Rehabilitation Part 9.1: Learning from History
The day had finally come. His happiness advisor put up a successful standard Occlumency barrier a few minutes ago, after a month and a half of lessons.
He learned a number of interesting and private things about her during that time, both from Legilimising her and from her Astral Plane memories, but now it was her turn to learn something private about him.
He did not like that he was about to do this. Even if it's an innocent memory, he hated the whole idea of 'sharing his trauma'.
But his advisor's plan seemed to be working so far. He had learned a number of useful facts about behaviour and mental states. He had learned a number of useful patterns of social interaction and relationship.
For instance, he can now recognize and understand the purpose behind the mind's natural tendency to model other intelligent beings. Past-Luna called them 'inner versions/voices' of the ponies you know, and she proved time and time again that they primarily exist to aid ponies, especially young ponies, to avoid running afoul of dangerous authority figures. Prompt a potential response to the 'inner voice' and see how it reacts within the confines of your own mind – that is how ponies (and most definitely humans as well) instinctually manage to avoid or mitigate punishment from authority.
She said there were other purposes for 'inner-voices', but he found fear to be the most compelling reason. His own mind had done similar things with Mrs. Cole and his tormentors in childhood, and a few of his Hogwarts professors as well.
If not for his employer's many memories and examples, and if not for her careful qualifications, he would have never believed it. He would have discarded the whole "inner voices" argument as cliché tripe, as vapid nonsense.
She had sat him through memory after memory, many of which made him fall asleep. They could be so boring and predictable, so trite and meaningless, that he would feel like leaving. But then, halfway through, he would encounter information he could find no-where else, not even in Mr. Potter's collection of muggle science and psychology books. He often had to push through his boredom to reach the parts that his employer ensured him were good, and nine times out of ten it did prove to be worth the wait. Following her advice did work to his own advantage, even if it hadn't at first seemed like it would turn out that way.
And so, despite his discomfort, despite his desire to avoid showing her any significant memories, despite how he felt and thought that this would end badly, he would follow her advice on this as well. He would show her one of his past 'traumas', and if she was right about where this would lead, he would be one step closer to the Patronus afterwards.
He would obviously avoid anything Voldemort, but there was only one Voldemort memory related to the set he was going to show her, and it should be easy to avoid, having occurred months after everything else.
Part of his original plan would probably fail. Having the language barrier act as a distancing mechanism wouldn't work with the Gift of Comprehension in play. But that new information hadn't been enough to change his plan.
"Are you ready?" asked Luna.
He said nothing right away. Instead, he retrieved a memory from his blank shelf, willed the scroll to grow to a much larger size, and had it levitate in front of the two of them. "Are you familiar with wrestling?" he asked.
"I am not personally familiar with it, but I know what it is. Wrestling is the form of play that even the simplest of mammals will do while young. Especially carnivores who need hunting and pouncing practice."
"That will suffice," he nodded. "What I'm about to show you is… let's call it a modified form of wrestling. Humans expanded on the concept. We have basic wrestling, of course, but we also have boxing, where humans punch each other- that is, they strike each other with closed fists- actually, it would be easiest just to show you." He called forth a different memory, one of a muggle fistfight.
His employer seemed to understand, if her palpable distaste was anything to go by. "That is boxing?" she asked with a frown.
"No," he answered, "but boxing is the sport that formalizes this kind of fighting. Many different parts of the muggle world focus on different styles." He called forth images of British fencing, American 'wrestling', Wizard dueling, and Asian martial arts. "The rules might be different, but the premise is the same – prove your combat prowess is better than your opponent's."
"I see," said his employer after a brief pause of examination. "Does your trauma involve a formalized fight?" she asked in a skeptical voice. Rightfully skeptical, since most physical 'traumas' are beatings, not formal fights.
"Not quite," he replied. "What you would call the 'trauma' I suffered… well, let's just say formal fights are part of the wider circumstance. At one point in my life, I wanted to become the world's best fighting wizard. My magical abilities were more than strong enough, but not my muscles or reflexes, so I set out to master a muggle combat style used by all the best duelists." All but one of the images disappeared, leaving only the martial arts image behind. "The memories I intend to show you stem from that circumstance."
His employer nodded, then watched in complete silence as he showed his memory of being beaten down, spat upon, and insulted.
On her request, he showed the incidents that led up to that moment – his lashing out at another student after being humiliated, and the master's explanation on why and how he would learn to lose. She did not speak during those memories either.
