Choosing Niceness Instead of Evil
Jan. 30th, 2012 10:38 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockWhen I was a kid, one of my favorite TV shows was the silly spy satire, Get Smart. Junior moralist and social reformer that I was, my favorite part of the show was always at the end, when Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) would muse, after defeating the bad guy, “If only he’d used his abilities for niceness instead of evil.” (Italics in original)
I recently read the excellent book, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, by Jim Wallis. An evangelical minister(1), Wallis is one of the founders of Sojourners Magazine (available on the Internet at sojo.net) and a promoter of “prophetic politics.” He points out that all the great American social movements, such as the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and the civil rights movement, were born out of Christian beliefs and led by believers. He adds that biblical prophets such as Isaiah and Amos were the social critics of their day who weren’t afraid to stand up to the rich and powerful and demand justice for the poor and oppressed. Wallis writes:
Prophecy is not future telling, but articulating moral truth. The prophets diagnose the present and point the way to a just solution. The “prophetic tradition,” in all of the world’s great religions, is just what we need to open up our contemporary political options, which are, honestly, grossly failing to solve our most pressing social problems....
What would it mean to evaluate the leading current political options by the values of the prophets? What would happen if we asserted that values are the most important subject for the future of politics? (72, emphasis in original)
We must find a new moral and political language that transcends old divisions and seeks the common good. Prophetic politics finds its center in fundamental moral issues like children, diversity, family, community, citizenship, and ethics (others could be added, like nonviolence, tolerance, and fairness) and tries to construct national directions that many people across the political spectrum could agree to.... (75)
As I read about this definition of prophesying, I couldn’t help comparing the exciting, dynamic, and eminently useful kind of prophecy Wallis is describing with the Harry and Voldemort prophecy and all the silliness related to it. (Now it’s important! Now it’s not! Which will it be today?) And I began to wonder...
What if there had never been a Lord Voldemort?
I don’t mean, what if there had never been a Tom Riddle? I mean, what if, instead of having been born a potential psychopath (since considerable research shows a strong hereditary component to psychopathy), Tom had been born a potential prophet in the biblical sense? What if he had been born a gentle, deeply spiritual boy who saw the injustice and pain in the world and, instead of trying to exploit it to gain power for himself, tried to heal it? What if, instead of using his magic to kill animals and torture other children in the orphanage, he used it to heal and help others, like little Severus tries to do with the sick “Muggle baby” in terri_testing’s story, “Father of the Man”?
Imagine Tom using his formidable intelligence and charisma to inspire his followers to create a society based on equality and compassion. Imagine Rev. Tom Riddle leading a social reform movement similar to the ones led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.
Because the truth is, Tom Riddle was right: Magical society was severely messed up. It was profoundly unjust, exploitative, prejudiced, and corrupt. His solution was what was wrong. He wanted to remake it in his own image, but his image was one of complete selfishness, tyranny, and exploitation. If his own image had been one of goodness, charity, and love, the resulting society would have been vastly better rather than worse.
Assuming young Tom had been a future social reformer, here are some questions I had about him and his life:
* How would Dumbledore have reacted to Tom when he went to the orphanage? Would a predatory psychopath like him view Tom as a threat or a potential patsy?
* Which House would Tom have been in at Hogwarts? Surely he would have chosen to be put in the most despised House because that’s where he was most needed, but which House would that have been?
* Would Tom have led his fellow students in demanding much-needed reforms? If he pushed for reforms, what would those reforms have been?
* From what we know of Head Boys, they tend to be people who appear to support the status quo and don’t overtly threaten the power of the school’s administrators, such as Albus, Canon Tom, James, and Percy. Would Prophet Tom also have become Head Boy, or would he have been seen as too dangerous to put in a position of such power?
* How would he have gotten along with the Malfoys, Blacks, and other pureblooded families? Would any of them have supported him?
* Would the future of wizarding society come down to a confrontation between Dumbledore and Prophet Tom? If so, what would this look like? Would Albus try to ruin Tom’s good name so he could stay in control? Would he still found the Order of the Phoenix to counteract Tom’s reforms, only now it would be more like the Tea Party rather than a paramilitary group?
* How would a prophetic Tom Riddle have changed magical society, and potentially non-magical society as well?
Here are a few suggestions as to what I think could reasonably be expected to happen if Tom were good rather than evil:
* There would have been no Moaning Myrtle because Tom never would have created Horcruces. If he were the heir of Slytherin, the basilisk would still be sleeping peacefully in the Chamber of Secrets.
