Owl Post Secret Activity 1: The Secret of Magic

[brightflower]

Activity: The Secret of Magic
Points: Long debate: Participation 10pts, Additional comment: 2pts.
Deadline: April 22, 11:59 PM UTC
Details:

Let's jump right into the magical world's secrets with a debate on the biggest secret of all: the secret of magic itself.

What are your opinions on the International Statute of Secrecy? Is it a fair law? When is it okay to break the law and reveal the secret of magic to Muggles? And what would you do if a Muggle discovered your secret and tried to take advantage of it?

Initial comment of at least 150 words for 10 points, additional comments 2 points each. Let's get a conversation going!


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Comments

[caitieness.livejournal.com]

I certainly think its necessary because as the say goes, a person may be smart but people are stupid. If the whole of Muggles found out about magic, panic would ensue. Also, people hate things different then themselves and magic is definitely different. Muggles would fear wizards and, as it always goes, try to harm them or regulate them and I'm just envisioning magic internment camps or something. However, there should definitely be extenuating circumstances. Besides being able to perform magic in the face of legitimate danger (like Harry did when the Dementors attacked him and Dudley), there should be an exception for marriages! We know that sometimes wizards marry Muggles (Dean's parents and Cho Chang off the top of my head) and shouldn't these wizards be allowed to practice magic in view of their spouses? The law doesn't seem to extend to telling Muggles you are a wizard (see: all the muggleborn's parents) but only against doing magic. And that just doesn't seem fair to me. You may say, if you are going to marry a Muggle, this is a sacrifice you must make and I guess some people can make that sacrifice but I just don't think they should have to. Marriage law should cancel out the Statue of Secrecy. Because it's not illegal to practice magic in front of a Squib and isn't that kind of the same thing?

caitie / puff / 232 words

[mmailliw.livejournal.com]

I think the International Statute of Secrecy is simply a Band-Aid (to borrow a Muggle term) on the real issue that Muggle technology is developing so much faster than the Wizarding version that, coupled with the much larger Muggle population, the Muggle world could easily exterminate the Wizarding world if they so choose.

One of the fics I read recently, one in which Harry keeps on reliving his life regardless of how he does, featured the Muggles finally discovering the Wizarding world sometime around 2007. The point was that with the Internet, YouTube, and similar phenomena, Muggles could broadcast the knowledge of Wizards in a convincing way faster than Wizards could Obliviate them... with YouTube posts, for example, having millions of viewers each scattered through the world! The way that particular fic dealt with the issue was that Harry knew of this discovery... and the Muggles subjugating Wizards in a war with very few magical people surviving by 2020 or 2030... and that therefore Muggles, not Voldemort, were the real problem to worry about.

Basically, it worked well enough at its purpose for a couple of centuries - but I simply don't see it holding up under 21st century technology!

William//Slytherin [197]

[caitieness.livejournal.com]

I never even thought about technology but it would probably be hard to fend against the Internet, especially since wizards know so little about it. I guess if wizards dedicated time to combating the Internet, they would be able to. Maybe they could invent a spell that makes it so that magic can't be recorded? Like how vampires can't be seen in the mirror?

caitie/puff

[slumber.livejournal.com]

This is difficult to argue one way or another, in part because I think a lot of the topic covers what if situations and may delve into fear-mongering. On one hand, I can see where the concerns of magical folk lie-- they don't want Muggles to take advantage of the magic that they possess, and they most certainly don't wish to encourage a repeat of the witch hunts that happened in ages past. Magic is honestly just a volatile resource whose discovery could very easily be detrimental to all of wizarding society.

On the other hand, how ~fair~ is it to have certain magical dangers present and potentially bleeding into the Muggle world exist whilst Muggles are completely unaware of it? I suppose the way the Ministry of Magic has it set up now, with liaisons established for Muggle government, serves to address that issue, and I guess, for what it's worth, they seem to be doing a decent job of helping cover up magic while also ensuring Muggles remain safe.

