This Wall Street Journal article didn’t ring any bells with me at first because it started with the description of Facebook as an envy-generator. I don’t really get that. I’ve read about the research that shows the more you use Facebook the worse you feel, but it just doesn’t really match my experience. I suppose FB could make me sad in a subtle way that I wouldn’t notice, but I think I would notice if my friends FB statuses were making me feel envious of their awesome lives. And… I just don’t feel that. Not ever, really.[ref]OK, after thinking about it I can think of one example. But other than the occasional update from this one law professor about how cushy the tenured life is, there’s really nothing there.[/ref]
So… I didn’t get it. But then this:
Psychologists and other experts aren’t immune to these feelings either. “There’s a man in my field who has made a big name for himself by so brilliantly promoting his work,” says executive coach Marcia Reynolds. “Whenever I hear his name, I feel something in the pit of my stomach.” But instead of dismissing her envy, she reflects on it and asks herself, “What’s holding me back? Can’t I play at his level too?”
Now that resonated. The paragraph thunked home like an arrow hitting the bulls-eye, and I vibrated to the core reading it, and especially the question at the end: “Can’t I play at his level too?”
For me, my nemesis/role-model (although he has no idea I exist) is John Scalzi. I vividly remember not only reading his excellent novel Old Man’s War, but also the sense of overt jealousy at the blurb on the cover that compared him to Heinlein (Heinlein!), and even more so at the discovery that he ran one of the most-viewed blogs on the entire web, and had been running it since the 1990s (before the word “blog” was a word). In fact, the very launch of this blog back in 2012 was heavily influenced by the years I spent reading John Scalzi, following his blog, following his Twitter, and thinking about what he did that could work for me and what he did that couldn’t.
It might seem a bit weird to focus just one guy that much, but John isn’t the only one. Every time I read a sci-fi book I’m thinking, “What works here?” and “What doesn’t?” And the more I like what I read, the more I try to learn from it. The difference with John Scalzi is just that he was the first author who burst onto the scene while I was watching, as it were. I read Old Man’s War, which was his first novel, within a year of it coming out. So I’ve been able to follow his career from first novel to his winning of the Hugo for Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas last year.[ref]Not my favorite book.[/ref] The other folks I’ve been envious of include Jim Butcher and Larry Correia: two other relatively young writers who write books I like and whose careers I have been studying and following as they unfurl before me.
So yeah… now that I think about it, I do get this notion of envy. I think the researchers are right:
“Those painful pangs of envy are there for an evolutionary reason,” says Texas Christian University researcher Sarah E. Hill, “alerting us that someone has something of importance to us.”
It’s not malicious at all, for me. These guys are my heroes (even if I disagree strongly with some of their political views). And it’s not competitive either. I don’t want to defeat anyone. I want them to keep writing, and write more books and better books. I’m a fan! And it’s not just imitation either, but I’m acutely aware that I’ve got to do my own thing. But, when I think about it, there really isn’t a better word for how I feel than “benign envy.”
Nathaniel has a thoughtful post on the morality of entertainment and art, focusing specifically on Game of Thrones and even Captain America. One particular point struck me:
I was also struck by an article(again, from Vulture) called Why Captain America Is Only Interesting If He’s a Prick. The article just elaborates on the headline: Captain America is devoid of artistic merit when he’s a good guy.
In 2014, of what artistic good is a flawlessly nice soldier? Can’t we get at least a little rough and dirty with this 75-year-old warhorse?
On one level, this (and the popularity of anti-heroes in general) is just a furtherance of “a silly idea” C. S. Lewis had already noted in his lifetime:
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is… A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
So I just don’t buy this argument that only if we have characters who revel in immoral behavior can we have a meaningful conversation about morality.
This is an excellent insight with a portion of Mere Christianity I had long forgotten. And I think there is much to the argument for a moral hero.[ref]For example, the Doctor in Doctor Who is (in some incarnations) damn near pacifist. However, he also tends to suffer remorse for the mass genocide he (thinks he) committed in the Last Great Time War.[/ref] “Moral art does not have to be saccharine, optimistic, or “nice,”” writes Nathaniel, “any more than the actual creation made by God Himself is saccharine, optimistic, or “nice.”” However, we shouldn’t confuse (and I’m not claiming Nathaniel does) an aversion toward seemingly stale heroes for a “nihilistic” lack of moral clarity rooted in our “reptilian brains.” Since I don’t watch Game of Thrones, I’ll use examples from a show I’m currently watching.
When Once Upon a Time first came out, I wasn’t much of a fan. For one, I missed the first couple episodes (which are actually quite good). The early episodes I did see struck me as cheesy and forgettable. It wasn’t until I began watching Doctor Who and reading The Dresden Files that the idea of fairy tales as different realms became appealing once more. But I think my original disinterest in the show was largely due to the first episodes I saw being centered on Snow White and Prince Charming. As I’ve ventured into the 3rd season, I’ve understood more clearly why this was the case: they are boring characters. They shouldn’t be, but they are. If I take my cue from the TheVulture article referenced by Nathaniel, they are the Captain Americas of Once Upon a Time: annoyingly optimistic,[ref]“I choose hope”…“Happy endings always begin with hope”…gag…[/ref] always worried about doing the “right thing” even though their decisions tend to get more people killed,[ref]Apparently intentions matter more than results in the Enchanted Forest.[/ref]become bedridden from guilt after a single use of dark magic while protecting people from a murderous, power-hungry witch,[ref]This earns Snow’s first black spot on her mystical heart. I guess engaging in an extramarital affair with Charming while they were under the curse wasn’t enough to earn one.[/ref] etc. Charming is especially irritating as he self-righteously condemns anyone who disagrees with him or doesn’t fit into his mold of “goodness.”[ref]His constant reviling of Hook in season 3 was infuriating, even if he finally comes around.[/ref] Perhaps this isn’t an entirely fair assessment,[ref]Snow has her moments, but it is mainly when she’s discussing her trials bluntly without the sugarcoating. That’s when you get a glimpse of her courage.[/ref] but it generally captures my feelings as a viewer.
Who are my favorite characters then? They are—surprise, surprise—Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin (“The Dark One”) and Regina (“The Evil Queen”). Why are the self-described villains my favorites? First, I should expose my biases. Mr. Gold is portrayed by Robert Carlyle, who rocked it in the hilarious British comedy The Full Monty. But even more important (for me, anyway), he was the pain-immune terrorist Renard in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. If an actor/actress was in a Bond film, no matter how terrible (and TWINE was not one of the best), they receive an honorary status in my book. Recognizing him in Once Upon a Time played a role in me rewatching the series.
Robert Carlyle as Renard in ‘The World Is Not Enough’
As for Regina, Lana Parrilla is hot. When it comes to “the fairest one of all,” the Evil Queen blows Snow White out of the water. And that’s all I have to say about that (and I can because my wife thinks Hook is hot, so there).
But what is it about their characters? True, there is a certain sense of badassery that they embody. Gold walks with a cane in a dark suit, condescendingly calls people “dearie” (especially those who try to threaten him), is always one step ahead of virtually everyone, makes people offers they can’t refuse, rips hearts out (including his cheating wife’s), etc. Regina also rips out hearts (lots of them…her mother was the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland…), cuts through whining and diplomacy with magical fire, and cursed the Enchanted Forest by transferring its inhabitants to an entirely different realm with brand new memories for 20+ years. There is a morbid kind of glee when I see a cool, snarky character exerting their power over others. It gratifies probably some of the baser parts of my nature. However, these traits aren’t what make them interesting. The reason I connect with them the most is because they are in need of and are seeking redemption.
