The true horror of Horcruxes?
Nov. 2nd, 2013 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalker posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
deathtocapslockWe've had discussions here at DTCL about the strangeness of Horcruxes being considered so much more evil than regular premeditated murder which splits your soul, and the discomfort at the idea that it seems to be considered so heinous because of what it does to the caster rather than the victim, like that actually matters more.
But we are, after all, basing that mainly on Dumbledore, who has a habit selecting bits of truth to tell that can give a... shall we say... misleading impression, on bits of old and arcane books whose authors might have had a less-than-clear writing style (never mind any potential biases or agendas), and on Slughorn's basically off-the-cuff remarks to young Tom.
None of them are lying, as such, but they might well be a bit careless in their explanations, yes?
Slughorn says that splitting one's soul is "against nature," and putting one of the pieces in some external container apparently even more so. This sounds like the terrible thing is the harm suffered by the unwise Horcrux-maker, who is now suffering from unnatural soul-damage and whose continued existence, if killed but stuck on the mortal plain, would be even more terrible. Poor Horcrux maker!
But people use "against nature" to mean "super inconceivably bad," not necessarily literally unnatural. You hear that it's "unnatural" to kill one's own children, for instance, and yet I quite clearly remember seeing hamsters and rabbits eat their babies as a child - as natural as can be. It's more a kind of shorthand for "no really, it's just that awful, you can't even imagine." And Slughorn is specifically talking about the side effects which might deter anyone thinking of trying it, not necessarily all off the effects. No, really, you wouldn't like it, it's so bad for you that you'd wish you'd died instead. Just say no to Horcruxes!
Which doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of truth in the idea that the soul damage is a terrible thing. But I doubt it's only terrible for the person whose soul-bit is now residing in a cup or a rock. So what is the terrible effect that isn't named?
Well, we know that the way to heal your torn soul after a murder is to feel remorse.
Ah. Now we're getting somewhere. After all, you can't heal it if you've fully split that piece off and put it in a rock, can you?
Making a Horcrux, in this light, is a magical declaration that you know you've done an awful thing and you're not sorry - nothing will ever make you sorry. At least, not enough to heal yourself. Just as premeditated murder is considered worse than murder in the heat of the moment, deliberately making it impossible for remorse to fully take effect is probably worse than not feeling sorry at the moment but allowing for the possibility that you might later realize have done something wrong. That's not quite enough, though. However...
When you tear your soul but keep the torn bit inside you, presumably you still have access to that bit of your soul, even if it isn't working together with the main chunk as well as it usually does. It's still part of you, in active daily use. If you remove it, does it work long-distance? It doesn't seem so, does it? We've all noted how Voldemort's abilities to plan, estimate others' emotions in order to manipulate them, self-control, etc. all seem to deteriorate after he's made a few Horcruxes, and that the accidental Harrycrux (and/or spending eleven years possessing snakes) seems to have finally cracked him a bit too much to be a truly effective Dark Lord. We also saw that even the Horcruxes that weren't explicitly designed to hold memories seem to have bits of Tom's personality and the ability to understand outside events and react to them, like the Locket. And imprints of departed souls - ghosts - also seem to have memory, personality, emotions, etc. (or imprints of them, whatever that actually means). So it does seem likely that these things are all carried in the soul, at least for wizards.
Doesn't it follow, then, that cutting off your access to a piece of your soul would destroy part of your ability to feel remorse? For anything, ever, not just for that particular murder? And would diminish your ability to feel empathy as well? And your ability to control your impulses?
I'm sure someone here has said as much before, but tying it all together in one post: the true horror of Horcruxes is that, by damaging your soul in this particular way, you become much more likely to commit horrible acts in the future. And you almost certainly know this: in accepting the soul damage, you didn't just plan this one single murder, but signed on for the possibility that you're going to hurt more people, too. You can't "just" decide to make one single Horcrux, with regret and solemn intentions never to murder again, because you've decided that the greater good requires your continued existence during some crisis - becoming more dangerous yourself is an unavoidable part of the package. You can't even hope that your sense of self-preservation will restrain you all the time, because some of your self-restraint has been split off as well. You've got less of a filter between your temper and blasting someone with whatever nasty spell you want to see them suffer from.
