Harry Potter series, and Susanna Clarke who wrote Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - which are currently my favourite fictions by living authors.

Looking at them in terms of personality type, there is a great difference (so far as can be judged from public media - all this that follows is my opinion, inference and guesswork).


Susanna Clarke seems a classic bluestocking type, in terms of her rather reserved, even shy, public persona - and her non-celebrity - one might even say reclusive - lifestyle. She is a very pleasant looking lady, but - unusually nowadays - has not dyed her hair and is naturally grey, she dresses traditionally and modestly, she does not project sexuality. She is a slow and careful writer and has only published one novel and a few short stories. She seldom gives an opinion on public subjects - although everything suggests she has broadly mainstream Leftist views (with the exception of being patriotically English).

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Joanna Rowling is in contrast a very public celebrity - never out of the news, making pronouncements on many subjects, and allying with several fashionable Left Wing causes. She presented herself in a sexualized manner, having had plastic surgery and wearing fashionable and immodest clothing.

In both womens' great works, there is an underlying Christian ethos; although I gather that Clarke is not a Christian and Rowling is currently a very liberal Christian (or else, as I believe, apostate and not a real Christian nowadays - even though she clearly was when writing Harry Potter) - however, in my understanding, the Christian frame is essential to the excellence of both authors' best work.

My point here is that real geniuses always have the Endogenous personality type - as I have called it (see reference below) -  but the Endogenous personality includes people expressing very different behaviours - as widely different as Clarke and Rowling.

The Endogenous personality can be regarded as a destiny - and only when it is so regarded, will genius achievement (potentially) follow. The interesting distinction between these two women, is that Rowling seem to me to have betrayed her destiny, while Clarke has tried to remain faithful to it.

Why do I say Rowling has betrayed her genius - simply because she is very-obviously very-concerned with how she presents herself to the public; and that acts to sabotage genuine quality, high-level achievement... genius. (This extends to creating a distorted, and dishonest, and self-serving mythology of her own life as a writer.) Rowling is consciously, almost systematically sabotaging her own destiny as a creative person. Unless she repents this, she will certainly have destroyed her own genius.

Therefore I think it is not possible that Rowling could again write anything as good as the Harry Potter series; while it is possible that Clarke could write another thing as good as Strange and Norrell.

But the situation is not symmetrical. Whereas Rowling cannot produce anything great again, because she has eliminated an essential element of great work; Clarke will not necessarily produce another great work even if she is faithful to her destiny, because achievement may be blocked by the lack of other necessary factors - such as health, or luck.

This is, indeed, what corrupts so many artists, why the culture of celebrity (of 'success') has been lethal to so many geniuses in recent years: on the one side they have a certainty of worldly-success (money, fame, status, power) - offered them on a plate, or indeed thrust-upon them; while on the other hand there is only a possibility of doing more great works.

Here-and-now certainty versus the mere possibility at some point in the future - the public world versus personal destiny - Pleasure versus Fulfillment - Prestige versus Creativity - Man versus God...

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-endogenous-personality-its.html 

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That the Harry Potter series of novels was inspired - and not a product of JK Rowling's unaided motivation and imagination - has seemed increasingly obvious since I was first able to appreciate the marvellous qualities of the books, and contrast them with the air-headed-ness of the author's public persona.

Indeed, before I engaged with reading the books, I was for many years put off by having seen interviews with Rowling, from which I concluded that someone like her simply could not have written anything worth reading.

But the books are a wonder - hence the necessity of acknowledging that they were indeed inspired (a fact confirmed by seeing what talentless and soul-draining bilge she produces when she sets Harry aside and is thereby bereft of that inspiration: I refer to her recent 'adult novel').

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Thus we get the fascinating clashes between the traditional Christian belief system which underpins the Harry Potter books, and the anti-Christian, anti-marriage, anti-family, anti-Good nihilism of Rowling's real-life bureaucratic Leftism.

So, while I have seen no reference to Rowling's views on the topic on the the bearing of weapons by subjects or citizens, I would be extremely confident that she would be against it (and in favour of sustaining and extending the current UK situation of mandatory Eloi-ism; in which only violent criminals and feral youths are tacitly 'permitted' to carry and use weapons; and the decent and physically weak are rendered helpless, and harshly prosecuted for any attempt - or any possibility of any attempt - at self-defence).

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Yet the Harry Potter novels, from the Prisoner of Azkabahn onwards, and especially the Order of the Phoenix, are brilliant depictions of precisely the form of tyranny which exists in the modern West.

An inverted reality  in which the existence and badness of baddies is excluded from public discourse, and the goodies become 'the problem'.

A world in which aggressors are relabelled as victims, and victims are blamed for provoking aggression against themselves.

In which the mass media, government policy, administration and regulation, and enforcement are all unrelentingly focused upon the past, present, and potential future, actual or extrapolated or invented, transgressions of decent people.

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You may recall that Hogwarts classes in 'Defence against the Dark Arts' are made wholly theoretical (all practical defensive training being abolished), and focused on elementary, harmless and useless responses; meanwhile the fact that Voldemort has returned and is preparing for war is ignored and denied.

Because nobody want Voldemort to have returned, Voldemort has not returned. Because effective defence against Voldemort carries risks, there must be no effective defence (and those who insist on preparing are taking needless risk). Because to prepare for disaster is scary, there must be no preparation for disaster (and those who do prepare are terrorizing the ignorant, for their own selfish or deluded purposes).

Because any form of organization outwith the state might resist the state, then all forms of actual or potential organization outwith the state are forbidden - and therefore organized resistance to Voldemort is severely impaired; and therefore resistance is scattered and individual, and may be officially portrayed as eccentric or revolutionary.

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Instances of aggression by the Death Eaters and their minions such as the Dementors are unmentioned, denied, or claimed to be propaganda from the disaffected, stupid or crazy - and contradiction of this line is punished by shaming and ridicule in the media (which almost everybody believes, even against the evidence of their own direct experience and common sense) and by increasingly sadistic sanctions against those who continue to speak out.

And whatever happens is made into a justification for more Ministerial control.  

In other words, life in England under the rule of JKR's close personal friend Gordon Brown, and its continuation under the current 'Conservative' 'coalition' government.

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I found this interesting post and comment on the topic which Americans call 'the right to bear arms':

http://everything2.com/title/Harry+Potter+and+the+Right+to+Bear+Arms

In which the thought processes of (more or less) common-sense tradition versus Leftism are set-out clearly, and the Potter versus Rowling oppositions comes through with force.

