Blog 553 – 02.22.2017

Muggles And Mudbloods

I met a very intelligent, attractive, and well spoken man on a work assignment near Chicago a year ago that uttered a particular statement that he meant, I think, sincerely but it shook me to the core. He said, “People say things like ‘I am no better than anyone else’ but I am better than some people.” I spent the first third of my life as a member of a group that believed and still does that they are God’s chosen people and as such better than the average bear like Yogi. Christians think that, Jews think that, most groups think they are better than the “other guys” in some way. It just ain’t so. To use the language of the world of Harry Potter, we are all muggles and mudbloods. This concept of racial purity or superiority or one group of people that God, the Universe prefers over others is just so much nonsense inspired by ego the most unreliable of sources.

I appreciate the author of the Harry Potter books dealing with prejudice in the way she does in the Harry her stories. It is wonderful the way in which fiction writers can address real world issues in a way that sometimes cuts right through some of the defenses we
put up to shield our nastier little thoughts. Oh, I think most of us agree it was despicable for the Nazis to kill six million Jews. But we are not so quick to judge the Europeans and later the Americans for the genocide of millions more of the inhabitants of the Western hemisphere. We try to act as if the New World was scarcely populated and free for the taking. That just was not true but take it many of our ancestors did and justified it with thoughts and slogans like “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” We still have organizations, like the KKK that believe that white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are Pure Bloods and that everyone else, especially in their opinion Jews, Catholics, and people of color, are muggles and mudbloods. Those people don’t scare me half so much as the man I mentioned in the beginning. The error of their thinking is so obvious but his subtle and far more dangerous. Moral superiority, economic, educational, religious, or racial it is all the same. If we think and act like we are better than someone else it is really our own inferiority complex manifesting itself.

We are nonetheless and nonethemore which was the real lesson in Jesus words, “In that you did (or did it not) to the least of these my brethren you did (or did it not) to me.” In The Universal Eye we are all the same, only ego, Satan, “The accuser of the brethren” sees a difference. We are all equally loved. Years ago The Smothers Brothers had quite a comedy skit call, “Mom Loves You Best.” It was both sad and funny and we laughed at how absurd the idea was and yet we live in a divided world and a divided country where many people still believe they are special and deserve special treatment. We are all special but none more so than others or less so. We are all of us muggles and mudbloods and loved nonetheless by the Universe that has no picks.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White