#meta ethics

[theidealistphilosophy]

Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.

William S. Burroughs, Source Unlisted.

[gghero]

9 hours 9 persons 9 doors is possibly the funniest game on replay for many reasons but my underrated comedic bit of knowledge is the mystery of how the Kurashikis got all the money to run the second nonary game because at some point if you remember the door 4 santa dialogue you gotta just conclude "it was probably gambling right I mean if I had postcognitive esp I would absolutely cheat at gambling" but then on replay you look at that scene and the options youre presented with and the implication is actually like "dont be ridiculous. gambling is stupid. we OBVIOUSLY used the postcognitive esp to cheat at the STOCK MARKET what kind of idiot are you"

[teamloyalty]

Adam Kadlac, The Ethics of Sports Fandom (2021)

[randomness-is-my-order]

you know, there’s this idea sometimes when talking about wei wuxian’s displays of violence in the novels as if they were indiscriminate, unmeasured and excessive when in truth, that was never the case. every single time wei wuxian employed more drastic methods to deal with an opponent—be it at an individual or collective level—there was a buildup and reason behind it. this includes his torture and killing of wen chao, which was literally just payback for the months of prolonged torture he had suffered at wen chao’s hands. using every trick up his sleeve during a war is fair game—it is not criminal to practice ghostly cultivation, however dubious it may seem for some, because the alternative is potentially losing against the wen clan who had already slaughtered countless people on their side before the war ever began.

similarly, wei wuxian defending himself against the assembly of cultivators during the nightless city massacre is not excessive violence. why should it be his prerogative to exercise restraint when the ones attacking him are coming at him with the intent to kill? i maintain the same position about the ambush. it’s very important and a deliberate detail that in these two instances, wei wuxian is NOT the one who instigates the violence, since these take place in a non-war setting and as such, the culpability of the losses suffered is actually on the party that initiates the full-fledged fight!

again, these were extenuating circumstances and wei wuxian had been pushed and pushed and pushed till he finally decided—not to go HAM and rage without sense—but to dish out fully deserved tit-for-tat consequences on the ones who first chose to harm him. this is not indiscriminate violence (and no, even jin zixuan’s death isn’t an argument for the contrary; momentary loss of control in extremely harrowing conditions ≠ a needlessly bloodthirsty, violence-for-violence’s-sake situation).

want an example from canon of indiscriminate violence? look no further than the lotus pier massacre or the wen genocide during the first siege. look no further than jin guangyao’s various murder plots. look no further than jiang cheng’s torture and murder of numerous cultivators who had done nothing to harm him. it’s just, when the text provides so many different instances of violence enacted, and makes a bifurcation between those scenes where a mutual battle takes place and wei wuxian just happens to have the upperhand vs scenes where defenceless and/or innocent parties are subjected to harm and are victimized, we’ve got no excuse to conflate the two and try to portray wei wuxian’s actions as something they are decidedly not.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

you've given me too much animorphs inspiration (animorspiration?) and I'm now drowning. help. I wrote like half an essay on The Tragedy of David and how it's not really about whether he deserved a chance to change but the fact that they just straight up did not have the luxury (or tools) to give one. I think that while rachel's only regret is not giving him a clean kill, at the same time she would have done almost anything to be able to throw david at a competent adult role model and watch him face a nonlethal and constructive consequence for his actions.

I think a lot of things about david, too many for the little shit. he's such an asshole, he's cruel and sexist and so fucking unpleasant to read about I can barely imagine the horror of actually being in a room with him. but he's also just fucking thirteen. I want to grab him by the scruff of his neck and send him to therapy. even better I want a story where his family lives and it doesn't magically make him a decent person, he's still awful because he's goddamn david, and *then* he's dragged to a good therapy program and has a real incentive to change. also I guess the child soldier thing would be happening too in the background or whatever.

I couldn't agree more, with all of that. The decision to nothlit him (and kill him) is excruciatingly well-justified in canon. He's so despicable that I often want to reach through the page and throttle him. He reminds me of myself when I was a spoiled, damaged 13-year-old sick to death of being The New Kid at every school.

