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July 25, 2015 at 9:04 pm (This post was last modified: July 25, 2015 at 9:33 pm by BrokenQuill92.)
As a subscriber to Alohamora, a Harry Potter podcast the debate still rages on! Did Severus Tobias Snape actually love Lily Potter? There is a split between the fans as to whether his behavior counts as love or if you can be an awful an awful person and still love someone.
Things Snape did
1. Called Lily mudblood (the magic equivalent to nigger)
2. Tried to trade the life of her husband and son for her safety
3. Joined magic nazis
3. Turned on magic nazis when they killed Liliy
4. Physically protected Lily's son for almost two decades
5. Emotionally abused her son for nearly 8 years
6. Spied on the craziest wizard nazi ever and got away with it
7. Traumatized Neville Longbottom to the point of nervous collapse
8. Sacrificed himself for the greater good
So can someone be awful and still love and do good things?
(July 25, 2015 at 9:29 pm)SnakeOilWarrior Wrote: Severus Snape was obsessed, not in love, and the way J.K. Rowling portrays it makes me wonder about her.
Snape only emotionally abused Harry for 7 years. Harry didn't even know who Snape was until he was eleven and Snape died when he was 18.
I think awful people are capable of love. I'm not sure though, that they're capable of being loving.
So you think there is a difference between love and affection?
(July 25, 2015 at 9:39 pm)SnakeOilWarrior Wrote: Of course there is. Not sure where you're going...
The question is mostly can you truly love someone but still treat them poorly.
Whether they can truly love them or not does not seem to matter much, does it? If someone treats you badly, I recommend that you not be with that person. Whether they "truly love" you or not.
I will turn this around and say categorically that I would rather be with someone who did not "truly love" me, but who always treated me courteously, respectfully, faithfully, and romantically, than be with someone who did "truly love" me but did not treat me courteously, respectfully, faithfully, and romantically. Some completely inscrutable and imperceptible hidden feeling is of no use to anyone. What matters is what people do, not what they feel if those feelings do not manifest themselves in action.
Of course, the way we actually speak of things, we infer inner feelings from people's actions, so that we would not normally speak in the manner of my previous paragraph. I have posted about this before, which I will partially repost now.
I am happily married, and have been for many years. My wife loves me very much. But I will now tell a different story. Suppose my wife is only pretending to love me, but does not really love me. Let us pretend she either despises me completely and absolutely, or is completely indifferent to me; whichever you regard as the most opposite to being in love with me.
Normally, when someone pretends something, they do not always keep up the pretense. They may not when around their close friends, for example, and eventually they typically drop the ruse entirely.
But I am telling a different story here. Let us suppose that my wife always pretends that she loves me, both whenever I am around, and when I am not. Let us suppose not only that she does this presently, but does so for the rest of her life. Even after I die (I am likely to die first, being older, and also because men, on average, do not live as long as women). So everyone believes that she loves me, because she always acts like she loves me. She is, in this imaginary scenario, a perfect actress, always playing her role.
In such a situation, everyone who knows us says that she loves me. They are completely convinced, because she smiles at me sweetly, and always acts like she loves me. Her behavior, in fact, is identical to how she would behave if she really loved me, and remains so forever. Even in her diary, she writes that she loves me, so that if someone sees it after she is dead, they will believe that she has a strong love for me, even though she secretly feels differently.
Now, think about this story. It is a different story from the story of her loving me, but everything that everyone knows is still the same as the story in which she loves me.
(I stated that I like this story better, but this one may seem dated. It may be that, eventually, people will figure out how the brain works and will be able to take scans and, effectively, read people's minds; they are already working on it. If they succeed, I hope it is only after I am dead.)
There is something odd about having stories that are different, yet are indistinguishable in one's experience, if one were really in the different stories.
In this case, everyone would say that my wife loves me (including her, though she would secretly feel differently).
The difference is really just a difference in the story, not in anything I experience, or anyone else (other than my wife) experiences. It makes no practical difference for anything anyone does. (Even for the things my wife does, as she does what she would do if she loved me, whether she loves me or not.) I am, after all, completely convinced that she loves me. (If I were neurotic, I may doubt the matter, even though it is perfectly obvious that she loves me. That is to say, the reasonable conclusion of the experience is that she loves me. It is only if I am unreasonable that I believe that she does not love me. My meaning on this may not be presently clear, but should be momentarily.)
What I want to suggest is that there is something wrong with the story of my wife always pretending to love me, but who does not really love me. The problem is, that is not how language works. Everyone would say that she loves me. "Pretending" is pretending when there is some circumstance in which the pretense is dropped. This is not a comment about the metaphysical status of my wife's "true" feelings; it is a comment about how words are used.
This is a common occurrence in metaphysical stories, that something has gone awry with language. When I speak of my hand, I do not know the ultimate nature of it; that is irrelevant to what is meant by my "hand." Before modern science, people generally talked about hands in a perfectly reasonable way, just the same as now. Whether it is really made of atoms or whether it is just a part of a computer program for a brain in a vat is irrelevant. The word "hand" is a shortcut word for describing a variety of sensations. The ultimate cause is unimportant to everything I do with my hand.