Making a Horcrux isn't just premeditated murder, but a premeditated decision to quite possibly make yourself incapable of not hurting people forever after.* Not quite premeditated serial or mass murder, or even premeditated petty verbal cruelty... or manipulativeness... but being perfectly fine with the possibilities, enough to actively encourage it. (Even if you somehow didn't know about that particular side effect, your ignorance won't matter to your victims - they'll get hurt just the same.) You're committing to kill not just one person, but potentially lots of them, forever, to preserve your own life.
Ultimately, the concern is for your potential victims, not necessarily your mangled soul itself. Or at least not primarily so. After all, just diminishing your capacity for remorse isn't even the end of it, is it? You kill one person, you don't feel sorry at all - well, there's one less thing restraining you from trying it again, isn't there? It wasn't so bad, really, and look what you got in exchange! And so your remaining empathy and remorse is dampened even further... In essence, you'll start conditioning yourself to murder.
You might not start out as incapable of remorse and empathy as Tom Riddle... but you sure might end up that way, the longer you live after having diminished your capacity to feel those things.
That's pretty awful.
*Well. Maybe if you limit yourself to just one... and have lots of self-control to begin with, because you're just so wise and awesome at everything... And it's for the Greater GoodTM
But we are, after all, basing that mainly on Dumbledore, who has a habit selecting bits of truth to tell that can give a... shall we say... misleading impression, on bits of old and arcane books whose authors might have had a less-than-clear writing style (never mind any potential biases or agendas), and on Slughorn's basically off-the-cuff remarks to young Tom.
None of them are lying, as such, but they might well be a bit careless in their explanations, yes?
Slughorn says that splitting one's soul is "against nature," and putting one of the pieces in some external container apparently even more so. This sounds like the terrible thing is the harm suffered by the unwise Horcrux-maker, who is now suffering from unnatural soul-damage and whose continued existence, if killed but stuck on the mortal plain, would be even more terrible. Poor Horcrux maker!
But people use "against nature" to mean "super inconceivably bad," not necessarily literally unnatural. You hear that it's "unnatural" to kill one's own children, for instance, and yet I quite clearly remember seeing hamsters and rabbits eat their babies as a child - as natural as can be. It's more a kind of shorthand for "no really, it's just that awful, you can't even imagine." And Slughorn is specifically talking about the side effects which might deter anyone thinking of trying it, not necessarily all off the effects. No, really, you wouldn't like it, it's so bad for you that you'd wish you'd died instead. Just say no to Horcruxes!
Which doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of truth in the idea that the soul damage is a terrible thing. But I doubt it's only terrible for the person whose soul-bit is now residing in a cup or a rock. So what is the terrible effect that isn't named?
Well, we know that the way to heal your torn soul after a murder is to feel remorse.
Ah. Now we're getting somewhere. After all, you can't heal it if you've fully split that piece off and put it in a rock, can you?
Making a Horcrux, in this light, is a magical declaration that you know you've done an awful thing and you're not sorry - nothing will ever make you sorry. At least, not enough to heal yourself. Just as premeditated murder is considered worse than murder in the heat of the moment, deliberately making it impossible for remorse to fully take effect is probably worse than not feeling sorry at the moment but allowing for the possibility that you might later realize have done something wrong. That's not quite enough, though. However...
When you tear your soul but keep the torn bit inside you, presumably you still have access to that bit of your soul, even if it isn't working together with the main chunk as well as it usually does. It's still part of you, in active daily use. If you remove it, does it work long-distance? It doesn't seem so, does it? We've all noted how Voldemort's abilities to plan, estimate others' emotions in order to manipulate them, self-control, etc. all seem to deteriorate after he's made a few Horcruxes, and that the accidental Harrycrux (and/or spending eleven years possessing snakes) seems to have finally cracked him a bit too much to be a truly effective Dark Lord. We also saw that even the Horcruxes that weren't explicitly designed to hold memories seem to have bits of Tom's personality and the ability to understand outside events and react to them, like the Locket. And imprints of departed souls - ghosts - also seem to have memory, personality, emotions, etc. (or imprints of them, whatever that actually means). So it does seem likely that these things are all carried in the soul, at least for wizards.
