Beyond Choices: Toward a Deeper Self-Understanding
Reflecting on your past choices may tell you a lot about yourself, but it may not. Consider Gilderoy Lockhart. Lockhart thinks about himself a lot—all of the time, in fact. But his self-image is completely out of whack. He imagines that he’s a great Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, but he can’t even manage a cage full of Cornish pixies. Although he poses as an expert duelist, he is easily blasted off his feet by Snape’s Expelliarmus spell. He vainly imagines that everyone is a fan of his, and when he confidently claims to be able to fix Harry’s injured arm, he ends up removing all of Harry’s arm bones instead. Why the big disconnect? Because Lockhart is blind to his own faults. He looks but doesn’t see.
This is the basic problem with seeking self-understanding simply by reflecting on one’s own choices. If you’re wearing rose-colored glasses—what psychologists call “cognitive blinders”—you’re not going to see the real you.
So, what’s a better strategy for achieving self-knowledge? If we look at what the great thinkers have said on this topic, we can identify four major strategies:• Cultivate a habit of self-examination.
• Be alert to your irrational tendencies.
• Get a little help from your friends.
• Challenge yourself.
As we’ll see, each of these principles is well-illustrated in the Potter books.
Cultivate a Habit of Self-Examination
Self-knowledge requires time, openness, and humility. What are my deepest values and commitments? What do I like? What do I dislike? What am I most passionate about? What are my greatest strengths and weaknesses? Am I the person I want to be? How can I make the most of my time and talents? What would I like to be remembered for when I’m gone? These are tough questions, and answering them takes time. It also requires openness and humility, because, as Socrates pointed out, most of us find it very difficult to face unpleasant truths about ourselves and to admit our own limitations.
As the philosopher Thomas Pangle remarked, most of the time when we reflect seriously, it’s because we’re in trouble. Some life crisis happens—we lose a job, get divorced, flunk out of school, get a really bad haircut. Only then, it seems, do we seriously evaluate where we are in our lives and the choices we’ve made. But life should not be lived on autopilot. Just as we need to develop good habits of diet and exercise, we need to form positive habits of mindfulness and self-examination. Only by knowing yourself can you live honestly and find your own path.
Dumbledore is a model of a reflective, self-aware individual. When he was a young man, he realized that his besetting weakness was a love of power. Realizing this, he never accepted the position of Minister of Magic, although it was offered to him several times. Dumbledore also drew an important lesson from his infatuation with the future dark wizard Gellart Grindelwald. In a 2008 interview, Rowling stated that Dumbledore “lost his moral compass completely” when he fell in love with Grindelwald.14 As a result, Dumbledore became very distrusting of his judgment in matters of the heart and decided to live a celibate and scholarly life.
In his effort to live what Socrates called “the examined life,” Dumbledore regularly uses the Pensieve, a magical stone basin that allows individuals to view either their own or another person’s memories from a third-person perspective. Dumbledore tells Harry that whenever he has too many thoughts and memories crammed into his mind, he uses the Pensieve to siphon off some of these excess thoughts. This unclutters the mind, removes painful or obsessive memories, and improves mental focus. The third-person perspective also makes it “easier to spot patterns and links” and to notice things that weren’t consciously observed in the original experiences.15 Clearly, such a device would be a great tool for self-understanding—not to mention as an instant replay device at the Quidditch World Cup!
Be Alert to Your Irrational Tendencies
Aristotle classically defined humans as the “rational animal”—but, obviously, he had never watched an episode of The Jerry Springer Show. The fact is that we humans regularly fall prey to irrational biases, prejudices, egocentrism, close-mindedness, wishful thinking, and stereotyping. And as we’ve seen, your choices may not tell you much about your true self if, like the Dursleys or Lockhart, your self-image is distorted by poor thinking habits.
The solution is to recognize and actively combat one’s irrational tendencies. As much as we might like to think of ourselves as unusually self-aware and perceptive individuals, we’re all human and thus heir to all of the thinking flaws that humans are so often prone to.
Pretty much the full range of human irrationality is on display in the Potter novels—think of Percy Weasley’s rule fetish and love of power, Malfoy’s virulent racism and classism, Ron Weasley’s irrational jealousy, Rubeus Hagrid’s blind affection for dangerous magical creatures, Cornelius Fudge’s close-mindedness, or Luna Lovegood’s credulity for tales of the uncanny. But Rowling’s best example of irrational thinking is wizards’ treatment of house-elves.
House-elves are effectively slaves in the wizarding world. They are bound for life to well-to-do wizarding families or to institutions, such as Hogwarts. They perform unpaid menial tasks, are given limited education, wear cast-off items such as old pillowcases as clothing, are forbidden to use wands, and can be beaten, tormented, and even killed by their masters with apparent impunity. Yet very few wizards see this kind of indentured servitude as morally problematic in the least. Why this ethical blindness? Because as Ron and Hagrid note, with the exception of “weirdoes” like Dobby, nearly all house-elves like being slaves and even regard freedom, as Winky does, as something depressing and shameful.16
As Hermione points out, however, the fact that house-elves have been conditioned to buy into their own oppression does not justify the practice.17 Although Harry at first shares the conventional prejudices regarding house-elves, in the end he accepts Hermione’s view, digging Dobby’s grave with his own hands and writing “Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf” on the tombstone.18 In this process of moral growth, Harry is greatly helped by his friend Hermione, a tireless advocate for elf rights. This leads to our third pointer.