Of course, I do not expect most people to accept my explanation. They want something ultimately real to grab onto (if you will pardon the expression).
Still, there is something very peculiar about stories that seem very different, yet make absolutely no difference to one's life or perception of anything.
Having a story might make things easier to remember, as opposed to things being a "black box" ... But it does not add anything to what is going on. And the story may also be problematic if one believes it, as it may make it harder to figure out new things, if the new things do not fit well with whatever story one is believing. That is, the story may go beyond what is known in some way that is, or seems to be, incompatible with something that might be known in the future. One can avoid that problem by not believing the story.
Perhaps, though, that is not the sort of thing you have in mind. If someone is stupid, they can make a mistake in how they treat someone, and so they may treat someone badly when they intend to be nice. And sometimes people are not thinking about their feelings for an individual when they act on some occasion, and so they may do something at that moment that does not fit with their usual feelings for someone. Or they can be temporarily angry, and again not act as they normally would.
There are also other feelings that people have that are commonly confused with love, like lust or the desire to possess something, which is different from loving that something.
And, there can be conflicting feelings in someone, so that, perhaps, someone loves someone, but also has feelings that cause them to act in a manner that does not fit with their love. That is, love is not the only feeling a person may have at one time. To use a homely expression, someone may want their cake and eat it too. In such cases, it is likely that there may be some dispute over whether the person loves that someone or not. Regardless, though, of whether such a person truly loves you or not, if they do not treat you well, being with them is probably not a good idea.
As for the Harry Potter stuff, I have not read it, so I have nothing to say about your specific example in your opening post.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
As someone that grew up with the Harry Potter series, I have been able to evolve my views as I grow from impressionable to more observant. I always remember focusing in on how Snape seemed to try and prepare Harry for what was to come. If I'm not mistaken he stated this several times. Given his hands on experience with the "the craziest wizard nazi ever," he knew that what Harry needed was much harsher than lovie dovie coddling. He tried his best to prepare Harry for relentless, senseless hatred the best he could.
(July 25, 2015 at 9:39 pm)SnakeOilWarrior Wrote: Of course there is. Not sure where you're going...
The question is mostly can you truly love someone but still treat them poorly.
Ahhh, ok. Yes, I suppose somebody can love someone and still treat them poorly. Many abusive husbands/fathers have given tearful confessions/shown honest remorse after beating their wife/kid to death.
Although, I have to agree with Pyrrho when he says that "If someone treats you badly, I recommend that you not be with that person. Whether they "truly love" you or not."
Thief and assassin for hire. Member in good standing of the Rogues Guild.
(July 25, 2015 at 10:58 pm)luka Wrote: As someone that grew up with the Harry Potter series, I have been able to evolve my views as I grow from impressionable to more observant. I always remember focusing in on how Snape seemed to try and prepare Harry for what was to come. If I'm not mistaken he stated this several times. Given his hands on experience with the "the craziest wizard nazi ever," he knew that what Harry needed was much harsher than lovie dovie coddling. He tried his best to prepare Harry for relentless, senseless hatred the best he could.
Really? I always saw Snape's actions toward and interactions with Harry as petty mistreatment of the son of the schoolmate he hated rather than him "preparing" Harry for being mistreated by others. He seemed to find excuses to take points from Gryffindor and dole out punishments on Harry and his friends whenever he could which, in hindsight, is a really confusing action to take against the son of the woman he purports to love so deeply that he's willing to put his life on the line to protect her and then, when she dies, risk his life to protect her son.
For a long time I had delusions of grandeur where I was going to write James, Lily and Snape's final year at Hogwarts which basically would document how deeply Snape was becoming obsessed with Lily - not in love with her, but dangerously obsessed with her, while at the same time having this amazing cognitive dissonance about how he was obsessed with a muggle girl and joining a muggle-despising hate group around the same time. I actually had it all plotted out, but I never actually wrote it.
So I guess that kind of answers the question of whether I think Snape actually loved Lily or not - in school I think he was more obsessed with her, or the idea of her, than he was in love with her. Though he might have had a confusing mishmash of emotions tied up with Lily and one of those emotions was love to some degree.
Not to change the subject, but I've always wondered to what degree "unconditional" love exists, and whether such a type of love could be considered healthy or not. But that is my own musing and not exactly on topic here.
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
(July 26, 2015 at 3:01 pm)Clueless Morgan Wrote: ...
Not to change the subject, but I've always wondered to what degree "unconditional" love exists, and whether such a type of love could be considered healthy or not. But that is my own musing and not exactly on topic here.
I don't believe in "unconditional" love. Or, at least, I do not think that would be a good thing. If I were to suddenly have a personality change, and started beating my wife, I hope she would leave me. I think she would, eventually, though I would first need to burn through 20+ years of goodwill. But I don't think that would take long if we are talking about brutal beatings, and I certainly hope it would not take long.
I think it would be totally stupid to have unconditional love. It would be like the idiot Christians who defend rape and murder ordered by God in the Bible. It is totally fucking insane, not anything healthy at all.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.