Rumpelstiltskin’s transformation into the Dark One–the most powerful and feared entity in the Enchanted Forest–grew out of a desire to protect his only son, first from the Ogre Wars and then personal enemies. His wife had abandoned them both to sail with the pirate Killian Jones (Captain Hook). Furthermore, Rumpelstiltskin’s own father (who had a reputation as a coward and scoundrel) had abandoned him as a child in order to remain in Neverland and become Peter Pan. Rumpelstiltskin had even injured himself to avoid war because a magical Seer had prophesied that his actions on the battlefield would leave his newborn son fatherless. The entire reason he creates the Dark Curse (the plot of the first season) for the Evil Queen is so that he can be reunited with his son Baelfire, who was transported to this realm alone after a panicked Rumpelstiltskin refused to follow him into a portal between worlds. Many deaths, betrayals, and battles later, not only is Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold reunited with his son, but he has even found love in the form of Belle (he was her “Beast”) and discovered he has a grandson. Rumpelstiltskin struggled with his “nasty habit” of self-preservation and his darker ways all the way up to the end.[ref]Well, sort of the end…[/ref] This is what made his sacrifice to save his friends and family so moving. Everything, good and bad, had been for his son.
Regina has a similar tale. Her dark path didn’t begin until after her emotionally abusive and manipulative mother Cora arranged (through a series of events) Regina’s engagement to Snow White’s father. Being in love with a stable boy, Regina planned to run away with him, while trusting the young Snow White with the information. After coaxing the information out of Snow, Cora murdered Regina’s love. Feeling betrayed by Snow, Regina’s anger boiled over the years. She began taking magic lessons from the Dark One, ridding herself of her mother and eventually plotting against Snow White. Devoured by grief and anger, trapped in a loveless marriage, and hated by the commoners, Regina’s heart grew colder. She consistently sought love and affection throughout the chaos she caused to no avail. Even after succeeding in the Dark Curse, she realized how alone she truly was. She adopted a baby (who ends up being the grandson of Snow White and Prince Charming) with hopes of filling the hole in her heart. She later struggled to win the affection of her mother once she returned to the picture. Her constant search for love leads to much destruction, but she is slowly turned by her love for her adopted son. Ultimately, she ends up being willing to sacrifice herself for her son on numerous occasions.
My point is not that these characters should have made their bad choices. My complaint isn’t even that the story of Snow White and Prince Charming are bland compared to that of Gold and Regina. Far from it. But I can connect with those who have fallen. I can root for them to repent, to be reconciled with friends and family, and to be forgiven. I personally connect with those who need redemption more than those who don’t seem to need it at all. I prefer these characters because, in some small way, I see a little of myself in them. And I need redemption as much as anyone else.
I want to write a post about that controversial rape scene from last week’s episode of Game of Thrones, about why I don’t watch Game of Thrones, and about the ethics of creating and consuming entertainment and art, but first I need to explain the structure of reality.[ref]That’s a little but of humor there, folks. But also I’m serious.[/ref]
Naïve Realism
Realism is the idea that the external world is objectively there, whether we observe it or not. There are lots of different kinds of realism, but the default view (especially among folks who don’t go out of their way to study this) is naïve realism. That’s the idea that the world is out there and that we perceive it directly (and more or less reliably) through our senses. According to this view, objective reality exists, and we all live in it.
Subjectivism
The alternative to realism is idealism. These days, and throughout much of history, idealism has been a minority view but an important one. Descartes kicked off modern Western philosophy with his Meditations, the most famous line of which is cogito ergo sum, or “I think, therefore I am.” That’s a fundamentally idealist perspective, because it starts with the mind first, independent of any observation about the external, physical world.
The best way to think about the relationship between idealism and realism is this. According to realism we can all be sure of the fact that we have brains, but the question of whether or not we have minds is an open one. According to idealism, we can all be sure of the fact that we have minds, but the question of whether or not we have brains is an open one.
Subjectivism is a particularly extreme form of idealism that, as far as I can tell, is the most popular alternative to naïve realism among non-philosophers. Subjectivism is the idea that all truth depends on our perception. In that view, there is no objective reality. We all live in our own little subjective realities where things are true for us that might not be true for anyone else.
Problems with Naïve Realism and Subjectivism
The simplest argument for realism is stubbing your toe. No matter how much you didn’t perceive that the doorframe was going to hit your foot right there, it did. And then it hurts. Clearly objective, physical reality doesn’t really wait around for you to perceive it before it imposes consequences on your perception.
So there is strong argument for objectivity, but naïve realism is more than just objectivity. It also asserts that we directly perceive the world around us through our senses.
The counterexample to that is the existence of optical illusions. It’s not the simple fact that our senses can be mistaken that causes the problem for naïve realism, however, it’s the way that optical illusions hijack the unconscious processes that we use to construct an internal reality from raw sense data. This proves that there isn’t a simple, direct correspondence between what’s out there, what we perceive as sense data, and what we then perceive as being out there.
Believe it or not, the squares labeled A and B are the exact same shade of gray.
The situation is worse when it comes to subjectivism because the concept is obviously incoherent. For a full treatment, I recommend Thomas Nagel’s The Last Word, but here’s one quick example of why subjectivism makes no sense. Subjectivism says that no claims about reality can be objectively true or false, but subjectivism itself is an objective claim about reality. That doesn’t prove it’s false. It just proves that it’s incoherent. No sane person can rationally believe subjectivism.
So why is it popular? Well some things (like taste) really are subjective. More importantly, however, subjectivism is what some people run to because it seems like the only alternative that captures the idea that perspective really matters. You and I may look at the same situation and come to different conclusions, and we might both be right. This doesn’t actually require subjectivism (you can have different viewpoints and conditional / provisional truth claims within an objective framework), but it’s close enough to confuse lots of folks.
Enactivism
Every now and then I come up with some theory or other, and I tinker with it more and more over the months and years and when I know that it’s a really good, solid theory that’s when I can be confident that it already exists on Wikipedia. Enactivism is one of those concepts. From the entry:
Enactivism argues that cognition depends on a dynamic interaction between the cognitive agent and its environment: “Organisms do not passively receive information from their environments, which they then translate into internal representations. Natural cognitive systems…participate in the generation of meaning …engaging in transformational and not merely informational interactions: they enact a world.”
In this sense, enactivism is a fusion of naïve realism and subjectivism. It starts with the idea that objective reality is really out there. But we don’t perceive it directly. Instead, we take the sense data that is there as raw material, and we use that raw material to build our own private, internal models of the world. Because we’re all starting with the same objective reality, our individual constructed realities have lots of points of contact. This is one reason why communication is possible: because we’re often talking about the same basic reality.
Welcome to Your Matrix
Part of our constructed reality is a model of objective reality. Here, I’m thinking about everything relating to physics. We use our senses to identify objects, how far away they are, how big they are, what direction they’re moving in, etc. Part of our constructed reality appears to consist of patterns of organization that just are. Like math. 2+2 =4 for everyone, even though the number two is not a physical thing. In this sense our constructed realities are less than objective reality, which is the real thing. We only see some of what is out there, we sometimes misidentify what we do see, and we imperfectly apply rules of logic and math.
