Bob Hayes Online

No, no, no, no, a thousand times, NO.

If my fellow citizens want to burden themselves with some horrific tax-and-spend nightmare of socialized medicine, they may. I’ll oppose it, but there’s a right to make stupid choices.

But I will not be coerced into buying an insurance product, whether public or private, to satisfy some bureaucrat’s desire that my spending choices reflect the ones s/he thinks I should make.

Hell, no.

If this atrocity becomes law, I will stand on the steps of the US Capitol and demand to be arrested for my crime of refusing to pay. We are not children subject to the whims of a babysitter, however benevolent. We are free Americans. I will choose the course of my own life, and I do not yield that power to any man or any state.

They can have my taxes but they cannot have my conscience or my choices. Those are mine, now and forever.

End of discussion.

What do you call it when someone attributes a common human failing – one that is universal or nearly so – to a particular group? I’m not thinking specifically of stereotypes (“Mexicans are lazy”, “white people are uptight”, “guys named Robert Hayes are amazingly handsome and witty”) which may or may not be based on observed behavior. Rather, I’m looking for something a bit more conceptually general – “Conservatives are hypocrites about their moral claims” or “Liberal politicians are dishonest and corrupt” – where the objective neutral observer notes gently that most EVERYBODY is a hypocrite about their moral claims and that pretty much all politicians are dishonest and corrupt. You could call it the “my side is full of saints and the other side is full of evil fallacy” but that is a bit wordy.

Name that fallacy and you’ll receive a plastic rocket and a pony. I swear. I’m a conservative, and we always keep our promises, unlike those lying liberals.

I have been a long-time reader and occasional commenter over at Hugo Schwyzer’s blog. Although I disagree with much of Hugo’s writing and belief system, I’ve found his work to be challenging to me as a Christian and as a man. Less nobly, I’ve been amused at his moralistic self-contradictions; just as one example, like many people with his type of uber-Green views, Hugo flies all over the world with nary a twinge of conscience, completely blind to how discrediting his behavior is to his ideals. (But he buys carbon credits, so that makes it all right. Eye-roll.)

Hugo embraces the animal rights movement and is personally a vegan – a welcome sign of consistency, I suppose, since one might expect him to advocate for animal rights while eating meat constantly and buying “vegetable credits”. However, his elevation of the moral status of animals has gone past the point of reason. It is arguable that research on vole behavior and brain chemistry (involving the killing of the animals) might not be justifiable; certainly, it is a reasonable position to be opposed to such research. (Although Amanda Marcotte, of all people, chimes in with a comment that points out why such research is valuable.)

In the comments, though, Hugo goes on to make a point that is simply, incontrovertibly, around-the-bend moonshine batshit insane. Regarding his father, who died a few years ago, Hugo writes:

I would not sacrifice the life of a single vole or monkey or rat so that my father could have lived. And I loved that man with all my heart — but I know, in the final analysis, that all living and sentient, pain and joy-feeling creatures are equally valuable.

I have to say that, with sympathy to Hugo’s hypothetical moral dilemma, I don’t know a meaningful definition of “love” which would prioritize a vole’s life over a person’s. “I love you, but not enough to kill this little hairy rat to save your life.” Yeah, great, thanks. There’s probably a Hallmark card for that.

But it’s the closing phrase that is truly mad. All sentient life is equally valuable? A dog is a pig is a rat is a baby? Two ferrets trump one human infant? This is Singer-esque, and it’s morally insane. Valuing life is a good thing. Doing so in a hyper-egalitarian, “everything is equal” fashion, is nuts. Hugo is aware, not that his position is crazy, but that his advocacy for it is turning people off; he’s announced a moratorium on animal rights blogging for the rest of the year. Hopefully in that time of reflection he will come to a more moderate place.

Is it acceptable for Christian Scientists (for example) to deny their children life-giving medications?

I think it is.  We don’t force Amish people to have telephones to summon LifeFlight helicopters, and people die as a result of that, including children.  Is that reasonable of the Amish?

