Magical Solutions

[lotesse]

Okay, so, question to the fandom: what on earth is so terrible about Muggles "wantin' magical solutions to their problems," the explanation Hagrid gives for Wizarding secrecy? I mean, shouldn't the wizards want to help Muggles if they can? If wizards can cure cancer or track down serial killers, why not offer their services to society?

As a child I interpreted Hagrid as referencing the traditional story of the human who is given wishes and messes it up, a la the folktale where the woman ends up with the pudding on her nose. I think I also brought to it a vague idea that it's not good for people to be handed the world on a silver platter, and that the journey towards something is often more valuable that the having of that something once you've got there. I thought about wanting to magically be rich, magically be famous, popular, happy, ect. And any kid who's read stories about magic knows that of course it doesn't work that way, and wizards would be seriously screwing everybody up and the Muggles would demand it anyway and it would be narsty.

Okay, but somehow that Wizarding World manages to have an economy. Still not sure how that works--why don't the Weasleys just transfigure nice clothes for themselves, a huge mansion house, whatever? If you can turn an inanimate object into an animal, couldn't you transform it into a servant? Why can't you conjure up food? Money is magically controlled, so inflation's not the problem. The issue is that money is only valuable as a unit of exchange, when you have it and want something else. But if you can make as much of "something else" as you want, if twelve-year-olds can give life to non-living things and pots can easily be made to stir themselves, why would you need to exchange for it? I mean, this whole thing obviously falls apart at the seams, but I'd think that if the Wizarding World does work, there must be some sort of restrictions.

But there are so many other things wizards could do for others. They can heal wounds, protect, conceal, cure, find the lost. Can they change the weather? They can certainly effect agarian production--doesn't Hagrid "do something" to his pumpkins? So it's not too far a stretch to guess that they could put a significant dent in the problem of world hunger. You know wizards have a pretty darn fail-safe method of contraception. Why not bottle and sell potions? reduce the dangers of travel by transporting Muggles via Floo Powder?

Okay, so I'm getting a bit frivolous here. But the point still stands. These people have great power, and could really, truly make the world a better place, and I don't see why they resist doing so. None of the Muggleborns ever get upset that their parents die from terminal diseases that St. Mungo's could fix in three seconds? It doesn't make any sense.

Of course, none of this really jives with the most commonly given reason for Wizarding secrecy: self-defense. The idea is that Muggles hunt them, burn them, kill them, and thus they have to hide themselves away lest the Bad Old Times begin again. But then you have Wendelin the Weird, and honestly, how could Muggles do any sort of systematic damage to people who have power of time and space and can kill you with two words? Does not compute.

Thoughts?

Comments

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

These people have great power, and could really, truly make the world a better place, and I don't see why they resist doing so.

Their culture doesn't have much of a concept of 'doing things because it is charitable and will help others'. Really, selfish unscrupulousness seems to be a *virtue* in the Wizarding World.

I'm not sure how JKR has set this up, but I'm pretty sure there are limits on conjuration -- you can create furniture out of thin air, but it will evaporate back into thin air in a few hours -- and there are probably energy-costs to transfiguration.

But then you have Wendelin the Weird, and honestly, how could Muggles do any sort of systematic damage to people who have power of time and space and can kill you with two words?

So far as we've seen, HP magic works on line-of-sight. You're only able to effect people in your immediate area, or those whom you've established a link with (examples -- the Dark Mark brand or Harry's scar) which seems to take a lot of effort.

Muggle science can attack from a distance -- from sniper rifles to atom bombs -- and doesn't need as much training as it takes to be come proficient at hexes and curses.

[lotesse]

Okay, yes, energy costs would fix a lot of it up. Still, there's a lot of stuff that little kids are doing that seems pretty damn massive. So you renew your conjurations every morning. That's still better than not having any, neh?

You'd think, with the line of sight thing, that they could develop some device or charm similar to Moody's eye to serve as a warning system.

You're right on all these things, but I can't help wondering how hard it would really be to be a bit innovative and find a way around the difficulties.

