The Imperius Curse
Spring 2008
“Moody reached into the jar, caught one of the spiders, and held it in the palm of his hand so that they could all see it. He then pointed his wand at it and muttered, “Imperio!”
The spider leapt from Moody’s hand on a fine thread of silk and… went into what was unmistakably a tap dance.
Everyone was laughing - everyone except Moody.
“Think it’s funny, do you?” he growled. “You’d like it, would you, if I did it to you?”
The laughter died away almost instantly.
“Total control,” said Moody quietly as the spider balled itself up and began to roll over and over. “I could make it jump out of the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of you throats…”
There are different kinds of control. The ability to identify them determines how to use them and respond to them when they are used upon us. Our freedom is always at stake.
1 Theory and Basic Control
1.1 Background Theory
There are three ways to classify everything: in terms of commitments, objects, or descriptions. These three classifications are fundamental because it is impossible to deny understanding what each means without contradiction. For example, when commitment is referred to, it is always the commitments of a particular person. In order to deny that you understand what making a personal commitment is, you make a commitment to saying something, a commitment to denying you understand something. This may be a very small commitment, but it is a commitment nonetheless. When objects are referred to, they are always the objects associated with a person: the things that person believes to exist. Again, if someone tries to deny that he or she believes things exist, then that person will use words to make that denial and words are a kind of thing. Lastly description refers to the way an individual describes the world: his or her personal descriptions of anything and everything. Denying that you describe things is a description of how you are and hence is contradictory.
Everything that follows will be construed in terms of commitments, objects or descriptions. Sometimes these three will be referred to as substance because of their fundamental nature.
1.2 Basic Control
1.2.1 Commitment Hijacking
Threatening someone is one way to have control: a dire consequence is held ransom against noncompliance to your will. When a threat is made one commitment of a person is being used against another, e.g. a commitment to a family held hostage will force a person to break commitments he or she normally would not break. By finding and threatening the things a person is most committed to it is possible to exercise control over all commitments less important than what is being held ransom.
The same holds for yourself: your major commitments determine your other commitments. If your most important commitment is to, for instance, your children, then commitments that interfere with your children, say to traveling the world, become less important. In this way your commitments control your activity.
1.2.2 Physical Control
Another way to control a person is to physically control the body. Each of us has physical control of our own body and can have physical control over someone else’s. Physically acting upon someone can put that person under your control, though in a very different way than by making a threat. If you push a person, then that person is moved according to how you want them to be moved, and no threat may be able to achieve the same result.
1.2.3 Description Discrepancy
It is possible to have control over a person by understanding what that person knows about the world. For example, if you can make a convincing bluff then you have made a person believe the world is some way that it is not. A successful bluff will effectively control a person’s actions such that he or she does (or does not do) something. Put simply, knowledge is power: if you know that someone is ignorant in some way, then you can gain control; if you do not know something then you will be vulnerable.
2 Sophisticated Control
As useful as the above methods are, they are limited because only a limited number of people can be controlled at any given time and for only so long. Someone will see through your lies, ignore your threats and be beyond your physical grasp. For more subtle and possibly long term control, a more sophisticated approach is required.
As we learn more about basic control we identify relationships and nuances that we did not originally recognize. Our individual commitments are structured and related to each other, eventually forming values. Objects are likewise related and also made up of other objects, and these structures can be grouped together in what we call science. Our desciptions of the world are interconnected in what we call logic. Understanding and exploiting these (higher-order) relationships allows takes a level of competency and complexity that requires us to expand the three forms of basic control.
2.1 Science
Instead of merely holding someone down (as in basic physical control), with the advent of rope it became possible to tie that person up; with better metallurgy handcuffs were created; with the right chemicals we can now keep someone bound without any visible restraints. As our understanding of how the body (and world) works increases, our ability to have control over people also expands. Drugs can be used to restrain people but also to control other things, such as illnesses. This kind of control is highly beneficial - careful use of medicine can save a person’s life - and beyond the purview of basic control.
Scientific research identifies the different relationships between objects in the world. The forefront of science represents the limit of the things we believe to exist and hence the different kinds of things we can control: only after the discovery of the atom and (some of) its internal structure was it possible to control the energy there to make `nuclear power.’ The more we know about how things interact with each other, the better, the more sophisticated and the more nuanced our control over objects in the world (and other people) will be.
2.2 Values
Commitments, like objects, have internal structure. A person may work long hours at a horrible job with no benefits in order to save enough money for her kids to get a better education. The commitment that she has to her childrens’ education causes her to forgo other commitments, such as a love of playing the piano, because the time commitment of her job is incompatible with practicing piano. This relationship of the overarching commitment to her kids’ education as compared to the commitment to working long hours is an example of how commitments are structured.
Commitments that have wide ranging effects on other commitments are called values. With an understanding of the values that a person or group has, it is possible to predict how each will react in certain situations. The more we can predict how a person or group of people will act, the greater control we can have over the people and situations alike.