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It is fortunate that so many millions of Harry Potter novels have already been sold and dispersed beyond all possibility of recall - since I am sure that if it were possible for them to be rewritten as politically correct tracts by the post-inspired and now evil-allied Rowling, then she would do this.

But as it is, I think Potter has broken free of his mediator, and he is no doubt at work on behalf of God and the Good (and against JK Rowling) - in a subliminal fashion - in the minds of many millions...

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I am actively reading both Charles Williams (the Inkling) and JK Rowling's Harry Potter chronicles - including John Granger's superb 'How Harry cast his Spell'...

when I suddenly realised that Rowling's book, across the whole series, is about the best possible illustration of C.W's distinctive ideas of co-inherence, substitution (including substituted love) and exchange.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2012/01/understanding-charles-williams-co.html

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It was the following passage, from the end of the first book of the series Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - Dumbledore is speaking to Harry:

Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing that Voldemort cannot understand, it is love.

He didn't realize that love as powerful as you mother's for you leaves its own mark.

Not a scar, no visible sign...

to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever: It is in your very skin.

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This is pure Charles Williams! Not that I think it derives directly from Charles Williams - rather it indicates that JK Rowling has independently worked-out the same implications as did C.W. - implications which are orthodoxly, traditionally Christian yet somehow neglected or de-emphasised.

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He saved others: himself he cannot save - this was said of Christ, indicating the reality of co-inherence - and the same could be said of Harry Potter.

Throughout the book he is saved from death, again and again, by the love of others - especially by sacrificial love, up to and including acceptance of death for love - such love as a kind of real but immaterial and permanent protection... It is operative even when (as in most instances) 'the person who loved us is gone'.

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And in the end, in The Deathly Hallows, Harry demonstrates that as we are saved by the love of others; so it is our task to save - not ourselves but others.

Harry sacrifices himself (allows Vodlemort to kill him) from love of others; and the effect of this act of sacrificial love is seen immediately because after Harrys death and rebirth the pupils, Professors, parents and friends of Hogwarts are rendered immune to the curses and magic of Voldemort and the Death Eaters - there are no more casualties from the Good side in the battle.

So, because of the effects of Harry's invisible love, the evil cannot (for a while, anyway) harm good.

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Yet all this happens without the Hogwarts defenders or the death eaters being aware of it - only Harry (and Dumbledore) know what has happened.

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So this is love that is real (not a psychological trick, not effective because people believe it is effective - but effective even without awareness) love as a real 'substance', but immaterial...

Rowling's is a description of love that is totally in contradiction to the mainstream one in our society - where love is seen as a type of pleasure; something wholly subjective, one-way and temporary.

For moderns, A loves B, and the love is something happening in A's brain. When the brain state changes, or the brain dies, then love dies and leaves nothing behind - unless it has influenced another brain state, which is equally evanescent.

Indeed the modern cliche idea is that love is a short term brainstorm, maybe pleasurable or maybe miserable - but inevitably disappearing like snow in sunshine to leave no trace. Unrequited or one-way love is seen as pathetic, undignified, a waste of time.

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Rowling's is a concept of love that saves - as it saves Snape, an almost-wholly nasty man, but who is wholly and gloriously redeemed by his love for a long-dead woman - married to someone else and who eventually disliked him - and the courage this love enables.

And of course, via Lily his mother (who is long since dead, but not 'gone') Snape's love saves Harry, many times - even despite that at a superficial level Snape loathes Harry (and the feeling is mutual).

Snape is a classic 'loser', in love but not loved; making sacrifices - his whole double-agent life is a sacrifice and he is sacrificially killed by Vodemort; except that this is not mere infatuation but real love, as proved by his sacrifice - hence its effects are real and permanent.

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And CW's definition of the worst thing - the exclusion of love - is almost a literal rendition of Dumbledore's and Harry's explanation for Voldemort - a man who deliberately lived without love, and therefore became a kind of demon.

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So the Harry Potter books can be seen as an illustration of Charles Williams web of exchange, substitution - people doing the work of salvation for each other - and only indirectly for themselves; this enabled because of co-inherence - that we are members one of another (contain a bit of each other) and unified by Christ (contained by and containing).

Love always working in both directions, and across the divide between life and death.

Love as real, effectual, permanent - the only answer to death.

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It is very difficult for modern people to understand 'love' (agape) and how it is central to Christianity.

But the Harry Potter series does not just explain Christian love, it shows agape in operation such that readers can experience it for themselves.

For moderns, Rowling's use of love in her plot is extraordinarily strange (so much of it being love between the living and the dead) and it is remarkable that this very obvious and repeatedly emphasized fact is apparently unnoticed - at least consciously.

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Somehow, the fact has eluded secular culture that Rowling's mega-bestselling seven volume book is, at a deep level, a precise and completely unambiguous depiction of agape in action, in multiple acts of exchange and substitution, crossing between this life and the next.

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When comparing successful writers from two generations ago - the likes of JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis - with a near-equivalent from now - JK Rowling - I am struck by the fact that Rowling's personality is highly fragmented and grossly inconsistent by comparison with her predecessors.

So that Rowling's world view in the context of the Harry Potter books is grossly at-odds with her personality as expressed in interviews etc; while Tolkien and Lewis are 'all-of-a-piece' - all their works in different genres, their letters and interviews and biography, very obviously amount to a self-consistent and integrated world view.

What I find interesting is that Rowling's world view in the Harry Potter books is both self-consistent and also broadly consistent with Tolkien's and Lewis's world views (although relatively simplified) - and it is the 'public persona, the non-literary world view which is so sharply at odds.

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Indeed it is very characteristic of modernity that people have fragmented, unintegrated world views.

The world view in their work is inconsistent with their world view as private individuals; their political views are inconsistent and changeable, their motivations do not match their explicit aspirations, and so on.

This is unsurprising in that modern life is (or was) composed of specialist social systems, each with different rules and languages - and these tended to evolve away from each other. So that science focused almost exclusively on Truth - which became operationalized in terms of replicable facts and approved methods; art became focused on aesthetic factors - which became operationalized in terms of theory; the media became focused on attention grabbing - and so on.

And of course Tolkien and Lewis both regarded themselves as 'dinosaurs' - out of step with the fragmented and specialized world of modernity which surrounded them, throwbacks to a much earlier (pre-Renaissance) style of thinking and being.

And they were pretty much the last representatives of that style - except for some few people operating in enclosed and detached religious groups (I am thinking of Fr Seraphim Rose), who do not impinge on mainstream culture.

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On the other hand, political correctness represents a kind of re-integration of world views: so that all the social systems are currently being re-integrated in terms first of being made consistent with political correctness, then being motivated by political correctness.