Maybe I was never quite that misogynistic. But at 13, I thought Light Yagami had the right approach to ethics. I thought the world would be better off if people would just shut up and give more power to the government. I was naive, I was awkward, I was a rich white kid with more experience being excluded than befriended and my social skills reflected that. Oh, and did I mention my obsession with snakes and horror comics and trying to shock adults? Because that's the root of my personal desire to stomp David's face in.

He's a normal kid, with normal problems, with a normal amount of teenage self-centeredness and temperamentalism. And the other Animorphs have basically no choice but to kill him to get him off their team. Because he's not ready for the tremendous soul-crushing responsibility they're forced to take on, to keep their species alive.

You know that old joke, about including exactly one normal athlete on every Olympic team so that we can really appreciate just how astoundingly good all the Olympians are? That's David, for the Animorphs. He's not superhumanly selfless, and he's the only one on the team for whom that's true.

[dragonnarrative-writes]

Generative AI Is Bad For Your Creative Brain

In the wake of early announcing that their blog will no longer be posting fanfiction, I wanted to offer a different perspective than the ones I’ve been seeing in the argument against the use of AI in fandom spaces. Often, I’m seeing the arguments that the use of generative AI or Large Language Models (LLMs) make creative expression more accessible. Certainly, putting a prompt into a chat box and refining the output as desired is faster than writing a 5000 word fanfiction or learning to draw digitally or traditionally. But I would argue that the use of chat bots and generative AI actually limits - and ultimately reduces - one’s ability to enjoy creativity.

Creativity, defined by the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus, is the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas. By definition, the use of generative AI discourages the brain from engaging with thoughts creatively. ChatGPT, character bots, and other generative AI products have to be trained on already existing text. In order to produce something “usable,” LLMs analyzes patterns within text to organize information into what the computer has been trained to identify as “desirable” outputs. These outputs are not always accurate due to the fact that computers don’t “think” the way that human brains do. They don’t create. They take the most common and refined data points and combine them according to predetermined templates to assemble a product. In the case of chat bots that are fed writing samples from authors, the product is not original - it’s a mishmash of the writings that were fed into the system.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is a therapy modality developed by Marsha M. Linehan based on the understanding that growth comes when we accept that we are doing our best and we can work to better ourselves further. Within this modality, a few core concepts are explored, but for this argument I want to focus on Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation. Mindfulness, put simply, is awareness of the information our senses are telling us about the present moment. Emotion regulation is our ability to identify, understand, validate, and control our reaction to the emotions that result from changes in our environment. One of the skills taught within emotion regulation is Building Mastery - putting forth effort into an activity or skill in order to experience the pleasure that comes with seeing the fruits of your labor. These are by no means the only mechanisms of growth or skill development, however, I believe that mindfulness, emotion regulation, and building mastery are a large part of the core of creativity. When someone uses generative AI to imitate fanfiction, roleplay, fanart, etc., the core experience of creative expression is undermined.

Creating engages the body. As a writer who uses pen and paper as well as word processors while drafting, I had to learn how my body best engages with my process. The ideal pen and paper, the fact that I need glasses to work on my computer, the height of the table all factor into how I create. I don’t use audio recordings or transcriptions because that’s not a skill I’ve cultivated, but other authors use those tools as a way to assist their creative process. I can’t speak with any authority to the experience of visual artists, but my understanding is that the feedback and feel of their physical tools, the programs they use, and many other factors are not just part of how they learned their craft, they are essential to their art.

Generative AI invites users to bypass mindfully engaging with the physical act of creating. Part of becoming a person who creates from the vision in one’s head is the physical act of practicing. How did I learn to write? By sitting down and making myself write, over and over, word after word. I had to learn the rhythms of my body, and to listen when pain tells me to stop. I do not consider myself a visual artist - I have not put in the hours to learn to consistently combine line and color and form to show the world the idea in my head.

But I could.

Learning a new skill is possible. But one must be able to regulate one’s unpleasant emotions to be able to get there. The emotion that gets in the way of most people starting their creative journey is anxiety. Instead of a focus on “fear,” I like to define this emotion as “unpleasant anticipation.” In Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown identifies anxiety as both a trait (a long term characteristic) and a state (a temporary condition). That is, we can be naturally predisposed to be impacted by anxiety, and experience unpleasant anticipation in response to an event. And the action drive associated with anxiety is to avoid the unpleasant stimulus.

