The Harry Potter books helped create my summer vacation at Wheatstone Academy this summer. Harry Potter is a wise series and reminds me of things philosophers and Scriptures teach, but does it magically and with chocolate frogs.
Friendship is the most important theme in the series: Ron, Hermione, and Harry are only the most prominent friends in the series. Teachers, bad guys, nearly everyone but Voldemort has friends and it is a key feature of Voldemort’s evil that he has no friends. His name is unspeakable by any peer and can only be intoned by slaves.
Friendship is between equals and not master to slave. Voldemort cannot be Voldemort and have friends.
Nor is it shocking that there are three friends. Everyone who reads, or watches television and movies, knows the Rule of Three: a good story will often have a head, a heart, and a doer in the partnership. For Plato, one of the first to write by the Rule of Three, the head led (at least ideally) while in Rowling it is doer or the hands, Harry Potter, who is the leader. Hermione, the intellect, follows him as does the emotional Ron. Whether it is Kirk, Spock, and McCoy or Luke, Leia, and Han, the Rule of Three works in literature.
It also works in life. Whenever I look to form a leadership team, I look for three or at most four to hold me accountable. These friends and co-workers must be different from me, but equals. If I am lucky enough to find such friends, there is little that we cannot do. Without them, I can do nothing. Why a “fourth”? Following Plato in Timaeus, there is sense in having a mediating person who can harmonize the workings of the three and when this person is missing, injustice can sometimes result.
All of this tells me the usefulness of friendship, but the minute I make friends of use to me, then I have become Voldemort and not Harry. As Aristotle points out in his Ethics and C.S. Lewis explains in his Four Loves, friends unite in a cause or interest different from any individual in the group. They unite to educate, read a book, or kill a basilisk. If it becomes all about the leader, the other people can have friends in united service to the leader, but the leader will be alone.
This is not wise for the follower or the leader. Jesus died with friends nearby, Socrates died with friends nearby, a tyrant dies alone with his camp followers scattering to secure themselves or loot.
Even while the cause is needed for friendship, the community that arises out of the friendship is often more valuable than the cause. When I make friends over fantasy football, the friendship is better than the game. In fact, the game may mostly be worth playing to give us something to do while becoming friends. A previous generation used card playing, poker and bridge, to achieve the same effect. Online gaming serves for my adult children.
Friendship with diverse people grows me up, shows me strengths not my own, and corrects my follies. I grow up when a friend is more mature in an area I have not even noticed and I strive to emulate him. I cannot do everything (many things!) well and my friends are delightfully competent. Finally, nobody can point out a problem as easily as a friend because a friend can wound without killing. He knows where and when to stop the dialectical prodding and let me be.
School and education in general should be a friendship making machine. If the workers are not friends, but followers, the school will not educate, but propagandize for the cause or leader. Hogwarts, except under Umbridge, was a place run by friends for friends. And so when I think of a vacation, I think of the friends that Phillip Johnson used to gather at Pajaro Dunes or the friends that come together to read great books at Wheatstone. The good news for you is that you can come to Wheatstone: a friendship factory!
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