So, for instance, arts and sciences are no longer either aesthetically-motivated/ truth-motivated but these are now subordinated to the motivations of political correctness.

One might expect that this would lead to a re-emergence of the integrated personality - except that political correctness is itself grossly incoherent, continually changing, and indeed oppositional and reactive rather than propositional and substantive.

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Where good work is still being done, as with the Harry Potter novels, then this is always non-politically correct insofar as it is good.

Yet, at a personal level, the penalties for being non-PC get greater and greater - so we still see (as with JK Rowling) gross fragmentation of personality; such that the ability to hold-by and be-adept-in multiple incompatible ways of thinking and world views is now adaptive, sophisticated - almost 'common sensical'.

So that if JKR expressed views views that were consistent with the world view of HP, she would be a social pariah - a hate figure - and the novels would be suppressed by one means or another. So the best that she can do (whether intentionally or by instinct) is to smuggle the world view out in the form of a novel (as, indeed, a kid's novel), hidden by a veneer of PC - and to ensure that never at any time does she follow through the logic of the novels into her public persona.

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Of course there is a price to pay.

JKR comes across as immature, vapid and evasive in her interviews and essays, compared with the tremendous adult solidity and gravitas of Tolkien and Lewis.

But she is in good company. Everybody in public life comes across as immature, vapid and evasive: because that is precisely what they are.

Worryingly, almost everybody in private life now comes across as immature, vapid and evasive - because it has become habitual (it has had-to become habitual, since the cost of failing to be dis-integrated is so high).

The triumph of political correctness is that we always feel asif Big Brother is watching us. A social grouping of unselfconscious truth seekers and truth tellers such as The Inklings would be almost impossible nowadays.

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(I should point out that Tolkien and Lewis are vastly more intelligent and knowledgeable than Rowling, or indeed than anyone else in modern public life - and Tolkien more intelligent than Lewis, Lewis more knowledgeable than Tolkien - but this is not mainly a matter of intelligence and knowledge. It is primarily a matter of partly-trained and partly-habitual honesty; and underneath that a grounding in reality. Reality regarded as real.)

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The consequence of all this is that moderns are incapable people. At most they can operate with technical adeptness within small, grossly-incomplete and hermetically-sealed specialist worlds - they are dogmatic technicians.

But most moderns are even worse than that because they lack technical expertise of any kind - this being continually stopped short or diverted by the over-riding application of political correctness - so that even very simple causal chains of a purely technical nature become disrupted whenever they get anywhere near human applicability (or else their human applicability is denied, and the activity thereby neutered).

And this is why modern humans cannot solve any problems anymore.

All they can do, all we can do, is reframe things so that they are no longer perceived as a problem: we simply redefine threats as - what is the jargon? - opportunities.

Transcendental inversion, again 

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And such is the fragmentation of thought and the dis-integration of world views that the gross insanity of the process is concealed.

Fragmentation leads to more fragmentation, until...

Everything falls apart.

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Robert Conquest's Second Law is something like:

Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left wing.

It applies to people as well, as I argued in yesterday's post on the apostasy of JK Rowling.

But why is it true?

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Clearly the law only applies to The Modern West - where Leftism is the long term trend - it is not a law applicable to all societies and throughout all of history.

But it does seem to apply, without any significant exceptions I can think of, to The Modern West.

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In the modern situation, the Left sets the baseline assumptions: for example in terms of atheism (i.e. the denial of Christianity), equality (i.e. the essential sameness of people), democracy (i.e. the denial of traditional authority), feminism (i.e. the essential sameness of sexes), an egalitarian concept of the nature of anti-racism (i.e. the essential sameness of races), and the sexual revolution (whatever appeared bad is now recognized as Good; and vice versa).

Since these are assumptions, they frame institutions, and shape their organization over time, unless and except the institutions explicitly defines itself against them.

The institution (or individual) that does not wish to become swept Leftwards (or person) must therefore either isolate itself from modernity; or set up a screen to filter the mass of incoming stimuli for any such assumptions - and then react against them.

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So, to take the example of JK Rowling. The Harry Potter series successfully walked a tightrope between its superficial postmodern Leftism and an underling Christian traditionalism - but the underlying reactionary structure was indirect and implicit, while the surface was obvious and in-your-face.

Thus in the fullness of 'sooner or later' Rowling had to do one of two things: make explicit and clear the underlying Christian and reactionary structure (in effect admitting she had successfully tricked tens of millions of people into reading covert religious propaganda); or else she would be swept Leftwards by the prevailing assumptions of society.

If she had chosen the first path, there would without any shadow of doubt have been an immediate, immoderate, coordinated and sustained campaign to discredit and demonize the Harry Potter books; in which the whole weight of international mass media (ie the centre and origin of world Leftism) would have been involved.

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But, as we know, she did not do this; consequently she has been swept into providing (with her new novel) an over-the-top endorsement of the vilest and most demoralizing Leftism; the inversion of Truth, Beauty and Virtue.

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I find it tempting to put Rowling's very obvious corruption down to her friendship with the egregious ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown - who is surely the most pervasively dishonest British of Premiers since Lloyd George; but of course Rowling chose the friendship; and in truth Conquest's Law operates without any need for specific factors or agents.

It is a sign of the intrinsic short-termism and impatience of Leftism that JKR did not pause to sugar coat her message of nihilism, but lets the reader have it full-on and in their guts - or else the book would probably have been vastly more harmful.

As it is, the new novel is such a naive, open faced, unmasked instance of horribleness that even Leftists are embarrassed and disgusted by it.

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At least for a while.

Probably, 'sooner or later', as the desensitization and inversions of unrepentant modernity continue to accumulate, The Casual Vacancy will come to be touted as a work of genius and the Harry Potter books (which are a work of genius) will be downgraded to 'kids' stuff'...
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From a Charlie Rose interview with JK Rowling, broadcast in October.

http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/charlie-rose-interviews-j-k-rowling/

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JKR: Well, for example, I’ve just talked about the fact that I was in a very precarious situation for a few years. I was probably as poor as you can go without being homeless in the U.K. Which is not to say that friends and family didn’t help me, because they did. But, you know, it was tough.

CR: And you were writing a book, and had to depend on the government.

JKR: Well, yeah I did, although I was working part-time. The law, at that time, was that you could earn up to a very small amount a week without forfeiting housing benefit, which was the thing that was keeping us homed. So I worked up to that amount. I had a clerical job in a church at one point, and then I was teaching, but we were still existing partly on benefits. I couldn’t wholly support us.

Then the miracle happened. Harry was published, and we really didn’t look back after a few months. It changed my life.

But that period of my life was a formative experience for me. It shaped my world view, and it always will shape my world view.

