The following is an
extract of a conversation between Harry Potter and Headmaster Albus Dumbledore,
in Harry Potter and the Methods of
Rationality, Chapter 77:
“There was a Muggle once named Mohandas Gandhi,” Harry sad.
“He thought the government of Muggle Britain shouldn’t rule over his country.
And he refused to fight. He convinced his whole country not to fight. Instead
he told his people to walk up to the British soldiers and let themselves be
struck down, without resisting, and when Britain couldn’t stand doing that any
more, we freed his country. I thought it was a very beautiful thing, when I
read about it, I thought it was something higher than all the wars that anyone
had ever fought with guns or swords. That they’d really done that, and that it
has actually worked.”
Harry drew another breath.
“Only then I found out that Gandhi told his people, during
World War II, that if the Nazis invaded they should use non resistance against
them, too. But the Nazis would’ve just shot everyone in sight. And maybe Winston
Churchill always felt there should’ve been a better way, some clever way to win
without having to hurt anyone; but he never found it, and so he had to fight.”
Harry looked up at the Headmaster, who was staring at him.
“Winston Churchill was the one who tried to convince the British government not to give Czechoslovakia to Hitler in
exchange for a peace treaty, that they should fight right away-“
“I recognize the name, Harry,” said Dumbledore.
“The point is,” Harry said, after a brief pause to remember
exactly who he was talking to, and fight down the suddenly returning sense that
he was an ignorant child gone insane with audacity who had no right to be in
this room and no right to question Albus Dumbledore about anything, “the point
is, saying violence is evil isn’t an answer.
It doesn’t say when to fight and when not to fight. It’s a hard question and
Gandhi refused to deal with it, and that’s why I lost some of my respect for
him.”
*******
No one asks the hard questions right? This one is for the
rebels, for those who dare to defy the conformity bias that plagues our very
species, for the ones who dare to be
a little less insane.
TO read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, click here.
I warn you this will be, in its own way, the most horrifying read of your life.
There is no gore or violence or rape or murder…. Just the
worst kinds of truth.
TO read more about conformity bias, click here.
TO read more about cognitive biases in general, check out the wiki website dedicated to the Methods of Rationality here.
TO learn more about Nazi Germany and post-WWII Germany, you can watch the 1961 movie Judgment at Nuremberg here.
Thank you for your time.
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