But part of our constructed reality is more than objective reality. The most essential concept here is narrative. Objective reality is just stuff that happens. There isn’t, outside of the rules of physics, a why. There isn’t meaning or purpose. That stuff exists in our constructed reality. Now, maybe it also exists in objective reality (because God says so, or for some other reason), but we can’t really be sure of that.
Shared Reality
There’s one last twist that I’ll put on enactivism before I get back to Game of Thrones (no, I hadn’t forgotten). That’s the idea of shared constructed realities.
Because we’re constantly interacting with each other, our individual realities are permeable. We have our own narratives, in which we are always the hero of our own story, but we share these narratives with other folks who agree or disagree with them. In addition, when we create things we are always cooperating in the creation of a shared, constructed reality. This is true even for individuals who do their creative work alone. Think about J. K. Rowling, writing her stories before anybody else had read them. At that point, they were strictly within her own reality. But once the world read them, then we became participants with J. K. Rowling in creating this shared reality.
Did the deaths of Sirius, or of Dumbledore, or of Dobby affect you? They affected me. Dobby’s, in particular, brought me to tears. That doesn’t mean that I was confused and thought that Dobby was out there in objective reality or that magic was real, but it does mean that there was as a sense in which at a deep, subconscious level, J. K. Rowling’s creation had become real to me.
For me it’s an open question if some narratives are objectively true. It may be possible that the shared, constructed reality is just our attempt to recreate objective reality, and that we can be right or wrong about narratives in the same way that we can be right or wrong about guessing size or distance or speed. But, practically speaking, there is a difference between objective reality (which can be quantified and objectively evaluated) and our shared, constructed realities (which cannot).
The Ethics of Sub-Creation
According to what I’ve read about J. R. R. Tolkien, he referred to world-building as “sub-creation.”
‘Sub-creation’ was also used by J.R.R. Tolkien to refer the to process of world-building and creating myths. In this context, a human author is a ‘little maker’ creating his own world as a sub-set within God’s primary creation. Like the beings of Middle-earth, Tolkien saw his works as mere emulation of the true creation performed by God.(Tolkien Gateway)
This is an extremely powerful for me, because I’ve always believed in a kind of grand universal theory of everything (only for metaphysics, rather than physics) that would somehow unify the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. On a more practical level, it provides a window into the ethics of sub-creation, which is the ethics of artistic creativity.
I know I’m going to lose a ton of people who bridle at the idea of imposing laws or commands on artistic expression (on the one hand) and who are horrified by the history of attempts to subvert artistic expression to propaganda for someone’s idea of right and wrong (on the other). These are serious concerns, but I do not think they apply to what I have in mind.
First, when it comes to rules and laws, I think we can all appreciate that a greater understanding of physical laws allows us to be more creative rather than less. This applies not only to what our engineers can build, but also to what our scientists and philosophers can imagine. I am not by any means suggesting that I could come up with the “right” rules for how to do art, or some objective metric for deciding what piece of art has more merit than another. It is not only foolish but vulgar to attempt to rank the Beauty of Mozart’s Requiem vs. that of Allegri’s Miserere, in my mind.[ref]I have no musical expertise. These are just pieces that mean a lot to me, personally. I have no idea what critics think of their relative merits.[/ref] But it isn’t vulgar or futile to wonder if there aren’t common principles—like symmetry and transcendence and struggle—which might animate both and help make each great.
Second, the grand unifying theory of everything is outside our grasp so, if we are appropriately humble, the danger of propagandizing is low. Propaganda is for people who already know what they want others to think, but someone who is searching for truth out there has no such agenda to sate and no pretext of certainty with which to sate it.
What I have in mind, by contrast, is a kind of unification of three activities that people might not ordinarily see as connected: faith, artistic creation, and artistic consumption.
Let me start out by illustrating that, because we have a wide range of freedom in constructing our realities, there is room for this to be a meaningfully moral activity. We cannot choose facts, obviously, but we still have great freedom. We can choose to look for light or to wallow in darkness. We can choose to find meaning or we can choose to see none. We can choose to be motivated towards a thing by love, or repelled away from something else by fear. What we desire is reflected in the world we create to live in, not in the banal sense of wish-fulfillment, but in a deep reflection of our truest desires.
Now let me make one simple comment: if our constructed reality determines our course of action, then it is in the truest and most accurate sense of the world what we believe. After all, beliefs are not about what we think is true, or even what we think we think is true (it’s possible to get that wrong), but rather about the things that must be true based on our actions. Therefore, another expression for constructing our reality is simply “having faith”. This need not be faith in a religious sense, secular humanists have ideals in which they have faith as firm and unwavering as any of the devout followers of religion, but it is absolutely faith.
Let me go farther and say that creating art is essentially the same thing as creating our own reality. There is a kind of symmetry between sub-creation as the creation of art and sub-creation as the creation of meaning in our day-to-day lives. I don’t think there is such a vast difference between Tolkien’s work creating Elven dialects vs. a parent’s work in feeding their child. To me: creation of meaning is creation of meaning. Faith, therefore, is not only about the construction of our beliefs, but also about the construction of art.
Lastly, let me bring back the concept of shared, constructed reality like the world of Harry Potter. When we read a book, watch a movie, listen to a poem, or hear a song we are not passively receiving information (like the failed theory of naïve realism), but are actively participating with the creator in constructing a shared reality. The audience, the performers, and the authors are all playing different parts, but in the very same activity.
In the end: The rules for what we should believe are related to the rules for what art we should create which are related to the rules for what art we should choose to participate in as the audience. And they amount, I think, to simply this: always strive for something truer, better, and more beautiful.
Game of Thrones is not the deepest, most subtle, or most innovative drama on TV. It is an example of what used to be called “meat-and-potatoes” storytelling: an R-rated yet classically styled epic. It’s mainly concerned with riveting the viewer from moment to moment, often through sex, violence, or intrigue, while keeping a vast fictional world, a complex plot, and a preposterously overpopulated cast straight in the viewer’s mind.
Does this sound like the kind of constructed reality in which you would like to exist? Not me. It’s not even the sex or violence per se that are the problem, but the fact that they are used as short-term goads to keep us interested. To the extent that these goads are linked directly into our “reptilian brains” (see next quote) they are essentially nihilistic. The next paragraph goes on:
Along with Hannibal, this is the most joyous, at times exhilarating nightmare on TV. Considering how unrelentingly bleak this world is — a State of Nature in which most characters are ruled by their reptilian brains, and those who show kindness or mercy tend to suffer for it — there’s no reason why it should be anything but off-putting.
But of course, there is a reason why it’s not off-putting: spectacle. Which brings me to a more recent piece on Game of Thrones called Rape of Thrones. The article ponders why it is that the HBO show has felt the need to deviate from the text of the books in the particular way that it does. Obviously it has to make changes (for length if nothing else), but why has the show chosen not once but twice to render a consensual sexual encounter (in the books) into rape (in the show)?
It seems more likely that Game Of Thrones is falling into the same trap that so much television does—exploitation for shock value. And, in particular, the exploitation of women’s bodies. This is a show that inspired the term “sexposition,” and a show that may have created a character who is a prostitute so as to set as many scenes as possible in brothels.
So you have to ask yourself, what kind of a person voluntarily inhabits a world where women are being degraded purely to sate his animal interest? Who willingly goes along with that? Who wants to help create that world?
