Like I said once in my status that Harry Potter “always enlightens my mind.” I think to say Harry Potter is a story about magic per se is an oversimplification of this marvelous story. Harry Potter is more than a magic story or a simple story about the battle between good and evil, or friendship and courage. If we immerse our self deeper to the story we can find that Harry Potter is about the way J. K. Rowling looks in contempt, our way of life, the science and modernity it brings. That’s also the reason why we love it. Take for example the Hogwarts. The school is all about being cool and classic. The broom, the symbol, the Latin, the robe (what school use robe as their uniform right now?), the castle (you see any school with castle right now?), the “professor”, and all classic ceremonial that has been robbed from our school system. Most of the part of Harry Potter is about Rowling comparing between the Muggles’ way of life and the magician. Rowling cleverly (she is so genius) portrays our lives as a dull world, so dry and without passion. Compare how she portrays the World of Magic, with all their “technologies” of Apparation, port keys, broom, secrecy (the way they remain unknown from muggle history will make CIA envy), and the most fascinating for me; Horcrux.. The main attraction of this story is not the story itself, not even the Harry Potter himself, but the background setting, The World of Magic, where everything you can think of, really do come true. The creation of this world is the real genius. And as for our world, the muggle, it was static (even their photographs never move), so rigid (they have all the science law, bound by physical law. But for magical world, it is only your wand and spell), so dull and no fun (think about Uncle Vernon’s job, Aunt Petunia’s customs and manners, the houses of Privet Drive that all look the same, so lame…), so pathetic (Dudley’s gang, and his school, sucks). If there is a most anti muggle person in Harry Potter, it will be the writer, J.K. Rowling. (Can a writer make a cameo in his book? That will be a good idea, never read any book like that, where writer was in the book for a brief time.)
Enough with literally critic and now move to more serious matter. Every time I read Harry Potter and introduced by new magic, my first reaction is to think if it is feasible to be created. Not a good way to enjoy a fiction, but I have my own explanation about a bad, good and great fiction. A bad fiction is a story that makes you think all through the show and makes you ask about this and that. A good fiction is a story that makes you stop thinking and enjoy it until the end. A great fiction is a story that makes you stop thinking until the end, takes you into a different world until the climax, but after the show, it makes you keep thinking about it, even until you go to bed. Great fiction is unforgettable because you will spend much of your time to ponder about it. Harry Potter is one of the great one. Every time I finished read or watch Harry Potter, I stop and think and many things you can ponder from Harry Potter. About the Flo channel (or network, I forget it already), apparition and port key (think about quantum theory and teleportation), about the house elf willingness to work, I even ask, is it really a slavery? House elf chose to work, that is what they are created for, and so what is a good reason for Hermione to liberate them? Is it morally wrong to eat a beef if we create a cow that willing to be killed and eaten? So for me, Hermione is dead wrong! (Form the fourth book, “Goblet of Fire”)
Harry Potter can make you think about many things, but among all magic in the books, the one that draw my interest more than other is Horcrux. Slughorn said that it is a very dark magic. But for me (let me make this clear), Horcrux (and I prefer to spell it as the way I always read it in the book; Horcrux, not Hoorcrax like in the movie) is the greatest and the coolest magic of all. Imagine, separating your soul into pieces, so if you die, you got the spare and all you have to do is to find a new body. Cool!!! Since the day I read it for the first time, I never forget this idea of Horcrux. How it cans possibly be? In 2006, I and my three roommates (Gosi, Loway, and Reds) were talking about the latest technology and the topic is about the capacity of hard drive (Surprise? Yes, we can talk about something clever sometimes). Back on those days, majority of us use 40 gigabyte harddrive and it is the best in the market for our budget. You can get something bigger but cost you lots of money. One of the guests (room visitor, whom the identity of the person I forgot already) informs us that one company just launched a new hard drive with 1 terra capacity (I have no idea what terra means). And suddenly Gosi yell, “Loway, itu biar ngana pe badang le tamaso kadalam” (Loway, even your body can be squeezed inside). That could be sounded like joking, but that was partially true. I think Loway can be squeezed inside.
Human being has two layer of being, mental and physical. Physical feature involve the tangible part of our body, like hands, legs, head, eyes, mouth, and all part of our body. Mental is about our mind which is intangible and abstract. It was formed inside our brain and more complicated to be examined and studied. This is what we call as personality; it includes our behavior, set of mind, preference, emotional response, etc. Result from the combination of these two beings is me. “I” (ego) is more than just my body, but my body plus my personality. “I” without my body is ghost, and without my mental, “I” is dead. What is horcrux? Horcrux is a technology that stores my “mental” being, so I can survive without my “physical” being.
