![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Grim Truth: 95/30/5
May. 30th, 2012 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_siriusGreetings, British Wizarding World.
A few days ago, we all learned of the sweeping rout of an organisation that had set itself the task of bringing down the Protectorate regime. In what appears to have been an operation comprising months of work and dozens of staff, MLE managed to ‘crush’ most of the group that called itself the DogStar Company.
I’ve written before about my mixed reaction to that group and its supposed origins. It’s not easy to find oneself becoming a rallying cry, especially when one’s stated objectives and motives seem to have been adopted and ignored in equal measure by the group using one as its touchstone. The DogStar may have expressed sentiments many of you in the Protectorate feel and think and wonder and wish, but they spent too much time indulging their darker impulses, pursuing their goals by any means and giving too little thought to the collateral consequences of their actions. Nonetheless, the men and women of the DogStar clearly believed in their cause and in their final moments, proved their dedication to their credo. As tragic as it is to have lost so many lives, it would be more tragic still to decry them as having sacrificed in vain, or in service to a fool’s notion.
Perhaps some of you reading this don’t think of it as a loss. Perhaps you do think of it as ridding the country of a dangerous menace, a disruption that needed to be put down. Perhaps you were happy when you learned that the group behind the Quidditch World Cup bombing had met its inevitable sticky end. That's understandable, I suppose, especially if you lost someone there or through any of the other deeds attributed to them. But if you look more closely at who those people were, it’s more sad than gratifying. Because they were, in the end, people: Mothers and husbands, sisters and sons. They were shopkeepers and teachers, office-workers and potioneers. They recognised that the Protectorate is an oppressive place and they took action to overthrow the despots who created the current state. Whether we agreed with their methods or not, they did sacrifice themselves in service to an idea of a better life for us all.
Yet that sacrifice may well lead one to wonder how the DogStar could have grown so large when its values were so radical and violent. Do the sentiments espoused by its members really pervade the entire realm? If all their members - muggles, muggleborn, witches and wizards alike - did not support those darker impulses, then how could they have joined DogStar? How could they have worked so hard for an organisation that believed it could be acceptable to set off bombs that would kill hundreds of innocents, on the chance that they might take some of their enemies with them? There are probably as many answers as there are fallen.
Of course, I can’t be sure but I think that in many cases, it may be because they thought there was no alternative. It could be that the strain of living under the yoke of oppression created by the Pretender and his Death Eaters drove many to choose DogStar’s plan to take desperate action over sitting back and doing nothing. Or it could be that people began to think that DogStar’s methods were necessary, that their violence answered the cruelty of the Protectorate in a way that non-violence could not do, that they were fighting fire with fire, as it were. That it was the only way to stop the brutality of the Ministry.
Unfortunately, as we’ve seen over and over, losing one’s scruples in the face of an enemy does little but lower oneself to the same level. Using Dark methods to fight Dark wizards only turns one into the thing one is fighting. Instead of upholding justice, the DogStar became as brutal as the Ministry, as indiscriminate and as unjust.
I can’t know why they did it, but I fear that many who found themselves in DogStar may not have realised before joining how ruthless a group it was. In that respect, they may have been similar to several who initially joined Voldemort without seeing the pit into which they were about to fall. I wonder how many who still serve him have now seen that the pit has no bottom, that there are no depths to which he will not sink, and who now deeply regret their choices but believe they are unable to escape.
I wonder how many in the DogStar felt a similar way, and how many justified their actions because they were in the name of the greater good.
The difference between good and evil is not just in motivation. It’s in the lines one draws and will not cross. It’s in the fundamental choice to not kill, no matter the provocation, to not bring harm to innocents even if doing so would stop a thousand murderers, to refuse to cast spells that violate the basic rights of the victim, such as subverting their free will. It is in looking long and hard at what we are and are not willing to do to improve the lives of those we wish to help. It is in continuing to seek out others with the same moral code and freely advocating to take only those actions which uphold that code. It is in relying on one another, constantly and continually, to help each other resist the temptation to resort to magic that will cause irreparable harm.
If there is a Grim Truth from the events of the last several months, it is that the surviving members of the DogStar - and anyone else who is mourning their colleagues - still have a choice. The remnants of that organisation can still remember and honour the lost by reforming to fulfill a better purpose. I urge them to re-examine their goals and the path to achieving them. I hope that they can find alternatives to wasting the human potential their former comradeship had amassed.