2.3 Logic
The descriptions that people make have internal structure. If I describe a certain person I know as an incompetent manager who lacks inspiration, you may infer that I believe that this person lacks inspiration. This is a basic example of logical inference: if I assert some statement of the form `(p & q)’, as above, then you may infer that I also assert q. Although this is a simple example, the logic of our statements can be exceedingly complex and only with practice can we quickly and accurately infer consequences correctly.
Given enough access to the descriptions a person has made, e.g. through his or her writings, and other descriptions of the world, it is possible to deduce logical consequences that are not immediately obvious. Sometimes these consequences are seemingly innocuous, sometimes they lead to contradiction. In the case of contradiction, the knowledge that the person’s descriptions are inconsistent can provide a basis for arguing the person is confused and wrong about what they are talking about. Seemingly innocuous consequences are not necessarily any less useful: imagine a suspect being interrogated for some crime. If such a person starts answering questions, then he or she may say something that, while initially did not seem important, can be used against him or her later.
3 Metaphysical Leadership
When it comes to exercising control across time, space and personalities, an even more developed form of control is needed. Insofar as it is a metaphysical truth there are always multiple explanations for any given phenomenon, at any point we can and must ignore one explanation in favor of another. If it is possible to control which explanations people accept and which they ignore, then it is also possible to have even more control than when using sophisticated control.
To make someone favor one explanation over another, two substances need to be used against the third. Three very effective forms of control can be achieved depending upon the different combinations: commitment and object against description, commitment and description against object, and lastly description and object against commitment. This section is inherently metaphysical because at any given point more than one substance will be employed, so the forms of control here are irreducible to any one notion of object, description or commitment, nor, by extension, science, logic or values.
3.1 Determinism: at the edge of Description and Object
Determinism is the doctrine that everything within the universe is the way it is now because of how it was in the past combined with the Laws of Nature. If you examine this definition, you can see that it describes how everything in the universe is with reference to the Laws of Nature, science: it is a combination of sophisticated objects and descriptions. The other important thing to notice immediately is that it cuts commitment out: if all things in the universe are the result of how they were in the past and science, then there is no room for things occurring as a result of a current commitment.
If someone is convinced that determinism is true, then that person can be swayed from his or her commitments by a strong argument for scientific inevitability. That is, if a person can be convinced that it is scientifically impossible to maintain his or her commitments, then he or she will be willing to break even strong commitments; resistance is futile, so don’t bother fighting.1
3.2 Rhetoric: at the edge of Description and Commitment
Being strong in rhetoric is being able to craft believable arguments to suit your purposes regardless of the data available. Notice this definition is a combination of descriptions (arguments) and commitments (purposes), and it discounts objects (`regardless of the data’).
Politicians, lawyers and philosophers, among others, use rhetoric to support their positions that do not agree with available scientific data and the better rhetorician, the less important the data becomes. This is not to say that these are bad people for ignoring data - many times data is misunderstood and misconstrued - but instead of working with objects to prove their cases, they appeal to the other substances.
For example if I want to argue against a deterministic explanation, I would first request an argument for determinism. Since I know there is no way to have actually tested everything in the universe to see if it follows the laws of nature, an inductive argument must be used. However, inductive arguments all initially require a proof of the base case. Since there is no way to prove anything follows the laws of nature insofar as following something implies a commitment to adhere to the laws, scientific explanations are inherently incomplete (though it may be said that the equations we call natural law predict what will happen to a relatively high degree of precision). This little bit of wiggle room is all that is necessary to transfer causality away from the objects to a different substance.
A district attorney might extend this argument to show that a person was guilty of murder and was not physiologically compelled to act by some medical reason. A politician may extend this argument to transfer responsibility for a natural catastrophe away from businesses that had polluted the environment.
3.3 Charm: at the edge of Object and Commitment
Charm is inherently more difficult to define because charm can defy description. Instead of starting with a common definition, I’ll build a definition from combining objects and commitments and let the reader evaluate the end product. If we have an object that has commitments, or a commitment crystallized into an object, then that thing should be charming. A person can be charming: a person, as a thing, may be unable to hide his or her commitments because those commitments and values are so ingrained in them. Likewise a landscape may be charming: the basic commitments that a landscape may invoke by representing a certain way of life can charm those who desire the sort of life possible in that area.
As Camus said, “Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.” Charm is a way of expressing certain commitments that others desire to have, without actually actively describing those commitments. Insofar as a person wants to do certain things, he or she has commitments to that effect. Some object that would allow that person to fulfill those commitments would have a charming affect on that person. Charm is the potential of fulfilled commitments.
Insofar as a person believes that his or commitments will be fulfilled by the charming object, then this person will be under its sway to the degree of the importance of the commitments to be filled. Since people don’t always know exactly what it is that they want, i.e. know what they are committed to, a charming object can be beyond description because it interacts with these yet undescribed commitments, and likewise have unknown power.