The experience of having been part of a mass of people who are very voiceless, the experience of being scapegoated and stigmatized – because that was the political climate at that time – really has colored my world view ever since. I don’t think I’ll ever lose that.

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This is very interesting, yet very typical of the way that Leftism has inverted reality; and the way that when state bureaucracy replaces individual charitableness it not only drains love but induces hatred.

JKR and her daughter were dependent on the government because she had separated from her husband who lived abroad, and had returned to Britain with the young child needing to be supported by 'other people'.

This support of the separated mother and child was in fact achieved by coercive extraction of resources from 'other people' by taxation, and distribution of some proportion of these extracted resources by the state bureaucracy manned by officials.

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Naturally JKR does not feel gratitude for being kept alive at a level which was luxurious by world-historical standards; why would she feel grateful to other people who had no choice in the matter but pay their taxes?

And naturally she is not grateful to state officials who make their living (often a very good living) from the job of collecting and distributing such resources.

Instead (since there is no such thing as neutrality of attitude) JKR feels a burning, and apparently lifelong, resentment that she was supported by others at a lower-than-average level for Scotland at that timepoint (i.e. relative poverty - not absolute poverty, where people are in danger of death from starvation, disease, exposure etc), and that she was supported in such a way, and in such a cultural climate, that she was regarded as having low status ('scapegoated and stigmatized').

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Ever since this time, JKR supports a set of Leftist political programs that would apparently entail (since neutrality of attitude is not possible) that people such as her former self (e.g. women who leave their husbands and ask to be kept alive by the labour of others) are not 'scapegoated and stigmatized' but instead regarded as high status and admirable, and privileged by being supported at least at the average material level for their societies, maybe higher - but certainly not in relative-poverty.

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In almost all societies before the twentieth century, and in much of the world even now, a woman and child in the position of JKR (having left her husband in another country) would have been dependent on the active and chosen charity of specific people (her family or a patron, or pehaps an exploiter), or from specific charitable institutions of a religious nature; or else first her child and then she herself would have died from starvation, exposure or disease.

Presumably JKR would regard this as unacceptable, since voluntary charity might not be forthcoming; yet she also regards the Leftist welfare state as unacceptable in its actually-existing form, since it is unloving and supports at the below-average level of some degree of relative-poverty.

Consequently JKR (by her expressed preferences and charitable giving) advocates a 'rights'-based model of support; dependants having the right to be supported at average (or above) levels of material welfare by 'other people' whose resources are coercively extracted; and with the additional element of moral inversion (encouraged by 'education' and other forms of propaganda, and sanctions against those who resist it) such that the welfare dependent becomes officially of higher-status than the welfare funder.

Indeed, the welfare funder gets not just zero credit for supporting welfare dependents, but less-than-zero; since under Leftism the producers are regarded as having zero right to the fruits of their labour, and are actually blamed for having obtained a larger share of resources in the first place.

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The welfare state is often criticized for its economic unsustainability, but the damage it does is far deeper and worse - as exemplified by the corrosion of character produced in someone like JK Rowling.

It is understandable (from all I describe above) why she (and those like her) are not grateful to be supported by the state, and it is understandable how they would tend to react by an assertion of moral superiority to those whose resources have been coercively extracted in order to support them (at a lower level than they think they deserve).

All this is understandable, and in a sense natural.

But the really significant damage comes from moral inversion, the failure to recognize one's own resentments as evil; and instead the elevation of such resentments into a source of pride, of boastfulness - as Rowling rationalizes her shameworthy response to soulless bureaucratic humiliation into what purports to be a ringing declaration of conviction politics: her solidarity with, championship of, the "mass of people who are very voiceless."

This is to boast of one's own sinfulness, to encourage others to share in your sin; and to work to create and sustain a coercive bureaucratic state in which the incentive to this particular sin will become even further institutionalized than it already was, back in the time when JK Rowling was a single mother on benefits.

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[Note:  To understand the context of the above post, new readers should search the blog using 'Potter' to access the many previous discussions of JKR and the greatness of her achievement with HP.]

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One of my major ethical concerns in reading the Harry Potter series was Harry's habitual lying - up to the point in the Deathly Hallows when he is sanctified, after which he becomes completely truthful.

My problem was not so much that Harry lied, but that I did not sense any authorial disapproval of the lying - it was as if the author went-along with Harry's dishonesty, such that almost anything served to justify Harry's lies (even to Dumbledore).

I had the feeling that this flaw was a consequence of Rowling's own moral stance - that she was herself the kind of person who lied easily, and who easily excused her own lying.

Seems I was correct.

It has emerged that JKR has published a crime novel under a male pseudonym

http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/j-k-rowling-ghost-writes-the-cuckoos-calling/

I don't have any disagreement with publishing under a pseudonym, nor even under a male pseudonym - but the fake-biography of the pseudonymous 'Robert Galbraith' is a self-serving lie:

“After several years with the Royal Military Police, Robert Galbraith was attached to the SIB (Special Investigative Branch), the plain-clothes branch of the RMP. He left the military in 2003 and has been working since then in the civilian security industry. The idea for Cormoran Strike grew directly out of his own experiences and those of his military friends who returned to the civilian world. ‘Robert Galbraith’ is a pseudonym.”

There is no doubt that the specific but lying claim of the novel to have a basis in direct personal experience lends fake authority to a crime novel in a way which is expedient and financially rewarding to the real author - as much as if the author of a scientific novel falsely-claimed to have a PhD in the subject, or if the author of a self-help book on money making pretended to be a multi-millionare.

I find this very disappointing, and indeed shocking - it goes far beyond even the most extreme exaggeration, hype or spin.

And it confirms my perception that JK Rowling, despite having written one of the most profoundly moral of popular novel series, has become corrupted, a turncoat and traitor, and is now working undercover for the Death Eaters.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/case-study-of-leftist-resentment-moral.html

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Phillip Pullman published a well-known trilogy from 1995-2000 called 'His Dark Materials', comprising Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

The point I wish to make about this series is that it starts very well, and ends very badly. The contrast is extreme - the first part of the first novel is very good, and by the end of the third volume it has become very bad.

This interpretation of His Dark Materials is not really a matter of opinion, but as close to objective fact as you can get in literary criticism - anyone who doubts should read John C Wright on the technical aspects; and the ideological reason for these gross errors and incompetencies.

http://www.scifiwright.com/xabout/transhuman-and-subhuman/#_Toc384557547

But bad endings are not unusual - indeed, it is quite normal, statistically common, even fashionable and mainstream - for books, plays, movies, and TV plays and series to start well and end badly.