That’s not the only problem, however, and Game of Thrones is not my only target. I was also struck by an article(again, from Vulture) called Why Captain America Is Only Interesting If He’s a Prick. The article just elaborates on the headline: Captain America is devoid of artistic merit when he’s a good guy.
In 2014, of what artistic good is a flawlessly nice soldier? Can’t we get at least a little rough and dirty with this 75-year-old warhorse?
On one level, this (and the popularity of anti-heroes in general) is just a furtherance of “a silly idea” C. S. Lewis had already noted in his lifetime:
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is… A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
So I just don’t buy this argument that only if we have characters who revel in immoral behavior can we have a meaningful conversation about morality.
This topic is more than I can handle conclusively in a single post, but here’s where I’d like to wrap things up for now.
Moral art does not have to be saccharine, optimistic, or “nice” any more than the actual creation made by God Himself is saccharine, optimistic, or “nice”. The two greatest arguments against God, in my mind, are the Problem of Evil and the hidden god. Why, if God is so good, is there so much suffering? And why, if God wants us to know Him, does he not make Himself obviously present? If the greatest creation of all can cause such incredible pain and confusion, then obviously we have absolutely no reason to suspect that our sub-creations ought to be relentlessly, oppressively cheerful.
Bearing that in mind, however, art is creation, and it is therefore morally significant in ways that are complex and open to interpretation and exploration. My point is not so much “no one should watch Game of Thrones“ as it is that we should all realize that what we watch literally contributes to the creation of the world we inhabit. That’s a big deal. It’s something to think about seriously.
I don’t think that the answer is to try and wall ourselves off from anything that challenges us or makes us sad, but I do think that we ought to avoid deliberate exploitation of sex and violence to hook viewers (because it is nihilistic) and also that we ought to seek out art that reaffirms the validity of moral striving. This will mean different things to different people. I’m not suggesting any kind of top-down censorship. I’m talking about bottom-up self-control in what we choose to participate in.
I don’t know all the answers. I just think, based on my theories of constructed reality, that the problem is more important than most folks realize. I believe there is deep significance to what we choose to consume as mere entertainment, and that it is worth thinking about.
I totally watched All That growing up. This was back in elementary school days when I was really too young to be out very late on Saturday nights (plus, I had Mormon parents). And, of course, I couldn’t drive. SNICK @ Nite was the kid equivalent of shows like SNL. Every 90s kid has characters like Pierre Escargot, Repairman (Man, Man, Man…), Ed from “Good Burger,” and Ashley from the “Ask Ashley” segment etched in their memories. Hence, my joy and nostalgia over an article at The Atlantic titled “The Quiet Radicalism of All That,” which looks at just how different All That was compared to other kid shows (especially the teen nonsense on The WB).
I had the opportunity to read and review David Bokovoy‘s (Ph.D., Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East) new book Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis – Deuteronomy for Greg Kofford Books over at Worlds Without End. The book description is as follows:
For the last two centuries, biblical scholars have made discoveries and insights about the Old Testament that have greatly changed the way in which the authorship of these ancient scriptures has been understood. In the first of three volumes spanning the entire Hebrew Bible, David Bokovoy dives into the Pentateuch, showing how and why textual criticism has led biblical scholars today to understand the first five books of the Bible as an amalgamation of multiple texts into a single, though often complicated narrative; and he discusses what implications those have for Latter-day Saint understandings of the Bible and modern scripture.
This is an incredible book for those interested in biblical studies, especially Latter-day Saints. Check out it out.
The article starts with the claim that Christians who have opposed Disney movies over the years have focused on the wrong issues (e.g. modesty of the Little Mermaid) and not the truly nefarious message at the heart of Disney:
Nearly every Disney animated film for decades taught us the same core moral principle. In most contexts, it looked like “love is a feeling that must be acted on at all costs.” At a more fundamental level, though, it was “following your heart is always the right thing to do.” Disney didn’t make most of us a witch, or a pantheist, or a nude sunbather, but boy did it teach us to value nothing above our own desires.
It then argues that Frozen directly contradicted that message: “Instead, the entire plot of the movie is built around the two main characters unlearning these givens of Disney morality.” I’m not sure I 100% agree with the criticism of the criticism of past Disney movies[ref]I think sometimes Christian objections are caricatured as being just about trivial issues because the world can’t grasp their more substantive concerns[/ref], but I think the praise of this aspect of Frozen is absolutely right. I’m glad it’s the movie my kids insist on watching on repeat.
Darren Aronofsky’s Noah rose above (or likely because of) the controversy surrounding it to have an impressive $44 million opening weekend. I was writing my review, but getting bogged down in some technical details regarding the Watchers. I’d much rather focus on some of the themes from an LDS perspective, so I thought I’d share this blog post from Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis (Adjunct Professor of Rabbinics, University of North Texas) that covers a lot of the interesting extra-biblical bits of Noah with further links. (I’ll likely build on these in my own review, but now I don’t feel obligated to explain it all.)
These include:
Watchers: “The fallen angels, based in Gen. 6:4 and grandly elaborated on in the Book of Enoch and the Book of Giants, are a big part of the storyline…Aronofsky elides the more lurid part to the tradition, their coupling with human women and producing giant offspring, focusing instead on their role in Enoch as the bringers of knowledge and technology to humanity.”
Tzohar: “The glowy-explosive substance used repeatedly in the movie is based on the tzohar, a miraculous gemstone that tradition tells us illuminated the interior of the ark.”
The Garment of Adam: “…I assume this is where the idea for the magical-glowing-serpent skin-arm tefillin worn by the shamanic patriarchs of Seth is derived from. In Jewish tradition, the garment is made from the hide of Leviathan [i.e. the sea serpent]. Here, it’s the sloughed-off, pre-corruption skin of the edenic serpent.”
Tubal-Cain: “The terrifying and terrified king is constructed from a single verse of Genesis where he is credited as a worker of bronze and iron, but is then fused with the midrashic King Nimrod, the power-mad tyrant of rabbinic fantasy who attacks God’s messengers.”
Drawing on a parable from the Zohar, Dennis writes,
Hopefully…people are finally coming to understand that the fundamentalist critics of this film are all masters of wheat as alluded to by the Zohar. They think that in cleaving only to the bare bones of the biblical narrative, they are masters of all aspects of the story, but in fact they are, to a great extent, suffering from a kind textual indigestion, or perhaps a spiritual ciliac disorder, in which they fail to absorb the full nutritional value of the biblical narrative because of their restrictive way of reading. The Noah story as received, a mere one hundred verses, with little dialogue, minimal motivation, no character development or insight, no struggle, is a mere skeleton which the readers must flesh out with themselves, projecting their experiences, emotions, and conflicts, and imagination onto the scaffold of plot to fully realize its many on complex meanings and implications. The movie Noah steps into those many gaps and fills them with clever, and sometimes crazed, midrashic storytelling.
I couldn’t agree more.
Here are a few more Noah-related posts from biblical scholars and biblically literate moviegoers:
As any Browncoat knows, you can’t stop the signal. You can, however, try to hijack it. Before the end of the first episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., I realized that that was exactly what was going on. I’m definitely not the first person to notice the strong parallels between Agents and Firefly. This excellent piece at ScreenRant dives right into the similarities… and why they don’t work. I largely agree with everything Andrew Dyce says in it, but I want to hone in on just the characters themselves, rather than also talking about plot, setting, and theme.