Starting a new project, developing a new skill, and leaning into a creative endevor can inspire and cause people to react to anxiety. There is an unpleasant anticipation of things not turning out exactly correctly, of being judged negatively, of being unnoticed or even ignored. There is a lot less anxiety to be had in submitting a prompt to a machine than to look at a blank page and possibly make what could be a mistake. Unfortunately, the more something is avoided, the more anxiety is generated when it comes up again. Using generative AI doesn’t encourage starting a new project and learning a new skill - in fact, it makes the prospect more distressing to the mind, and encourages further avoidance of developing a personal creative process.

One of the best ways to reduce anxiety about a task, according to DBT, is for a person to do that task. Opposite action is a method of reducing the intensity of an emotion by going against its action urge. The action urge of anxiety is to avoid, and so opposite action encourages someone to approach the thing they are anxious about. This doesn’t mean that everyone who has anxiety about creating should make themselves write a 50k word fanfiction as their first project. But in order to reduce anxiety about dealing with a blank page, one must face and engage with a blank page. Even a single sentence fragment, two lines intersecting, an unintentional drop of ink means the page is no longer blank. If those are still difficult to approach a prompt, tutorial, or guided exercise can be used to reinforce the understanding that a blank page can be changed, slowly but surely by your own hand.

(As an aside, I would discourage the use of AI prompt generators - these often use prompts that were already created by a real person without credit. Prompt blogs and posts exist right here on tumblr, as well as imagines and headcannons that people often label “free to a good home.” These prompts can also often be specific to fandom, style, mood, etc., if you’re looking for something specific.)

In the current social media and content consumption culture, it’s easy to feel like the first attempt should be a perfect final product. But creating isn’t just about the final product. It’s about the process. Bo Burnam’s Inside is phenomenal, but I think the outtakes are just as important. We didn’t get That Funny Feeling and How the World Works and All Eyes on Me because Bo Burnham woke up and decided to write songs in the same day. We got them because he’s been been developing and honing his craft, as well as learning about himself as a person and artist, since he was a teenager. Building mastery in any skill takes time, and it’s often slow.

Slow is an important word, when it comes to creating. The fact that skill takes time to develop and a final piece of art takes time regardless of skill is it’s own source of anxiety. Compared to @sentientcave, who writes about 2k words per day, I’m very slow. And for all the time it takes me, my writing isn’t perfect - I find typos after posting and sometimes my phrasing is awkward. But my writing is better than it was, and my confidence is much higher. I can sit and write for longer and longer periods, my projects are more diverse, I’m sharing them with people, even before the final edits are done. And I only learned how to do this because I took the time to push through the discomfort of not being as fast or as skilled as I want to be in order to learn what works for me and what doesn’t.

Building mastery - getting better at a skill over time so that you can see your own progress - isn’t just about getting better. It’s about feeling better about your abilities. Confidence, excitement, and pride are important emotions to associate with our own actions. It teaches us that we are capable of making ourselves feel better by engaging with our creativity, a confidence that can be generalized to other activities.

Generative AI doesn’t encourage its users to try new things, to make mistakes, and to see what works. It doesn’t reward new accomplishments to encourage the building of new skills by connecting to old ones. The reward centers of the brain have nothing to respond to to associate with the action of the user. There is a short term input-reward pathway, but it’s only associated with using the AI prompter. It’s designed to encourage the user to come back over and over again, not develop the skill to think and create for themselves.

I don’t know that anyone will change their minds after reading this. It’s imperfect, and I’ve summarized concepts that can take months or years to learn. But I can say that I learned something from the process of writing it. I see some of the flaws, and I can see how my essay writing has changed over the years. This might have been faster to plug into AI as a prompt, but I can see how much more confidence I have in my own voice and opinions. And that’s not something chatGPT can ever replicate.