But why should this be? Why do they, on the one hand, start well; and on the other hand, finish badly?

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I think the answer is quite simple. Great works are written with the assistance of genius, which can be understood as a visitor who will only stay if treated well.

Many more talented writers are visited by genius than succeed in completing works of genius, because most writers betray their visiting genius before the work is complete - the genius flies away, and the work must be finished without it; and talent without genius is comparatively a very poor thing.

So, Phillip Pullman was a talented writer who was visited by genius and began Northern Lights; but he was dishonest in the way he used this gift - so away it flew and he cobbled together the rest of the trilogy on his own - getting across the 'message' which meant so much to him, but making a an artistic pig's ear of the writing.

JK Rowling is different. She was visited by genius when writing Harry Potter, and it sustained her through seven volumes - and the last volume, including its ending, are wonderful! The best thing in it (probably).

There are signs that, part way through, Rowling became personally dishonest and corrupt -  probably due to the temptations of fame - but she kept this out of the books. However, when she finished Harry Potter, Rowling embraced the dark side, and away genius flew - her work has waned even as her commitment to political correctness has waxed - and she has been caught in several blatant lies about her life and work. I would not expect her ever to write anything really good ever again.

However, throughout HP, Rowling was true to her visiting genius - it stayed with her for the duration, and she was therefore able to complete a great work.

*

And of course the benchmark classics all end well, else they would not be real classics. The Lord of the Rings, the Narnia Chronicles (despite extreme digressiveness en route), The Wind in the Willows (despite major incoherence and a detachably episodic structure) - all of these have deeply satisfying endings.

No author is so great as to overcome the need for a good ending. When George Bernard Shaw tried to end Pygmalion with an anticlimax, the actors when on tour secretly substituted the dramatically-implied-and-required 'comedic' ending (ie implying marriage between Higgins and Eliza). This, to Shaw's extreme annoyance! - but they would not stop doing it, because the audience response told them what was right. And the highly successful musical adaptation (My Fair Lady) made exactly the same change.

So, even so great a playwright as Shaw was not immune to the absolute requirement for a good ending. Even the greatest of all - Shakespeare - has to bow to this imperative...

All Shakespeare's best plays (best, that is, according to the consensus of playgoers through the ages) end well; and the ones that don't end well are not regarded as great.For instance, Measure for Measure is shaping-up superbly for most of its length; but the play has a truly terrible ending - so it never has become a part of the standard dramatic repertoire (despite having the best 'strong' female role Shakespeare ever wrote).

*

This, then, is a possible reason why too many books end badly; and why so many other narrative forms end badly too. It comes down to the abuse of visiting genius.

Bad endings have indeed, become a feature of modernist writing over the past century. The inability to finish a book, play, movie has been covered-up with nonsense about the sophistication of an 'ambiguous' ending, or 'deliberate' anticlimax, or the desirability of 'dark', 'subversive' conclusions; or the need for some kind of radically transgressive and expectation-thwarting finish (to educate the audience).

But the fact is that it is an extremely difficult thing to end a narrative well - and I would regard supposedly deliberately ambiguous (etc.) endings as a fake; an excuse to cover-up incompetence and failure.

*

Bad endings are so common nowadays because corruption of writers has become so common as to be nearly universal. When visited by genius, the writer is not grateful, does not perceive that this entails a duty to be truthful to his inspiration - but instead he tries to use the gifts of genius to pursue to fashionable ideology, or to ride some personal hobby horse.

Corruption leads to betrayal of genius - usually by dishonesty; and the cause of dishonesty is usually some brand of Left Wing/ radical politics - which the writer or artist places above the truth of art.

Dishonest art cannot be great; and an habitual liar can only be a great artist when he is (nonetheless) utterly truthful in his art - however badly he behaves the rest of the time.

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*

Traditionally, for Christians, Good and evil are understood in terms of the 'unseen warfare' or 'spiritual warfare' between (one the one hand) God and the angels and (on the other) Satan and his demons - humans are the location of this warfare, rather than its instigators - and the main decision of each person is which side they will take.

*

At the same time, some people are mostly nice, while others are mostly nasty.

And there need not be much or any correlation between Good-nice and evil-nasty: indeed, the character type of Good-nasty is a favourite in literature.

*

A recent example of Good-nasty is Severus Snape - who is probably the most interesting and moving character in the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling.

Yet, the lack of a framework of spiritual warfare means that the secular perspective misinterprets Snape as a 'morally ambiguous character'.

Snape is not morally ambiguous - he is nasty, as is abundantly demonstrated throughout the series. However, like Harry, he has Rowling's prime twin virtues of Courage and self-sacrificing Love - and these mean that he has chosen the side of Good, as it emerges near the very end of the seven volumes.

Throughout the series we should not be in doubt that Snape is nasty - what we are unsure about - and what the novels mislead us about - is the answer to the question: What side is Snape on ?

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In the Harry Potter series, the background of unseen warfare between God and the Devil is only hinted at - and superficially replaced (for much of the series) by Dumbledore versus Voldemort: nice versus nasty, kind versus cruel.

Yet in the Deathly Hallows we recognize that Dumbledore is sometimes nasty, has several nasty traits, has a history of cruelty.

At the secular level, this subverts the moral clarity of the novels - but not if a backdrop of spiritual conflict is acknowledged.

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The real conflict in Harry Potter, and in Lord of the Rings and in the Narnia books, is between God and evil - and the bottom line evil is not cruelty but heresy: evil wants to be worshiped as God.

*

This is clearer in Tolkien and Lewis - but there are sufficient hints in Rowling that this is 'The Dark Lord's ultimate purpose: to be worshiped as an immortal god. Voldemort is, of course, cruel - but it is his indifference to others (e.g. killing Cedric Diggory as 'the spare'), his treating them merely as a means to his end, which is portrayed as his worst sin. They exist only to serve and worship him.

*

My point would be much clearer is there was a nice but evil character to mirror Snape as nasty but Good - however, I don't think there are any.

Indeed, this is a major deficiency in most modern/ recent literature and narrative art: the way that nastiness and evil are conflated.

Evil people in books, movies, on TV always turn-out to be nasty (cruel, sadistic etc) whereas in real life many of most devoted the servants of evil are (mostly) nice, and not especially cruel.

Can anyone come up with a good example of a genuine, clear cut nice-evil character from art?

Or life?

Somebody really nice, and really evil?

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*
Discerning Christian scholars of the Harry Potter novels by JK Rowling - such as John Granger (Eastern Orthodox), and Jerram Barrs (Calvinist Protestant) - have proved beyond reasonable doubt that these books are profoundly Christian in their attitudes and messages and in many symbolic references; and this is confirmed explicitly albeit discreetly in the text and authorial interviews.