Doesn't it follow, then, that cutting off your access to a piece of your soul would destroy part of your ability to feel remorse? For anything, ever, not just for that particular murder? And would diminish your ability to feel empathy as well? And your ability to control your impulses?
I'm sure someone here has said as much before, but tying it all together in one post: the true horror of Horcruxes is that, by damaging your soul in this particular way, you become much more likely to commit horrible acts in the future. And you almost certainly know this: in accepting the soul damage, you didn't just plan this one single murder, but signed on for the possibility that you're going to hurt more people, too. You can't "just" decide to make one single Horcrux, with regret and solemn intentions never to murder again, because you've decided that the greater good requires your continued existence during some crisis - becoming more dangerous yourself is an unavoidable part of the package. You can't even hope that your sense of self-preservation will restrain you all the time, because some of your self-restraint has been split off as well. You've got less of a filter between your temper and blasting someone with whatever nasty spell you want to see them suffer from.
Making a Horcrux isn't just premeditated murder, but a premeditated decision to quite possibly make yourself incapable of not hurting people forever after.* Not quite premeditated serial or mass murder, or even premeditated petty verbal cruelty... or manipulativeness... but being perfectly fine with the possibilities, enough to actively encourage it. (Even if you somehow didn't know about that particular side effect, your ignorance won't matter to your victims - they'll get hurt just the same.) You're committing to kill not just one person, but potentially lots of them, forever, to preserve your own life.
Ultimately, the concern is for your potential victims, not necessarily your mangled soul itself. Or at least not primarily so. After all, just diminishing your capacity for remorse isn't even the end of it, is it? You kill one person, you don't feel sorry at all - well, there's one less thing restraining you from trying it again, isn't there? It wasn't so bad, really, and look what you got in exchange! And so your remaining empathy and remorse is dampened even further... In essence, you'll start conditioning yourself to murder.
You might not start out as incapable of remorse and empathy as Tom Riddle... but you sure might end up that way, the longer you live after having diminished your capacity to feel those things.
That's pretty awful.
*Well. Maybe if you limit yourself to just one... and have lots of self-control to begin with, because you're just so wise and awesome at everything... And it's for the Greater GoodTM
no subject
Date: 2013-11-10 02:18 am (UTC)Tom is just that much more arrogant!
Also, it occurs to me that you might also be ripping off a piece of your ability to control your magic, and maybe your magic itself. A small bit, yes... But if you have average control or average ability, that could make enough of a difference that you actually can't make another if you try? We don't really know how difficult it is, since so few try in the first place.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-10 02:48 pm (UTC)And Dumbledore did say (HBP 23) "Never forget, though, that while his [Tom's] soul may be damaged beyond repair, his brain and his magical powers remain intact."
Mmm. But let's also consider the long-term effect of Dementors in this context. (PoA 10) "If it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself... soulless and evil."
You remember my arguemnet that part of what's wrong with Bellatrix and the other Azkaban-escapee DE's was Dementor Dementia, long-term (and apparently fundamentally irreversible) mental damage, depriving the victims of empathy and love.....
And "Dementors are supposed to darin a wizard of his powers if he is left with them too long..." but that effect, if it happens at all, is clearly temporary. Bellatrix (et alia) retruns to being an extremely powerful witch, but also stays a crazy sadist.
So maybe making a Horcrux essentailly inflicts Dementor-damage on oneself?
Hmm. Short term magical depletion... if you have enemies, weakening yourself directly before going into a fight wouldn't be a good thing. Unless, of course, you were already so superpowered you'd outclass them even after a drop in power....
?
no subject
Date: 2013-11-11 03:41 pm (UTC)Dementor-like damage also sounds like a distinct possibility.
As for Dumbledore's claim... well, he might well have meant that Tom's mind and powers were close enough to being intact for all intents and purposes, since Tom started out with so much and any degradation could be from a combination of causes, really, and after all he does want to make sure Harry doesn't underestimate him. I can't really fault him much for shading the truth that way, if he did (though Dumbledore might not truly know either, since he isn't actually all-knowing). The way Harry is by that late in the series, any suggestion that his mortal enemy might have weakened himself a bit might sound like an invitation to slack off.