The ensemble cast (9 stars!) was the heart and soul of Firefly, but it was also the show’s Achilles’ heel, because having a lot of characters makes it harder for the audience to invest in the characters. This is partially because each individual character gets less time-per-episode, but there’s more to it than that.
In a show like Firefly, the audience gets to know the characters through their interactions with each other. To really know the group, we have to know how every member of that group relates to every single other member. Which means that it’s not characters that we have to worry about, it’s relationships. And the number of relationships in a group grows much faster than the number of individuals in the group.
This is a basic finding from network theory, but we can skip the theory and go straight to the pictures. In this illustration, taken from Wikipedia, imagine that every dot is a character, and every line connecting two dots is a relationship.
Small groups have very few relationships. You have to get up to three people in a group before you have three relationships to keep track of. But from that point on, the number of relationships grows much faster than the number of people being added to the group. Agents has six characters, so there are 15 relationships to keep track of. Firefly, on the other hand, had nine characters, which means there are 36 relationships to keep track of. This means that the cast of Firefly is more than twice as hard to get to know than the cast of Agents.
This isn’t just some random mathematical excursion, either. Social dynamics are a fundamental part of what makes us human. Some evolutionary biologists believe that one of the defining characteristics of the human brain is the ability to keep track of larger social groups than other primates. This is called the social brain hypothesis, and it was first promoted by Robin Dunbar. He argued that humans can only track a finite number of total, real-life relationships (most modern estimates say about 150), and this number became known as Dunbar’s number. In the real world, Dunbar’s number meant that our ancestors could congregate in much larger groups than chimpanzees, which allowed them to specialize and survive and (according to the hypothesis) could have created a feedback loop of increasing intelligence that led to modern humanity. The point is that we’re social animals, and there’s no reason to think that this doesn’t also apply to art.
This means that narrative with a lot of characters has the potential to be particularly engaging for us, but that it’s also harder to pull off. The story has to be good enough to keep people engaged long enough to have a chance to learn the relationships, and it also has to actually depict all the important relationships.
This isn’t a comprehensive theory of narrative, or anything. There’s a lot more to the story. Harry Potter is an incredibly engrossing narrative, and it only has 3 core relationships (between Harry, Ron, and Hermione) but a lot of the depth there comes from how those relationships change over time. (It’s partially a coming-of-age story, after all.) Game of Thrones has literally dozens and dozens of important characters, and there’s no way the books (let alone show) could hope to describe how every single person relates to every single other person, but that’s fine. The characters in Game of Throne are divided into factions and separated by geography, so it makes sense to have a very incomplete graph: not all the dots are going to have lines between them. But Firefly is a show about 9 people who all live together, and in that context we’re going to want to know how everyone relates to everyone else. Similarly, Agents has 6 people all living together, and so we can do a sort of apples-to-apples comparison between those two shows, even if we can’t generalize the analysis to every other book, movie, or TV show in existence.
So the point is that Firefly had a lot of relationships, and if you watch the shows in order that’s awesome because the story is good enough to keep you hooked, and then the episodes flesh out all the relationships. Which is great, right up until Fox decides to show the episodes out of order and to not even bother airing the premier.
Now, the lesson we Browncoats took from this is simple: air the episodes in the order they were written! TV execs probably saw things differently, however. Rather than fuss with shows that are highly sensitive to viewing-order, you’d want to try and re-engineer the show to be less sensitive. With or without my fancy network diagrams, it’s not really rocket science to realize that the simplest way to do that is to have fewer characters.
Which brings us to Agents as FireflyLite: they basically took the exact same characters and downsized them from nine to just five[ref]Yes, just five. You’ll see.[/ref] Here’s how they did it:
Mal vs. Agent Coulson
This one is pretty obvious: older, white, father figure who was mysteriously and powerfully changed by some violent, traumatic event in his past. He loves his crew, but maintains a degree of emotional distance and detachment, attributes that serve him well as the unquestioned and unrivaled leader.
Zoe vs. The Cavalry
Next up we have the captain’s right-hand woman. She is staunchly loyal to the captain and they have a military history together, but there is absolutely no spark of romance whatsoever. Competent and resolute, she is the consummate professional fighter, but deep down she also bears the scars of loss and injury.
Kaylee vs. Fitz & Simmons
This is the most likeable and relatable character in the crew. We have a scientifically brilliant character who’s skills are without parallel and who has the technical know-how to save the crew on more than one occasion, but also a person who is in no way suited for combat and tends to wilt under threat of violence.
And yes, I am treating Fitz and Simmons as one character. This is because the thing that matters the most for this analysis is the relationship between characters, and the sibling relationship is so well-known that it doesn’t need to be explored or explained.
Jayne vs. Agent Ward
Here we have the muscle of the team. With nothing like the professional technique of the leader’s right-hand woman, the muscle is more an avatar of brute aggression and male assertiveness. Sexually avaricious, self-centered and emotionally stunted, the muscle can be relied on to rescue the team when needed, but usually grudgingly.
River & Simon vs. Skye
Here we have the most recent edition to the crew. This character is viewed with suspicion and a little resentment by everyone else because they arrived late, brought an unknown past, display a troubled personality, and still have murky ties to a mysterious organization that could threaten the whole crew. On the other hand, the character is vulnerable and needs their help and also possess a rare and highly specialized skill. Technical wizardry is great, but it sort of comes with the territory. Your very own top-tier trauma surgeon / hacker? That’s not something that comes standard for a group like this.
You’ll also note that, once again, I’m treating siblings like a single character because from the standpoint of intra-group relationships, the sibling relationship is more of a surplus to be tapped than a vacuum waiting to be filled.
MIA: Book, Inara, and Wash
So let’s talk about the crew of the Firefly that didn’t make the cut: Book, Inara, and Wash. Without doubt, these three characters were the most peripheral. After all, entire episodes took place with literally no input from Book and Inara, and when Serenity opens neither one of them is even onboard the ship anymore. Wash, for his part, ends up gutted on the end of a giant Reaver harpoon-type-thing, so none of them are actually present for the entire show.
They also, at times, fill overlapping roles. Book serves as the conscience of the crew sometimes, but Whedon often preferred to have the religious character ironically rudderless. In those cases, or when the Shepherd was off-camera, either Wash or Inara could also step up to fill that role.
And yet, they also each brought their own, irreplaceable element to the story. Book and Inara served to really flesh out Mal’s character, which is important because otherwise his relationship with the rest of the crew was a little formal and strained. Inara, as the love interest, and Book, as the mentor, showed a vulnerable and relatable side of Mal that made him much, much more compelling and relatable as a character. Wash, filled a similar role for Zoe, adding unexpected depth to her otherwise stoic façade. More than that, however, he served as the source of fun and humor for the crew. Not for the audience, mind you, but for the actual crew. It was Wash, more than anyone else, who could diffuse tension and act as a sort of mediator for some of the other relationships.
In a lot of ways, it was these supporting characters who really made the chemistry happen. They could drop off camera for a scene or even an episode, but they were anything but dispensable. These weren’t the only characters that Agents tried to get away without, however. There’s one more.
Serenity vs. The Bus
Outwardly there’s nothing subtle about this comparison. Serenity is a big, flying ship that is home to the entire crew. The Bus is a big, flying ship that is home to the entire crew. They perform pretty much exactly the same function, they look sort of similar, and they even both feature prominent engines that can rotate for vertical take-off and landing.