(I have also written about this on this blog - the pieces can be found by word-searching 'Potter' and 'Christian'.)

The Harry Potter series has also been a sales sensation, and have reshaped the whole publishing environment.

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This should, of course, have been the greatest possible news among evangelical-minded Christians of all denominations - the best news in decades! - a tremendous opportunity for those who want to spread the word, and encourage Christians in their faith.

Instead, a sizeable number of influential Christians in the USA launched and sustained an aggressive, ill-informed and slanderous (false, dishonest) attack on the Harry Potter phenomenon; so that Christians labelled these books as anti-Christian in intent and tendency - and did their best to prevent their own and other children from reading them.

http://www.bethinking.org/culture/jk-rowling-and-harry-potter

The Christian anti-Rowling attacks were avidly encouraged by the mass media (which should have been sufficient to warn serious Christians of what was going on).

The result has been a disastrous lost opportunity and self-inflicted wound for Christianity:

1. The most popular books in decades have been labelled, and interpreted, as if they were anti-Christian; and instead distorted into a frame which supports the dominant culture of secular Leftism.

This was a tragically lost opportunity for Christianity in the West - perhaps the biggest lost opportunity for several decades.

2. For Christians, the depth and faith strengthening beauty of these books has been lost.

3. The author seems to have been astonished and wounded by these attacks from Christians; and from subsequent interviews and published novels it seems very probable that she has become apostate, has changed sides - and now consistently takes a pro secular Leftist (and implicitly anti-Christian) stance.

Clearly this was very wrong of her - but my point is that this corruption and change in JKR was (in my view) probably begun by the vile and hysterical attacks on her personally and on the HP books by Christians.

*

One consequence may have been that the very popular movies based on the books, which followed a few years later, almost-entirely deleted the Christian elements - and indeed inverted some of the primary moral and spiritual messages of the novels.

Given the innate tendency of movies to usurp the understanding and interpretation of novels,this was a further deep wound inflicted on the potential-for-good of the Harry Potter series.

*

In conclusion, the Christians who campaigned against Harry Potter seemingly ended-up inflicting very serious damage on Christianity, and doing the work of Satan.

How did this happen?

There were good and bad intentions at work - as usual.

The good intentions were thoughtless and lacking in discernment - regarding the HP books with prejudice rather than actually reading them with sympathy. This attitude means that inevitably Christians will reject on a priori grounds any Christian phenomenon successful among non-Christians, and any potential major opportunity for evangelism.

The bad intentions were the usual ones - seeking any 'plausible' excuse to indulge in hatred, moral showboating and status striving, the pleasures of controlling and bullying others...

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The Harry Potter phenomenon handed Western Christians a great opportunity. The same applies, of course, to the Narnia books by CS Lewis, and the Middle Earth books by JRR Tolkien.

That opportunity remains - but an aggressive and influential minority of US supposedly-'evangelical' Christians are working against this great opportunity - by gifting this Christian literature to anti-Christians: handing it to them on a plate!

Unsurprisingly, this kind self-destructive lunacy by Christians has been given every possible encouragement and amplification by the secular Leftist mass media.

*

The damage has been done - water under the bridge - why write about it?

Well, now that the scenario has played out, now that the scale of damage can be surveyed; those serious Christians who participated in the slandering of Harry Potter should now be able to see the extent of their error, and to repent.

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What is the difference between good and evil characters in fantasy novels?

There is a superficial difference which seems universal to the genre, and a fundamental difference which is seen only in the best of the genre.

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The superficial difference is that good characters are kind, honest and altruistic, while bad characters are cruel, lying and selfish.

But the main superficial difference is kindness versus cruelty - the scenes which depict the evilness of the evil characters are typically those where they take pleasure in torment and torture.

This is seen in the best of the genre as well as the mainstream - Tolkien's orcs are cruel and love to torture, Rowling's Death Eaters love to torture Muggles and Muggle-lovers.

This can be seen as a hedonic morality, evil characters make others miserable: Vote for the goodies and have a better life.

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Cruelty is never good but it is possible to imagine a fantasy novel in which the goodies were violent and the baddies are pacifists. When the regime is evil and in control, and the only escape from oppression is by force, then evil may be pacifist. 

In Lord of the Rings Wormtongue takes a pacifist line when it comes to fighting Saruman, and he tries to protray Eomer as a blood-thirsty troublemaker who is the cause of provoking Saruman's aggression against Rohan.

In the Deathly Hallows where Voldemort controls in Ministary of Magic, official propaganda presents Harry and his supporters as the cause of all repressions, and provoking the necessity for the Snatcher squads. If only Harry would surrender, or would be handed-in to the authorities - then all would be peaceful...

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But the fundamental nature of evil in both Tolkien and Rowling is that evil desires to usurp God and itself be worshipped.

This meaning is deeply buried, but it is there.

The reality of Tolkien's universe is that The One is supreme; but Morgoth's prideful desire is to be worshipped in his place. Sauron is Morgoth's chief 'priest', and when he corrupts Numenor Sauron reinstates the worship of Morgoth. Presumably this would be Sauron's aim if he ruled Middle Earth - or alternatively to set himself up for worship (there are indications in the History of Middle Earth that Sauron pretended to be Morgoth at one point).

It is this displacement of God which is Morgoth/ Sauron's fundamental evil - that they falsely set themselves up as the supreme object of worship.

*

And in Harry Potter something similar applies to Voldemort.

While Dumbledore and Harry implicitly serve some higher but unnamed Good (which is, in fact, God - as is suggested by the Harry-Dumbledore discussions of the King's Cross - Limbo chapter, and its depiction of the state of Voldemort's soul) - but Voldemort wants to be worshipped as supreme.

This is perhaps why Voldemort/ Tom Riddle will not allow anyone to speak his name, will not allow his name to be 'taken in vain' - this is characteristic of a jealous god.

*

So, in the best fantasy, evil is ultimately that which would falsely usurp God as that which ought to be worshipped: evil is that which sets itself up to replace the true God.

The goodies are those who oppose this - and the characters are defined as good or evil not so much by their conduct as by which side they choose: real God or usurper; truth or falsehood (although conduct is also affected by the choice of sides).

Evil is an objective wrong because it is a denial of the Truth of the universe, the evil usurper is not - in fact - God: God is God - the only legitimate object of worship.

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In fantasy novels the attempt to enforce worship of evil leads to the superficial features of evil; because to worship evil and deny God is inherently false; it is distorting, unnatural.