* Hagrid would not have been expelled because Tom would have befriended him and convinced him to get rid of the Acromantula before he got caught.
* Tom would foster solidarity between human and nonhuman magical species. He would lobby for other sapient species such as goblins, centaurs, and elves to share equal rights with witches and wizards.
* Eventually, he would fight to have the Statute of Secrecy repealed and try to establish harmony between magical and non-magical people.
What other ideas does anybody have?
1) For those who may be thinking “evangelical minister” is synonymous with “right wing Bible-thumper,” that’s not the case. The major theme of God’s Politics is the immorality of (1) cutting taxes for the rich while raising them for the poor and middle class, and (2) prosecuting an unnecessary war while cutting social programs. Wallis was part of a contingent of clergy members who came up with a (divinely?) inspired six-point plan that would have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein peacefully and avoided the Iraq War entirely. That would have saved the lives of thousands of service members, over 100,000 Iraqis, and trillions of dollars.
I recently read the excellent book, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, by Jim Wallis. An evangelical minister(1), Wallis is one of the founders of Sojourners Magazine (available on the Internet at sojo.net) and a promoter of “prophetic politics.” He points out that all the great American social movements, such as the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and the civil rights movement, were born out of Christian beliefs and led by believers. He adds that biblical prophets such as Isaiah and Amos were the social critics of their day who weren’t afraid to stand up to the rich and powerful and demand justice for the poor and oppressed. Wallis writes:
Prophecy is not future telling, but articulating moral truth. The prophets diagnose the present and point the way to a just solution. The “prophetic tradition,” in all of the world’s great religions, is just what we need to open up our contemporary political options, which are, honestly, grossly failing to solve our most pressing social problems....
What would it mean to evaluate the leading current political options by the values of the prophets? What would happen if we asserted that values are the most important subject for the future of politics? (72, emphasis in original)
We must find a new moral and political language that transcends old divisions and seeks the common good. Prophetic politics finds its center in fundamental moral issues like children, diversity, family, community, citizenship, and ethics (others could be added, like nonviolence, tolerance, and fairness) and tries to construct national directions that many people across the political spectrum could agree to.... (75)
As I read about this definition of prophesying, I couldn’t help comparing the exciting, dynamic, and eminently useful kind of prophecy Wallis is describing with the Harry and Voldemort prophecy and all the silliness related to it. (Now it’s important! Now it’s not! Which will it be today?) And I began to wonder...
What if there had never been a Lord Voldemort?
I don’t mean, what if there had never been a Tom Riddle? I mean, what if, instead of having been born a potential psychopath (since considerable research shows a strong hereditary component to psychopathy), Tom had been born a potential prophet in the biblical sense? What if he had been born a gentle, deeply spiritual boy who saw the injustice and pain in the world and, instead of trying to exploit it to gain power for himself, tried to heal it? What if, instead of using his magic to kill animals and torture other children in the orphanage, he used it to heal and help others, like little Severus tries to do with the sick “Muggle baby” in terri_testing’s story, “Father of the Man”?
Imagine Tom using his formidable intelligence and charisma to inspire his followers to create a society based on equality and compassion. Imagine Rev. Tom Riddle leading a social reform movement similar to the ones led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.
Because the truth is, Tom Riddle was right: Magical society was severely messed up. It was profoundly unjust, exploitative, prejudiced, and corrupt. His solution was what was wrong. He wanted to remake it in his own image, but his image was one of complete selfishness, tyranny, and exploitation. If his own image had been one of goodness, charity, and love, the resulting society would have been vastly better rather than worse.
Assuming young Tom had been a future social reformer, here are some questions I had about him and his life:
* How would Dumbledore have reacted to Tom when he went to the orphanage? Would a predatory psychopath like him view Tom as a threat or a potential patsy?
* Which House would Tom have been in at Hogwarts? Surely he would have chosen to be put in the most despised House because that’s where he was most needed, but which House would that have been?
* Would Tom have led his fellow students in demanding much-needed reforms? If he pushed for reforms, what would those reforms have been?
* From what we know of Head Boys, they tend to be people who appear to support the status quo and don’t overtly threaten the power of the school’s administrators, such as Albus, Canon Tom, James, and Percy. Would Prophet Tom also have become Head Boy, or would he have been seen as too dangerous to put in a position of such power?
* How would he have gotten along with the Malfoys, Blacks, and other pureblooded families? Would any of them have supported him?