Other than function, however, they couldn’t be more different. The name Serenity comes from the Battle of Serenity Valley, which was the pivotal event in the war the defined the entire ‘Verse. It’s a deeply personal name for Mal, but it means something to every single person on the ship. The Bus, on the other hand, is about as impersonal as it gets. The Bus gets you from Point A to Point B. You don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what your relationship is to it. It’s just a means to an end. Agent Coulson named one of his cars with a personal name, but not the plane they all live. It isn’t really a home, and therefore they don’t have that family dynamic.
There’s nothing impersonal about Serenity. Every character on board had his or her own unique relationship to the ship, which is why it makes sense to talk about her as a character. She represents Mal’s stubborn refusal to let go of the past even as he struggles to confront the future, a symbol of the tattered shreds of his idealism and hope. She’s like a giant, beloved children’s toy or safety blanket for Wash, and she’s a confidant and companion to Kaylee. She’s a refuge for Inara, a rare example of a relationship that gives to the Companion without asking for anything in return. She’s like a forest for the Shepherd, providing both the shelter of shade and the confusion of shadow. She’s a bunk for Jayne, but also so much more. On Serenity, Jayne gets his own bunk, and so she represents his fragile self-esteem and acceptance in a that hates him (the feeling is mutual). Even Jayne loves Serenity because everyone loves their mom. Simon might have the most tenuous relationship to Serenity, but his sister River loves the ship so much she becomes incorporeal and merges her identity with it!
Although she doesn’t often make a big deal of if, however, it might be Zoe who has the most invested in Serenity, even if we don’t see it until after the loss of her husband at her helm.
Getting Agents off the Ground
Lots of folks have tried to call Agents something like Firefly 2.0, but it clearly doesn’t deserve that title. A 2.0 version is supposed to be a big step forward. It’s supposed to build on the lessons of the prior iteration and offer more and better. But Agents has struggled to find its own voice while living off of borrowed magic from Firefly, and it borrowed that magic poorly. It’s not a version 2.0. It’s much more like a lite version. It took the essential heart of Firefly–a band of misfits forged into a family—and then it tried to get away with a simplified, dumbed-down version. Fewer characters and simpler group dynamics might make the show easier to understand, but it also just means that there’s a lot less to love.
With the announcing of the semi-rebranding of Agents to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Uprising, the show clearly has aspirations of finally lumbering off the ground on its own right. Some folks are pretty excited about what this means. Others are more skeptical.
I certainly wish the show the best, and I hope it succeeds in finding its own identity. I sort of doubt it will, however. Trying to launch a stripped down version of an earlier success is the definition of playing it safe, and safety is hardly ever the path to greatness.
On the heels of James Hetfield’s interview, Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett opened up at Guitar Center about his custom guitars and high school dreams. In a surprisingly emotional moment, he reveals that one of the most hardcore riffs of the song “Creeping Death” was written when he was 16-years-old. Check it out below. Hetfield and Hammett were early influences in my guitar playing, so I’m really pleased with these interviews.
It’s tempting to write off the small minority of humankind who dislike the Harry Potter books as merely malcontents and misanthropes but for one fact: they are somewhat united in their criticism of the books. This criticism, in a nutshell, is that the Wizarding World and the witches and wizards who inhabit it make no sense.
Neville’s parents were recent Deatheater victims. Nobody thought to try and save them?
For example, in a world where time travel is possible, why did no one ever think of using it to kill Voldermort or at least save some of his victims? The Ministry of Magic had a whole cabinet full of time turners, after all. Maybe there’s some practical or ethical problem that would prevent them from being used in that way, but it seems unbelievable that no one even considers a long-run plan in which they might be useful for something other than letting Hermione overload her course schedule. Surely Sirius might have thought it would be nice to use the trick that saved his life to try and save Lily and James? Surely Harry, after a time turner made him think he saw his father, might have gotten the idea of using the device to go back and see his parents for real?
This is the kind of unreality that can really bother someone who is otherwise perfectly happy to suspend disbelief about the whole magic thing. Potions and spells are fine, but Quirrel repeatedly trying to grab Harry with his bare hands mere moments after using magic to bind him is not. Apparition is acceptable, but a world where wizards can apparate but choose to mostly travel using trains, floo powder, port keys, carriages pulled by griffins, thestrals, broomsticks, dragons, magical underwater pirate ships and the Knight Bus instead isn’t. Ritual duels using a variety of interesting curses and counter-curses seem sensible, but using anything but avada kedavara in an all-out-war seems as absurd as trying to fight a real war with Nerf guns.[ref]A lot of these examples came up in conversations I had with my contrarian friend Reece. You can read his completely wrong-headed criticisms of Rowling’s world-building on his blog.[/ref]
One might argue that only Scrooge would apply this kind of scrutiny to beloved children’s tales. The Wizarding World doesn’t make sense, but who cares? I understand that approach, but in the first case: I can’t help it. Analyzing things is what I do. I couldn’t turn it off I tried.[ref]For that matter, I have tried. No dice.[/ref] In this case, however, something funny happened. The closer I looked at these supposed flaws, the more convinced I became that J. K. Rowling is a world-building genius. If you look carefully, the apparently nonsensical traits of the magical community actually make a very good deal of sense. In fact, given the basic reality of magic in Rowling’s work, there’s no other way the Wizarding World could have turned out.
On Magic
There are two key facts to understand about magic as it exists in Harry Potter. The first is that it’s very rare. How rare? Well, here’s one way to try and estimate the entire population of Wizards in the United Kingdom, just to get a general idea.
Start with the fact that Harry’s first year of Hogwarts was 1991[ref]The date of death on the gravestone of Lilly and James Potter is October 31, 1981. Since Harry was one when they died, his birth day was July 31, 1980. Therefore, he would have started Hogwarts in fall 1991 just after he turned 11.[/ref]. There were 40 first years in his cohort. So if we assume every 11-year old wizard or witch in the UK showed up at Hogwarts we know that there were 40 of them in 1991. Now let’s compare that to the total population of 11-year old kids in the United Kingdom in the same year. We can start with the total population of the UK in 1991: 57,439,000.[ref]Wikipedia[/ref]. The closest age bands I could find were from 2011, but lets just say that’s close enough. In that case, 5.8% of those 57,439,000 were children between the ages of 10 and 14[ref]Wikipedia[/ref], which is 3,331,462. Let’s assume that within that age band equal numbers of kids are 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. So if we divide the total number of the group (3,331,462) by the number of groups (5) we get that there were 666,292 11 year old kids in the UK in 1991. If 40 of them were magic-users, then we can establish a wizard:Muggle ratio of 1:16,657. Now, sure, there were a lot of “ifs” and assumptions along the way, but it’s not a bad start for a ball park estimate, and if that ratio holds true across all ages then there would have been about 3,448 witches and wizards all together in the Unitked Kingdom in 1991.
This is fairly close to J. K. Rowling’s estimate of 3,000 [ref]Harry Potter Wiki[/ref]. Of course it’s possible that not all the eligible 11-year olds in the United Kingdom came to Hogwarts. You might also want to consider Squibs to be part of the wizarding community. Both of these factors would raise the estimate from 3,448. J. K. Rowling stated elsewhere that the total population of Hogwarts was 1,000, and others have used this as a starting point to extrapolate higher numbers for the total population in the range of 12,000 – 15,000[ref]Harry Potter Wiki[/ref] . Even at the high end, however, we’re talking about a population that is at least 99.97% muggle[ref]15,000 / 57,439,000 = 0.026%[/ref]. The magical community is absolutely tiny.