Get a Little Help from Your Friends
Humans aren’t like the Borg in Star Trek. We don’t have a collective consciousness in which we directly experience other people’s thoughts and emotions. Instead, we live our lives from the “inside,” from the vantage point of our own personal mini-cam on life. This gives us a privileged access to what’s going on inside our own heads. But sometimes we can be too close to ourselves to see us as we truly are. We lack perspective, objectivity. That’s where friends can help. Friends can tell you when you’re being selfish or rude or making a total fool of yourself. Conversely, they can let you know when you’re being kind or generous or need to lighten up on yourself.
In the Potter books, friends frequently play a vital role in enhancing one another’s self-understanding. For instance, Hermione helps Harry understand why he was being insensitive to Cho Chang on their trip to Hogsmeade; Harry, Ron, and Hermione assist Neville Longbottom in overcoming his painful shyness and lack of self-confidence; and Hagrid helps Ron understand why friendships should not be wrecked by petty jealousies. By the same token, characters who apparently lack close and supportive friendships, such as the Dursleys, Lockhart, and Professor Slughorn, tend not to progress in self-understanding. Honest and caring friends can be a mirror in which we see ourselves as we really are.
Challenge Yourself
In ordinary life, people tend to behave in stereotypical ways. You can’t tell much about a person by watching how she brushes her teeth or walks to the bus stop. It’s in out-of-the-ordinary situations—especially situations of challenge or adversity—that the most important differences between people shine through. That’s why, as the Roman philosopher-poet Lucretius observed, “It is more useful to scrutinize a man in danger or peril, and to discern in adversity what manner of man he is; for only then are the words of truth
drawn up from the very heart, the mask is torn off, the reality remains.”19
In the Potter books, Harry and his friends are repeatedly tested. Over and over, they are placed in situations that test their courage, loyalty, intelligence, and resourcefulness. With a few notable exceptions (such as Ron’s temporary abandonment of Harry and Hermione in Deathly Hallows), they pass these tests with flying colors and prove their true mettle. As a result, they grow in self-confidence and self-knowledge and emerge at the end (much like Frodo and his hobbit friends in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings) as humble but battle-tested heroes.
The Ultimate Measure of a Person
So, in the final analysis, Dumbledore is right when he says that our choices tend to be more revealing than our abilities. Our abilities show us what we can do, but our choices reveal most clearly our qualities of character and what we care about most deeply. In this sense it is true, as the author Tobias Wolff remarks, that “we define ourselves and our deepest values by the choices we make, day by day, hour by hour, over a lifetime.” 20 But as we’ve seen, some choices are more revealing than others. The ultimate measure of a person is where he stands when tested by challenge or adversity. By this measure, Harry and his friends all earn O’s, for Outstanding!
NOTES
1 Chamber of Secrets, p. 333.
2 Tom Morris, If Harry Potter Ran General Electric: Leadership Wisdom from the World of the Wizards (New York: Doubleday, 2006), p. 23.
3 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated by J. A. K. Thomson (London: Penguin Books, rev. ed., 1976), p. 116 (1111b5).
4 Andrew Oldenquist, “Choosing, Deciding, and Doing,” in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1967), p. 96.
5 Ibid., p. 97.
6 Immanuel Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Morals, translated by Carl J. Friedrich, in The Philosophy of Kant, edited by Carl J. Friedrich (New York: Modern Library, 1949), pp. 144-145. Kant frames his discussion in terms of “acts,” rather than “choices,” but I think he would agree that the storekeepers have made different choices.
7 The phrase “who we truly are” is ambiguous. It might refer to the metaphysical self (whether the self is a spiritual substance, for example, or is ultimately identical with the Divine). Or it might refer to the psychological self—our character or personality. Because there’s no reason to think our choices would reveal our ultimate metaphysical identities, Dumbledore must be speaking of the psychological self.
8 For more on the Dursleys’ talent for self-deception, see Diana Mertz Hsieh, “Dursley Duplicity: The Morality and Psychology of Self-Deception,” in David Baggett and Shawn E. Klein, eds., Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), pp. 22-37.
9 Michael J. A. Howe, Principles of Abilities and Human Learning (London: Psychology Press, 1998), p. 55.
10 Of course, it’s sometimes hard to know whether someone has made a particular choice. (“Marietta looks shifty-eyed. Has she decided to betray Dumbledore’s Army?”)
11 In Aristotle’s terms, choices belong to the category of act, whereas abilities belong to the category of potency. See Aristotle, Metaphysics, V, 7.