Imagine if you can upload your memory and emotion – your mental being– into a big capacity hard drive, and you can download this “mental” into a robot. What happen is, we now have two Juan, but one with complete being, and the other one, the robot, is Juan in a sense of its (or his) memory. But not Juan if you see from the physical perspective. But mental is what a person is. If I can swap my mind with –for example- Justin Beiber, now, which one is Juan Mahaganti? Is it a bodily Juan Mahaganti with Justin’s mind, or Justin Beiber with Juan’s mind? I believe, the real Juan is the “Justin Beiber’s body” with Juan’s mind. Because although he has Justin’s body, but the memory inside, the way he thinks, behaves, perceives, reacts, all resembled Juan, not Justin. The body is Justin, but mental is Juan. So we can see, mental is the being that explain one’s being more than physical.
So this is horcrux. A tool to store the most important, intangible, yet storable part of my being, into a storing device, so if my physical being does perished, I can still be, because I have a reserve for my being, my mental being. That is genius! In Harry Potter, Voldemort store his souls in seven different parts, but I think the most important and captivating horcrux is “the Tom Riddle diary.” From this diary we can see how talented Tom Riddle a.k.a. Lord Voldemort was. The diary is an “I” or ego of Tom Riddle but separated from the master ego (the real “I”) of Tom Riddle. But this “I” is still clever, cunning, genius, crafty and deceitful just like the real “I”, that is why the Diary can deceives Ginny in the second Harry Potter series of “The Chamber of Secrets”.
Imagine if Juan Mahaganti can store (or upload) my own soul, to a laptop and by chance, you the reader open the laptop and start a conversation with me. Of course that is me, but not me. That is my mental being, but separated from me. I can still teach you social study, tell you my story of life (at least until the moment I upload myself), talk to you and be your friend.
Is horcrux feasible to be created?? Yes, absolutely. First, we need a hard drive with a very big capacity to contain all of my memory and emotion. Second, we need very complicated software that can mimic the very, very, ultra complex algorithm of my brain. This software I believe will be the mother of all software, the pinnacle of human understanding of all mathematical logic. This will be a software that can enable a computer think independently. The software will be the combination of human greatest genius from many field of science; cognitive psychology, neuroscience, neurologic, game theory, computer science, mathematics, probability theory, economic science, and many other field (you name it), combined, perfected, and when we get the total understanding of how brain works, then we can create this software, the codes and algorithm it needs. Then, we need a computer (a super-duper-ultra computer) that can copy the human neural system that was a network of billions of neural network. Combine this three requirements – the hard drive, the software, and the hardware- the we can create a…… (drum taping) HORCRUX!!!!
If we, the muggles, can create this horcrux, it will be the day when we become God, create a part of human being, that can think and reacts independently, a being with free will. We store a being, a mental being, and then we can upload it. Imagine the capability of this device. We never have to worry about the lost of the loved one. They are here, their bodies are gone, but not their beings, their mental are here. Maybe we can wait for a new body, then upload the memory to their brain and ta-daaa: we resurrected them from the death. Cool!!!! That’s what Horcrux is all about. If Star Trek inspires the WARP, Horcrux is the greatest gift of Harry Potter series for human imagination of science.
Now that’s what GREAT about Harry Potter. So if you haven’t watched the latest series of the movie, I remind you that “Harry Potter and The Deadly Hallows” is now playing at Studio 21 Manado. Don’t miss it. It is the most satisfying “Harry Potter movie” ever. It goes well with the book, which is why they made it in two parts. But I warn you, if you haven’t read the books, or haven’t made yourself really familiar with Harry Potter series, the story will be a little bit complicated. But only no brainers, “Twilight” lovers that won’t enjoy this movie. Selamat Menikmati.
P.S. As I finished this writing, I just realized that there is no other fiction in this world that can captivate me for soooooo long, longer than Harry Potter. I’ve been knowing Harry Potter and his story for; let me recall it, since I was at grade 8 maybe, so it makes it 12 years then… Mamae… such a long time. And yet, Harry Potter still one of the best novel I ever read. You can call it cheap and light, but that’s one of the reason I love to read, back to the day when I was still in middle school. Thank you J.K. Rowling. You are a genius.
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