[artbyblastweave]

"Why does everyone hate the X-Men but love the Avengers and the Fantastic Four-" well, Ultimate Marvel had a pretty thematically coherent response to that question, namely that the Avengers (ultimates) are a CIA publicity stunt and the Fantastic Four are the superhuman equivalent of industrial runoff from a government backed think tank, while the X-Men are a self-directed clandestine militia-bordering-on-cult with cool-at-best relationships to the U.S. government (implicitly tolerated because the U.S. government considers them significantly more aimable than the Brotherhood of Mutants, who they nonetheless also do under-the-table deals with on the regular). However nobody likes Ultimate Marvel

[glitter-stained]

So in highschool we had a year with mandatory philosophy classes and I have to admit to a bit of cultural blindness because that was so important to my development of my worldview that I completely forgot philosophy isn't maths or language and has no reason to be mandatory everywhere. I say this because I had a hard shock coming in here and seeing people talk about how "it's evident and everybody knows that Bruce/Cass is right and we shouldn't be killing no matter what" -and to be clear, this isn't a criticism of Bruce or Cass or anybody who agrees with them, this is a completely understandable position that has been defended by plenty of people smarter than me over the years. (It's also not about Jason, because Jason is notoriously bad at behaving along his morals which is great in a character but bad for the debate). It's just that, there are also a whole bunch of people smarter than me who disagree and think killing a mass murderer is fine if it prevents millions of death.

The question is : are morals determined by rules that suffice themselves that actions are inherently right or wrong, or are morals determined by the intended consequence of the actions? (Deontology VS Consequentialism with the most famous subtype of consequentialism being utilitarianism). (I would like to add that there are other options and nuances here, it's a false dichotomy, but these positions are the most famous in the debate). I guess what surprised me is that the trolley dilemma is a famous meme, so I was like well if people are making jokes about the most famous debate in moral philosophy, that probably means they know what's going on with the debate.

Anyway, yes it's perfectly understandable to agree with the notion that murder is always morally condemnable but not everyone agrees with that idea. Just check out, uh, recent events.

I mean, maybe I'm understanding things wrong and people are saying this because they are so into deontology that they think it's evidently the superior option and anyone who likes utilitarianism or something else is dumb, but I also would rather assume people to be unaware than patronizing and mean so I don't prefer that hypothesis.

[monabee-draws]

Caitlyn's slow but inevitable decline into facism was painful to watch but it's Vi's tacit support of that that REALLY hurts me.

Cait was raised at the top of the hierarchy and it only took her being the one 'in danger' to flip from sympathetic to the undercity to desperately angry and wanting to return to the status quo where she and piltover are in power/control/oppress the weak 'for their own good.' I expected this to happen from the moment her rhetoric began to shift (us vs them, calling Zaunites animals, general dehumanisation.)

Vi knows that the issue is structural and the structure that's used to exercise violence against the oppressed is the enforcers, yet she still joined them anyway. It's excellent writing but the implications that has for her as a character who has been shown to have strong convictions and morals is so heartbreaking. It feels like her years in prison have eroded at the heroic spark in her to the point where she'll justify anything to return to the past. I keep asking myself how Vi could justify using The Grey as a weapon against the undercity, and her parotting what is probably Caitlyn's justification - that they used it to clear the streets and keep as many safe as possible - just rings so hollow. She felt like a lost soul just vaguely drifting through life in Act 1, and of course she did. She has no one left BUT Caitlyn. She has no place in the Undercity because it grew away from her. Her base of motivation as a kid was to fight for and protect the Lanes and now that the Lanes are gone who even is Violet anymore? If only she could rewind time and restore the uncomfortable uneven past.

Vi and Cait are actually the same person, the only difference is that Caitlyn has the power to enact her vision and Vi doesn't. I'm so sore.

[levis-poison-is-my-medicine]

I love the moral ambiguity of Attack on Titan. Just like in reality, the world isn’t simply divisible into black and white, good or evil. Two things which should be mutually exclusive can be true at once. It’s reflected in the characters, too: Reiner’s entire being cracked upon realizing this, unable to fully process this impossible truth. In a world in which the supposed hero ends up doing unspeakable things to save the people he cares about, who should we even root for? Eren and Reiner are two sides of the same coin. We could have just as well started out the story from Reiner’s point of view. In the end, it’s just a matter of perspective, a flip of the coin. Both of them started out believing that what they did was right and just, morally sound. Both of them found out the truth and continued anyway, fully knowing what they were doing. Both ended up broken by it, but in different ways, victims of the complex impossibility of this world, at once beautiful and cruel. A mirror image of our own.

