{"id":5356,"date":"2012-10-30T11:33:56","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T15:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=5356"},"modified":"2012-10-30T11:33:56","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T15:33:56","slug":"how-art-thou-fallen-severus-son-of-spinners-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/10\/how-art-thou-fallen-severus-son-of-spinners-end.html","title":{"rendered":"How art thou Fallen, Severus, son of Spinner’s End"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

As we\u2019re all battered by a storm, huddled up by our stockpiled supplies, our minds return to the most important questions like:\u00a0Does<\/em> Hermione love learning for it\u2019s own sake? \u00a0That became a point of contention in the conversation that followed my jeremiad against Hermione and Ron\u2019s relationship<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hermione is clearly a nerd type. \u00a0She\u2019s bookish, bossy, has messy hair, and the glasses are silent, I guess. \u00a0But Hermione is a lot more active and\u00a0ruthless<\/em> than we might expect her to be if she were just Harry\u2019s exposition pipe. \u00a0The means she chooses to identify and punish Marietta Edgecombe<\/a> for betraying Dumbledore\u2019s Army is cruel (acne spelling out the word \u2018SNEAK\u2019) and excessive (presumably she could have just turned Marietta\u2019s face green for a week or something like that, if the goal was to identify the leak). \u00a0The curse was strong enough that Marietta was still scarred and hiding her face the next year. \u00a0Hermione expressed no regrets.<\/p>\n

I had hoped that the later books might do more to explore the cost of Hermione\u2019s cleverness. \u00a0Especially because I suspected she might be dangerously similar to Severus Snape. \u00a0I was bitterly disappointed to find out that he fell because of a frustrated\u00a0romantic<\/em> love, when that story has been told so many times, and there are plenty of other loves that can lead us astray if we mistake them for the highest good. \u00a0I was hoping to have a cautionary tale about a less saccharine kind of temptation.<\/p>\n

One scholarly temptation I tend to need to watch out for is the love of data as a means to mastery<\/em>. \u00a0It\u2019s easy for me to slide from loving learning the way things work and seeing how all the pieces of physics\/a friendship\/a security system fit\u00a0together\u00a0and feeling and loving the rush of \u00a0power<\/em> that comes with knowing where all the levers are, even if I\u2019m not going to manipulate them yet.<\/p>\n

Wanting mastery doesn\u2019t have to be for the purpose of subjugation; a less obviously malign strain of this temptation is the desire to be of use, to be indispensable. \u00a0(I stand pretty well indited by Lewis\u2019s treatment of this tendency<\/a> in\u00a0The Great Divorce<\/a><\/em>). \u00a0The check here is whether Hermione would be delighted if Harry and Ron ever got around to reading\u00a0Hogwarts, A History<\/em> or if she\u2019d feel a little threatened, less secure in a friendship where the other two weren\u2019t so obviously dependent on her.<\/p>\n

When I read the article on psychopathy and TMS yesterday, I had a flash of envy for the hyperfocused, calloused Special Forces soldier. \u00a0I like<\/em> being someone my friends know to turn to in a crisis and the person that can fix your broken whatsit or help you script an email to someone you like. \u00a0People trust me to have the necessary distance to diagnose and repair the problem. \u00a0But I have to remind myself that if distance is a strength, it can\u2019t be my\u00a0only<\/em> strength.<\/p>\n

When we saw a lonely, teenaged Severus Snape through the memory Harry\u00a0glimpsed\u00a0 I thought he could be tempted by knowledge as mastery, but he might also have fallen through a too-abstracted\u00a0intelligence. \u00a0Think of the scientist who doesn\u2019t flinch at vivisection, driven on by curiosity. \u00a0This would be a kind of knowing that would necessarily have drawn Snape on into the Dark Arts and would set him apart from the more passionate evil of Bellatrix and others in the Death Eaters.<\/p>\n

Here, the error mode seems to be knowledge without enlightenment. \u00a0This Snape would be contemplating truth unaccompanied by the other two big transcendentals, beauty and goodness. \u00a0In Christian thought, these three transcendentals are\u00a0ontologically\u00a0one \u2014 you cannot experience any of them in isolation.<\/p>\n

Now, wouldn\u2019t this quasi-Faustian struggle have been more interesting than a boy who didn\u2019t get over a teenaged crush?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we\u2019re all battered by a storm, huddled up by our stockpiled supplies, our minds return to the most important questions like:\u00a0Does Hermione love learning for it\u2019s own sake? \u00a0That became a point of contention in the conversation that followed my jeremiad against Hermione and Ron\u2019s relationship. Hermione is clearly a nerd type. \u00a0She\u2019s bookish, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[201],"class_list":["post-5356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-morality-in-practice","tag-offering-weakness"],"yoast_head":"\nHow art thou Fallen, Severus, son of Spinner's End<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As we're all battered by a storm, huddled up by our stockpiled supplies, our minds return to the most important questions like:\u00a0Does Hermione love\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/10\/how-art-thou-fallen-severus-son-of-spinners-end.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How art thou Fallen, Severus, son of Spinner's End\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As we're all battered by a storm, huddled up by our stockpiled supplies, our minds return to the most important questions like:\u00a0Does Hermione love\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/10\/how-art-thou-fallen-severus-son-of-spinners-end.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Unequally Yoked\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-30T15:33:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/images.wikia.com\/harry-potter\/images\/f\/f7\/Snape_potions_dungeon_1.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Leah Libresco\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Leah Libresco\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/10\/how-art-thou-fallen-severus-son-of-spinners-end.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/10\/how-art-thou-fallen-severus-son-of-spinners-end.html\",\"name\":\"How art thou Fallen, Severus, son of Spinner's End\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-10-30T15:33:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-10-30T15:33:56+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/17ee17592b35b40040d5f5f7ea5ab464\"},\"description\":\"As we're all battered by a storm, huddled up by our stockpiled supplies, our minds return to the most important questions like:\u00a0Does Hermione love\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/10\/how-art-thou-fallen-severus-son-of-spinners-end.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/10\/how-art-thou-fallen-severus-son-of-spinners-end.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/10\/how-art-thou-fallen-severus-son-of-spinners-end.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"How art thou Fallen, Severus, son of Spinner’s End\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/\",\"name\":\"Unequally Yoked\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/17ee17592b35b40040d5f5f7ea5ab464\",\"name\":\"Leah Libresco\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/20e1e6a3a94c4e7928687804a41d888d?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/20e1e6a3a94c4e7928687804a41d888d?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"caption\":\"Leah Libresco\"},\"description\":\"Leah is the author of Arriving at Amen and Building the Benedict Option. 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