I would argue it is.  The Amish have decided to live a certain way, a way that happens to foreclose using certain kinds of technology.  That way of life is different than the choices that other people would make.  However, our freedom to choose is predicated on extending that right to other people.  Christian Scientists have also decided to live in a certain way, a way that forecloses certain other kinds of technology.

A reasonable interlocutor might ask, “what if you have a religion that prescribes some objectionable behavior, like beating your child with ropes every day?”  Should the government ban that kind of thing?  I think it should.

Prohibiting certain actions may infringe on people’s rights, which is sometimes necessary for the state to do.  It is a big leap from prohibiting negative actions to compelling positive ones.  Prohibiting actions is authoritarianism; compelling actions is totalitarianism.  I prefer not to have either, but I recognize that authoritarianism is sometimes required of the state.  Military defense and civil order are not maintained by state actors making polite requests.

I think part of the intellectual discomfort many of us have with allowing people the freedom to choose their own actions when we know those actions will have bad consequences comes from the visible and discrete nature of the suffering.  If a Christian Scientists denies her son penicillin and he dies, we see that right away.  We say “this act led to this death; I object!”

But, for example, millions of parents underemphasize the importance of good nutrition to their children, and as a result, there are tens or even hundreds of thousands of premature deaths later in life.  People are acting irresponsibly and there is a terrible toll, but it isn’t obviously the result of the irresponsibility; it’s distant in time and space.  We might get irked when you see a mother giving her baby Froot Loops instead of fruit, but we don’t say “she should be compelled to act the way I think sensible and proper!”

Indeed, if George Bush were to come out and say that the Federal government was planning to compel all parents to give their children fresh fruit each day, and teach them a certain set of defensive driving techniques, and make them brush their teeth twice daily, and exercise for thirty minutes every afternoon, I imagine that many people who object to Christian Scientists’ medical beliefs would think it the biggest fascist plot since Iran-Contra.

And yet, the sufferering and death caused by bad parenting in the areas of nutrition, safety, hygiene and exercise is at least a thousandfold greater than the suffering and death caused by the occasional religious nut who doesn’t approve of sulfa drugs.  It’s just that the religious nut is a little more obvious and a little more direct in their bad effect.

Freedom is not a costless good.  Letting people run their own lives means that quite often they will do a bad job of it.  That’s something that libertarians, and liberal societies in general, just have to accept as part of the cost of doing business.

Following up a comment on Alas:

This is a draft of an alternative alignment system for roleplaying games such as D&D. It is written with D&D in mind, but should in principle be adaptable to any roleplaying system that deals with moral behavior.

Introduction

In D&D, alignment is defined by a person or institution’s position on two axes, law vs. chaos and good vs. evil. As each duality has a neutral point which is established as a node on the divide, there are three times three = nine possible alignments. A person might be neutral good, or lawful evil, or chaotic neutral. This provides instant conflict in the world and great justifications for adventures (“as servants of good, it is our duty to enter the cave and find the wicked dragon that has been eating our livestock and children”) and on the whole has been relatively satisfactory for many gamers. Others, however, have wished for greater nuance in the possibilities of moral behavior. The lawful good paladin can see no way to free the trapped orphans from death other than by using a chaotic method; he chooses the good rather than the law, and violates part of his code to appease another. This produces fantastic dramatic tension in fiction, but in roleplaying it’s kind of a pain. Most of us want to have fun being our character, not undergo tremendous angst. For angst, we have life.

There have been attempts at creating alternative alignment systems before, most in home-brewed systems of the best style. Many of these have been very funny; one of my college chums half-invented a system based on narrow divisions in a particular era of German philosophy. (“OK, as a Schopenhaurian Materialist, I have immunity to that spell effect…”). I won’t promise funny for this one.

The Basic Premise

Characters’ moral systems are defined by their placement along five axes of measurement. The five axes are protection, fairness, solidarity, authority and purity. (I am stealing most of these labels, and the general concept for this system, from an article in some liberal rag.)