[theidealistphilosophy]

The first duty of love is to listen.

Paul Tillich, Source Unlisted.

[empyreansentinel]

Going into the quote page and remembering Angel tells you she's an artificial intelligence for most of the story. Probably because Jack told her to. And thinking Damn she has been getting dehumanized for years even when people do listen to her because they just assume they're talking to a machine, in a universe that already devalues robots despite their sentience. Aigh. Augh.a ugh

ITS SO...esp with the way roland talks about her when theyre planning out how to get to the bunker, its so depersonalizing. and i understand why he would be that way because he’s spent the last five years thinking shes a machine, and now a machine with malicious intent, but :(

literally every single named ai in the series shows human levels of sentience and emotional capability but they are clearly seen as having less autonomy. claptrap ofc is the most obvious answer but it also extends to felicity and balex ect. but by being forced to take the role of an ai angel also experiences that same treatment even from people she has known since she was a child. and its just. AUGH. a million deaths upon me.

[ao3cassandraic]

As far as they can

At the end of the Job minisode, Crowley inaugurates Their Side by proclaiming Aziraphale "an angel who goes along with Heaven... as far as he can," parallel to his own stated relationship with Hell.

Only it... doesn't actually work that way. Their exactlies are different exactlies.

Crowley defies and lies to Hell as often as he thinks he can get away with it. He never disabuses Downstairs of their misconceptions about his contributions to human atrocities. He cheerfully lies in his reports Downstairs, something Aziraphale briefly turns on his Baritone of Sarcastic Disapproval about in s1. Crowley even turns evil homeopathic in the latter part of the 20th century, likely in hopes that it will look good to head office while accomplishing essentially nothing. (This, of course, is another way he Crowleys himself, both with the London phone system and the M25.) After Eden, Crowley's default given an assignment from Hell is to see how he can subvert it.

Aziraphale, on the other hand, defies Her and Heaven as little as he possibly can. Sometimes, as with his sword giveaway, his compassion gets the better of his anxiety. Sometimes, as with Job's children in the destruction of the villa, he can try to stay within the letter of the law by leaving the defiance to Crowley.

His default, however, is "'m 'nangel. I can't dis- diso -- not do what 'm told." This comes out most often as respect for the Great/Divine Plan, which to him is sacrosanct. He sounds quite sincere in s1 when he says "Even if I wanted to help I couldn’t. I can’t interfere with the Divine Plan."

Aziraphale quite frequently Good Angels along by parroting Heaven's party line, whether it's "it'll all be rather lovely" or "I am good, you (I'm afraid) are evil" or droning on about evil containing the seeds of its own destruction, or condemning Elspeth's graverobbing as "wicked" (a stance he offers absolutely no reasoned support for, no logic, no "but She said," not a word -- that's very Heaven; most of Heaven's angels have the approximate brainpower of paramecia). Maestro Michael Sheen even has a particular voice cadence -- I think of it as Sententious Voice -- he uses when Aziraphale is thoughtlessly party-lining.

When the angel's conscience wars with his sense of Heaven's orthodoxy but (and this is an important but) he can't feasibly resist whatever's wrong, he offers strengthless party-line justifications he clearly doesn't agree with (as with the "rain bow" in Mesopotamia) or resorts to a Nuremberg defense: "I'm not consulted on policy decisions, Crowley!" Once or twice, he's even vocally aware of Heavenly hypocrisy: "Unless… [guns]'re in the right hands, where they give weight to a moral argument… I think." This isn't Sententious Voice. It's I-can't-disobey-and-I-hate-that voice.

But at base, the angel prefers obedience (not least because it's vastly safer), and he'd rather have someone else do his moral reasoning for him. Honestly? Pretty relatable. I know lots of people like this -- hell's bells, I've been this person, though I grew out of it somewhat -- and I daresay you do too. Moral reasoning is hard and often lonely (since it can be read as self-righteousness or even hypocrisy) and acting as it dictates can hurt. Nobody would need ethics codes if The Right Thing was also invariably The Convenient Thing.