4 Complete Metaphysical Leadership
If someone has charm, or can deterministically prove things, or is a rhetorical master, he or she will be able to lead people to accept his or her view of things, insofar as those people are not as skilled leaders. A strong rhetorician will be able to convince people who are not as skilled at rhetoric of his or her rhetorical viewpoints. However, someone strong in one area will be able to resist (or just ignore) a strong argument from a leader in another area, in favor of an argument from his or her own area: someone who has very strong values will be able to resist deterministic arguments. It is hard to directly engage with someone more skilled in a particular area, but if there are reasonable alternatives available, there is no need to submit to that person’s control.
If a single person is accomplished in the three skills of the preceding section then that person has the potential to be a complete leader. The ability to apply determinism, rhetoric and charm is a skill outside the scope of the previous section and is the mark of a complete leader. At any given point he or she will use one or more of those skills to be a step ahead of everyone else: any dissension will be discounted. For a complete leader, commitment, object, and description, as well as their extensions of values, object and rhetoric are all, in some sense, arbitrary: such a person will draw upon any substance for inspiration at will, and as is necessary, to accomplish his or her goals.2
4.1 Free Will
Being a complete metaphysical leader may be thought of as having freedom of will. If a person’s decision making process is independent of any particular form of control, then it cannot be thought of as a result of metaphysical control. The free will is completely metaphysical in the sense that it cuts across all three substances at the same time.
4.2 Total Control: The Imperius Curse
Having complete metaphysical leadership raises the question of having complete metaphysical control. This is possible if someone is highly skilled at all the leadership skills and knows how to use them. This cross-substance application of metaphysical leadership skills may be thought of as using the free will: having a free will and using it are not the same thing.
Using free will in dealing with someone who lacks comparative leadership ability means subjugating that person. Any argument that a person with complete metaphysical leadership would raise would dominate the lesser skills of the other person, placing that person entirely under the other’s will. For example a child may believe whatever his or her parent says without a second thought. Insofar as there is such a gap between people, such total control is possible and to be in such a situation is to be cursed.
4.3 Defending Oneself
What do you do if you come up against someone who is a better leader than yourself? Either you will have to submit to that person’s will or invest time in becoming a more skilled leader. Becoming a more skilled leader means going back to the beginning, basic control. Reevaluate your commitments, objects and descriptions and work to have a stronger grasp of values, science and logic. If the person is far more skilled than you, it may be difficult to focus on basic control, but only by returning to the basics is it possible to find an ontological (substance-based) difference between your perspective and the other person’s. If and when a difference is identified, it will provide a basis for resisting the other person’s will. Eventually, by incorporating this new understanding of substance into your leadership skills, it will make you a better leader.
5 Conclusion
“…
Moody raised his wand, pointed it at Harry, and said, “Imperio!”
It was the most wonderful feeling. Harry felt a floating sensation as every thought and worry in his head was wiped gently away, leaving nothing but a vague, untraceable happiness. He stood there feeling immensely relaxed, only dimly aware of everyone watching him.
And then he heard Mad-Eye Moody’s voice, echoing in some distant chamber of his empty brain: Jump onto the desk … jump onto the desk …
Harry bent his knees obediently, preparing to spring.
Jump onto the desk….
Why, though? Another voice had awoken in the back of his brain.
Stupid thing to do, really, said the voice.
Jump onto the desk….
No, I don’t think I will, thanks, said the other voice, a little more firmly … no, I don’t really want to….
Jump!NOW!
The next thing Harry felt was considerable pain. He had both jumped and tried to prevent himself from jumping - the result was that he’d smashed headlong into the desk, knocking it over, and by the feeling in his legs, fractured both of his kneecaps.
“Now, that’s more like it!” growled Moody’s voice, and suddenly, Harry felt the empty, echoing feeling in his head disappear. He remembered exactly what was happening, and the pain in his knees seemed to double.
“Look at that, you lot … Potter fought! He fought it, and he damn near beat it! We’ll try that again, Potter, and the rest of you, pay attention - watch his eyes, that’s where you see it - very good, Potter, very good indeed! They’ll have trouble controlling you!”
Footnotes:
1There are lots of attempts to square determinism with free will and I won’t get into that here, save one comment specific to my metaphysics. It suffices for my purposes to put myself in the camp arguing that once determinism is accepted as true, then free will is lost. My treatment of free will follows below and it becomes nonsense if commitment is somehow less fundamental than the other substances.
2A `natural’ leader is someone who has ability to draw upon any substance at will, but does not necessarily have all the knowledge and skills to be an effective metaphysical leader. Natural leaders still need to work to become metaphysical leaders.
File translated from TEX by TTH, version 3.79. On 18 Jul 2008, 15:00.
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