[anima-mecanique.livejournal.com]

I always wondered why it was bad for Muggles to want a magical fix to their problems, but wizardfolk were allowed to throw their magic around any way they see fit. Why is it alright for a witch to heal wounds magically but not alright for a Muggle to WANT their wounds healed magically?

I suppose it does make sense, though, that when people with inborn magical abilities are (I assume) a pretty small minority, secrecy might be a good option. I'm thinking of the incident in history where the Prussian king shut an alchemist in his dungeon and ordered him to produce gold...in a Muggle-controlled world where people are born with magical talent but have to study in order to be truly powerful, it's concievable that they could be subject to exploitation. After all, the really powerful wizards we see are a product of a world where wizardry is the norm and people are allowed to develop their talents; if wizards were being oppressed somehow, maybe Voldemort and Dumbledore wouldn't have ever learned to kill people with a word. However, that doesn't explain why they still keep themselves shut off from the world...force of tradition, perhaps? They certainly don't have anything to fear from the Muggles, even though there are more of them -- they have shown themselves to be surprisingly effective at defending themselves. How would a Muggle army win a war against wizards?

On an unrelated note that I just thought of, where do spells come from? You have to learn them, of course, but where did they originate? Did the formulas exist and people discovered them, like physics equations? In that case, how do you go about discovering a spell -- they mechanics appear to be simple concentration and words. Can spells be written? If you're proficient enough in the magical arts, can you script a new curse no one has ever seen before? How does one go about adding to the body of spells? More and more, Potterverse magic reminds me of what I don't like about the Dungeons and Dragons presentation of magic....you have a set list of things you can do with magic, each separated into nice discreet packages. Say this and you get that, and you can't really improvise, recombine, or get creative with the workings of your spells. There seems to be very little innovation in Potterverse magic -- it's as though everything's already been discovered. It's...well, it's not how I've always envisioned magic. There seems to be less wonder to it than there should be -- it doesn't seem like an art at all.

[lotesse]

Yeah, the magic thing drives me totally crazy too. It just doesn't work. At all. Not as a part of a story, not as a part of a realistic world.

I guess my problem here is coming from the fact that I can't figure out what the balance of power is. You have an extrememly powerful minority and a weak majority. Are the wizards hiding from the Muggles because they can hurt them or because they selfishly don't want to help the Muggles? It's hard for me to concieve of Muggles being more powerful than wizards.

In your example of the alchemist, okay, yes, but alchemists are humans, just smarter. Wizards aren't like that. I can easily see them ruling the Muggle world as benevolent or malevolent dictators. So if wizards really are stronger than Muggles, the Statute of Secrecy comes off as more selfish than defensive. Because in my book, if not in JK's you try to help people weaker than you, especially if it's really buggered easy for you to do so.

[anima-mecanique.livejournal.com]

Well, wizards ARE different from regular humans, but they never specify how powerful a wizard can get without being trained. I just sort of assumed that a really powerful wizard would have to have a huge innate talent AND dilligent study to reach full potential. Hermione, for instance, is praised quite a bit for being an excellent witch, but her innate power doesn't seem to be any greater than anyone else's -- she's just smarter and studies more. Also, wizard children aren't immediately able to employ their power effectively. Magic seems to manifest itself before the child has learned to control it, and it does so in very obvious ways...Maybe I'm misreading (it's been a while) but it seems to me if you have a situation where the wizards are part of the general population and the Muggles are afraid of the wizards' power, it could be easy to slap down magic-using folk the moment they display their power and prevent them from ever BECOMING Voldemort or Dumbledore. Without a social network for training and finding wizards, there is that possiblity. Of course, this assumes that Muggles would be afraid of people with magical power and not, say, regard them as gifted or even sacred...which, honestly, looking at history, seems a little more likely to me. But ASSUMING we accept JKR's word that in the HPverse Muggles are pretty much uniformly reactionary and fearful of what they don't understand, fear of being hunted or oppressed might have been the original impetus for going into hiding.

However, none of this excuses the fact that they are STILL in hiding, even though they have clearly developed to the point where the Muggle world would be hard-pressed to do ANYTHING to them.