So at the end of the day I think there is inherently no harm in upholding the International Statute of Secrecy, but I would seriously consider looking into alternatives should the secret ever come out. Doesn't hurt to be ready in case disaster strikes!

Evyclaw

[bergeronprocess.livejournal.com]

The International Statute of Secrecy is kind of a double-edged sword: it does help keep the magical community safe from the way Muggles can sometimes enter the crowd mentality and lose their sense of individual morals, rights and wrongs, etc. because of what the group is thinking. If the group is thinking that the person with the ~special powers~ really has an unfair advantage and, hm, maybe needs to be silenced somehow...that's very dangerous. But at the same time, what if Muggle and magical people could live in good harmony with magical people out in the open? Imagine how they could help each other! Could potions help cure the sicknesses that ail Muggles? Cancer and such? Never once was the word cancer mentioned in the entire Harry Potter canon, leading me to wonder if it even exists or if some sort of potion kills the bad cells before they start to affect people. Muggles would benefit from that knowledge and could help magical people navigate the confusing aspects of the Muggle world. But again, you have to be cognizant of what could happen if people give in to their darkest thoughts and worst intentions instead of working for a better world for everyone.

Emmapuff, 203 words

[bergeronprocess.livejournal.com]

Disaster has struck before--in Voldemort's reign of terror, with the "natural disasters" like the bridge and all of that, and that's when the liaison to the Muggle government needed to be used. The Muggle PM was good at basically keeping the secret of this...peculiar adviser type person, but what if a former PM, later in life, revealed everything? That breaks the statute, right? I guess someone just goes and Oblivates everyone.

The concern over what could happen when Muggles are suffused with fear is so real. SO REAL. Many smarter minds than mine have devoted studies to seeing just how inhuman people get when they are in a large group and not in their right mind. It ain't pretty and it could, like you said, be very bad for magical people.

Emmapuff

[bergeronprocess.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely--I'd like to believe in the goodness of people, but we both know for sure that people aren't always calm, cool and collected when faced with something different and something powerful. That's a great point about if you are betrothed to a Muggle. Marriage means no secrets, right? That means telling your spouse about something that is as much a part of you as your eyes or feet...and occasionally being able to do magic in front of them?

Emmapuff

[bergeronprocess.livejournal.com]

Good point! Recently I read that the more "democratized" nature of broadcasting has made it somewhat harder to craft long-standing recognizable jokes about certain topics--this was a Guardian article in relation to how anyone can make a joke about Margaret Thatcher dying, so the well-known comics who were once the arbiters of comedy are now just one part of a large landscape of humor. So the same could be said of revealing magic, huh?

Emmapuff

[bergeronprocess.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of creating a, say, reverse-Trace that applies to all magic users and makes them un-recordable. Maybe they'd even have to ask for help from friendly vampires (if there exist such a thing???) to ask them how the principle of not being viewable in a mirror works.

Emmapuff

[slumber.livejournal.com]

The overriding thought with Muggles benefiting from magic is that they'll think everything can be solved, and thus.. problems, but I think there is also some merit in understanding that magic by itself does not eradicate all problems. This isn't necessarily something Muggles can understand though, at least not right away. And I think to a certain extent what's giving the wizarding community pause now is just how huge a news like this could be-- what are the logistics of revealing magic exists, how do you pull off this revelation without inciting mass panic or riots?

Evyclaw

[slumber.livejournal.com]

I can't remember if this is fic or not but I think the Loch Ness monster supposedly involved a lot of Obliviators from the Department of Mysteries or something... I imagine they do a lot of Men in Black type clean-up duties, I guess, to maintain secrecy.

THIS. Like... just one person having the wrong idea about it could go so terribly wrong, you know? The risk just doesn't seem to be worth any benefit.

Evyclaw

[slumber.livejournal.com]

That's a very good point, but I think it speaks more to the wizarding world's short-sightedness than in whether or not they SHOULD be keeping themselves secret. It just proves that secrets are harder to keep, and if even Muggle-loving wizards can't figure out how to work a blasted telephone (or even what to call it-- his enthusiasm is sweet but if Muggles were a fandom then Arthur Weasley is an awful fan-- shouldn't he know as much about it as possible? He works in the government office dedicated to Misuse of Muggle objects!) then they are so shamefully behind.