* Would the future of wizarding society come down to a confrontation between Dumbledore and Prophet Tom? If so, what would this look like? Would Albus try to ruin Tom’s good name so he could stay in control? Would he still found the Order of the Phoenix to counteract Tom’s reforms, only now it would be more like the Tea Party rather than a paramilitary group?
* How would a prophetic Tom Riddle have changed magical society, and potentially non-magical society as well?
Here are a few suggestions as to what I think could reasonably be expected to happen if Tom were good rather than evil:
* There would have been no Moaning Myrtle because Tom never would have created Horcruces. If he were the heir of Slytherin, the basilisk would still be sleeping peacefully in the Chamber of Secrets.
* Hagrid would not have been expelled because Tom would have befriended him and convinced him to get rid of the Acromantula before he got caught.
* Tom would foster solidarity between human and nonhuman magical species. He would lobby for other sapient species such as goblins, centaurs, and elves to share equal rights with witches and wizards.
* Eventually, he would fight to have the Statute of Secrecy repealed and try to establish harmony between magical and non-magical people.
What other ideas does anybody have?
1) For those who may be thinking “evangelical minister” is synonymous with “right wing Bible-thumper,” that’s not the case. The major theme of God’s Politics is the immorality of (1) cutting taxes for the rich while raising them for the poor and middle class, and (2) prosecuting an unnecessary war while cutting social programs. Wallis was part of a contingent of clergy members who came up with a (divinely?) inspired six-point plan that would have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein peacefully and avoided the Iraq War entirely. That would have saved the lives of thousands of service members, over 100,000 Iraqis, and trillions of dollars.
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Date: 2012-01-31 06:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 07:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-01 05:33 am (UTC)Hufflepuff! Just think what all that loyalty and hard work could do if channeled to good causes...
You've also got me wondering how Tom could have turned out differently. I remember a story - can't remember the guy's name unfortunately - about a researcher who had imaged murderers' brains and come up with some key traits of how they differed from the brains of people who weren't habitual murderers. It turned out that quite a few of his close relatives had been terribly violent people, so he got the idea to image his own brain. Lo and behold, he had a murderer's brain... but having been raised by loving, supportive people, was not a murderer or tempted to be one. So. Even assuming Tom had some predisposition toward psychopathy, maybe he could have turned out okay, if he had the right care. Orphanages in this period had a policy of not giving babies affection iirc, so unless his orphanage in this AU got an employee who secretly played with the kids, he's probably better off being adopted as a baby (anyone adopting a baby is probably looking for a child rather than a servant, so that would be better than, say, being adopted when he's 9). So, either given affection by an orphanage employee and sensitive to all the injustices the poor orphans face, or taken in by a nice socialist couple with reforming tendencies (Mum probably talks about going to suffrage rallies and anti-war meetings and such with her mother). (Of course this could still have some problems - if his adoptive parents are the kind of socialists who are also in favor of eugenics, not quite conceiving how horrible that could get, he might have some... interesting background coming into the wizarding world. But maybe suddenly finding himself in a class which would be on the list for "don't reproduce for the good of society" would make him rethink this point anyway.)
Dumbledore might not catch on to Tom the moment they meet, since "gee you must be good folks to have a fund for orphans!" probably doesn't set off as many alarm bells as strangling rabbits. And assuming Tom is still cunning (regardless of which House he ends up in - no reason he can't be cunning and hard-working), it might take him, and maybe most of the other teachers and students, some time to catch on to just how revolutionary he could be. Probably he'd start with little things, like study clubs for Muggleborns to learn more about the wizarding world, and suggesting a girl and/or a Muggleborn for Slughorn's club (assuming the club we saw in the memory was all-male due to the times, with Slughorn getting a little more liberal over the years, and not simply chance). As far as we know, Hogwarts was already free to all qualified students, and definitely paid for books etc. for poor children, so he wouldn't have much to do there. Maybe he'd encourage more pen-pal programs with students from other countries (Ron said Bill had a Brazilian pen-pal once, right? so it happens), and work up to picnics with goblin children or something. I expect he'd hang out with the house-elves in the Hogwarts kitchens a lot; depending on whether he grew up with a paternalistic reforming model, he might be high-handed like Hermione, but since he's probably still cunning, I would guess he'd instead start slowly and listen to the house-elves, to tailor his message better if nothing else. Moving along... he'd probably start pointing out discrimination against Muggleborns, asking why the same people ruled in the Wizengamot for decades on end and what kind of representation they really offer, and things like that. Maybe in this AU he would go into the Ministry, or maybe he'd once again defy expectations by taking what looked like a humble career beneath his talents (though probably a different one than in canon, like starting a rival to the Daily Prophet). And he probably would have applied to teach at Hogwarts to influence the youth, though again for different reasons, and Dippet probably still would have told him to come back in a few years once he had some experience of the world and Dumbledore wouldn't have wanted him.