I really want JKR to go more into the mechanics of spell-casting...I doubt it will happen, but I want to know. Why couldn't a Muggle mix a potion, assuming he had access to all the ingredients? What are the limits of conjuration spells? Imposing limits on conjuration, something like how fairy gold vanishes after a certain amount of time, would be an easy way to solve some of the economic problems with the WW culture.

[lotesse]

I think that a lot of it actually is innate talent. Hermione (this is tantamount to heresy in some parts of the fandom, so don't slap me) isn't that good of a student. She's woefully inefficient, and her paper-writing techniques would not fly well with any of my tutors. But even as a swotty little kid she can just do it. Same with Harry. He doesn't even have the pretense of being a good student, and yet he can do all this Terribly Advanced Magic.

But for someone like Hermione, would she even need to go to school? SHe's got talent and drive, and learns as much from independent reading as she does from her teachers. Couldn't a trip to Flourish and Blotts give her all the know-how she needs?

[anima-mecanique.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Like I said, I haven't read the books in a long time, so I guess I just sort of internalized the fact that Hermione is a good student. I also think I made a lot of assumptions from my own ideas about how magic should work, thinking back on it.

You're right, of course. There really doesn't seem to be anything TOO HPverse magic. It doesn't even seem to require a lot of concentration, which is usually the unifying feature of spellcasting in fantasy novels. As long as you have a wand and you can pronounce the words right, you're set.

Wands. There's another thing I can't quite wrap my head around either.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

I think it's because people suck. If we found an alien being of great powers, we'd cut it up to see how it works. We'd cut God up to see how She works, if only we could. I'm seeing wizards in processing vats or plugged into machines; spells extracted mechanically and exchanged for money and services. And that's only if paranoia doesn't drive us to illegalise magic and persecute witches and wizards. OR wizards and witches in charge with Muggles as slaves or third-class citizens. It would have to come down to a war. People suck - don't give them easy power they didn't work for themselves, not even the possibility thereof.

[lotesse]

Okay, yes, but healing? It's not okay to bring them in as, like, super-doctors or something? Hell, you could even disguise medical magic as scientific advancement. AIDS, man. Cancer. Come on. There's got to be some way we can use what strength we are given to help others.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, I guess witches and wizards prefer to help other witches and wizards. Less risk and less work and you still get to help approximately the same number of people.

[lotesse]

How the same number of people? Magic in the Potterverse seems to be nearly instant. A decent Healer could help many more people than there are wizards.

[anima-mecanique.livejournal.com]

Hmm...but why is it alright for wizards to employ power they didn't work for among themselves? We've seen a lot of pretty awful wizardfolk -- they're clearly not innately any more noble or good than regular Muggles. Is it just because they're all theoretically born with this "quick fix"?

Looking back at history, there actually is a lot of what you talk about. The Code of Theodosius actually does have an anti-wizard law in it, and of course persecution of people for 'witchcraft' was pretty widespread in a lot of places. However, most of this is after the Christianization of the western world -- I have read a bit of pagan Roman trials for magic, but there is a definate emphasis on "good" magic vs. "bad" magic that is completely lacking in post-pagan discussions of the same subject.

But even with all of this anti-magic brouhaha, there's always things that people are doing under other guises that sound very much like magic. Certain branches of Christian and Jewish mysticism, pagan theurgy, talismans, shamanism, contacting angels or genii, horoscope-casting, and the whole aforementioned "good magic" thing...if flashy, HP-style magic has existed since the beginning of civilization (I'm assuming it has, I might be assuming wrong) it seems like it wouldn't be too far-fetched to think that there might be methods of legitimizing it. Perhaps even people would think magical talent came from the gods or something, who knows. Maybe I'm just stubbornly less cynical, but it doesn't seem like wizards would AUTOMATICALLY be exploited -- just that they very well MIGHT.

It just seems like magic hasn't interacted with history at all in this world. What was the Wizarding World like in the middle ages? Did it even exist? What about in places like historical Persia, which developed a very strong reputation for being just chock-full of insanely powerful wizards? When was the Wizarding World founded? *argh*

[hyel.livejournal.com]

Wizards DID work for the power - all those years in school! And if they didn't, they weren't allowed to use magic. The school's purpose is also to imprint the rules of the wizarding world on the kiddies. After those years, magic doesn't feel like power anymore, it feels like electricity feels like to us; taken for granted. And then some people have to throw toasters in other people's bathtubs to see what happens.

