Life Lessons From Quidditch

Quidditch is a mainly fictional game, made famous in the Harry Potter books and films.

For those of you that are not aware of Quidditch and it's rules, here they are:

• Quidditch matches are played over an oval-shaped pitch, with a scoring area at each end consisting of three hooped goal posts, each at a different height. Each team is made up of seven players, consisting of three Chasers, two Beaters, one Keeper and one Seeker.
• The job of the Chasers is to keep possession of the scarlet Quaffle, a leather ball passed between players. They must attempt to score goals (worth 10 points) by throwing it through one of the opponents' three hoops. These hoops are defended by the opposing team's Keeper, who ideally tries to block their goals.
• Meanwhile, players of both teams are attacked indiscriminately by the two Bludgers. These are round, jet-black balls made of iron that fly around violently trying to knock players off their brooms. It is the Beaters' job to defend their teammates from the Bludgers; they carry short wooden clubs, which they use to knock the Bludgers away from their teammates and/or toward the opposing team.
• Finally, the role of the Seeker is to catch the Golden Snitch. This is a small golden ball the approximate size of a walnut. The winged Snitch is enchanted to hover, dart, and fly around the pitch, avoiding capture while remaining within the boundaries of the playing area. Catching the Snitch ends the game and scores the successful Seeker's team 150 points. As the team with the most points wins, this often guarantees victory for the successful Seeker's team, but not always.

However there is more to Quidditch than meets the eye.

In creating Quidditch, J. K. Rowling commented: "I had been pondering the things that hold a society together, cause it to congregate and signify its particular character and knew I needed a sport."

In this article I would like to share some of my interpretations. 

The Game:

Firstly let's start with a definition of a game. 

A rule-defined framework in which players engage cooperatively and competitively, that results in a quantifiable outcome (typically win, lose or draw).

The Rules:

As outlined above, Quidditch clearly has rules that everyone playing is subject to. It defines what teams and players can and can't do, and provides a guideline of what success looks like. In this case it is to outscore the other team. 

This has parallels with present day society and culture in the majority of developed countries. Society has rules, in the form of laws, that are used to govern the actions of it's citizens with the aim of creating stability and order. By being part of a particular society or group there is an implicit assumption that you agree to abide by the rules. Within every society you will find people that seek to enhance and strengthen it, people that are happy to exist within it's framework passively, and people that try to resist the rules or live by their own volition. 

J. K. Rowling summaries this nicely in this following tweet:

"[Quidditch] makes total sense. There's glamour in chasing an elusive lucky break, but teamwork and persistence can still win the day. Everyone's vulnerable to blows of fate and obstructive people, and success means rising above them. Quidditch is the human condition."

The Teams:

In Quidditch, there are two teams of 7 players. While the teams are made up of different roles, they are united by a common goal which is to win the game fairly. To achieve this the teams may use different strategies and tactics to gain an advantage. In Harry Potter these teams are made up of the Hogwarts Houses at a domestic level and qualified countries at an international level. 

This is no different from society if you think about it. Within an established framework of rules, which we can call the law, different teams compete to achieve a common goal. This common goal is to be at the top of whatever hierarchy they are competing in. This could be different political groups who compete for power and the ability to influence policies that affect their constituents. This could be rival companies in the same industry that compete for market share and an increasing base of consumers. This could be different public service institutions (such as the police, firefighters, healthcare here in the UK) that compete for increased government funding. You will always find competition at a local, national and international level. 

The Roles:

We could use different levels of analysis here, but I would like to talk about the level of the individual as it is possible to extract up to the level of society and culture (which are just made up of a collection of individuals).

The Chaser:

The most common role in Quidditch with three chasers per team. They rely on possession of the Quaffle to be able to score goals. 

I believe there are parallels here to the people in society that are actively involved in a game. There is the ability to cooperate with other people in order to achieve a goal. There is the ability to overcome the obstacles that are trying to block the goal from being achieved. Sometimes you are the one to score, sometimes you are assisting someone else to score and there will be times where you are scored against, despite your best efforts. Hence the unpredictable nature of a fair game.

The Beaters & Bludgers:

Bludgers are violent balls of flying iron that indiscriminately set out to cause fear, harm, destruction, and chaos. Viewed a particular way, Bludgers can represent the problems and negative aspects of each individual, culture and nature. Avoid paying attention to Bludgers at your own cost. 