Evyclaw

[bergeronprocess.livejournal.com]

I wonder how they become keyed into the knowledge that Muggles are Seeing Things. I know Arthur said something once about the regurgitating toilets, which will obviously trigger plumber (pumbles) attention, but when they falter...I wonder if they put up a Bat-signal or something and the Obliviators just come around. WHO YOU GONNA CALL? OBLIVIATORS!

I like to think that people are, at their roots, good and just and fair. MOST PEOPLE ARE. But what if the wrong person gets jealous of magic users?

Emma

[bergeronprocess.livejournal.com]

Exactly. As a culture, Muggles are rather...demanding. They want it all and they want it now. Could they learn that magic can do some things, but not others--like not bringing people back from the dead, but maybe helping cure injuries to people who are still living?

As for the revelation...I have no idea how it would be managed, but I'm inclined to go with good old-fashioned person-to-person oral storytelling. That method of relaying news has been reliable for millennia!

...I mean, that's not to say that the news media could be of no use, though.

Emmapuff

[caitieness.livejournal.com]

I imagine there are all kinds of exceptions to the Statute -- doesn't Dumbledore do magic in front of The Durselys? Doesn't Hagrid (even though he is supposedly not allowed to do magic in the first place)? It's supposed~ to help them understand their dependent is a wizard so I bet most muggles who have a magical child see magic at one time or another without repercussions. That leads me to believe if you're married to a wizard, the same rules apply. Perhaps, no excessive magic is allowed?

caitie / puff

[bergeronprocess.livejournal.com]

Either there are exceptions or we're reading a series with a lot of lawbreaking rebel types ;) Kids, don't break the law! But good point--you'd hope there would be a little leeway in reasonable scenarios. Surely cooler heads would prevail when crafting these laws.

Emmapuff

[passerine.livejournal.com]

(not reading any other comments before I post my first one)

I think the Statute is really important and definitely fair. People are not extremely willing to accept the idea of magic, it's always considered an evil force. Think of the Salem Witch Trails, for instance. While I think the Muggle world is more tolerant than it used to be, it's not hard to imagine a huge backlash if people knew that there were actual wizards and witches and other supposedly mythological and imaginary creatures roaming the world. Muggles have something to lose without the ability to protect themselves against magic, so I could imagine more and more witch hunts and a whole lot of chaos and insanity and death and uggghhh. I would love to think that this wouldn't happen, but there are so many countries that have such a complex about perceived threats that I can't really ignore the plausibility of full scale war against the wizarding world because who knows what they're capable of.

i think it's okay to break it in cases of marriage and other things like that. If a witch or wizard can't perform magic in front of their Muggle spouse... well, something just seems wrong about that to me. "Don't be who you naturally are when the person you devoted your life to is in your presence". Yeah, okay.

As for cases of muggles discovering and taking advantage of their knowledge of someone being magical, I think there should be a department in the ministry that deals with this. The wizard who's been found out would contact the Ministry and then they would send off a very specialized Ministry employee to use memory charms on that person (instead of the wizard doing it themselves, because not everyone is great at memory charms and you would only want to erase that one bit of information... anything more is just cruel imo).

Julia // Gryffindor

[brightflower]

I personally feel that the Statute in and of itself is fair, because of the ways in which Muggles would inevitably react if they were to find out about the magical world. It seems to me that most people have a tendency to be selfish and want to use things for their own personal gain. Tapping into the magical world would have dire consequences; Muggles would insist on having the ability to use magical people for their own purposes. It would be chaos. I can easily see trials against wizards on trumped-up charges, and if the wizards used magic to escape (like Apparating out of prison cells and the like), it would only enrage Muggles further. It would dissolve into warfare as Muggle and magic weapons are pitted against one another for one imagined slight or another. Really, the magical population feels safer under the statute, and I can't disagree with them on that.