The desire to overturn the organizing principle of the world is indicative of the primacy of pride and will - and to re-order the world requires immense power to reshape everything according to the will of the usurper - the more unnatural the desired state, the greater the power required to create it.

Hence evil characters seek power over the world. The unnatural deployment of power then leads on to the 'superficial' side effects that characterize the evil characters in fantasy: destruction of beauty, denial of Natural Law, deceitfulness, and that cruelty that delights in bending the will of others to conformity with the will-full fantasy of the evil villain.

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*

JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has a grown-ups novel coming out next month called The Casual Vacancy.

Will it be good?

Well, now is the time to make a prediction, before I have read it.

*

I don't like the title, I don't like the plot summary, I don't even like the idea of her doing a modern adult 'literary' novel (which is a dead genre, IMHO)... so I am having a hard job looking forward to reading it.

But, being in the midst of sequentially reading aloud the whole of the Harry Potter series (currently nearly half way through the Half Blood Prince) I must rationally set aside my fear and dread, and have confidence that she will pull-off this improbable venture, and will be publishing another triumph.

The Harry Potter books are just so good - and the fact that she wrote the last five under immense and intense and indeed unprecedented public scrutiny is a hugely impressive feat - so she could do it again, I think.

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How good are the Harry Potter books?

I think they are in the same league as, at or above the level of, the Narnia Chronicles in terms of Childrens' fantasy (below Lord of the Rings, of course, because everything is) - and in terms of novels as such they are at the level of Thomas Hardy or Anthony Trollope (which is second rank by the strictest criteria).

As novels they have many virtues, too many to list; most importantly including deep moral seriousness and genuine heroism - but their partial defect is in the sheer quality of the prose, which is considerably below the highest level.

There are also some fairly serious structural implausabilities in Prisoner, Goblet and Phoenix, upon which hinge major aspects of the plots: viz: the excessive power of the Time-Turner, the unbelievable sustained impersonation of Moody, the unexplained self-distancing from Harry by Dumbledore - why unexplained?, the notion that Sirius - a powerful wizard and animagus - was unable to leave Headquarters for months...

So they are not first rank - but their rank is very high, and probably higher than anything else in recent decades.

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Can she do it again?

Well, why not?

As a person, JKR has never struck me in her public interviews and speeches as very smart, or very interesting, or very impressive - her personality seems poorly-integrated, her extensive facial plastic surgery (starting from about 2003) and embarrassingly juvenile dress style seem like evidence of lack of unrealistic vanity and shallowness

- but then all geniuses (especially women geniuses) are odd, so that does not make any difference, really.

I shall have a hard job getting myself to read Casual Vacancy - and maybe I will need more than one attempt - but in the end I expect to won over by it.

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Throughout the Bible there are multiple references to the sinfulness of gossip, the passing on of malicious details, speculations, and falsehoods. The problem of gossip is taken very seriously in the Bible, and there are sanctions against those who gossip.

Yet gossip is the bread-and-butter of interpersonal discourse for many people, most of the time - including Christians. And it is the very basis and substance of much mass media communication, which has expanded so much in recent decades.

And the synergistic combination of interpersonal discourse with internet mass media has made the phenomenon of social networking into by far the largest and most powerful international malicious gossip fest that there has ever been in the history of the world.

So, there is a serious, damaging sin - which is rampantly growing, combined with little awareness of the gross wickedness involved.

*

An example from a while ago was the Christian-driven gossip, ignorance and lying directed against the Harry Potter books and JK Rowling. This matter is thoroughly dealt with by Jerram Barrs in the following lecture.

http://www.bethinking.org/culture/jk-rowling-and-harry-potter

As so often, people are most in danger of unrestrained sin when they feel they are being self-righteous.

Obviously malicious gossip is - sooner or later - sickening for decent people, they feel disgust for themselves and others. Moralistic gossip is the worst kind of gossip, people hatred, spite and malice are disguised.

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The matter of gossip is not to be confused with 'judgement' - and especially not with the confused and mistaken idea among Christians that humans are (supposedly) not allowed to judge the sinfulness of others.

This is nonsense - the judgement from which Christians are supposed to refrain is that concerned with their ultimate salvation. But it would be insane and indeed wicked for humans to refrain from judging one another about their activities and motivations - of course we must judge!

So, as always, extremes are both wrong. Gossip is certainly a sin; but we must judge, and may have a duty to warn others in light of our judgements.

Part of doing right is a matter of motivation (real inner motivation, not what you might say to others to justify yourself); and part of it is a matter of knowledge based on trusted sources and persona experience; versus passing-on hearsay from sources known to be dishonest, spiteful, destructive and themselves wicked.

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I have been, very belatedly, hooked by the Harry Potter series; which initially I was indifferent-to, or mildly hostile about.

It required that I read the end of the series (to 'get' what the books were doing) and then went back and read the earlier books (albeit in some peculiar order, which I cannot now recall).

Now I am very taken with them, and regard them as genuinely inspired (whereas, previously, I saw them as merely ingeniously contrived - the product of a magpie bricolateur, rather than of a wise and farseeing owl - as I now think).

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The most stunning, and heartening, thing about the series is their moral seriousness underpinned by a transcendental perspective: which is pretty much exactly what the modern world requires.

The Harry Potter books provide a rich Christian perspective - but not too rich nor too obvious (indeed, not-at-all obvious - there is their strength); they provide about as much as our deeply corrupt and barren modern world can reasonably digest.

Much more, and the books would have been merely a cult. As it is, there is a great deal in HP, and it has gone out to tens (or, more likely, hundreds) of millions of people - and the books have not merely been read-through, but devoured, multi-read, and assimilated. 

Remarkable.

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The first and most vital thing is that the Harry Potter series is predicated on the reality of the immortal soul.

The reality of the soul is not argued; it is accepted: as indeed it must be.

It is there; indispensable and woven through the whole story: Death is real, necessary and irreversible; yet the soul is eternal.

And the soul is regarded as being a person's primary concern; susceptible of change as a result of choices.

(And free will is foundational, assumed, intrinsic to the series as well, as it must be.)

The soul can be maimed and diminished, irreversibly, by choices during life - as we discover from Harry's sight of Voldemort's maimed and diminished soul in the King's Cross chapter of Deathly Hallows.

Such damage cannot be undone after death.

That is what I mean by moral seriousness.

How many other works of late twentieth century mainstream literature can compare with this? I can't think of any at all.

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The second aspect is prophecy.

We moderns have a big, big problem with the reality of prophecy - which I take it is a self-made and artificial problem, because earlier generations did not share it.

That there were real prophecies was a given: the problems related to discerning the real prophets and prophecies from the fake; and understanding the real prophecies, and recognizing when they were being, or had been, fulfilled.

