Voldemort and Harry meet at the Piraeus


[originally posted to facebook, June 22, 2016]

Voldemort: Join me, Harry! There is no good and evil. There is only power, and those too weak to seek it. Will you join me?

Harry: Before I answer, tell me this: what is power?

Voldemort: The ability to do whatever you want, and to have whatever you want happen. If you become a Death Eater, there will be no limits to the magic you can perform. Do What Thou Wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Harry: But if I join you, I'd have to do what you say.

Voldemort: Of course. I am the leader of the Death Eaters.

Harry: So I would actually be losing power, if I joined you.

Voldemort: Technically.

Harry: Tell me about honesty and dishonesty.

Voldemort: Mere illusions! This binary opposition derives from the fundamental illusion, which is morality itself!

Harry: Illusions, eh?  So you mean that saying that morality does exist is... dishonest?

Voldemort: I see what you did there.

Harry: If there are no rules about honesty and dishonesty, why would you ask me whether or not I will join you? Would you believe me if I answer yes or no?

Voldemort: Why? What are you trying to pull, here?

Harry: I mean, I might say, "Yes, I will join you," but secretly I will be working as a spy for Dumbledore and the other good guys, rising up through the Death Eaters and betraying you at the last minute....

Voldemort: Don't do that.

Harry: On the other hand, I might also say, "No, I'll never join you," but secretly I will be a Death Eater from then on, and nobody at Hogwart's - and none of the readers of the books or watchers of the movies - will be any the wiser, except for the really clever, perceptive ones....

Voldemort: Interesting... go on....

Harry: In other words, if I say, "Yes," that means I agree with you, which means I think the concept of honesty is meaningless, so you shouldn't trust me. And if I say, "No," and I really mean it, that means that I don't agree with you, and I'm not on your side, so you shouldn't trust me. You lose either way.

Voldemort: Hm.

Harry: And there's another possibility. What if I say, "No, I'll never join you," and I really mean it, but in fact I've internalized your principle, that there is no good or evil, and there is only power? In other other words, I no longer believe in good and evil, I only believe in power, and precisely for that reason, I don't want to be under your power - I want to be independent.

Voldemort: I guess I see what you mean....

Harry: And if that were the case, even if I were doing many things that most people consider evil, I would want them to think that I am good, because I would want people to be on my side....

Voldemort: Well, that's pretty devious....

Harry: In fact, what you're doing seems pretty stupid and counterproductive - loudly advertising yourself as a Bad Guy. Look at you, all dressed in black, with that creepy noseless face and reptilian teeth... no one's going to want to be your friend. Seems pretty weak, if you ask me.

Voldemort: Now you're just being mean.

Harry: No wonder you're so desperate for me to join you! If you really had all that much power, you wouldn't care whether I joined you or not.

Voldemort: I'm not desperate. It's just, you know, a guy gets lonely....

Harry: Whereas, by looking like a nice, cute, innocent, little boy, I get everyone to trust me, to love me, to identify with me, and to want to protect me. Even if I break the rules!

Voldemort: Hey, yeah, that's true! That's not fair!

Harry: Plus, by opposing you, I not only get the power that comes from the support and obeisance of all of these suckers, I also get to enjoy the bloodlust of violent action against you and your goons, AND the supreme sense of self-satisfaction that I am right and righteous.

Voldemort: Isn't that a bit hypocritical?

Harry: If you don't believe in good and evil, does hypocrisy have any meaning?

Voldemort: Good point.

Harry: I mean, if a person REALLY gave up on all belief of good and evil, and merely sought power for its own sake, then not only would they be willing to lie to everyone else, they'd even be willing to lie to themselves. They'd be willing to convince themselves that they were good people, if it made them feel good. So they would wind up believing in good and evil after all, though in a very self-serving way. In this way, the act of not-believing-in-good-and-evil undoes itself.

Voldemort: I'm getting confused. What are you saying?

Harry: By looking the way you look, and saying things like, "There is no good and evil, only power, and those too weak to seek it," I think you're being a bit too honest.

Voldemort: Too honest?

Harry: If you really cared about acquiring power, more than anything else, you wouldn't say honest things like that. You'd only tell people what they want to hear, nice talk about democracy and friendship and love.

Voldemort: Damn it, you're right.

Harry: So "Bad Guys," who talk the way you do, that is to say, honestly, are really more good than "Good Guys".

Voldemort: On second thought, I rescind my offer. Don't join us. You're creeping me out.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Liquefactionism

Image
“To Dissolve Man” An Investigation into the Liquefactionist Party In the 21st century, we will have to deal both with the odious Liquefactionists and with a confused and reactionary anti-Liquefactionism, which is far more apparent and obviously horrifying. I borrow the term “Liquefactionist Party” from William S. Burroughs, who writes about the Liquefactionists in the “Parties of Interzone” section of Naked Lunch - which, as a political policy guide, is unmatched in its insight and accuracy.  He writes that, “ The Liquefaction program involves the eventual merging of everyone into One Man by a process of protoplasmic absorption. ”  He goes on: “It will be immediately clear that the Liquefaction Party is, except for one man, entirely composed of dupes, it not being clear until the final absorption who is whose dupe.” Paradoxically, Burroughs goes on to tell us that “Liquefactionists in general know what the score is.”  If they know the score, how can they be dupes?  Perhaps thi
Read more

Why Capitalism is Ending

Image
THE PRODUCTIVITY BOMB Sorry, Ray Kurzweil , there will be no singularity.  As much as Moore’s Law has become a cliche, it has also become a cliche to point out that exponential growth has no "knee" - that is to say, that an exponential growth curve has no inflection point.  It goes up faster and faster, so that not only is the value rising but the derivative of the value is also rising (that is, the rate of increase is itself increasing) yet at any given point it is still a gradual increase.  Growth that gets indefinitely huger as it approaches a specific point of time, a limit known as a singularity, is not exponential growth but rather hyperbolic growth .  There’s no evidence that technology is growing hyperbolically; it is “only” growing exponentially.  Gordon Moore himself has stated that he doesn't believe in the singularity, or even in the continuation of Moore's Law.   (And Moore's Law is starting to fail, anyway ... )  But it hard
Read more

Why Ayn Rand was Wrong

  It is a pet theory of mine that the "greatness" or "importance" of a philosopher is mostly determined by that philosopher's subsequent degree of influence on a government leader.  Would we still talk about Socrates, if his student Critias had not taken over Athens as the leader of the Dictatorship of the Thirty?  Would we talk about Aristotle, had he not tutored Alexander, who later became Alexander the Great and took over a vast part of the ancient world?  Would we remember Rousseau, had not Robespierre declared him "divine"?  Or Locke and Montesquieu, had not the founders of the United States revered them?  The esteem given to the philosophy by professional professors within the academy matters less, and its internal coherence, or insight, or truth matters less still.  By this measure, Ayn Rand is, unfortunately, the most important philosopher of the 20th century.   Even though she is barely noticed by philosophy departments, Ayn Rand is massively
Read more