(WARNING: Intense woo ahead)

The last post was about the nature of power.

This post is about moral and ethical considerations. To this end, I find the following table helpful.

Source: https://rpad.tv/2014/02/20/coffee-talk-615-whats-dungeons-and-dragons-alignment/

This one’s a little easier.

Source: https://rpad.tv/2014/02/20/coffee-talk-615-whats-dungeons-and-dragons-alignment/

If you are anything like me you will recognize these immediately as D&D alignments. Over time I have found this a surprisingly useful model for morality and ethics. For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to get into the ur-source for associating good with the the desire to uplift and protect the dignity of sentient beings and evil with the impulse to subjugate, oppress and destroy. Going to simply refer you to the discipline of moral philosophy on that one.

Now for the woo.

What I appreciate about this model is that it’s just a taxonomy. It isn’t normative. And likewise in the game of life, we are all just LARPing our own conceptions of self. There is something to the idea that people tend to embrace either the lighter or darker side of human nature. My personal cosmology is very much centered on the push and pull across a range of dualities. Altruism/selfishness. Creation/destruction. Order/chaos.

I’ve been tempted at times to believe a rich and meaningful existence is balanced on a knife’s edge between an infinite series of dualities. These days I’m more of the mind that the cosmos is a churning sea of chaotic forces (chaotic in the mathematical sense). These forces act on us externally in our physical reality and internally in our feelings about and models of that reality. You can flow with these forces or you can fight them. The output of this process is your character. Like, literally, in a deep sense, as well as in the superficial context of an elaborate D&D metaphor.

There is no objectively “correct” moral or ethical alignment. It’s all about which cosmological forces you choose to embrace and perpetuate with power.

“I don’t make choices about cosmological forces at all,” some might say.

In my view, whether we choose to think of the actions we take every day as choices is irrelevant. They are still choices.

From this point of view, the morality of power is simplicity itself. What do you want to manifest in the world? The answer is your moral and ethical code.

Now that’s not to say this is an easy or comfortable question to answer. Not if you’re being honest (as opposed to just vomiting up whatever you’ve been socially conditioned to adopt as moral values). If you’re anything like me, you will find honestly exploring the answer to that question often results in odd and irreconcilable contradictions. There is a difference between what you really want, on a “primal” level, and what you tell yourself you want on the basis of socially conditioned rationalization.

People tend to think of themselves as “good.” Yet there is an awful lot of “evil” in the world. I suspect this is simply because most people are just not very honest with themselves.

I am becoming more comfortable with accepting the contradictions and hypocrisy I find inherent in the human condition. Generally, I gravitate toward the light side of things (if you are curious my RPG characters lean toward the wizard archetype, usually with Neutral Good alignment). But I have some fascination with the dark bits as well (see: wargaming hobby). And in my own way I am pretty selfish and even a little greedy. I have to be mindful of overfeeding my selfish and greedy aspects. I do not always succeed. Such is the human condition.

I suppose you could call al this a moral compass.

Where exactly did it all come from? No idea.

And I’m not sure it matters, either.

Everything is turning into a loaded term these days. Power is no exception. I am not a fan of the current public discourse around power. To my eyes this has degenerated into a turgid morality play. (Though in fairness, public discourse around any topic has a tendency to do that)

I like to think of power in neutral terms, as a kind of force. Like gravity. What does that force do? It compels. Power operates on a spectrum of intensity, from subtle influence to physical coercion.

Different attributes and abilities strengthen and weaken any given individual or group’s power. Power has many different sources. Different types of power are fungible, to varying degrees. The most obvious example of this fungibility is with money. If you happen to have a lot of material wealth, say generational wealth, you have lucked into a major source of power. It is trivial to convert money to influence. Hell, mere proximity to wealth can be a source of power.

Another example is being super hot (extremely attractive). Being super hot is a kind of power. It is a form of sexual power. Sexual power, too, is fungible, though not to the same degree as money. For example, if I am super hot I can become a trophy husband and trade hotness for material comfort. (IRL this option is not available to me) Of course, the term “trophy spouse” implies another power relation. You can extend this kind of thing on and on and on.

To me, it is trivially obvious that human civilization is a web of power relations.

This is neither inherently good nor bad. It merely IS. Toss a rock out a window and it falls. Put humans together in groups and you get webs of power relations. This is a fractal pattern that runs from the nation state to the bedroom.

“I don’t have that kind of relationship with my husband/wife/partner,” some will insist.

To which I say: LOL. LMFAO.

As long as you sometimes have conflicting interests and desires, you have some level of conflict that needs resolving. And if you have some level of conflict that needs resolving, the balance of power in the relationship will influence that resolution. Again, that statement isn’t a value judgment. In good relationships, conflict is resolved through mutually empowered negotiation. In toxic relationships, conflict is resolved through emotional and physical coercion.

Here I’m touching on the ethics of power a bit, though the ethics of power are beyond the scope of this post. The ethics of power have no bearing on the nature, existence or pervasiveness of the web of power relations that shapes human interactions. The ethics of power are about the means and ends to which we exercise power. .

There is quite a bit of intention around the use of the term “web” here. A frustrating and pervasive mischaracterization of power is that it is some kind of weird binary–that you either have power or you don’t.

Power is not a binary concept. It varies in its precise nature and intensity. Read up on Nelson Mandela’s time in prison sometime. Mandela possessed extraordinary power, though not always in a conventional political sense. Mandela, and indeed all great leaders, understood the fungibility of power intuitively.

Another abuse of the concept of power that frustrates me is when it is used to pass moral judgments. “Having power = bad. Not having power = good.” That kind of thing. But weakness itself is not a virtue, and strength itself is not a moral failing.

Of course, if we want to get meta about it we can observe that occupation of the moral high ground (the perceived moral high ground, anyway) is a source of power. If we want to get extra meta (and I always do) we can further observe that the ability to define what constitutes moral high ground is an even more fundamental kind of power.

If you feel you are locked out of power, a decent strategy is to redefine the discourse. Not all wars are fought in meatspace. Insurgencies can be waged over ideas.