(cont...)
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Date: 2012-02-01 05:54 am (UTC)Dumbledore is all about appearing like a fair, liberal fellow, so he probably would have taken the line that Tom had some lovely ideas which of course sensible witches and wizards would support, but his methods were dangerous and could lead to a terrible division in society and maybe bloodshed. After all, look what happened on the Continent with that Grindelwald trying to enforce The Greater Good!
Probably there would still be a pureblood fanatic faction, run by the Blacks - and probably both Dumbledore and Tom would accuse each other of really being ideologically close to that faction despite claiming otherwise. (He's essentially run the ww for decades, and see how the purebloods retain their ancient privileges and the magical races are still oppressed - no surprise given his secret youthful association with Grindlewald! He's an untrustworthy descendent of Slytherin himself and is really planning to become dictator for life, and now he knows who all the agitators are because you gave him your names!) There would be less violence than the Voldemort-led version and a lot more secret political deals and bribery. The Weasleys would still be in Dumbledore's camp - the rich purebloods still wouldn't like them, but pureblood privilege is their main advantage, so they wouldn't be keen on Tom dismantling that. Though they'd justify it some other way. (If Harry is born, but Lily went to Tom's side, he might end up rivals with Draco and Ron.)
On another note, I do want to take issue with one point: most of the opponents of all those social movements were also devout believers. Because just about everyone was a believer, and found a justification in their common text for whatever they were doing. Pro-slavery people cited the passages in the Bible supporting slavery, and anti-slavery people cited different verses, etc. (An analogy I heard is that religion is like an amplifier: if you're already a jerk, you'll find the verses about how children who laugh at prophets will be eaten by bears, the brats; if you're already inclined to kindness, you'll get inspiration to help the poor.) And were plenty of non-religious people even in the 19th century who also wanted social reform, like Robert Ingersoll. So I don't give religion itself too much credit - more what people make of it. I like to give people credit when I can :D
no subject
Date: 2012-02-01 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-04 02:42 am (UTC)Ahem, sorry- it's funny you should mention that because in this other fanfic I'm working on, there is a character who tries to model himself after the Jewish Messiah (that is, the savior of the world and the Jewish people, according to tradition) despite being neither Jewish nor the Messiah. Of course, he's also insane....
Actually, that would make for an interesting idea. In fact, Tom Rid could still be a villain--if he started off as a caring, selfless boy at least partially driven insane by the callousness around him. Now that would've been a good villain. He could be a decoy villain whom Dumbledore pitted against Harry to distract him from his manipulations You almost wouldn't even have to break canon for it to make sense.
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Date: 2012-02-04 03:22 am (UTC)(And I agree with you, religion is whatever people make of it.)
no subject
Date: 2012-02-04 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-08 08:45 am (UTC)You get people who lead civil rights and human rights movements from different religious and philosophical backgrounds. Christians have contributed greatly to human rights. It's not just Christians who have lead widespread human rights movements. The revolution in Egypt invovled Christians and Muslims working together for freedom and a just and honest government free from brutality.
Buddhist monks greatly contributed to the fight for democracy in Burma. There is now a wave of Arabic countries fighting for democracy, and to overthrow corrupt and tyrannical governments. Christians, Buddhists, non religious people are now fighting sexual slavery in Asian countries.
Religious and non religious People have fought for the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, rights for people from different cultures, people with disabilities and sexual orientations. These values are not purely Christian values, they are values held by people from different religions and non religious people.
I like the show Get Smart. Nice strikes me as not the right word to describe good/justice (then again Maxwell Smart isn't always the sharpest tool in the shed). Nice strikes me as a vague word worn out by having been overused.
Your AU ideas sound interesting. it would have been fascinating for Tom Riddle to have started out as a gentle and compassionate person.
Knowing Dumbledore, he would have viewed a 'good' Tom as a potential threat (as he thinks Gryffindor brutality is wonderful). I would love to read a good fanfic where Tom fight against the corruption, barbarity and prejudice of the Wizarding World. I'd much rather read that than the canon where Harry is unjusstly treated as being compassionate and moral when he isn't.