Not being a Christian myself I'm not going to touch the JKR & Christianity issue, but one thing I must argue with:
Dumbledore’s frightened and selfish attitude to political office
Socrates might be countered with another quote, namely, 'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'
(Or, as paraphrased by Douglas Adams, whose ruler of the universe is an old man in a shack on an obscure world who isn't even certain that the universe outside his door exists, it is a well-known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.)
JKR is clearly in the tradition of Tolkien here, who has Gandalf, who obviously serves as a model for her Dumbledore, reject the One Ring when offered by Frodo ('Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused.') as well as Galadriel, who also
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That quote did not come from Socrates, but from Lord Acton, a nineteenth-century historian, who in turn claimed to have heard it from a Russian exile. I will add that I have no great respect for Lord Acton - his mind was fairly flat Victorian, Macaulay-and-water you might say. As for the polemic against seeking power, Winston Churchill sought power. And he came closer to absolute power than any British politician since Oliver Cromwell. If you say that this corrupted him, you are speaking as a doctrinaire, so I hope you will not. Socrates actually held high power in Athens as a member of the Ten, a body of judges, which did not stop him from criticizing his country and his fellow-citizens tirelessly - nor yet from dying to prove his obedience to their laws.
What you describe is not the mastery of death. It is the mastery of fear - an entirely different matter.
Oh, I knew it wasn't Socrates; I hadn't known where it originally came from (I mistakenly suspected some Roman historian because I remember having it heard quoted in a lecture on Roman history once), but in that case Google is your friend; I assumed you'd know the source better than I had, so I didn't feel the need to attribute.
I don't see it as a doctrine, and there are, of course happy exceptions, but as a general rule I think it's true more often than not.
As for mastering death, of course as a Christian you'll see this differently. For someone who doesn't really believe in an afterlife, either the Christian version or any other, there is no way to master death in the sense you mean it.
...there is no way to master death in the sense you mean it. Two answers: 1) I would remind you that this is fiction. In fiction you can do anything you want - including inventing a myth for death. 2) That does nothing to challenge my original point, which was that JKR and anyone who agree with her plainly misuse the words "master" and "mastery", which have a perfectly clear meaning which is not the one you ascribe to it.
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Dumbledore’s frightened and selfish attitude to political office
Socrates might be countered with another quote, namely, 'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'
(Or, as paraphrased by Douglas Adams, whose ruler of the universe is an old man in a shack on an obscure world who isn't even certain that the universe outside his door exists, it is a well-known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.)
JKR is clearly in the tradition of Tolkien here, who has Gandalf, who obviously serves as a model for her Dumbledore, reject the One Ring when offered by Frodo ('Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused.') as well as Galadriel, who also ( ... )
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What you describe is not the mastery of death. It is the mastery of fear - an entirely different matter.
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I don't see it as a doctrine, and there are, of course happy exceptions, but as a general rule I think it's true more often than not.
As for mastering death, of course as a Christian you'll see this differently. For someone who doesn't really believe in an afterlife, either the Christian version or any other, there is no way to master death in the sense you mean it.
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Two answers:
1) I would remind you that this is fiction. In fiction you can do anything you want - including inventing a myth for death.
2) That does nothing to challenge my original point, which was that JKR and anyone who agree with her plainly misuse the words "master" and "mastery", which have a perfectly clear meaning which is not the one you ascribe to it.
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