She did not speak when she was shown other things – memories of what he went through in order to get accepted into the dojo, which involved demonstration of both physical and mental maturity (as well as a bit of compulsion magic to ensure he actually got accepted, though he didn't show her that part).
Reaching the level of 5th Dan, which he had been before entering the dojo, required more than just skill at the style. He had to demonstrate, at each promotion to the next level, that his personal philosophy, demeanour, and even language skills would bring honor to himself, his current and former masters, and the martial art itself.
When asked what that meant, he showed how he'd written an essay about his motivation for learning the art, then gave a speech with similar undertones during his application interview for the dojo in the memory. (Again, he did not show her the part where he used a compulsion charm on the master.)
Finally, he showed her the second-to-last meeting he had with the master of the dojo. (He did not show her his actual final meeting.) The master asked him if he understood why the beat-down had been necessary, and he honestly replied it was the most important lesson he had ever learned.
"Is that all your relevant memories about the affair?" she asked at last.
"All but one," he said honestly. "I don’t intend to show the last."
"Does it happen before, after, or sometime in the middle of what you've already shown me?"
"Well after."
"Did it involve the master or a student hurting you?"
"No," he said, ignoring his impulse to grin.
She nodded. "Then you may keep it to yourself if you wish. I believe I have seen enough."
"Enough to do what?" he asked, half expecting her to attempt a 'Night Court session' with him.
"Enough to craft a dream," she said. "I will show you… tomorrow is too soon. Give me three days. I will get back to you then. May I have a copy of what you've shown me so I do not have to reference them recursively?"
"Will such copies allow you to access my other memories?" Riddle asked immediately.
"No," said his advisor. "You have complete control over what the scrolls will and won't contain."
"Astral Plane," he said out loud, "do as she requested, but show me first."
Alicorns don't need to say that sort of thing out loud, but he wanted to make it clear to his advisor that, no matter how often she insisted that she didn't lie, he would verify dubious claims himself whenever he could.
As far as he could tell, the scrolls that had manifested before him could not access any memories aside from the ones he'd shown her. The interview with the dojo's master did not contain his compulsion charm, no matter how much he tinkered, trying to draw that brief part out.
"Here," he said, relinquishing the harmless memories.
She held them in her magic for a moment, and then they disappeared. "Thank you."
"They are in your Astral Plane now?"
She nodded.
"What will you do with them?"
"I will use them in the art of my true special talent," she said, then vanished with memory scroll in tow.
During the next three days, Riddle reflected. The 'payoff', whatever it might be, had yet to come. It was too early to form a conclusive opinion about her plan. But it was not too early to form a preliminary opinion.
The actual act of 'sharing' hadn't been nearly as bad as his mind had been dreading. When he looked for something to compare his own fear to, he realised his own fear was probably similar to the fear his students had felt when taking their Ministry-mandated Defense exam – the one that he'd utterly failed to prepare them for in any way, shape, or form, given that the trivia it tested was utterly useless to real self-defense.
He faced this different kind of fear like his students had, he overcame it, and… not much had happened since then. It was a strangely mundane result to overcoming such a significant emotion. Well, 'significant' is strong word for it. His nervousness was never very powerful in the first place, but it was the only fear he'd felt at all recently. The existential fear from the 'End of the World!' prophecy about Mr. Potter had abated years ago. In the absence of any truly important emotion, this fear felt significant even if it was minor.
His employer still hasn't shown him whatever she's using his memories to do, but he can tentatively say it was worth it.
Now that he has re-visited the memories, he better understands why the master forced that lesson upon him. Without that compulsion charm, his past self would have been rejected as a potential student – not for anything having to do with his skill, but for his ego and pride. He had used magic to compel the master to overlook it and accept him anyway.
Later, his temper had come as a surprise, maybe even a shock, to the master, who had been forced by magic to ignore the minor manifestations. But the charm only influences subtle things. It didn't and shouldn't have prevented the wise old man from seeing his temper for what it was. In retrospect, it's not surprising the old man got angry and ordered the students to do as they did.
The master's calm demeanor had actually fooled his past self. He can see it now when re-watching the memories. The master had been furious. And Riddle was now seeing the hypocrisy as well. Just who, exactly, couldn't control their anger in that situation? Then again, if the lesson was only about lost tempers and lashing out like an animal, his master did have more control in that respect.