I think the only reason there aren't any laws about magic these days is that most people don't believe or at least won't admit to believing that it actually works. HP style magic with very obvious, fast results would be something different: power that can make $ $ $.

[lotesse]

Not really all that many, though, and there are no Wizarding universities. I mean, over here in the States a high school diploma means 13 years, and college another 2-10. I've done 14 now, twice the amout of education necessary to become a full-fledged wizard. And first- and second-year magic seems to cover some pretty powerful stuff, stuff that could have a major impact on the Muggle world.

Aren't the rules about magic directed at age, not schooling? I know that there's debate about whether or not every witch and wizard goes to Hogwarts, or if there's some sort of power threshold. But it's the Statue of the Blahdeblah of Underage Wizards, not Unschooled ones.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

Ah, but Hagrid was expelled and therefore isn't allowed to use magic. A witch or a wizard has to complete the school education.

I wonder if the British wizarding community is small enough that they all can be educated in Hogwarts? I'd think the North Irish go to an Irish school along with the other Irish wizards, at least.

[lotesse]

Seamus?

I always thought that Hagrid wass both expelled and, for the same offense, forbidden to use magic. Of course, there doesn't seem to be anything stopping him. There's obviously not too much monitoring--he uses magic all the time.

Anyway, that always seemed strange to me, because he wasn't outlawed from the community formally, and the entire WW functions by use of magic. It seems like a rather harsh sentence, because the implications of it if it were to be properly enforced would be a sort of necessary outlawry.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

I've always assumed you have to complete schooling or get OWLs at least in order to be allowed to use magic. I never thought that the restriction of magic-use was added as a legal punishment.

[lotesse]

But can't you use magic as a Howarts student who is of age but hasn't graduated yet?

Anyway, if Hogwarts is a requirement, there can't be many wizards in Britain.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

Can you? Does it say so somewhere? I mean, I thought you HAVE to get OWLs to be allowed to use magic.

[lotesse]

Hm. I'm going to have to track this down.

[lotesse]

Curious--what do you mean about it being right for them to use their powers? Should they give them up and live like Muggles? I don't think that would be terribly likely, considering. And why wouldn't it be okay?

[anima-mecanique.livejournal.com]

It just seems slightly hypocritical to fault Muggles for wanting 'the easy way out' with magic when you routinely fix your glasses by saying two words and waving your wand. I dunno. Maybe it's just me.

[lotesse]

Of course! But the solution to that hypocrisy wouldn't be to not use your wand, it would be to help the Muggles, neh?

[anima-mecanique.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[(Anonymous)]

According to Rowling, Muggles are relatively primitive. They couldn't possibly hope to understand the fantastic world of magic that belongs to the other part of the world (although I honestly wonder what the muggle-wizard ratio is). While I agree people can be pretty stupid, she portrays the wizards as somehow better and more high-minded. They're above mundane humans. Remember the mind-erase stunt that Mr. Weasely pulls on the tent salesman in the Goblet of Fire? The moral is that it's okay to manipulate and control Muggles; they're weak and don't know any better. They're inferior.

The money problem is one I've been wondering about. Of course, I've also wondered how families like the Weasleys can have so much property without paying taxes.

So what's the message we can take from Rowling's little children's story? You're not obligated to help people that aren't as good as you are; people like you are the only ones that matter.

(By the by, I found you through browsing friends lists, so don't be alarmed. The questions you raised interested me, that's all.)

[lotesse]

No worries, welcome! BTW, if you're without an lj, it can be nice to sign anonymous comments with a pseudonym, so that people can tell you from other anons.

JK scares me sometimes, you know? especially because I first read these books as a little kid and didn't think of a lot of this stuff, just absorbed it. And I was a terribly critical reader as a little kid. How many people never go back and examine this stuff? It's creepy, these thousands of kids that you know read the books and have forgotten how reprehensible so much of it is and...argh! The campsite salesman's fate always brought me up short, though. Because. Gah. Some things just go too far.