12 . As Dumbledore remarks, “It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be,” Goblet of Fire, p. 708.
13 Chamber of Secrets, p. 333.
14 Adeel Amini, “Minister of Magic,” http://gallery.the-leaky-cauldron.org/picture/207262.
15 Goblet of Fire, p. 597.
16 See, for example, Goblet of Fire, pp. 224, 265; and Order of the Phoenix, p. 385.
17 It’s not uncommon for subordinated peoples to internalize their oppressors’ values and come to see their own oppression as natural or just. This is a form of what Marxists call “false consciousness.”
18 Deathly Hallows, p. 481.
19 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book 3, lines 55-59.
20 Quoted in “Moments That Define Spirituality,” cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/06/10/o.spirituality.2.u/index.html.
12
THE MAGIC OF PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION
S. Joel Garver
When we first meet Dudley Dursley, he’s an utter prat. Dudley despises Harry and treats him like “a dog that had rolled in something smelly.”1 Dudley always wants his own way, and when it comes to his parents, Petunia and Vernon, he knows how to get it. Dudley thinks he’s always in the right and can do no wrong. He can’t see himself as anything but God’s gift to the world—a model of juvenile perfection, entitled to every good thing that comes his way. And Dudley can’t recognize Harry as anything but a nuisance—a worthless distraction, a potential threat to ickle Dudders’ own comfort and ease.
Yet by the beginning of Deathly Hallows, Dudley has changed dramatically. He leaves a cup of tea for Harry outside Harry’s room at Number 4 Privet Drive, and he defies his parents to instead do what Harry urges. Dudley ultimately manages to express something like affection and gratitude toward Harry, even in the face of his parents’ incomprehension and his own embarrassment. In the end, when Dudley shakes Harry’s hand and says good-bye, Harry sees a “different personality.”2
What happened? How did Dudley come to see Harry in a new way, not as a nuisance, but with a newfound respect? And does this mean that Dudley came to see himself differently than before? If so, how did this change occur?
These are questions about how Dudley develops as a person, but they also raise fascinating epistemological issues. “Epistemology” is the part of philosophy that asks and tries to answer questions about how we know stuff. Specifically, let’s consider how Dudley and Harry came to know both themselves and others better than they did before. By examining how these two characters grow and develop, we can understand how Rowling presents knowing as a process of personal transformation. As we’ll see, when we encounter ourselves and others in significant ways, we grow in mind and heart and become better knowers.3
Positioning Our Prejudgments
In order to know and interpret our world, said the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), we must come to the world with “prejudgments.”4 Every time we try to interpret a situation, a person, or a text, we bring questions, biases, and expectations with us, like bringing a handful of tools from a well-worn toolbox. Without such prejudgments, we wouldn’t have any way to “get into” whatever it is we’re trying to understand. It would be like a container sealed shut, and we’d be left standing there, helpless and empty-handed.
Our prejudgments shape, in turn, the kinds of information we’re able to get out of what we’re trying to understand. But if we come at things with the wrong tools, we aren’t going to make much headway. What we’re trying to interpret and understand will resist our advances. After all, we can’t undo screws very easily with pliers, never mind with a hammer.
Gadamer said that there’s no use pretending we don’t have prejudgments that craft how we think and perceive. The issue is whether our prejudgments will help us understand better or whether they’ll get in the way. It’s not simply that the wrong sorts of questions or expectations won’t get us very far. Whether they help us understand also depends on how loosely we hold these prejudgments and whether we allow the situations we face to challenge and reshape our strategies. When we’re face-to-face with a box screwed shut, do we have the sense to set down the hammer and scrounge around for a screwdriver instead?
The Ignorance of Ickle Dudleykins
If Gadamer’s insight applies to our world, might it apply in Harry’s as well? Dudley sees himself as the center of the universe and interprets his world through his own bloated ego. This is due mainly to the way Petunia and Vernon constantly dote on him. In their eyes, there is “no finer boy anywhere” than their “baby angel.”5 They build up and reinforce Dudley’s sense of self at Harry’s expense, favoring their son over Harry with gifts, clothes, and special treats. Aunt Marge likewise is eager to visit her “neffy-poo” Dudley and to slip him a twenty-pound note. How could any child
treated in this way feel anything but special and privileged?
Furthermore, Dudley’s sense of self resists any sort of retooling or change. Any information that can possibly challenge or modify Dudley’s prejudgments is quickly papered over or given a new spin by his parents. They are able to “find excuses for his bad marks,” insisting that Dudley is a “very gifted boy” but misunderstood by his teachers, and they brush away accusations of bullying with the contention that although Dudley is a “boisterous little boy . . . he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Even when Dudley is forced to go on a diet, Aunt Petunia asserts that he is merely “big-boned,” a “growing boy” who simply has not yet shed his “puppy fat.”6 This environment of flattery and indulgence sculpts Dudley’s own intellectual outlook by which he understands his world, his place in it, and his cousin, Harry. As Mark Twain said, denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles Page 18