It was almost fitting. In the end, he had learned well from his master's display. Riddle, like his master, had learned to hide his anger, to turn it from hot rage into cold, simmering fury. He tamed his impulses, tempered his desire to lash out immediately, just as his master did. A true, storybook ending, and he hadn't seen it before.
When he realized his mind was beginning to think like Dumbledore's, he switched focus.
The memory-viewing session also provided the minor benefit of learning that the pony Gift of Comprehension did NOT cause him to hear Mandarin as English; he heard it as Mandarin, despite being in pony form, probably because he could comprehend it easily enough without that crutch.
With all the benefit that's come from it so far, he might even be open to showing his employer more memories. If nothing else, it would prove to himself that he really has overcome his nervousness.
He decided it will depend on what she has in store for him.
He looked at the portrait-framed memory that was floating within his own Astral Plane. "Is that your memory, or mine?"
Within the portrait frame was clearly the image of his martial arts master, but if it was that copy of memory that he'd given her, it should have still been a scroll.
"This is what I have been working on," she said. "I have used my special talent over dreams to create a fantasy. This, I think, would have been best for you, if it happened. This is how it should have gone."
"You removed the beating?" he asked in a flat and unimpressed voice.
"Stop making assumptions," she said, "and watch."
He rolled his eyes as the memory began. Somehow, his advisor had managed to keep it in the original language, despite not speaking it herself.
"Do you know why you are here, David?" said the memory of his master in Mandarin. Present-Riddle watched with a bit of disinterest. Nothing was different so far, except the fact that this conversation was being had in private, not in front of the other students.
"I know, master," said his past self, who had been disguised as David Monroe at the time. "I am being expelled."
"You are not," said the master.
"I am not?" he replied in surprise.
"No. That is not the reason you are here. You are here, in this dojo, to learn from me. And so you will."
Present-Riddle's attention drifted a bit as the memory played out without change, as the master correctly described the problem of his temper. He was beginning to wonder if anything had changed at all, until…
"If you were in my place," said the master, though he had not actually said that, "what would you do to a student such as yourself?"
"I would expel him," past-'David' said without hesitation. Riddle almost chuckled out loud. He would have answered the question that way, then and now.
"That is not what I am asking," said his master. "How would you teach a young man to control his temper and pride? How would you punish him for losing it? Or would you even punish him at all?"
"Are you asking me to devise my own punishment?" asked past-'David' insightfully.
It was at this point that Riddle grew a bit more absorbed in the 'memory'. He had expected to be annoyed by obvious errors, inconsistencies in the master's or his own speech patterns, but his suspension of disbelief was being satisfied by how 'in-character' his master and himself were being. His master was a rigid disciplinarian when necessary, but could also be a thoughtful philosopher and teacher. And he could win almost any fight in his own martial art, of course. That is what it means to be 9th Dan.
It also helped that the language was Mandarin, though he didn't know how that was possible, since Luna shouldn't be able to speak it.
"I am not asking you to devise your own punishment," replied his master in the false memory, "but why don't you do so. I'm curious what you think is appropriate, other than expulsion."
"I want to say that the shame and humiliation I have gone through for lashing out are enough…" past-'David' said. "Even that much has taught me not to do it again."
"Perhaps that is enough to prevent you from lashing out again in my dojo," the master nodded. "But it would not help your temper outside these walls."
"Maybe physical discipline?" past-'David' suggested after a pause. "No food for three days? Or laps around the compound?"
"You truly think that would work to fix your temper?" asked his master. "Would starvation or running laps prevent you from exploding in anger a year from now?"
"…No," past-'David' agreed. "It would not."
The master nodded. "You are a smart man, David. That is why I have not expelled you. When you came here, you said you wish to become the strongest version of yourself that you can be, physically and spiritually. That is why you want to learn from me. You said those words with honesty and conviction, and it is due to those words that I accepted you as a student. Now, we shall put your conviction to the test."
Riddle felt the nervousness of past-Riddle, which Luna somehow included into the memory. In the Astral Plane, you can experience what your past-self felt if you want. You can do the same with the memories of others, if they will it. And apparently, Luna could instill feelings even into false memories.
"You will teach me to control my temper?" asked 'David'.
