Jan 30Liked by Salomé Sibonex, Joseph (Jake) Klein
I cannot believe the synchronicity of this... just now I am in the middle of reading the very Harry Potter book you mentioned to my 7 year old twins.
And just like you, I couldn’t help but notice the uncomfortable parallels that between the book and our current socio-cultural situation.
The conformity, the making the messenger of uncomfortable truths into the enemy, even down to the media destroying Harry’s reputation, (we can surely think of one or two examples off the tops of our heads of similar cases in “the real world.)
Funny how your article reached me right now, I just closed the book an hour ago and all that you said was floating in my brain. Huh.
I love some good old synchronicity! Glad you're sharing the stories with your kids; they're so meaningful and instructive.
And yes, if you're at all paying attention to the destructive shifts in our culture, the problems that show up in Harry Potter are glaringly similar. The way Rowling shows how the media can be malicious and weaponize reputational attacks is SO insightful and unnervingly prescient. It's crazy how much earlier she wrote this before the media had exposed its biases as much as it did after 2020 (and her experience with hit pieces)!
The scary part for me is, the people around Harry ultimately come to recognize good from bad and rally. We have so many narratives motivating people to do otherwise today that our story's ending is still in flux!
Jan 29Liked by Salomé Sibonex, Joseph (Jake) Klein
Speaking directly to my heart with this one, Salomé 🥹💖✨ I am the biggest HP fan! ✨✨ Long Live JK Rowling!!! Her new(er) Strike mystery series is phenomenal too.
Love that you're a fan too!! I'm late to the party but I totally get it now haha. Rowling is a master artist and now I'm an even more rabid defender of her. I'll check out Strike! I hadn't heard of it.
The parallels are even deeper than you wrote here -- although you're clearly aware of that, given one of your replies below.
Throughout The Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter is demonized by the mainstream media, represented by the immensely popular wizarding newspaper, the Daily Prophet. He is subjected to an endless litany of character assassinating articles, which would have been even worse if Rita Skeeter hadn't been blackmailed into silence by Hermione at the end of the previous year.
It's not even that wizarding people, in general, are willing to blind themselves to avoid facing harsh reality... many would believe if they saw convincing evidence. But they are denied the opportunity to see the evidence by a censorious government/media conspiracy.
The truth only begins to break free when it's reported -- honestly and clearly -- in a rag of a publication best described as a supermarket tabloid. Thousands of people find themselves purchasing the Quibbler -- The Quibbler! -- for the first time, reluctantly admitting that this new account "rings truer" than anything the Daily Prophet or Ministry of Magic is saying.
People are capable of evaluating the believability of information, even when it appears in questionable sources. And sometimes, when the Big Players in media conspire to deny information, it becomes necessary to make an end-run around them... which seems to me to represent the new media of independent podcasts and Substack publications like this one.
The Daily Prophet survived its lapse into censorious propaganda, but its reputation was tarnished, likely for decades.
Perhaps the legacy media will pull their heads out of their butts and start rebuilding their reputations. Or perhaps they'll die. The latter will be messy, and awful. I sometimes think that we're already seeing their "death throes."
Wonderful breakdown! Thank you for commenting this, it's one of the most unnervingly prescient plot lines in Harry Potter.
These are the kind of stories that make the real-world events frustrating because we've seen them play out fully in both history and fiction, yet the pattern reemerges.
Agreed that we're seeing the legacy media's death throes.
Always a privilege to read smart, observant persons' epiphanies about how the people on their own side are just as willfully obtuse and ethically weak as the people on the other side!
I loved this essay!! (I’m actually in the middle of writing my own Harry Potter/JKR essay for my substack). I’m a longtime HP nerd so I’m wildly biased, but it’s incredible how prescient, wise and deeply complex this series, and it’s creator, has turned out to be. I always thought JKR was amazing, but now I think she’s basically Dumbledore irl. She taps into something so true, ancient, and universal with her story that it has transcended literature to become modern day fairytale/mythology.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in particular was always my favorite book- the scene of Harry standing up in class and stating the truth about Cedric’s death still gives me chills. That scene helped me to recognize when I was in that sort of situation myself and to have the courage and conviction to speak up for myself and others (I also definitely had Harry’s temper as a teen so I can extra relate 😬😇).
On my annual rereading of the series this year, I noticed in that classroom scene that Harry’s voice is described as shaking. I don’t remember his voice ever being described as shaking from fear or rage in any of his encounters with Voldemort.
But yeah- I still sometimes daydream about getting a “I must not tell lies” tattoo. I’ll have to get a t shirt.
Thank you for reading and sharing your Harry Potter love! I totally agree with your takes.
After revisiting the series, I was extra disturbed at how Rowling has been treated recently, by both the media and activists. It's one thing to disagree with a person, but the way she's been relentlessly maligned speaks to whether our culture can even identify good from bad anymore. She truly created a cultural treasure.