But the reality of the phenomenon of prophecy was not in question.

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In relation to Harry Potter the explicit explanation of prophecy (both from Dumbledore, and by JKR) is psychological - prophecies are real because (and only because) people believe them, and make them come true.

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/11/19/new-interview-with-j-k-rowling-for-release-of-dutch-edition-of-deathly-hallows

But as pointed out in this insightful blog posting...

http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2008/08/prophecy-potter.html

...this is not quite right, since Dumbledore clearly recognizes when Professor Trelawney is making a real prophecy (only twice, when she goes into an altered state of consciousness and is apparently unaware of what she is saying and does not recall it), and when she is just consciously making-up stuff.

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My feeling is that these are moments when JKR is pointing off-stage, beyond the world of HP, since true prophecy is supernaturally inspired (and is beyond the capability of 'magic'); ultimately true prophecy would imply God.

(Prophecy implies God even when a specific prophecy might well be 'demonic' - indeed it might well be that most true prophecies were indeed demonic - because the existence of demons is predicated on the existence of God)

Rowling must have known, or been inspired to act on the basis, that she could not bring God explicitly into Harry Potter, or else her book would have been restricted to a Christian genre and a Christian sub-culture.

The Harry Potter novels are therefore compatible with a Christian perspective, subtly point to that perspective, but in an entirely optional and 'deniable' fashion.

You don't need to acknowledge the presence of Christian underpinnings; but they are there if you notice them, want them, or need them.

*

As CS Lewis recognized after publishing That Hideous Strength and Perelandra, it is one advantage for the Christian apologist in our secular public discourse that almost any amount of theology can be 'smuggled' into fantasy novels without being detected, but still having an effect - so long as it is not explicitly labelled as such.

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Given the sheer scale of their sales, and the obvious devotion of their readership (and no book can have much real influence on people unless it inspires multiple re-readings - which the series clearly does) - I would have to regard the Harry Potter books as one of the most hopeful and potentially fruitful recent phenomena of the Western world.

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*

One of the many extraordinary things about the Harry Potter series is the way in which the celibate and unrequited love of Severus Snape for Harry's mother Lily all-but usurps the main plot - and forms (for a sizable minority of fans) the centre of the whole series.

In other words, for some fans, Snape - rather than Harry - is the most interesting and sympathetic character.  

This was clearly unplanned by JK Rowling - who has stated that she regards Snape as a nasty character redeemed only by his love (for Lily) and the courage which this inspires - but otherwise very deeply flawed - almost to the point of sadism.

It is a remarkable thing in a modern context that Snape should take on this role; especially as he is portrayed in the books (big nose, greasy hair, awkward loner).

*

Of course, the casting of Alan Rickman in the movies may have something to do with this, since Rickman's screen persona is intrinsically attractive to women of all ages, regardless of his role.


*

That aside; I see this phenomenon of Snape-mania as yet further evidence of the benign subterranean influence of the Harry Potter series - that Rowling has made the permanently unrequited love of an unattractive social reject (albeit one of great magical powers) for a 'popular' beauty into a morally-admirable thing for tens of millions of readers.

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This fact is only understandable in terms of the other-worldly backstory of Harry Potter - the immortality of the soul, and life beyond death.

Snape is indeed brave in life - but from a this-worldly perspective his unyielding love for Lily can only be seen as a pitiful delusion. The fantasy life of a 'sad' man.

Yet that is not how Harry Potter readers experience it: they see Snape's love as being - not requited - but validated (or redeemed) beyond the grave.

This in the context of the biggest publishing success of the past generation!

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I say it again: remarkable...

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The original Harry Potter series of seven books, completed by the superb "Deathly Hallows" volume, is probably the major Christian fantasy fiction since the Lord of the Rings; because (as well as its many incidental delights) it has a deep moral structure, and this deep plot concerns depicts matters of primary and transcendental importance for Christians.  

A note on a striking but contrasting re-use of the given-nickname "silver-handed", with resonances spanning across some thirty years of Tolkien's writing life. 

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I had missed a key scene in my earlier readings of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, coming in the early Chapter entitled The Ghoul in Pyjamas:

'And the more I've read about [Horcruxes]', said Hermione, 'the more horrible they seem, and the less I can believe that he actually made six. It warns in this book how unstable you make the rest of your soul by ripping it, and that's just by making one Horcrux!'

Harry remembered what Dumbledore had said, about Voldemort moving beyond 'usual evil'. 

Isn't there any way of putting yourself back together?' Ron asked. 

'Yes' said Herminone, with a hollow smile, 'but it would be excruciatingly painful.'

'Why? How do you do it?' asked Harry. 

'Remorse', said Herminone. 'You've got to really feel what you've done. There's a footnote. Apparently the pain of it can destroy you. I can't see Voldemort attempting it, somehow, can you?'

*

Then, from the penultimate Chapter - in the final confrontation:

Harry: 'Before you try to kill me, I'd advise you to think about what you've done... think, and try for some remorse, Riddle...

'What is this?'

Of all the things Harry had said to him, beyond any revelation or taunt, nothing had shocked Voldemort like this. (...)

'It's your one last chance', said Harry, 'it's all you've got left... I've seen what you'll be otherwise... be a man... try... try for some remorse...'

*

In JK Rowling's covert Christian supposal, 'remorse' = 'repentance'. And, as with The Good Thief, she is saying that Voldemort's soul really could be saved, even at the last moment, if Voldemort was sincerely to recognize what he had done and repent.

But of course he does not; and in the King's Cross Chapter (in a Limbo between life and death) Harry has seen what Voldemort's ripped, unrepentant and un-saved soul has become:

It had the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath. (...)

He ought to comfort it, but it repulsed him.

'You cannot help' [, said Dumbledore].


*

I have begun a new blog, with John Fitzgerald and William Wildblood as collaborators, on the theme of spiritual Britain, and especially England - potentially awakening from centuries of slumber.

http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk

The blog sees itself as working in a lineage of 'Romanticism' which I perceive as including (but not restricted to) the likes of William Blake, ST Coleridge, William Wordsworth, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Owen Barfield, William Arkle; and (currently) Jermey Naydler and the fictional worlds of JK Rowling's Harry Potter and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell...

(John and William will be adding to this list from their distinctive personal experiences.)

That is, English Christians of creativity and intuition who are especially concerned with the transformation of human consciousness. 

We sense a time of stirring, and perhaps an impending moment of decision; and the blog is primarily intended to provide clarification, inspiration and daily encouragement to those who hope for that new and spiritual England we can call Albion.