"That is up to you," said the master. "I wish to teach you to control your temper. But I will not force you. I will offer you the opportunity to learn. I will describe the lesson I have imagined for you. If you do not like it, you may reject it, and I will not expel you. Your punishment will be laps around the compound, as you suggested, and that will be the end of it unless it happens again."
"Why give me the choice?"
"I want to see if you meant what you said. I want to personally see the strength of your conviction. Do you truly wish to be as strong as you can be? Your choice, and if you accept it, how you react to the lesson, will show me the answer to this question, and I wish to see that answer with my own eyes. I wish to see if you are truly willing to do all that it takes to reach your goal."
The false version of his past-self felt apprehension, but also respect and… appreciation? Inspiration? Admiration? Something like that. It was the same feeling he'd had when he first met the master. It was the same feeling he'd had when he first met Dumbledore. It was the feeling that slowly diminished over time as he learned more about them, as he interacted more with them, then disappeared entirely when they…
"What is the lesson you have imagined?" asked his past self.
The master went on to describe, in abstract, what he had simply ordered to happen in the real version of events.
"That is what I think will teach you to control your temper, even in the face of great humiliation and failure, which seem to be your weak points. As I said, I will not force you. I have not told the other students of this plan. If you say yes, only then shall I tell them. For your sake, once we start, we shall not stop, no matter how much you beg. I will only bring it to an end when I think the lesson has truly sunk in. I will try not to let it last a moment longer than it needs to, but I shall also not stop it before you have learned the lesson. Do not forget that rejecting the lesson is also an option. Now, do you truly wish to grow strong?"
He blinked when the memory paused. He turned to Luna in some annoyance. He'd been watching that.
"Do you think," said Luna, meeting his gaze, "that if he had presented you with the choice, as I had him do, rather than simply forcing the lesson upon you, that the you of that time would have accepted it of your own volition?"
Riddle blinked again, considering her question. "…Yes, I think I would have. My past self knew he was right about my temper. If he gave me an option of punishment, using that argument… I can see myself choosing the harshest one."
Luna smiled, and the memory continued.
"Yes," said the voice of past-'David'. It trembled slightly, but it did not lack for conviction. "I wish to become stronger."
"Know that you will not feel that way as you are becoming stronger," warned the master. "Do you also wish for me to do what I must as I teach you this strength?"
"Yes," said past-'David'. "Please do what you must, master. I will endure it."
The insults and feelings of phlegm and fists were as difficult to tolerate as always, even in memory, for the Astral Plane conveyed them as if he was currently experiencing them, and Luna had not held back in any way. Since it was technically her memory, he could not choose to shut off the feelings like he could when it was his own.
But he had learned his lesson. He faced the memory of insults and pain head-on. He endured his loss, partially thanks to his knowledge of what had happened to the 'winners' in the end.
"Stop," ordered his master, as he had actually done in the past.
Then, rather than dismiss all the students for the day, including 'David', there came another modification to the memory.
"Stand," ordered the master.
'David' stood.
"Stand back," he ordered.
'David' stood back.
"Look upon him, students," said the master. "What you are seeing is a man of conviction. I gave him the option to reject this lesson. He did not. I gave him the option to run laps. He chose this instead. He said that he wished to become stronger, and this day he has proven his resolve. Today, he has redeemed his shameful actions, and in doing so, he has brought true honor to this dojo. I was hesitant to accept you when you came here, David. But I can now say with pride and confidence that you are one of the most worthy students I have ever taught. Your skill in the art is only 5th dan, but your philosophy is higher. When you have grown in skill, I will not hesitate to promote you, so long as you maintain the honor you have demonstrated this day."
Then, in defiance of convention, tradition, and custom, the master bowed to the student. If Luna had done all this without seeing Mr. Silver's experience of his first Friday in Defense Class, then it was interesting that she had managed to think of something so similar.
The other students, in seeing that the master had bowed, also bowed to David. Some even apologized, especially the ones who had only given him physical punishment instead of insults, saying they only did it because they had been ordered.
The master then called a few students, the ones who had clearly enjoyed his torment, and said for them to meet with him in private about the dishonor they have revealed, which produced a sense of satisfaction in both the watching Riddle of today and the watching 'David' of the past.
Then the memory paused. Or ended, Riddle supposed.
"Your master was a good man," said Luna.
He turned to face her, frowning slightly.
