More HP stuff

[avevale_intelligencer]

Evil is to some extent as evil does. It is evil, for instance, in a small but significant way, to, say, punish a student under your tutelage for correctly answering a question you have asked the class as a whole. Practical jokes in general are (at least in my opinion) evil in a small way. Both these actions may, however, be undertaken without a specifically evil motive. What is it that makes Slytherin the Evil House?

A long while back I tried to retool the old moral compass used by the makers of Dungeons and Dragons tee em, and inherited from Michael Moorcock among others. I was not happy with the imprecision of the emotionally loaded terms it used, and curious about the motivations behind them. What makes someone Chaotic? What makes them Good? Eventually some alternatives suggested themselves; Law and Chaos became Security and Freedom, and Evil and Good became Self-direction and Other-direction.

(I can hear an outcry from those who follow the old saw that no-one ever does anything unselfishly. Sorry, but this is cant, possibly put about by people who want to excuse their own selfishness. An unselfish act is still an unselfish act even if the person does it to give himself or herself a good feeling, or because s/he’s been told s/he should. And many people act unselfishly for neither of these reasons, but simply because they do not stand at the dead centre of their own universe. Strange but true...)

So, once again using as a springboard Azalais’ masterly analysis of the personality types associated with each House, how can I make the four Houses of Hogwarts fit into this framework? Well, Hufflepuff seems to slot right in as Other-directed (doing the work because Someone's Got To) and Security-driven (=Lawful Good). Slytherin also seem to be Security-driven, but Self-directed (broadening the definition to include “one’s own” under Self), which in a D&D universe would be Lawful Evil. Gryffindor I’d place as Other-directed (the heroic impulse) and Freedom-driven (Chaotic Good). Which leaves Freedom-driven and Self-directed (which certainly fits the description) for Ravenclaw. Who emerge as...Chaotic Evil.

See what a difference the words make?

Of course no-one is all one way or the other, and Neutrality is only another word for Balance. There is, however, a place and a purpose in the world for all four of the characteristics on my compass, whereas I don’t think anyone would argue that the world needs more evil. It’s also possible to see that my sets of opposites represent moral/ethical choices one makes, rather than qualities bred in the bone dooming one to eternal damnation or salvation as the case may be...and that they can easily have no bearing at all on the consequences of a person’s actions.

Comments

[cleverthylacine]

Well, you know, it's like planetary influences.

(Note: I practised astrology for a living for several years, and if anyone reading this doesn't believe in it, that's fine with me. I refuse to get into an argument about it. If you don't believe in it, just...don't believe in it, because I'm just using it as an example anyway.)

Astrologers nowadays don't believe that planetary influences force people's decisions. What we tend to think transits and progressions do is tell you what kind of energy is liable to be coming into your life. It's your choice how you deal with it. You can do harm with any motivation, and you can do good for selfish reasons. Ultimately, fucking people over is not in your best interest, after all...

[jahura.livejournal.com]

I have always been taught that Lawful is metaphorically explained as By the Book, whatever that Book may be, and that Chaotic was By the Whim. In that sense, Lawful Evil can be an accurate description of terrorists, who in the face of their accusers pull out the very Book which they say guarantees their reward for their act of evil. Lawful Good whips out same said Book and says "Well, here it says that I can punish you for that, and dictates how."
Meanwhile, Chaotic Good calculates the most plausible outcome for this debate while Chaotic Evil snickers at this whole Book issue and lays odds on each of the opponents.
For the most part, it all depends on the Book in question. If Hufflepuff and Slytherin have opposing interpretations of their code of conduct but still follow the same prose word for word then there must as well be some similarities in their conduct in spite of the outward differences. Only being admittedly vaguely familiar with the HP genre, is Hufflepuff similar in Muggle census to the Slytherins, or do they act as 'missionaries', recruiting new blood for their cause and disregarding the mud reference?

It does make sense that Ravenclaw would be Chaotic Evil. It's always the quiet thinkers one has to watch out for. They can be your sword and shield or the knife in your back. Predicting the outcome of a Quiddich (sp?) match would be great amusement for them - not for money, but for the right to say they told you so. That's not necessarily the textbook definition of evil, but it is self-motivated and based on pure logic. There's a reason why the left brain is called the sinister side, it is the side we use for evil when there is a need for it.

That is not to say that the emotionally driven dexter motivations are necessarily good, as we all experience from time to time. Yet what stops ourselves from carrying out an evil act against another most of the time? It is empathy - an emotional reaction - the ability to put oneself in the other's place. How would you feel if someone did that to you, we ask ourselves. We are taught that discipline from a book, whether that book is the Bible or the Quran or Dr.Spock or Superman comics. For those that would be considered Lawful, that discipline always kicks in, where as the Chaotic shrug and say - oh, what the Hell?

There is a personality compass floating around that frequently is used in seminars where four basic personality types are laid out as extremes, and the majority score somewhere in between points of that compass. It is interesting that you should use this method of measurement. I wonder what each House would determine if they were asked to take the quiz?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting angle. The empathy would be right-brain, but the discipline to apply it (or ignore it) would have to be left. Empathy is a basic key to other-directedness, as you say.

So: can one be disciplined and "Chaotic"? My impulse would be to say yes, because if freedom is your motivation you are free to choose which if any of the rules in the book to follow. If you're driven by a need for security, on the other hand, you have to swallow the book whole, as it were. Anything else wouldn't be safe.

The "book" for the four Houses would be the rules, written and unwritten, of Hogwarts and the wizarding world in general. Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, if I'm right, would follow those rules if and when it suited them, whereas Hufflepuff and Slytherin would keep to them rigidly. Which is not entirely what comes across in the books...hmm, maybe I'm overthinking this whole thing...

It would be interesting to apply some of these personality test thingies to an "archetypal" character from each of the four Houses and see what emerges.