You see that sliver representing 0.03% of the population? No, you probably don’t. That’s because it’s *tiny*.
The second is that magic conveys a tremendous amount of power for very, very little effort. This seems obvious, but it’s impossible to overstate the profound implications of being a person who has secret powers that 99.97% of the rest of the world do not even know exist. As Horace Slughorn showed in The Half-Blood Prince, a wizard can easily live comfortably simply by mooching off of the work of Muggles. There is no such thing as real poverty or want or deprivation in the wizarding world except, as with the Gaunt family as, as a result of stubborn, voluntary arrogance or, as with the Weasley family, apparent indifference. (Ron’s robes may have been unfashionable and their house may have been crowded, but access to housing, food, healthcare, and self-washing dishes was never in question.)
The magical world, in other words, is comprised of a tiny cadre of the ultra-elite where the only scarce resource is status. All the dysfunctional aberrations (by Muggle standards) of the Wizarding World flow from this.
Parasitic
Because witches and wizards don’t have to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, the entire society is basically a parasitic leisure class that depends entirely on the Muggle world. Start with government: the Wizarding World (at least in the United Kingdom) is under the jurisdiction of the Minster of Magic. In the parliamentary system of the United Kingdom, the various ministers are appointed by the Prime Minister and fulfill a role somewhat akin to the Cabinet of a United States President. This means that the head of state for the wizarding community is described by the wizarding community itself as only an adjunct to the larger Muggle government. By this logic, the head of state for witches and wizards in the United States would be just “the Secretary of Magic” (instead of “President”).
The same is true of culture. All wizarding music is depicted as being just magic-themed veresions of contemporary muggle artists. Mrs. Weasley adores her old-timey crooning and the Hogwarts students enjoy the rock and roll of the Weird Sisters. And what about wizarding religion? There is none. The only religious holidays mentioned are Christmas and Easter, but the celebrations seems strictly secular. There is only one explicit instance of religion in Harry Potter, although it’s a very important one. The gravestone of Lilly and James Potter bears a phrase (“The last enemy that shall be conquered is death”) which is taken from one of Paul’s epistle’s to the Corinthians in the New Testament[ref]1 Corinthians 15:26, although the KJV and NIV use “destroyed” instead of “conquered”.[/ref]. To the extent that the wizarding world has any religion at all, it is apparently borrowed directly from the Muggle world.
Even the grand old institution of Hogwarts itself belies a world dependent on Muggle culture and institutions. After all, students do not start until they are 11, by which time they are clearly supposed to have learned basic literacy somewhere else. It’s not clear what that means for pure-bloods like the Weasleys or Malfoys, but at least for those who hail from the muggle world like Harry and Hermione, it means a reliance on public Muggle schools for basic education.
So where do the basic economic goods of the wizarding world come from? Where to the houselves at Hogwarts get the ingredients for their feasts? Where do the tailors at Diagon Alley get the fabric for their robes? Who mines the tin, copper, antimony, and bismuth that go into a cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)? Whether paid for with Muggle money exchanged at Gringotts or “borrowed” a la Slughorn, it is clear that everything that isn’t explicitly magical in the Wizarding World—from government to culture to physical goods—comes directly from the Muggle world, and at effectively no cost.
Backwards
The reason that witches and wizards make so little of their own is quite simply that they don’t have to. In contrast, every aspect of the development of the Muggle world is defined by the constant struggle for scarce resources. Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. That is why Muggle society progresses, and it is why the wizarding society does not. Efficiency drives the Muggle world, but it has relatively no influence on a world where anyone can always opt to just coast along and enjoy a comfortable life gleaning off of Muggles.
Although the drive towards invention and efficiency has been a permanent aspect of Muggle society, for most of human history the pace of progress has been glacial. That’s why, with very little effort, wizards and witches had been able to keep pace with Muggle technology until the Industrial Revolution. Telescopes they have, while steam power (to say nothing of electricity) they do not[ref]Sure, there’s the Hogwarts Express, but it’s a single train that runs on the Muggle rail system. They also have the Knight Bus, but it doesn’t mean they have a clue about the internal combustion engine. None of the magical homes are wired for electricity, and there’s no evidence of steam or internal combustion engines being used in any widespread, common way.[/ref]
The technological gap is obvious in Harry Potter, but what is most interesting is the gap in the financial sector. In Muggle history, the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution were predicated on financial innovation of prior centuries. Two of those innovations are conspicuously absent from the wizarding world: representative money and fractional reserve banking.
Witches and wizards, by contrast, are using commodity money: coins that derive their value from the rare metals of which they are composed. In actual history, representative money (which refers to paper money that can be redeemed for valuables) is actually even older than coinage, but it really came to supremacy with banking innovations just prior to the Industrial Revolution, and especially fractional reserve banking.
Fractional reserve banking is the practice of banks lending out more money than they actually have. It sounds a bit crazy, but every banking system in the real world is based on this system. The reason it is important is that it lets money flow freely in the economy to where it is needed most.
Hagrid, and everyone else, calls Gringotts a bank, but as far as the world of Harry Potter is concerned, pretty much the only role Gringott’s provides is a secure place to keep stuff. This has about as much to do with banking as a coat closet has to do with running a restaurant. Gringotts, in other words, is absolutely not a bank by any definition that the muggle world would recognize in the last five or six hundred years.
So the wizarding world is dependent on the Muggle world and mirrors their institutions on Muggle institutions, but over the last few centuries as the pace of Muggle progress has increased exponentially the wizarding world has been left farther and farther behind. They have the façade of Muggle institutions, but only the façade.
The fact that they call it a bank just shows they don’t actually know what a bank is.
Seen this way, there’s no surprise to the fact that wizards travel by all manner of bizarre and inefficient contrivances when—with minimal discomfort and a little bit of organization—they could easily be zipping around the world faster than the speed of light. Everything about the wizarding world is inefficient, not just the travel arrangements.
Shallow
In the Muggle world, a really advanced education requires the 13 years of K-12, 4 more years of undergraduate work, 5 or 6 years of work on a combined masters/doctoral degree and then perhaps another year or two of postdoctoral work for a total of up to 25 years of education. In the wizarding world, 7 years has you covered, maybe 8 or 9 if you want to be an auror.
In the Muggle world, a credible military force requires expensive hardware and serious training. The United Kingdom spends about $60 billion per year on defense spending .[ref]Wikipedia[/ref] In the United States, the costs of training a single Marine are hard to estimate, but good guess would be $50,000 – $150,000 .[ref]NBC[/ref] The deployment costs are much higher, with the US Army spending between $850,000 and $1,500,000 per soldier per year for deployment in Afghanistan.[ref]CNN[/ref] In the Wizarding World, by contrast, a couple dozen teenagers with no special equipment who train in their spare time without adult supervision constitute a credible threat to the standing government.