However, the means of enforcing the statute make me uncomfortable. Obliviating seems like such a cruel punishment to a person. I hate to use the word "rape," but invading somebody's brain and wiping their memories away against their will, just because they happened to see something magical, seems really violating to me. Perhaps a better idea would be a binding spell of some sort, so that the Muggle cannot speak or communicate about what they have seen? That seems a little less harsh. Then again, it leaves them to realize what has happened and recognize their punishment for what it is, which is also not a very pleasant consequence. It just seems unfair to me because it's not like that person did anything wrong. The magical person did the wrong thing, by allowing their abilities to be seen. So why punish the innocent bystander?

But that leaves the question of what, then, to do when this sort of thing occurs. Incorporate Muggles into the magical society, and deal with the consequences of that as they arise? Who knows what could happen?

As for when it is okay to break the statute, I would like to say that people should be able to use magic if they need to save somebody's life, like in an emergency situation. Then, look, superheroes could be a real thing! People might then start begging that wizard/witch to use magic to do things for them, too, though. I don't know, it's such a complicated issue. I guess I'd just resign myself to keeping the status quo, because I'm not wise enough to come up with a more suitable answer.

Crystalpuff

[slumber.livejournal.com]

This is true. Individually everyone may be able to think rationally but there is just no accounting for mob mentality. Law-abiding citizens can run amok just with getting swept away by crowds, and I shudder to think what their reactions could be if magic is revealed to be real.

Evyclaw

[slumber.livejournal.com]

HEY REMEMBER THE VANCOUVER RIOTS? I'm pretty sure when those fans went to watch a game, tipping cars over and breaking into stores was pretty much the last thing on their mind. They were just mad after the loss, too, and I can see that, but somehow, something sparked them to do more-- you just can't account for "but this is what rational people would do" because people CAN and HAVE behaved irrationally.

Evyclaw

[bergeronprocess.livejournal.com]

OH GOD, ABSOLUTELY. I have a friend who lives there and she found herself downtown--doing karaoke or something, not really watching the game--that night, which was very frightening. She is okay, but I think she got a little traumatized by the experience. This is part of the reason why I think people can do well alone or in small groups, but crowd mentality takes over in larger groups...and it's not good.

Emmapuff

[slumber.livejournal.com]

This is a very good point. I'm thinking there are tons of different exceptions because, hi, how can Muggleborn witches and wizards be told? Their parents definitely know, and if you were a wizard who married a Muggle, then you'd let them know too. Seamus' mum told his dad eventually, though he never did say how-- Dean's dad never told his family though (and if I'm not mistaken JKR has mentioned she had a whole backstory for him; basically, Dean isn't Muggleborn like he thought, his dad was a wizard who went into hiding or something like that) so maybe it's on a case-by-case basis? McG also never told the Muggle she was in love with, so I'm guessing the Statute played a part maybe a long time ago? And I think maybe the Ministry has this blanket rule of "if you think it's going to be a problem, you can Obliviate Muggles who find out" or something.

Evyclaw

[slumber.livejournal.com]

It's tough, definitely, because you're inherently deciding you know better than another group of people about what information they can know. Isn't that in and of itself a little bit unfair? Or... I don't know. Maybe not entirely, but the fact that there is danger in the secret getting out certainly has to play a role in it too. I feel like this is the kind of "for the greater good" thinking that Dumbledore and Grindelwald toyed with, to a certain extent.

Evyclaw

[slumber.livejournal.com]

The Muggle world is still not as tolerant as it can be, to add another point there. And add to that the idea that this new kind of people actually have abilities that can be viewed as superior to what Muggles can do? Yikes, witch hunts are almost an inevitability! We fear what we don't understand.

Evyclaw

[pinksonia.livejournal.com]

I was under the impression that McG didn't tell the Muggle because she thought it would put a strain on their relationship and she didn't want to repeat the problems in her parents' relationship, not any law based reason. Of course, things between her parents probably would have been less strained if her mother had just spoken up to begin with so maybe it is a case of taking the law too seriously and causing personal troubles.

Allison//Ravenclaw