Many GO fans find these Aziraphalean traits frustrating! Especially his repeated returns to parroting Heaven orthodoxy! Sometimes I do too! (Not least because I'm rather protective of my own integrity, and it's cost me quite a few times. I'm well-known in professional circles for picking up a rhetorical spear and tilting at the nearest iniquitous windmill. I often lose, but I sure do keep tilting. Every once in a blue moon I actually win one.)

The key, I think, to giving our angel a little grace on this (beyond honoring the gentle compassion that is pretty basic to his character) is noticing how often he can be induced to abandon an unconsidered Heavenish default stance. As irritating as his default is, and as consistently as he returns to it, it's not really that hard to talk him out of it. Crowley, of course, is tremendously good at knocking Aziraphale away from his default -- he's had to be. But Aziraphale even manages to talk himself away from his default once, in the form of the Ineffable Plan hairsplitting at the airbase!

I think the character-relevant point of the Resurrectionist minisode is making this breaking-the-Heavenish-default dynamic as clear as the contents of the pickled-herring barrel aren't. "That's lunatic!" Crowley exclaims, when Aziraphale Sententious Voicedly parrots Heaven's garbage about poverty providing extra opportunities for goodness. Aziraphale isn't quite ready to let go yet, replying "It's ineffable."

But Dalrymple (who, I think, parallels Heaven, perhaps even the Metatron -- there could be something decent there, but it's buried too deep under scorn and clueless privilege for any graverobber-of-souls to dig it out) manages to break Aziraphale's orthodoxy by explaining the child's tumor.

Once released from his orthodoxy, Aziraphale can't be trusted to handle moral reasoning well; his moral-reasoning ability is not-uncommonly (though not always) portrayed as vitiated. When he gives Elspeth the go-ahead to dig up more bodies, his excuses are just as vacuous as they were when he was convinced of her wickedness. He knows that he's crossed Heaven's line, too, and just as at Eden it's worrying him. That's why he has to talk to Crowley to nerve himself up to help Wee Morag... only he spends too much time talking, and it's too late.

But Crowley can then talk him into bankrolling Elspeth toward a better life. Aziraphale doesn't even put up any fight, both because he's compassionate and because Crowley is temporarily taking the place of Heaven (he's even Heaven-sized and staring down at them!) as the angel's moral compass.

S1 has an even worse example of Aziraphale's moral wavering, actually. Crowley yells "Shoot him, Aziraphale!" and Aziraphale sure does try to murder Adam. Again, he's adopting his morals from the nearest (and loudest) convenient source. Madame Tracy, thankfully, has enough of a moral backbone to save our angel from himself and Crowley.

(With my ersatz-ethicist hat on: this is a fight between utilitarianism and deontology. Crowley is the utilitarian, which is actually a bit of a departure for him, but he's admittedly desperate. Madame Tracy is the deontologist: One Doesn't Kill Children. Aziraphale is caught in the middle.)

I wouldn't be surprised if part of the reason we start s3 with Aziraphale and Crowley separated is so that Aziraphale finally has to do his own moral reasoning, without Crowley's nudges. I don't think it'll be easy for him. It will absolutely be lonely. And it may well hurt.

But I will watch for it, because it's how he will become his own angel, independent of Heaven and even of Crowley. And he must do that.

[anghraine]

i just saw someone say that faramir is infuriating because he's self-aggrandizing in claiming that he won't act in any way that doesn't befit his status, and on one hand - i understand the root of it? he does have a courteous, almost formal style of talking. he does openly claim that he would not take this mysterious power (before he knew about the ring) if it was on the highway. he agrees to denethor's characterization that he wants to appear noble like a king of old.

but on the other hand i'm straining at the bit to defend my baby because - infuriating?? when he lives up to the words he is saying?? when the text shows over and over that he's loved by his people, that he genuinely tries to live by those standards (and seems to succeed) - him not killing even animals unnecessarily, him riding back for his men. even his proclaimed dream to see gondor's tree bloom and peace restored, is supported by him seemingly making that transition from steward to king as smooth as possible?

maybe it's because i instantly liked him so much. it just caught me so off guard because this particular criticism never ever crossed my mind. so funny how people will interpret the same thing differently. to some internet user out there, his words are self-aggrandizing. to me, his words are straightfoward and supported by actions - dreamboat central.

