There is only power

I’ve started reading the Harry Potter series of books by J. K. Rowling. Yeah, I know the first book came out 22 years ago, the last 12 years ago. Even the last movie came out eight years ago (and I saw them all). Sometime after the last novel was released I bought the set of seven. I had a coupon for half price on one item and the box counted as one item.

And then the box sat in my closet of unread books. For a decade. Yeah, that sometimes happens.

I had intended to read the set and give them to my niece, who was about 9 at the time. But her mother said she wasn’t interested – the story was too dark. So my incentive to quickly read them disappeared.

And a couple weeks ago I decided it was time. I read the first book in about five days and very much enjoyed it, even though my teen years were a long time ago. I had read it before, the only one of the set I had previously read. But that was maybe 15 years ago, well before I bought the set. In reading it again I didn’t remember what I had read the first time, but did remember some scenes from the movie.

The set of books is the story of Harry Potter’s struggle against his nemesis Lord Voldemort. In the first novel Voldemort’s protege is Professor Quirrell.

A difference this time is my current understanding of power and supremacy. So a couple sentences spoken by Quirrell at the climax scene resonated with me.

A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me how wrong I was. There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.

They resonated with me because they encapsulate the basics of my current understanding of supremacy. These sentences are something that a supremacist, someone with or wishing for a lot of power, would say. They would say it as a way of justifying what they do. If there is no good and evil I can do what I want.

There very much is good an evil in the world. And, in my understanding, all evil is the result of supremacy, the enforcement of societal ranking. A supremacist works to gain power. The purpose of that power is to oppress others. The reason for that oppression is to demonstrate the powerful has power over others and thus is higher in the social hierarchy, to demonstrate the life of the powerful is indeed better and more important than the lives of the oppressed, and to prevent those without power from climbing the social hierarchy.

I’m reading something else at the moment. The second book is probably next. The first is the shortest of the series, about 300 pages. The longest is almost three times as long. I’m sure there is a lot in those longer books that didn’t get into the corresponding movie.