"He was," Luna said. "He regretted the lesson he forced upon you. That is why, in the end, he asked you if you understood why it was necessary. If he did not regret doing it, at least in part, he would not have asked you that question. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is what he wishes he could have done for you. He wishes he could have known you well enough to realize you could have chosen this for yourself. He wishes his anger had not clouded his vision from seeing this possibility. He wishes he had not gone to the extremes that resulted in your resentment."
"Yes," Riddle agreed, thinking to himself that the man probably wouldn't have been murdered if he'd done Luna's iteration of events. "He probably would have wished all that."
The inside joke failed to produce the usual amusement within him. Instead, he only felt hollow and empty. Well, more than usual. And he was also feeling… negative. Not cynical, but self-critical, in a very familiar way.
The false memory flattened into a two-dimensional portrait frame, then shrunk to a quarter the size of a piece of parchment, then floated to his memory storage. Rather than disappear into an empty space, it was placed on top of the shelf, looking like a picture that ordinary people put in regularly-seen places for sentimental reasons.
"I cannot do this for every trauma of yours," said Luna. "Or even most. I suspect that none, or almost none of the other authority figures in your life have been good at heart, like he was. And it's ordinarily not wise to get lost in the fantasies of what could have been. But it's also important to dream, and I thought that if you cannot dream for yourself, then I could do it for you."
Riddle said nothing. His attention was on that negative feeling, which neither lessened nor worsened at her words. What did affect the feeling was remembering privately, not on a visible scroll, an image of an old man with his tongue ripped out, watching his students being tormented into insanity. That image had always been a source of satisfaction and triumph. Now it was evoking something else entirely.
He'd felt it many times while gazing at the stars and thinking about the first time he died. He was, without a doubt, feeling regret at his past mistakes. It was strange, since he had never suspected it was a mistake before now.
He had simply been enacting Rule Twelve by murdering the master, and he was implementing the most important lesson he'd ever learned in the process. What could be wiser than that? Should he have done nothing at all? Would that have left him with no regret?
No. His mind certainly didn't like that as an option. Like Luna, his mind had an automatic evaluation metric. Not to do with honesty, but with rationality. If an idea was not sensible, his mind would instantly reject it. If an idea was somewhat sensible, his mind would still reject it, but his mind would also 'feel' as if he was on the right track, or thinking about the right things. Once he thought of an idea good enough to implement, his mind would accept it, all stress leaving at the moment of eureka.
He had many, many thoughts about what he should have done to prevent his first death, at many steps along the way, and not all of them were good. 'Don't heed prophecy', 'Learn how to control wild magic better', and 'Don't be confident in your rituals' were all bad. When presenting them to his mind, his mind had clearly been saying "No". It took a long time, with nothing better to do, to even recognize that his mind was telling him "No", and it took almost as long to deliberately interpret the "No" as "Keep thinking".
After he finally did reject those ideas, he regained the ability to keep thinking about problem. The better ideas of 'Don't be clever with prophecy', 'Throw away wand and become animagus to survive out-of-control magic', and Mr. Potter's later suggestion of 'test your horcrux system before you need it' had each been given a very firm and instantaneous "YES!" by his mind.
At the moment, his mind was clearly rejecting his final visit to the dojo. The feeling of 'that had been a mistake' was clearly present, and he knew it would be with him for a while longer.
The standard remedy of imagining smarter alternatives wasn't exactly instantaneous. As he had once remarked about Luna's honesty sense, his 'gut feeling' was an evaluation metric, not a search function. It judged an existing idea, it didn't pluck them out of thin air. In order to find the idea in the first place, he needed imagination, creativity, cleverness, and conscious thought.
It had taken months of star-gazing, not mere minutes, to see the smarter alternatives to many of his past mistakes. He wondered how long this one would take.
"Same time next week?" asked Luna, reminding him that she was still there.
"Very well."
Future memory sessions did not go like the dojo. They were more along the lines of what he'd been expecting.
He would show her a past 'trauma' and she would clinically analyze it like she did with the petitioners, offering him a perspective he had never considered, but still sounding completely accurate.
He mostly showed her memories of Mrs. Cole and the orphans who bullied him. (The orphans he later tortured and killed after he graduated Hogwarts.)
She pointed out how being around a constant liar, manipulator, and authoritarian like Mrs. Cole had naturally produced the behaviour within himself. She pointed out how suffering at the hands of the petty and vengeful bullies produced his own pettiness.
He couldn't deny that he was those things now, but he could point out that he wasn't authoritarian or nasty as a child.