Hi, anon! I'm pretty much with you on this one. I've seen the occasional post like that, and I can understand finding his style grating (though I personally love it) or disliking the general baggage associated with Tolkien's handling of Númenóreanness (there's a considerable degree of classism and racism built in to the presentation of Elves and peredhil/Númenóreans in LOTR in particular, while later texts like "The Mariner's Wife" are relatively more nuanced).

But the idea that Faramir is essentially just performing the appearance of high virtue as a sort of imitation of Númenórean cultural values without actually possessing those values or the virtues of the best of them just seems a profound misinterpretation to me. He has flaws, but he's not a hypocrite and he does not fail to live up to his presentation of himself at any point.

He's exactly what he appears to be, a stern and intelligent young man out of step with the current trends of his culture, who still cares deeply about his people and their allies. He's potentially highly dangerous in the way of Denethor and Aragorn, and like them, his personality is hard and unbending when it comes down to it, but he's also gentler than either—the combination of his willingness to act on the threat he represents if necessary and ethically justifiable, with a deep compassion and sympathy for others (even animals), is distinct and really interesting.

I think there's a very important distinction between Faramir performing virtue and gentleness and putting on the persona of a great Númenórean lord in times of peace, and Faramir presenting himself as he truly is and then suiting actions to words, despite the fundamental antipathy between his temperamental inclinations and the circumstances he's been placed in.

[feverdreamsandlucidnightmares]

I keep thinking about moral vs ethical authorities and actions in the Trigun animes. I hope this ramble about it makes sense.

I think most of us will agree that morality is perfectly capable of secular development and is unbeholden to religion in general, though religions can certainly serve as a moral authority and inform specifics. But they are not, or at least not the only, source of morals.

And while ethics and morals are often used as synonyms, they do actually have different meanings. The short version is that ethics are the rules and standards of a social system/culture/etc and morals determine what a person individually thinks is wrong or right. Often, people’s morals and ethics follow the same principles and authorities. They don’t have to, though.

Functionally, let’s say that ethical choices are social goods, and thus social authorities are the ethical authorities within a given society or culture. Much like laws and power structures are meant to protect and benefit the people they govern, a social or common good is something that benefits the largest number of people within a society. In Trigun, these authorities include the Bernardelli Insurance Society (in a limited capacity), the JuLai/July military police, the Eye of Michael, and (notably, but discretely) Millions Knives.

There’s plenty of speculation on and textual implication within Trigun Stampede that Knives and Conrad having their hands in a lot of JuLai’s governance and polices. This is where the moral value of the ethical systems in place becomes questionable.

There are a lot of implications to unpack within an ethical system potentially developed and controlled by a genocidal semi-immortal being using it as a shadow government. The abridged, most important point is that there is no reason for Knives to be a part of a system that allows humans to flourish, build community, and grow. There is every reason for him to convince/allow everyone to think that he is.

A social good is one with the support of those in authority. It has no innate moral value. Laws and orders from unjust governments do not absolve anyone of the weight of their actions. But they determine who is punished.

So, the Eye. The church of No Man’s Land. A social authority for people in Hopeland, at least to some extent. Enough so that the orphanage cannot stop the Eye from taking its children. And Windmill Village to a much larger extent. So much so that its people volunteer their children as sacrifices. And it’s implied to have a much wider reach than just that. The Eye of Michael is a cult that preys upon the planet’s most desperate. Rollo - sick and poor and unlucky. Blessed. Made new, made whole (everything down to his emotions tampered with). Monev the Gale. Wolfwood and Livio - orphans and poor. Wolfwood, the handpicked Child of Blessing. The perfect candidate to be a child soldier. Nicholas the Punisher. Livio, the volunteer. The good and faithful brother follower. Livio the Double Fang. The other Gung-Ho-Guns. Dominique the Cyclops, Midvalley the Hornfreak, Rai-Dei the Blade, E. G. Mine, Leonof the Puppet-Master, Hoppered the Gauntlet, Caine the Longshot — volunteers? Desperate people doing desperate things? Or violent people playing at divine intervention? Social authorities in their own right, in the sense that they can do what they want without repercussions from the masses. They answer to Legato, to Knives, not to the traditional governments of No Man’s Land.

