Posted on 12/26/2001 8:35:02 AM PST by massadvj
Possibly. When I was a college professor, the college I worked for pressured every student to sign a pledge that they they would not cheat or plagiarize. A certain number of students might refuse to sign this pledge because they wanted to get away with cheating. But others refused to sign because they simply opposed the idea of taking a pledge that was being forced upon them by the institution. Personally, I was very proud of this second group, even though they were in league with cheaters. But I guess that's what distinguishes lbertarians from moralists.
Given the corrupting nature of power, we should always be quick to question authority and rules. Didn't George Washington break the rules? Didn't Mozart break the rules of music in his day? True greatness comes not from going along, but from having the courage to ask why a rule exists, then deciding whether or not it deserves to be broken. The best example I can think of is if the federal government decided to confiscate our guns. Isn't that a rule we would be morally obligated to break?
As for Potter, I was a bit perplexed as to why he was not reprimanded for flying that broom after he was told not to. But I think the point is that true excellence can supercede rules, and that is a point worth considering. Had some stupid kid grabbed the broom and hurt himself, he would have paid two prices: pain and repurcussions. For better or worse, that is the true nature of life.
Doesn't sound like a very libertarian position to me. Doesn't the institution have the right to set the rules for those who choose to attend it? Those who don't want to sign such a pledge are perfectly free to attend an institution that doesn't require it.
The free market will eventually determine which was the "proper" position for the institutions to take. Frankly, I suspect a degree from an institution that doesn't tolerate cheating would eventually have greater value than a degree from one which does.
The above argument, of course, assumes the State is not forcing institutions or students to take a pledge.
BTW, doesn't classic libertarian thought prohibit the initiation of force or fraud? Isn't cheating fraudulent?
Check out the top sellers at Amazon. Out of the top 25 items, 6 are versions of LotR and The Hobbit!! I have a friend at work who bought it and is reading it for the first time after seeing the movie.
Yes, certainly. But in this case the students were unaware of the pledge requirement until the first day of the freshman seminar, when it was given to them to sign and hand back. I suppose the institution could have offered a refund to any student who refused to sign, but they didn't.
Frankly, I suspect a degree from an institution that doesn't tolerate cheating would eventually have greater value than a degree from one which does.
No doubt. The pledge actually ended up encouraging cheating. It was the brainchild of lazy liberal arts professors who thought that if students signed a pledge they would not have to be as vigilant about monitoring cheating and plagiarism. Stupid, I know. But no more stupid than thinking that registering law-abiding citizens who buy guns will reduce violent crime.
Isn't cheating fraudulent?
Totally. It is not cheating to refuse to sign a pledge. I absolutely agree that professors should be extremely vigilant about enforcing rules against cheating. Nonetheless, I recognize that a true genius at plagiarism will get away with it, so the rules often only punish the incompetent, as was the case in Harry Potter. He got away with breaking the rules because he was excellent, and for better or worse, that's the way the system works.
It's like the loyalty oaths some on this forum are attracted to. Loyal people are loyal whether they sign an oath or not. Traitors are perfectly willing to sign it as a form of cover.
At last! A compadre who sees the truth! I was beginning to think that the entire site had been taken over by the religious nuts who never met a rule they didn't like.
You can teach your kids anything you like but I'll still tell mine that lying and cheating are wrong.
Wizards were angelic beings sent from God in LOTR? Get a grip, I don't remember a single word about Christianity or God(the one we worship) in either the books or the movie. Sounds like a unique interpretation to me.
You were not paying attention, then. It is made quite clear in the books, especially, that the Istari, the five wizards who make up Gandalf's order, were sent into middle earth by "God" (Eru, the One, the creator, as detailed in The Simarillion) in order to help those in middle earth fight against Sauron and other evils. The two blue wizards are off in the east doing something which does not come into any of the stories which Tolkien wrote; Radagast the Brown is only concerned with trees and birds and other creatures, and spends most of his time in and around Mirkwood, and does not get involved much with the larger doings of the world which Gandalf and Saruman are concerned with; Radagast is good but his area of expertise does not bring him much into the stories, except for a brief mention in The Hobbit, and the small role he played in The Fellowship of the Ring (which got cut out of the movie version). Saruman the White is the head of the council, and becomes evil after being corrupted by desire for the kind of power which Sauron has. Gandalf the Grey....well, read for The Two Towers or wait for the movie.
The wizards are "angels" in the sense that they are sent by God to help lesser beings who are lost, far from God's help, in an existence cut off from direct access to the higher realms. To many people think of angels as invisible entities which are up in heaven with God; the original notion of angels was that they were beings who appeared as ordinary mortals but who were more than they seemed and who were sent for a purpose by a higher power (God), whether as messengers, or to perform some other function. That's why Gandalf and the others are not "wizards" in the sense of being mortal men who dabble in magic, but are in fact immortal beings disguised as mortal "wizards"; they are not omnipotent but are very powerful compared to ordinary mortals.
Of course Tolkien doesn't mention Christianity, because he was writing a myth of something that was supposed to have happened thousands of years before recorded history, and therefore something that predated Christianity and all other known religions. But quite clearly, the creator God in his myth is the same God of Christianity, only that the appearance of Christ, in the fullness of time, is something which will not happen until many, many thousands of years after his stories take place, when they and everything in them are long forgotten. Hence the Christian background to stories which are not otherwise explicitly Christian.
That's about the size of it.
Wizards were angelic beings sent from God in LOTR?Obviously, not from the Christian God, but then it really wouldn't be as much a fanstasy if it used a real world God.
Well, actually, Tolkien was at pains to write his stories in such a way that, if they were true, they would be perfectly consistent with Christianity. That is, Tolkien's fictional God is the same God as that of Christianity, only the events are taking place at a mythical time, many thousands of years before recorded history. Hence, the God in his stories is the Christian God; but this is not explicitly stated, because the stories are supposed to be a self-contained myth, not an allegory (Tolkien hated allegories, and for good reason, IMO).
It is not a question of what I teach my kids, but whether the depiction has a sensibility to it. If I watch Potter with my kids I can ask them why they think Harry didn't get punished for taking that broom, and we can arrive at conclusions.
Let's say you tell a kid not to play the piano when you leave the room. The kid sits down and plays like Chopin. What are you going to do? Reprimand the kid and send him to his room without his supper? Maybe YOU would, but typically, I don't think that's what's going to happen. So Potter is reflecting a reality that children will have to deal with one way or the other, and it is worth their consideration.
That reality is this: in the real world there is one set of rules for the truly great and another for the simply average. In the face of that, which do you want to be?
What I would do with my children has no bearing on the matter one way or the other. But I wouldn't keep them away from Harry Potter material. Even if I opposed it, I'd monitor it and encourage discussion about it, but I wouldn't restrict it.
Poor Glorfindel. Bakshi, as I recall, replaced him with Legolas, and now Jackson with Arwen. Ah well, the life of a minor character.
And this last thought: thank God at least that Jackson rejected the (noisome, noxious) suggestion that he "make" one of the Fellowship a woman, just to "update" things.
Dan
And on that topic, if you'll forgive a fellow-Tolkien-geek... isn't it that the river itself rises up in outrage at the Riders' desecration of it, while Galdalf sort of chucklingly admits that the white horses are his "touch" (like the explosion at Bilbo's disappearance)? Or do I mis-remember? My wife and I will be re-reading that part within the next week or so.
Dan
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