Churchill—-Er, J.K. Rowling Speaks At Harvard About Totalitarian States
Gee … One of the best arguments for what we did in invading Iraq, and Afghanistan … and real soon Iran … by Harry Potter’s ‘creator’, no less.
Imagine Totalitarian States
[Rawling] told the Harvard Class of 2008 that when they consider what they might do about their fellow human beings suffering in the world’s various police states, they have a responsibility to use their imagination, and to act wisely on it.
[ … ]
Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read. …
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy. …
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
[ … ]
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And many times the only voice such ‘totalitarian states’ can hear … is the sound of guns and JDAMs …
I’m NOT putting words in the prized writer’s mouth … But I believe she was trying to ’say’ something … without ’saying’ it … ya know what I mean? I think she may have done quite splendidly in doing just that …
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Never read or watched any “Harry Potter,” but my siblings did.
Heh, I was reading “Battle Cry,” “Once an Eagle,” “The Caine Mutiny,” and helluva lot of Tom Clancy books. Never really found ‘fantasy’ books to be interesting, BUT, I did enjoy the “Chronicles of Narnia” when I was in elementary school.
June 8th, 2008 at 10:49 amIm not sure if she is one of “us” who believe that totalitarian regimes need to be met on the battlefield or one of “them” who believes the U.S. is the enemy and believes students from Harvard should be rallying around AQI and protesting American “NeoImperialist” policies that are “creating” new terrorists. Im skeptical of her enough to believe that she is talking about the “powerful” being the U.S. and the “powerless” being Jaish al Sunna, AQI, Hezbollah in Iraq, etc. etc. I am not convinced she is a good guy at all.
June 8th, 2008 at 11:14 amI filtered that speech the same as you…but how the Harvard grads fileter it is anyones guess. Is this her quote are the moderator? “And many times the only voice such ‘totalitarian states’ can hear … is the sound of guns and JDAMs “…
June 8th, 2008 at 11:23 am“Never read or watched any “Harry Potter”
neither did I
June 8th, 2008 at 11:36 amNo … THAT’s mine …
June 8th, 2008 at 11:36 amNever cared for Harry Potter. Too busy reading Spencer and Warriq. Never read “Chronicles of Narnia”. I read “Mere Christianity”, and “The Screwtape Letters” instead. C.S. Lewis was pretty good.
I’m suprised Ms Rowling didn’t have another wardrobe malfunction like she did at a book signing for little kids on “Book TV”.
I doubt she’s on anyone’s side but her own.
June 8th, 2008 at 12:07 pm“The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders.”
She probably believes that the kind of horrors she describes would go away with a good talkin’-to, a la Obama. Personally, I answer that nonsense by pointing out that that may work for about 95% of humanity, but the problem is that it’s the unreachable 5% who wind up causing most of the trouble. Those remaining people, as Drill pointed out, listen only to JDAMs. Unfortunately, that concept tends to be too sophisticated for most of your typically decadent, protected Harvard crowd to comprehend.
June 8th, 2008 at 12:10 pm“And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.”
I’m gonna go out on alimb and say her “experiences do not include monsters…..some of those “narrow minded” people as she sees them do have experience with monsters, know what they are capable of, and so tolerate alot less from both them and their enablers…..it’s easy to see the good in a two legged monster when you haven’t seen them ravaging the innocent first hand. Naive, sheltered, and safely protected from the real world.
June 8th, 2008 at 12:23 pmI was too busy reading the Green Monster, along with the Guidebook for Marines and my MCI’s. Oorah oorah!
June 8th, 2008 at 12:30 pm” … There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.”
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We just eliminated one of the true Monster regimes by invading Iraq and deposing a ruthless dictator and replacing him with a democratically elected government. Hopefully the person who replaced you will have fewer of these letters to read!!
Funny to think that the one with real imagination was George W. Bush.
June 8th, 2008 at 12:34 pmFunny to think that the one with real imagination was George W. Bush.
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June 8th, 2008 at 1:03 pmI think her words are heard by “harvard” grads as “Bushitler” & the “why can’t we all get along crowd”. Her words are carefully set and those on the left will hear a much different tone than those on the right. She does not say or elude to using violence against those that are violent, it’s all “imagine” … and education AND “unique status” ” all Crap !! Amnesty international has done for peace about as much as the UN has done.
Sounds like OBOMA-Nation to me.
June 8th, 2008 at 2:21 pmThe only thing I have ever heard about JK Rowling is that she’s rabidly anti-American and keeps her mouth shut for fear of losing 85% of her market.
The British celebrities talk a great game when they know the US is the bulk of their mealticket.
June 8th, 2008 at 5:20 pm