Love that you also value the parts of Harry's story that deal with standing alone for something important. I was impressed at how real those challenges feel, both in the story and for me personally. It's another testament to Rowling's talent.
Haha the "I must not tell lies" plot line goes craaazy. So good!
“It's one thing to disagree with a person, but the way she's been relentlessly maligned speaks to whether our culture can even identify good from bad anymore.”
Agreed, but I’m not sure we would agree on the “solution”. I think everything that you pointed out can actually be remedied by a mass return to religion in the western world. I already know what your thinking, this would be like moving backwards, no quite, I would contend that if we as a society (not saying that it should be forced or that individuals can and should be atheist etc.) moved towards more religion in our lives and not less many of these issues would fall by the wayside. We as humans evolved to “need” religion, so either we can be a part of the few “eternal” religions with thousands or tens of thousands of years of history behind them, or we are “forced” to buy into a postmodern version of religion. (BLM, LGBTQAI+, techno-something)
I agree there' s a problem of belief, but I actually think religion is just another vehicle for meaningful stories that instruct us on how best to live; they were just better at getting people to follow them because they're usually enforced by intense social pressure or fear of punishment for non-belief and non-adherence.
The problems of conformity and motivated reason clouding our judgment existed during religious times too. A lot of people were put to death or severely punished for presenting new information that people were motivated to disbelieve because it went against current religious thought. We still see so much brutality and forced conformity in more religious parts of the world, like the middle east. I'd honestly rather deal with BLM and all that madness than religious fundamentalism, particularly as a woman. I don't find that any of these ancient religion provide enough room for the individual to determine their own destiny as a secular society does.
We do need something to believe in and something that bonds us to each other collectively, but even if I agreed that religion was the solution: I don't think conversion to faith will be successful enough. But I do think some type of non-religious belief system can be forged. Probably will require use of psychedelics to facilitate quasi-religious experiences that can then be contextualized in a secular, meaningful belief system that provides values like religions do, but without requiring faith in disproven or difficult to believe claims.
Here’s how I see it: the incumbent major faiths are too big to fail. What needs to happen is a return to the more natural forms of these religions which I don’t think we’re mainly predicting on intense social pressure but had a much more universal-positive outlook before becoming increasingly tribal and violent. If I thought it was in any way possible to create a robust secular religion, I would attempt to.
I cannot believe the synchronicity of this... just now I am in the middle of reading the very Harry Potter book you mentioned to my 7 year old twins.
And just like you, I couldn’t help but notice the uncomfortable parallels that between the book and our current socio-cultural situation.
The conformity, the making the messenger of uncomfortable truths into the enemy, even down to the media destroying Harry’s reputation, (we can surely think of one or two examples off the tops of our heads of similar cases in “the real world.)
Funny how your article reached me right now, I just closed the book an hour ago and all that you said was floating in my brain. Huh.
I love some good old synchronicity! Glad you're sharing the stories with your kids; they're so meaningful and instructive.
And yes, if you're at all paying attention to the destructive shifts in our culture, the problems that show up in Harry Potter are glaringly similar. The way Rowling shows how the media can be malicious and weaponize reputational attacks is SO insightful and unnervingly prescient. It's crazy how much earlier she wrote this before the media had exposed its biases as much as it did after 2020 (and her experience with hit pieces)!
The scary part for me is, the people around Harry ultimately come to recognize good from bad and rally. We have so many narratives motivating people to do otherwise today that our story's ending is still in flux!
Speaking directly to my heart with this one, Salomé 🥹💖✨ I am the biggest HP fan! ✨✨ Long Live JK Rowling!!! Her new(er) Strike mystery series is phenomenal too.
Love that you're a fan too!! I'm late to the party but I totally get it now haha. Rowling is a master artist and now I'm an even more rabid defender of her. I'll check out Strike! I hadn't heard of it.
The parallels are even deeper than you wrote here -- although you're clearly aware of that, given one of your replies below.
Throughout The Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter is demonized by the mainstream media, represented by the immensely popular wizarding newspaper, the Daily Prophet. He is subjected to an endless litany of character assassinating articles, which would have been even worse if Rita Skeeter hadn't been blackmailed into silence by Hermione at the end of the previous year.
It's not even that wizarding people, in general, are willing to blind themselves to avoid facing harsh reality... many would believe if they saw convincing evidence. But they are denied the opportunity to see the evidence by a censorious government/media conspiracy.
The truth only begins to break free when it's reported -- honestly and clearly -- in a rag of a publication best described as a supermarket tabloid. Thousands of people find themselves purchasing the Quibbler -- The Quibbler! -- for the first time, reluctantly admitting that this new account "rings truer" than anything the Daily Prophet or Ministry of Magic is saying.