I think there are two sides to the Beaters depending on the perspective you take:

• The first is the perspective of the protector. This is the Beater who uses their wooden club to protect themselves and their team from danger. 
• The second is the perspective of the adversary. This is the Beater who intentionally sets out to cause harm to their opponents by forcing the Bludger in their direction.

I believe each individual has the capacity to be the protector and the adversary, dependent on context. Once we become aware of our collective ability to experience suffering and pain, we can choose to protect ourselves from it to the best of our ability or we can use that knowledge to inflict damage to others. 

The Keeper:

The role of the Keeper is to prevent the team from being scored against and therefore increase the chances of winning. 

I believe the majority of humanity is driven by progress and achieving the next level of success. In the process of achieving goals (the role of the Chaser) you also don't want to lose what you have. Being able to defend your (or your family's) current lifestyle for a long-period of time is also important. The same can apply for your values, what you believe in and how you identify. They are worth protecting. 

The Seeker and the Golden Snitch:

There is something unique about the role of the Seeker and why they are revered in Harry Potter.

When Seekers enter the field of play, they are playing a different game to everyone else - a meta game. Their objective is to catch the Golden Snitch, a small golden orb of immense value. When the Golden Snitch is caught, not only does the person triumph, but everyone else in the team typically wins.

Note: This isn't always the case as teamwork and persistence can win out (if the other team has a 160 point lead or more). 

Let us unpack the role of the Seeker a little bit more.

The Golden Snitch is incredibly valuable, but also near impossible to see due to its small size and fast, random movement. What does this mean? Well there is significant value in seeking an outcome that will win you the game of games. This not only gives you a high probability of success, but also increases the probability of success for everyone on your team (your partner, your family, your friends, your community, etc). Very few people are searching for an answer to the problem of problems, which makes the people that do valuable and revered by society. 

The Golden Snitch can be described as chaotic potential. It has the ability to damage and destroy you in searching for it, but also contains incredible possibilities as well.

Why can it damage and destroy you?

Well firstly, not everyone wants you to find it. One of the Beater's roles, apart from protecting their team, is to cause damage and disruption to the other team. Harry has to endure significant pain and suffering in order to achieve his objective. We see him swallow a Golden Snitch, have his arm broken, and knocked unconscious a number of times by Bludgers and Dementors. Yet he displays resilience and comes back to play, time and time again. 

It can not be easy searching for something of value in the presence of people that are either actively trying to tear you down. The word "snitch" is cleverly used as it can describe someone who risks injury and even death, by sharing valuable and secretive information. This could be for the purposes of the greater good or to protect oneself from harm, through immunity. 

The value of the Golden Snitch on the Quidditch pitch foreshadows its true value off of it. In the last Harry Potter book it is revealed that the Snitch contained one of the Deathly Hallows, the Resurrection Stone. This could be only be accessed by Harry due to the Snitch's "flesh memory", meaning that it would only interact with the person who caught it first.

This echoes a deep-rooted concern we all face, which is what to do about the problem of certain death and whether there will be an afterlife. The fact that the Snitch is so hard to catch in the first place and there are so few people that are chasing it, probably means that the answer will be incredibly difficult to obtain in any one lifetime.

The Crowd:

In Harry Potter, all the Quidditch games are attended by a crowd. The crowd represents a group of individuals who support their team and comment on the game from the stands. They are not actively involved on the field of play.

In society, a crowd is an interesting phenomenon.

Any person in a crowd can be passive, their individuality and personal responsibility lost as they become one of many. Alternatively, any one person has the ability to positively or negatively impact any player. We see this played out today in the best and worst of social media and behaviour in stadiums.

At an aggregate level a crowd will also be passive and peaceful provided there is common agreement that the rules of the game are fair. However if the crowd collectively feels that there has been a breakdown of rules, that they are no longer fair and just, then that is when a crowd can become powerful and chaotic. 

Questions to reflect on:

• What games are you actively involved in?
• What games are you observing passively in the crowd?
• What type of role do you typically play? (Chaser, Beater, Keeper, Seeker) 
• What meta-game could you play? (A game that if you win, others win)