Luna said that he had learned to be the passively aggressive victim when others were in control of his life, but their negative behaviours finally manifested in himself once he was the powerful one.
(She didn't even know how true that statement was. She still didn't know about Voldemort.)
According to her, he had quite naturally absorbed and reproduced the behaviour modeled for him as a child, just as all her petitioners had done. And since much of his peers' behaviours had been negative, it's no surprise that he is so negative today. Furthermore, since his primary influence until age eleven was a heartless banshee behind closed doors, one who always pretended to be nice and perfect for outsiders (outsiders like Dumbledore), it’s no surprise that he concluded all displays of positive emotion are lies.
His environment was evil growing up, so 'evil' is what he ended up believing about the rest of the world on a base, instinctual level. He saw that nobody else truly cared about him, so it made empirical and internal sense that (1) he should not care for others, and (2) nobody actually cared. If they did, his experiences would have been different.
Her insights, as usual, sounded accurate, and she gave him the courtesy of not delivering them in a critical or condescending tone. He disliked where the analysis went after that, but he found that he couldn't logically refute it.
Not all displays of positive emotion are false, she went on to say. Not all kind smiles are lies. He now has access to the Changeling sense. He can feel the truth of it, can he not?
For ponies, he can indeed.
She reassured him that if he uses it in the human world, when he gets back, he will feel genuine love and happiness and caring in others. Not as much as he feels in modern Equestria, perhaps. But his instinctual belief about human nature, she reassured him, was fundamentally flawed. It was based on his own negative and narrow experiences. That is how all false beliefs develop.
His experience, he said, is that his beliefs have not been false.
They are not completely false, she conceded. His cynicism is sometimes justified. Humans and ponies are sometimes heartless. They are sometimes empty. They are sometimes evil. It might even be the case that they are usually evil, especially to strangers. But they are also sometimes not.
In order to cast the Patronus charm, she said, he shall have to come to terms with that. And in fact, anyone he's ever seen who can cast the Patronus are people who have cared. Not just as pretense and public politeness. They are the counter-evidence to his worldview. If he wishes to cast it himself, he must manifest that counter-evidence in his own body and soul. Thus, he will have to change his worldview.
In short, cynicism is the enemy of happiness, and he shall have to drop it.
He was beginning to understand the magnitude of the task he'd undertaken. No, casting the Patronus Charm would not be easy. He was beginning to truly understand Mr. Potter's prediction of 50 years.
"So what should I do fix it?" he asked when her speech seemed to be over.
"Ah," his employer raised a hoof. "You are making the same mistake you witnessed in my petitioners. Can you see it?"
"…No," he said with a frown.
"You are skipping past the emotional pain of understanding your past trauma by jumping straight into action. Remember how often my petitioners said things like, 'Okay, but what do I do now?'? And remember how I would always point out what their minds were doing? Skipping ahead, past the pain? Your mind is doing the same."
"Interesting," he said. "I don't think it's quite accurate to say my mind is trying to avoid 'emotional pain'… still, you might be close to the truth. It's certainly trying to avoid annoyance. It's strange how you can say to yourself that you will not imitate a mistake that you have witnessed so many others making, and yet you do it anyway."
"It's not your fault," Luna said gently. "It merely indicates how deep the instinct of avoidance runs."
"Indeed," said Riddle. "I can see how those who attempted to 'understand their past traumas' did not live long enough to pass their genes to the next generation. If anything, the evolutionary impulse would be to avoid anything of the sort. It always seems to entail criticism of abusive authority figures who would do anything, even killing or ousting children from the tribe, to hold on to power."
"That is my own suspicion as well," Luna nodded. "Now that I know about evolution, at any rate. I didn't back then."
"So…" he said slowly. "Rather than ask what I should do… I should ask…"
"You should ask how you feel about my words," said Luna. "Consult your true emotions. You will only come to terms with them by paying close attention for many long hours. It will take time for your mind to finally relax into peace. When you are at peace with the truth, that is when you will be ready for the next step. It is much easier said than done, but it is the only way."
"There is no way to speed up the process?"
"There is, but you won't like it."
"What is it?"
"Develop true and close friendships."
He gave a vocal huff of dismissal. The long way it is, then.
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Third Sight?
I get the feeling Luna already knows about Voldemort, or, at least, knows Riddle has commission horrific acts in the pursuit of his power and immortality.
