Posted on 11/15/2002 2:23:23 PM PST by RJCogburn
The movie adventures of child-wizard Harry Potter will continue on November 15. Far from being an agent of the occult, as his critics contend, Harry Potter is the kind of hero children should be encouraged to read about and emulate, said the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
"It is true that Harry lives in a magical, fantastical world, but what's important is that he is a hero who wins through intelligence, effort and courage," said Dr. Yaron Brook. "Throughout the series, Harry has developed his talents through hard work and has learned to think for himself, to be honest and to be self-confident. He has friends who share his values and he earns the respect of his teachers. Aren't these the character traits all parents want their children to possess? I know they're qualities I actively try to instill in my two boys."
Dr. Brook said that the critics' focus on the supernatural aspects of the Harry Potter stories is completely non-essential. What is fundamental is the abstract meaning being conveyed during the course of Harry's magical adventures. "The books are, in short, fuel for a child's maturing mind. As vitamins and minerals are essential to a child's healthy physical development, so literature with this view of the world is essential to a child's healthy mental development."
See, Ayn Rand's problem was that people aren't really like she said they are. She faced an additional difficulty in this case in that she was not a mother, and thus could not know what she was talking about. Rand apparently assumes that mothers will simply perform a cost-benefit analysis when their children are in danger.
Where the safety of their kids is concerned, however, most mothers don't even consider relative value. They will do anything to save their kids, no matter the cost to themselves.
So a scene where Lily Potter shields her child with her own body is completely believable. A scene where Lily Potter hesitates between Harry and "Ayn Rand's hat" (i.e., some deal with Voldemort) is not -- or if she does hesitate, we understand her hesitation to be wrong in some manner.
As so often happened when Rand's theories ran afoul of reality, this passage has her trying to force the square peg of motherly self-sacrifice into the round hole of her objectivist philosophy. And, as is typical with Rand, she is forced to make assumptions and assertions that don't stand up to scrutiny.
And you chose the following words to disagree with Ayn Rand ...
Where the safety of their kids is concerned, however, most mothers don't even consider relative value. They will do anything to save their kids, no matter the cost to themselves.
... thereby putting you in complete agreement with Ayn Rand's words.
Nice tactic though, expressing the same thought you disagree with ... using different words.
Santa is a game many people play with their children. You and I, dear child, know it is a game. We may give you a present marked "from Santa", that you can enjoy the game. But we won't lie to you, and tell you he exists, because later on, you would find out that we, your parents, LIED to you. How could you belive that Christ was true, if we told you He lived, and then lied to you about other things?
Santa is a game, dear child. Don't tell other kids and ruin their fun. It is their parents responsibility to decide when to tell them. We won't lie to you.
A: Mr. Lewis, I am afraid those Narnia books are unholy obsenities, regarless if generations of children loved them, and many grew to find Jesus Christ by slowly coming to understand the basic sacrificial nature of Jesus through the sacrifice of Aslan. And hey, the first book in the series is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe! Yes, it is true, that book of childrens' fiction, heralded as a fanciful retelling of large chunks of the Bible, actually features not one, but several witches, and magic too! Oh, my, I can now see that it was not the curesed Rock and Roll, nor sex, nor drugs that have laid waste to our culture! It is all traced back to that b*stard C.S. Lewis, corrupting our children with the occult!
That is the single best burn I have seen in my life.
No, wait, let me put myself in the mindset of mine opponant...Clearly, Mary Poppins is the anti-Christ!
[Lithium Mode ON>
Whew, sorry.
I told mine that it isn't, and that God says we are not supposed to pretend in our own lives that it is. They seem to understand what fiction is. I trust you have told your children that magic is not real as well.
Well, good. Got that straightened out then. Carry on.
It's these darn comic books that are the real problem, I tells ya, corrupting the youth and all. We should burn them. Yep, and those cursed "records" they listen too all the time, yeah. And dancing!
My kids have no trouble seperating fact from fiction. Bible, Fact. Potter, Fiction.
Sweet Moses, man! Go attack Dianetics if you want to joust with real demons corrupting our youth! Or "splatter" movies! The "Reverand" Moon! Go attack something that matters with all they PowerRiffic Typing Ability you pocess!
DISCLAIMER: The writer of the previous paragraph, upon Inquisition, acknowledges that if it did exist, which it doesn't, a PowerRiffic Typing Ability would be a "super power" and therefore blasphemous before the Lord God, as would all so-called "mutant abilities" which might exist, except they don't. Thusly, comic books are innately satanic, portraying mere "man" with "Godlike abilities." Thus, X-Men would be, of course, the sinkhole of corruption in our culture, and a blatent attempt to make our children try to do evil things, such as incinerate things with laser beams pouring from their eyes, turn invisible, grow Adamandite claws from hidden sockets genetically engineered into their flesh by secret government Black Ops scientists, and so on.
You and I know what this means. Stan Lee is the Anti-Christ. Think about it. You never see those two together. (Or with Mary Poppins, come to think about it.)
I don't see how you get that. It's worth noting that in the snippet you posted, Rand does not seem to draw any moral distinction between the child and the hat. Both, it would seem, are commodities that the mother can choose at her whim. We know this to be wrong. Monsters can perhaps behave that way, but normal people cannot.
In that vein, I see that you didn't respond to my full post, but only that one word, "most". And it's true: not all women choose the child. Read a bit further, and you'll note my comment that the ones who do perform the cost-benefit analysis (i.e., even think about choosing the hat) are considered to have done something wrong.
Your Rand quote is really quite instructive: The only choice Rand offers is "food or hat," and even that is no choice at all: a mother who can only choose one, and chooses the hat, is a bad mother. She is morally bound to forego the hat, and to feed the child, whether she wants to or not. The child takes first claim on the mother's budget. So much for John Galt's oath.
Next, if we are to follow Ayn Rand's call to deal with reality as it is, then we need not demand unanimous consent on human action (for if that were possible, we'd have no moral disagreements). The altrustic motivations of "most" mothers are sufficient to identify this as the norm -- the way things ought to be.
Rand cannot accept this, because (as is so often the case) her philosophy cannot withstand having to acknowledge the responsibilities of parenthood, much less the reality of such a thing as altruistic motherhood. Again: we recognize Lily Potter's action as something a real mother would do, and as something noble. We cannot recognize the opposite -- shielding herself with the baby, or dickering with Voldemort for position at the expense of her son's life -- as anything but evil.
A mother might do any number of things between these extremes, of course, but the direction of good and bad are firmly established. And none of Rand's principles can properly address these facts as they stand. And so she's left to make lame comparisons between children and hats.
As it happens, of course, there is a moral system that does explain such things. And, of course, Rand the atheist denies it. IMHO Rand's whole philosophy is based on a failed attempt to make morality work without God.
"You don't debate Evil," my Human/Elf MU/Fighter used to say, "you kill it." Ah, those were the days!
I haven't read enough of this thread to know how Ayn Rand got into this, but it's obvious to most parent s that a child's life has infinitely more value than one's own. This is true both psychologically and objectively.
Perhaps not in species that produce thousands or millions of offspring, but humans invest their entire lives just barely replacing themselves. Of course Rand might argue that this value is a matter of individual choice.
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