And Legato has been desperate. He would kill almost anyone before suffering that again. He would die to escape it, too. Life holds so little meaning to him. The end is near and he is both hierophant and harbinger. He lays no claim to justice, only ruin, but it’s all in Knives’ name.

Knives, who plays god. Who puts a bounty on his brother’s head to drive him back to him. All that power, he gets to determine what is wrong or right and people can either agree or die. It’s easy to see where his morals fail, but there isn’t a higher power to enact justice. So, he has the authority, what goods does he perform with it?

It’s also important to note that Zazie does not perform moral or social goods. Zazie serves themself, for their own betterment. And this is not a moral failing because applying human morals to a multi-consciousness conglomerated hivemind controlled collective of bugs can’t make sense. Zazie is all of the wams on No Man’s Land. All of their collective experiences in the species’ existence. All of their lives, all of their loss. It’s all Zazie. And Zazie believes that the needs of the many (themself in all their facets) outweigh the needs of the interlocutor few (humanity, Plants). Tentatively willing to coexist and adapt, unwilling to accept their own destruction. Allies or enemies. They work with Knives until it no longer benefits them. Very utilitarian.

Nonetheless, the Eye of Michael and its chosen crusaders, its sychophants, its priests are a definitive social and tentative moral authority within No Man’s Land. So, who can tell Conrad that he is performing anything other than a social good by doing his experiments? He claims he’s trying to save humanity and the only authority over him wants humanity dead. A flawed system. The Gung-Ho-Guns perform social goods by killing whoever they are sent to exterminate. This, of course, includes Vash without regard to whoever might be caught in the crossfire. Vash, who unwittingly takes the blame for his brother over and over. Vash, who has a bounty placed on his head by his brother and his misguided puppet government. Vash, who is being mocked and chided, his bounty the same as the cost of a new Plant. Vash, the Humanoid Typhoon, legally an act of God, the first “human” natural disaster. Destruction in his wake.

Wolfwood performs a social good by betraying Vash. He has the authority to justify his actions through his ordainment.

And Wolfwood performs a moral good by saving Meryl. It’s the first unilaterally moral good he performs in Trigun Stampede. That’s important. The thing about Wolfwood is that he knows the difference between moral and social goods. He knows whatever values he’d like to act on don’t align with his orders, but there’s always other lives at stake. Wolfwood doesn’t kill because he’s particularly bloodthirsty. He’s pragmatic. Other people have to die to keep the orphanage safe. An unfortunate, but necessary cost that he’s willing to pay. Until he isn’t anymore. Monsters don’t need morals, but if Vash can afford them maybe he can, too.

And normal, everyday people perform social goods, too, by trying to stop bank robbers and bandits and the Nebraska Family. And Vash. Those are ethical decisions, stopping criminals threatening your home is ethical. You just have to remember who determines who the criminals are and why.

Your moral and ethical authorities, ideally, should be in alignment. This is not a utopia, so they aren’t. And these random people living on the planet he forced them onto are continuously subjected to the so-called social good of Knives enacting his divine plan in order to force Vash’s hand. They are a necessary sacrifice for his greater good. The greater good that is Knives’ Eden, that is a world remade in his image. Vash remade in his image.

[artbyblastweave]

Monstress is a comic I like for many many reasons, but one of those reasons is in the fourth or fifth volume, when a couple of protagonist-adjacent characters are wandering through a village, and the ignorant villagers try to do the whole anti-mutant-lynch-mob-burn-the-witch routine, and the protagonists are like, guys, we have magic powers and extensive combat experience, if you attack us, we're gonna kill the living shit out of all of you, and then the ignorant villagers attack them anyway. And they go, alright, we've done due diligence on this one, and then they kill the living shit out of all the ignorant villagers. Cannot count the number of times I've encountered beats like that over the years where I was like, Jesus, just kill these ignorant villagers