(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.