Maybe not to the full extent, but I believe she has an idea... and she is still helping reform him, without him fully realizing it.
this chapter screams about life and just how messed up people really are.
i love it.
the loss of cynicism is not worth it.
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I didn't realize it until I thought about this comment for a while, but I'd like to point out Harry's following line from HPMoR: "I think that's what he [the Defense Professor] is getting wrong. That he's cynical about everything else, but not about cynicism itself."
In short, when you question everything, when you're cynical about everything, never forget to be cynical about YOUR OWN cynicism. Because there's this strange tendency for cynics to be helpless, powerless, unhappy nihilists. Couldn't imagine why.
11334295
a cynical attitude to cynicism prevent you from being cynical?
if you are cynical about everything, then you are already cynical about cynicism. prove it.
11334456
Nope. You're not cynical about cynicism if you never doubt the outlook. That's the whole point of the quote. It's like atheists who treat atheism like a religion without even realizing it - their lord and savior is Sam Harris, their holy book is the God Delusion, and so on. The best atheists aren't like that at all, just like the best cynics know when to turn it off, but many atheists ARE like that, and many cynics never turn it off, even when the cynical outlook isn't the most accurate.
For instance, the comedy film titled "Uncomfortable Flukes" by Al Gore has many cynical climate predictions about the terrible things will happen on the planet Earth by the distant future of 2016. Pretty funny to go back and watch it now. The reason all those wrong doomsday climate predictions were made in the first place is that the predictors didn't doubt their own cynicism. Or they were just trying to make a quick buck and get a dude elected for president, who knows. That's the cynical outlook on their motivations, but they COULD be genuine believers.
Anyway, cynicism is NOT always the correct position to take. You've got to know when to doubt your own negativity.
11335014
cynicism is part of "everything". They are not atheists, they are believers (what does it mean - treat them as a religion? they put candles in laboratories?).
this terribly pessimistic view is much better than the old terribly optimistic forecasts of the future.
I think you mean "formalizes that kind".
Yes, atheism is a religion. The claim that there is exactly zero gods, and the claim that there is exactly one god, are logically equivalent. The claim that there is at least one god is much weaker, and can be proven with a simple existence test; the claim that we cannot tell or do not yet know enough (agnostic) is weaker yet (and probably the only one we can actually support with accepted evidence).
11369393
Fixed.
As for the atheism thing, more or less agreed. I've called myself agnostic for years now. There's a famous quote that all humans have a god-shaped hole in their minds, and if it's not filled with god, it'll be filled with something else that you worship, that you look to for guidance and salvation. The sad truth is that many atheists are actually statetheists. They fill the god-shaped hole with the state, the government, the nation, etc. Which is WAY worse than filling it with god. (Extreme examples of statetheism: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, the current Kim dynasty in North Korea. Mild example: the recent circulating clip of the Sam Harris interview on Triggernometry.)
Yes, I'm agnostic, but that doesn't mean I'm uncertain or ambivalent. Thanks to Occum's Razor, my default assumption about the universe is atheism until proven otherwise. I'm willing to admit that it's an assumption, but I also don't expect it to ever be proven otherwise. I call myself an agnostic because I'm willing to play ball with the theists, and because I'd rather not associate with statetheists. Some atheists are great, but on average...
11369393
knowing the right statement and believing in the right statement is not the same thing. atheism is not a religion
11385739
Do I need to pull out formal logic?
For all X, it is not the case that X has the property "is a god". (Atheism)
For all X, for all Y,
if X has the property "is a god" and Y has the property "is a god",
then X and Y are the same (Zero-or-exactly one god).
These are fundamentally equivalent -- to examine either, you need to understand the property "is a god". You are making assertions about god that cannot be tested or even evaluated when different people make different claims about that property.
There exists some X such that X has the property "is a god" -- theism. (Combine with the zero-or-one case for monotheism).
This is a fundamentally different concept. Sure, on one hand, you still have the debate over "what is the property", but now, instead of only being able to work from the concepts of the property (it's impossible to examine all X), you can demonstrate an existence proof. You only need to find one example of that property, rather than checking every possible example of that property.
Heck, you only need to demonstrate that the property is satisfied.
We have math proofs where we demonstrate that something exists without showing how to find it.
Damn... Riddle will indeed be gone, when Voldemort past is nothing that brings joy from schadenfreude for him anymore.
Though I could be wrong.
Luna is awesome ♡