A few days ago, we all learned of the sweeping rout of an organisation that had set itself the task of bringing down the Protectorate regime. In what appears to have been an operation comprising months of work and dozens of staff, MLE managed to ‘crush’ most of the group that called itself the DogStar Company.
I’ve written before about my mixed reaction to that group and its supposed origins. It’s not easy to find oneself becoming a rallying cry, especially when one’s stated objectives and motives seem to have been adopted and ignored in equal measure by the group using one as its touchstone. The DogStar may have expressed sentiments many of you in the Protectorate feel and think and wonder and wish, but they spent too much time indulging their darker impulses, pursuing their goals by any means and giving too little thought to the collateral consequences of their actions. Nonetheless, the men and women of the DogStar clearly believed in their cause and in their final moments, proved their dedication to their credo. As tragic as it is to have lost so many lives, it would be more tragic still to decry them as having sacrificed in vain, or in service to a fool’s notion.
Perhaps some of you reading this don’t think of it as a loss. Perhaps you do think of it as ridding the country of a dangerous menace, a disruption that needed to be put down. Perhaps you were happy when you learned that the group behind the Quidditch World Cup bombing had met its inevitable sticky end. That's understandable, I suppose, especially if you lost someone there or through any of the other deeds attributed to them. But if you look more closely at who those people were, it’s more sad than gratifying. Because they were, in the end, people: Mothers and husbands, sisters and sons. They were shopkeepers and teachers, office-workers and potioneers. They recognised that the Protectorate is an oppressive place and they took action to overthrow the despots who created the current state. Whether we agreed with their methods or not, they did sacrifice themselves in service to an idea of a better life for us all.
Yet that sacrifice may well lead one to wonder how the DogStar could have grown so large when its values were so radical and violent. Do the sentiments espoused by its members really pervade the entire realm? If all their members - muggles, muggleborn, witches and wizards alike - did not support those darker impulses, then how could they have joined DogStar? How could they have worked so hard for an organisation that believed it could be acceptable to set off bombs that would kill hundreds of innocents, on the chance that they might take some of their enemies with them? There are probably as many answers as there are fallen.
Of course, I can’t be sure but I think that in many cases, it may be because they thought there was no alternative. It could be that the strain of living under the yoke of oppression created by the Pretender and his Death Eaters drove many to choose DogStar’s plan to take desperate action over sitting back and doing nothing. Or it could be that people began to think that DogStar’s methods were necessary, that their violence answered the cruelty of the Protectorate in a way that non-violence could not do, that they were fighting fire with fire, as it were. That it was the only way to stop the brutality of the Ministry.
Unfortunately, as we’ve seen over and over, losing one’s scruples in the face of an enemy does little but lower oneself to the same level. Using Dark methods to fight Dark wizards only turns one into the thing one is fighting. Instead of upholding justice, the DogStar became as brutal as the Ministry, as indiscriminate and as unjust.
I can’t know why they did it, but I fear that many who found themselves in DogStar may not have realised before joining how ruthless a group it was. In that respect, they may have been similar to several who initially joined Voldemort without seeing the pit into which they were about to fall. I wonder how many who still serve him have now seen that the pit has no bottom, that there are no depths to which he will not sink, and who now deeply regret their choices but believe they are unable to escape.
I wonder how many in the DogStar felt a similar way, and how many justified their actions because they were in the name of the greater good.
The difference between good and evil is not just in motivation. It’s in the lines one draws and will not cross. It’s in the fundamental choice to not kill, no matter the provocation, to not bring harm to innocents even if doing so would stop a thousand murderers, to refuse to cast spells that violate the basic rights of the victim, such as subverting their free will. It is in looking long and hard at what we are and are not willing to do to improve the lives of those we wish to help. It is in continuing to seek out others with the same moral code and freely advocating to take only those actions which uphold that code. It is in relying on one another, constantly and continually, to help each other resist the temptation to resort to magic that will cause irreparable harm.
If there is a Grim Truth from the events of the last several months, it is that the surviving members of the DogStar - and anyone else who is mourning their colleagues - still have a choice. The remnants of that organisation can still remember and honour the lost by reforming to fulfill a better purpose. I urge them to re-examine their goals and the path to achieving them. I hope that they can find alternatives to wasting the human potential their former comradeship had amassed.