People are capable of evaluating the believability of information, even when it appears in questionable sources. And sometimes, when the Big Players in media conspire to deny information, it becomes necessary to make an end-run around them... which seems to me to represent the new media of independent podcasts and Substack publications like this one.
The Daily Prophet survived its lapse into censorious propaganda, but its reputation was tarnished, likely for decades.
Perhaps the legacy media will pull their heads out of their butts and start rebuilding their reputations. Or perhaps they'll die. The latter will be messy, and awful. I sometimes think that we're already seeing their "death throes."
Wonderful breakdown! Thank you for commenting this, it's one of the most unnervingly prescient plot lines in Harry Potter.
These are the kind of stories that make the real-world events frustrating because we've seen them play out fully in both history and fiction, yet the pattern reemerges.
Agreed that we're seeing the legacy media's death throes.
Always a privilege to read smart, observant persons' epiphanies about how the people on their own side are just as willfully obtuse and ethically weak as the people on the other side!
"They're ALL idiots, by God/FFS!!"
Objectivity is a far better tool for finding the truth than tribalism 👌
Thank you for reading!!
I loved this essay!! (I’m actually in the middle of writing my own Harry Potter/JKR essay for my substack). I’m a longtime HP nerd so I’m wildly biased, but it’s incredible how prescient, wise and deeply complex this series, and it’s creator, has turned out to be. I always thought JKR was amazing, but now I think she’s basically Dumbledore irl. She taps into something so true, ancient, and universal with her story that it has transcended literature to become modern day fairytale/mythology.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in particular was always my favorite book- the scene of Harry standing up in class and stating the truth about Cedric’s death still gives me chills. That scene helped me to recognize when I was in that sort of situation myself and to have the courage and conviction to speak up for myself and others (I also definitely had Harry’s temper as a teen so I can extra relate 😬😇).
On my annual rereading of the series this year, I noticed in that classroom scene that Harry’s voice is described as shaking. I don’t remember his voice ever being described as shaking from fear or rage in any of his encounters with Voldemort.
But yeah- I still sometimes daydream about getting a “I must not tell lies” tattoo. I’ll have to get a t shirt.
Thank you for reading and sharing your Harry Potter love! I totally agree with your takes.
After revisiting the series, I was extra disturbed at how Rowling has been treated recently, by both the media and activists. It's one thing to disagree with a person, but the way she's been relentlessly maligned speaks to whether our culture can even identify good from bad anymore. She truly created a cultural treasure.
Love that you also value the parts of Harry's story that deal with standing alone for something important. I was impressed at how real those challenges feel, both in the story and for me personally. It's another testament to Rowling's talent.
Haha the "I must not tell lies" plot line goes craaazy. So good!
“It's one thing to disagree with a person, but the way she's been relentlessly maligned speaks to whether our culture can even identify good from bad anymore.”
Well said!
"... their darkness is a choice."
A Little chip off the nose with that one.
Agreed, but I’m not sure we would agree on the “solution”. I think everything that you pointed out can actually be remedied by a mass return to religion in the western world. I already know what your thinking, this would be like moving backwards, no quite, I would contend that if we as a society (not saying that it should be forced or that individuals can and should be atheist etc.) moved towards more religion in our lives and not less many of these issues would fall by the wayside. We as humans evolved to “need” religion, so either we can be a part of the few “eternal” religions with thousands or tens of thousands of years of history behind them, or we are “forced” to buy into a postmodern version of religion. (BLM, LGBTQAI+, techno-something)
I agree there' s a problem of belief, but I actually think religion is just another vehicle for meaningful stories that instruct us on how best to live; they were just better at getting people to follow them because they're usually enforced by intense social pressure or fear of punishment for non-belief and non-adherence.
The problems of conformity and motivated reason clouding our judgment existed during religious times too. A lot of people were put to death or severely punished for presenting new information that people were motivated to disbelieve because it went against current religious thought. We still see so much brutality and forced conformity in more religious parts of the world, like the middle east. I'd honestly rather deal with BLM and all that madness than religious fundamentalism, particularly as a woman. I don't find that any of these ancient religion provide enough room for the individual to determine their own destiny as a secular society does.
We do need something to believe in and something that bonds us to each other collectively, but even if I agreed that religion was the solution: I don't think conversion to faith will be successful enough. But I do think some type of non-religious belief system can be forged. Probably will require use of psychedelics to facilitate quasi-religious experiences that can then be contextualized in a secular, meaningful belief system that provides values like religions do, but without requiring faith in disproven or difficult to believe claims.
Here’s how I see it: the incumbent major faiths are too big to fail. What needs to happen is a return to the more natural forms of these religions which I don’t think we’re mainly predicting on intense social pressure but had a much more universal-positive outlook before becoming increasingly tribal and violent. If I thought it was in any way possible to create a robust secular religion, I would attempt to.