The whole initial scene with Neville where he protects him from the bullies and uses the pies and the time turner is pretty quickly revealed to be a pretty rash and irrational things to do that hurt Neville more than it helped him
The whole initial confrontation with Snape is something Harry later reflects on as super reckless and rash that gave up both a lot of his strategic advantage in the form of the time turner, and very needlessly escalated a conflict for the sake of his own pride
A lot of Harry’s harshest and most arrogant tendencies are revealed to be the result of Tom Riddle’s mind being imprinted on him. That’s why he is so paranoid about losing people, and find it’s hard to trust people, and lies to people a good amount.
The whole thing where he lied to Malfoy about how he related to Hermione blows up in his face
In the last chapter he realizes that he likely would have destroyed the whole universe by doing something dumb like reverting vow of secrecy for magic, opening up the world to crazy things like people transfiguring a single up-quark. At least Harry’s take at the end of the book is that if Quirrel hadn’t forced him to take a vow not to risk destroying the world, he would have likely almost immediately done so.
The whole ark with Hermione is primarily about Harry learning how to healthily relate to other people in a non-controlling way. The last chapter makes this pretty clear.
That chapter where Dumbledore tries to get Harry to understand the need to be strategic and that losing Hermione isn’t worth losing the whole war over, and Harry responds with a bunch of dumb stuff about “replacement cost” and tells Dumbledore how he is an idiot I think is pretty clearly trying to show a bunch of facets of irrationality and arrogance in Harry.
More broadly, I think Dumbledore as a character is first portrayed as kind of an antithesis to Harry with little merit, but is later revealed to have been the primary positive force in the whole story, I think in parts to show the need for the kinds of virtues that Dumbledore has, in contrast and addition to the virtues that Harry has.
To be clear, overall the book is not like “all of these cognitive patterns have no merits”. I think the book tries to say that Harry has a lot of important components that are necessary to actually do important things, but that he is frequently reckless and clueless about how to apply them, and frequently bumps into both other people and the world in ways that is quite dangerous and reckless.
Yeah, here are some examples in spoiler blocks:
The whole initial scene with Neville where he protects him from the bullies and uses the pies and the time turner is pretty quickly revealed to be a pretty rash and irrational things to do that hurt Neville more than it helped him
The whole initial confrontation with Snape is something Harry later reflects on as super reckless and rash that gave up both a lot of his strategic advantage in the form of the time turner, and very needlessly escalated a conflict for the sake of his own pride
A lot of Harry’s harshest and most arrogant tendencies are revealed to be the result of Tom Riddle’s mind being imprinted on him. That’s why he is so paranoid about losing people, and find it’s hard to trust people, and lies to people a good amount.
The whole thing where he lied to Malfoy about how he related to Hermione blows up in his face
In the last chapter he realizes that he likely would have destroyed the whole universe by doing something dumb like reverting vow of secrecy for magic, opening up the world to crazy things like people transfiguring a single up-quark. At least Harry’s take at the end of the book is that if Quirrel hadn’t forced him to take a vow not to risk destroying the world, he would have likely almost immediately done so.
The whole ark with Hermione is primarily about Harry learning how to healthily relate to other people in a non-controlling way. The last chapter makes this pretty clear.
That chapter where Dumbledore tries to get Harry to understand the need to be strategic and that losing Hermione isn’t worth losing the whole war over, and Harry responds with a bunch of dumb stuff about “replacement cost” and tells Dumbledore how he is an idiot I think is pretty clearly trying to show a bunch of facets of irrationality and arrogance in Harry.
More broadly, I think Dumbledore as a character is first portrayed as kind of an antithesis to Harry with little merit, but is later revealed to have been the primary positive force in the whole story, I think in parts to show the need for the kinds of virtues that Dumbledore has, in contrast and addition to the virtues that Harry has.
To be clear, overall the book is not like “all of these cognitive patterns have no merits”. I think the book tries to say that Harry has a lot of important components that are necessary to actually do important things, but that he is frequently reckless and clueless about how to apply them, and frequently bumps into both other people and the world in ways that is quite dangerous and reckless.
Thanks for taking the effort to write this up. I was definitely wrong.