One big reason for this is simply that, as mentioned previously, the Wizarding World is tiny. The British Armed Forces comprise about 400,000 individuals (active and reserve)[ref]Wikipedia[/ref] out of a total population of about 63 million.[ref]Wikipedia[/ref] That means about 0.63% of the population is in the armed forces. If the wizarding world in the UK has a population of 12,000 and Dumbledore’s Army had 80 members (seems high for the book, but low if the total school population was actually 1,000) then they would represent 0.67% of the total population. And, unlike a typical modern army, they would all be potential combat troops. Just to be clear: 80 high school kids constitute a greater relative military force in the Wizarding World than the entire British army, navy, and air force do in the Muggle world.
I count 25 in this picture, so about 1/3 the combined military might of Britain relative to the Wizarding World, give or take. Do not mess with DA.
The same shallowness works on an individual level. In the Muggle world an unarmed 15 year old doesn’t even register as a threat next to a fully armed SAS team. But in the Wizarding World, you might actually feel the need to deploy an entire squad of their most elite fighters, the aurors, just to bring in a teenage kid. In the Muggle world, a precocious high school student doesn’t hold a candle to the expertise of a newly minted neurosurgeon, but in the Wizarding World the skills of a really talented 7th year student can rival or even surpass those of adult wizards and government officials. The wizarding world is incredibly flat. Setting aside Squibs, there’s very little distance between the least and most knowledgeable or dangerous relative to Muggle society.
Reckless
As a result of all the previous observations, wizarding society is incredibly reckless relative to Muggle society. It’s impossible to get even ballpark mortality estimates because the wizarding world is at war throughout most of Harry Potter, but even the peacetime activities are frightfully dangerous compared to what would be acceptable in a Muggle world. In the very first book, after all, Dumbledore keeps a vicious, man-eating, three-headed dog monster inside a school full of young kids who have a hard time knowing where their classes are. And, oh yeah, Fluffy is separated from the kids by nothing but a locked door that virtually any of the kids can defeat with a trivial spell.[ref]Of course, with the basilisk still locked in the Secret Chamber, Fluffy was only the second most dangerous monster inside the walls of Hogwarts![/ref] From that to Hagrid’s choice of ferocious textbooks to the potentially lethal Tri-Wizard Tournament, wizards all seem a bit deranged when it comes to matters of life and death.
But that sort of makes sense in a world where everyone is carrying the magical equivalent of a loaded bazooka from age 11 whether they want to or not. Ariana Dumbledore’s death is the most tragic example of this: she lived and died in peacetime before either Voldemort or Gridlewald had risen to power. She died simply because her brother got into a fight with his childhood friend. Similarly, Luna’s mother blew herself up messing about with potions. Because magic is so powerful, being a wizard is inherently dangerous, and there’s just no way around it.
But it’s not just individuals who are prone to early demise in the Wizarding World. The entire society itself is incredibly volatile because of all the characteristics noted so far. Wizarding society is completely dependent on Muggle society for its institutions, culture, and basic resources. And yet, because wizards aren’t subject to the same competitive pressures, the link between the Wizarding and Muggle Worlds is increasingly breaking down. This leaves the wizarding institutions increasingly arbitrary and brittle. It’s also a very flat world, where the relative power of the weakest member is very high relative to the most powerful institutions. Add to this the very low numbers of wizards, and it’s clear that the entire society is dangerously volatile and will only become more so with time.
Conclusion
Charles Darwin once noted that the honey bee would obviously be better off if it did not have a barbed stinger. Because the singer is barbed, a honey bee can only sting once before it dies. Wasps and hornets, on the other hand, are capable of stinging many times without suffering injury because they have straight stingers. Obviously it would be better if honey bees had straight stingers. Darwin understood, however, that this is unlikely to happen. The reason for that is simple: evolution doesn’t tend towards optimal results. Natural selection is all about doing the least necessary to survive. Without direct evolutionary pressure, bees will not evolve straight stingers even if it would be better for them to do so.
Humans are the same way. Without external pressure: we stagnate. Because of their incredibly powerful gifts, witches and wizards are largely immune from the pressures to which the rest of human society is constantly subject. On an individual level, this sounds like a lot of fun, and it’s part of the reason that Harry Potter is so much fun to read. But in the long run, the freedom from pressure comes with a serious cost.
The odd behavior of witches and wizards and the bizarre nature of their social institutions is not sloppy world-building. It’s brilliant world-building based on a keen observation of human nature. If a tiny cohort of humans were given incredible magical powers, this is pretty much the world that you would end up with. Parasitic, backwards, shallow, and reckless[ref]This is the same key insight behind Lev Grossman’s bitter and cynical coming-of-age wizard series starting with The Magicians.[/ref]
I really have no idea how much of this was intentional on J. K. Rowling’s part. I haven’t read The Casual Vacancy, but judging by The Cuckoo’s Call (in addition to the Harry Potter books, of course), she is an incredibly astute observer of human nature. My guess is that she didn’t sit down and think “How would a world populated by witches and wizards operate?” My guess is that she just started with a fun premise (hidden magic! wizard school!) that involved certain key attributes (magic is relatively easy and magic users are very rare), and the rest just flowed naturally from there.
In a way, of course, it doesn’t really matter. You can enjoy Harry Potter without analyzing it. But I’m not gonna lie: the fact that it withstands this level of scrutiny so well makes me love the books more then ever, even if it is a darker take on the Wizarding World.
Here’s the most interesting proposition, though. It’s possible that part of what fueled Voldemort’s rise to power was the increasing instability of the Wizarding World as it lagged farther and farther behind Muggle progress. And, since the pace of technological progress shows no sign of slowing down, you have to wonder: what’s the long-run fate of the Wizarding World? How long can this relatively primitive society continue to maintain any social cohesion at all while all its foundational institutions are eroding out from underneath it? If we’re really lucky, maybe one day J. K. Rowling will decide to tell us.
This Wall Street Journal article didn’t ring any bells with me at first because it started with the description of Facebook as an envy-generator. I don’t really get that. I’ve read about the research that shows the more you use Facebook the worse you feel, but it just doesn’t really match my experience. I suppose FB could make me sad in a subtle way that I wouldn’t notice, but I think I would notice if my friends FB statuses were making me feel envious of their awesome lives. And… I just don’t feel that. Not ever, really.[ref]OK, after thinking about it I can think of one example. But other than the occasional update from this one law professor about how cushy the tenured life is, there’s really nothing there.[/ref]
Rumpelstiltskin’s transformation into the Dark One–the most powerful and feared entity in the Enchanted Forest–grew out of a desire to protect his only son, first from the Ogre Wars and then personal enemies. His wife had abandoned them both to sail with the pirate Killian Jones (Captain Hook). Furthermore, Rumpelstiltskin’s own father (who had a reputation as a coward and scoundrel) had abandoned him as a child in order to remain in Neverland and become Peter Pan. Rumpelstiltskin had even injured himself to avoid war because a magical Seer had prophesied that his actions on the battlefield would leave his newborn son fatherless. The entire reason he creates the Dark Curse (the plot of the first season) for the Evil Queen is so that he can be reunited with his son Baelfire, who was transported to this realm alone after a panicked Rumpelstiltskin refused to follow him into a portal between worlds. Many deaths, betrayals, and battles later, not only is Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold reunited with his son, but he has even found love in the form of Belle (he was her “Beast”) and discovered he has a grandson. Rumpelstiltskin struggled with his “nasty habit” of self-preservation and his darker ways all the way up to the end.[ref]Well, sort of the end…[/ref] This is what made his sacrifice to save his friends and family so moving. Everything, good and bad, had been for his son.
