Me three. The Wizarding World has all the hallmarks of a near-cult. The Death Eaters are a bit more cultish and fringe than, say, the Weasleys - but that's like saying that living in Yearning for Zion is harder than living FLDS but technically outside of town.
I mean, let's look at the facts.
1. They take their kids and carefully manage their education so they are incapable of surviving if they leave the fold.
1a. This also applies to first generation children who
1b. are tacitly discouraged from maintaining much of a connection with their families - mandatory full-term boarding school (no weekly option) to encourage immersion in a "total environment", enough dangerous and dodgy incidents during the school year that the kids can't tell their parents without their parents being upset and the teachers don't think the parents ought to know (did anybody inform any of the Muggle parents what happened 2nd year? Even those whose kids were petrified?), no thought given to creating phone access or anything like that - and don't give me that "technology" nonsense, if radios can work, cell phones could.
2. Special clothes and terminology, to the point where even shared items and ideas often use words that aren't widespread in the greater world.
3. A simultaneous belief that the mainstream population is both very dangerous and also very foolish - so dangerous (but also so foolish) that it's okay to use memory charms with impunity for the most trivial of matters.
3a. With the corollary that if the Muggles found out unspecified "bad things" would happen. Everybody seems to believe this, but they barely give lip service to any explanation.
4. A governing system that seems strongly focused around personal power rather than qualifications and/or a popular mandate. Little to no laws or outside commissions to act as a check on abuse of power - these systems are only brought in as a power play when one faction feels it is losing ground. (The Ministry taking an interest in how Hogwarts runs its affairs is considered an inherently bad thing, but... why? I don't believe that the numbers support the idea that Hogwarts is *literally* the only school, but all the same, it's an important one. Shouldn't the state have some say in what they teach and how?)
5. Even our so called progressive heroes avoid any contact with their own relatives if those relatives don't have magic.
no subject
I mean, let's look at the facts.
1. They take their kids and carefully manage their education so they are incapable of surviving if they leave the fold.
1a. This also applies to first generation children who
1b. are tacitly discouraged from maintaining much of a connection with their families - mandatory full-term boarding school (no weekly option) to encourage immersion in a "total environment", enough dangerous and dodgy incidents during the school year that the kids can't tell their parents without their parents being upset and the teachers don't think the parents ought to know (did anybody inform any of the Muggle parents what happened 2nd year? Even those whose kids were petrified?), no thought given to creating phone access or anything like that - and don't give me that "technology" nonsense, if radios can work, cell phones could.
2. Special clothes and terminology, to the point where even shared items and ideas often use words that aren't widespread in the greater world.
3. A simultaneous belief that the mainstream population is both very dangerous and also very foolish - so dangerous (but also so foolish) that it's okay to use memory charms with impunity for the most trivial of matters.
3a. With the corollary that if the Muggles found out unspecified "bad things" would happen. Everybody seems to believe this, but they barely give lip service to any explanation.
4. A governing system that seems strongly focused around personal power rather than qualifications and/or a popular mandate. Little to no laws or outside commissions to act as a check on abuse of power - these systems are only brought in as a power play when one faction feels it is losing ground. (The Ministry taking an interest in how Hogwarts runs its affairs is considered an inherently bad thing, but... why? I don't believe that the numbers support the idea that Hogwarts is *literally* the only school, but all the same, it's an important one. Shouldn't the state have some say in what they teach and how?)
5. Even our so called progressive heroes avoid any contact with their own relatives if those relatives don't have magic.