Speaking up for the Muggles

Chris Mooney pens an essay in the Washington Post in praise of Muggles - those people who aren't wizards a la Harry Potter.

Rowling's critique of people like the Dursleys owes a great deal to two other British writers of fantasy, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Both writers believed that fantasy and the imagination -- in stark contrast with technology and modernism -- can help us access a deeper, more magical and enchanted existence. As biographer Humphrey Carpenter described Tolkien's views: "Only by myth-making, only by becoming a 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbor, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil." Or as Ron Weasley advised Harry in a letter: "Don't let the Muggles get you down!"

I think the choice between technology and fantasy is a false one. I enjoy fantasy and science/technology. At their root both have the same mythic quality Tolkien wanted to promote.