A character’s score along each axis ranges from 0 to 5. 0 reflects a complete absence of the axis trait. A 5 means the trait is extremely present in the character. The axis traits are influenced by (and influence) a character’s actions, thoughts, and feelings, with an emphasis on feelings. (An evil overlord with a 0 protection score may nonetheless buy healing potions for his troops. He’s not doing it because he likes them or because he feels he owes them a chance in the upcoming battle, but because giving them the potions will increase his chances of winning the battle, and thus more power for himself.)

The Traits

Protection – The measure of protection and safety the character feels he owes to the world, to strangers in general, and to his friends in particular.

Fairness – The degree to which the character feels she is obliged to show integrity in her dealings with others, and that society should do the same.

Solidarity – The measure of a character’s feeling of membership in a group larger than himself, or perhaps multiple such groups, extending even to favorable feelings for and treatment of fellow members of that group, on the grounds of their shared membership.

Authority – How much importance the character places on acceptance of duly legitimate authority, and on the physical environment of their community being secure from threat and harm.

Purity – The devotion of a character to ideals of proper behavior, virtue, and on a society that reflects those values.

Interpretation

Each axis characteristic is somewhat culture-dependent for each character. For example, an elf who comes from a community where public nakedness is unremarkable might have a Purity score of 4 and be undisturbed by seeing someone unclothed; a dwarf from a rural outpost with strict nudity taboos might have a Purity score of 2 and be somewhat disturbed. The form of Authority, and its duties in regard to public safety, can range from a traditional kingdom to a feudal republic to a tribal autarky run by a religious priesthood – it’s the attitude that is measured by the statistic, not the specific form.

A score of 0 on an axis represents a complete absence of the characteristic. The character with an Authority of 0 is an absolute anarchist at heart. A character with a Purity of 0 has no interest whatsoever in the social-moral norms of the people surrounding him and does as he pleases.

A score of 1 on an axis represents the barest existence of the characteristic in an individual. A character with a Solidarity of 1 dimly realizes that he is part of his tribe, and that if the glacier destroys the village, that includes him. A character with a Fairness of 1 will not steal from you, while you’re looking, if you look like he couldn’t get away with it or outrun you.

A score of 2 on an axis represents an acceptance of the characteristic as a norm. A character with a Protection of 2 would not harm a child of her own species under any normal circumstance. A character with an Authority of 2 tells the watch if he sees a suspicious band of gnolls in the hills outside of town.

A score of 3 on an axis represents an emphasis on the characteristic in the person. A character with a Solidarity of 3 always makes sure that any new members of his species that arrive in his village get a good meal and a warning of the dangerous parts of town. A character with a Fairness of 3 walks four miles back to town when she realizes the innkeeper has undercharged her by two gold pieces.

A score of 4 on an axis represents a very strong part of the character’s persona. A character with a Purity of 4 would not dream of breaking a norm of sexual behavior in his community. A character with an Authority of 4 organized the gnoll watch patrol and personally lights the warning beacons every night.

A score of 5 on an axis is the absolute maximum strength possible for a character trait. A character with a Fairness of 5 would not tell a lie to save her own life. A character with a Protection of 5 is a paladin of steadfast virtue and service – whether that is his character class or not.

Applicability

Like the two-axis system, this five-axis system can be used as a quick guide to an NPC’s behavior. The system can also be used by a PC to help figure out “what Olaf would do in this situation”, especially in cases where their own personal values are very different.

If a decision is to be made or an attitude needs to be determined, the DM decides which characteristics are most applicable to the situation. Sometimes, relevant characteristics self-veto: if a characteristic applies equally well to each possible choice in a situation, that stat drops out of contention since it cannot resolve the conflict. The highest relevant score controls.

For example, a paladin (one with actual paladin levels) must choose between saving the life of a small commoner child being swept away by a river, or saving a wealthy noble maiden about to be killed by an orc. The paladin’s Protection score of 5 is vetoed, as it is equally strong for either option. The DM decides that the most relevant other stats are Solidarity and Purity (she does this without considering what the paladin’s scores are; she is concerned only with what is relevant to the situation.) The paladin’s Solidarity is 4 and his Purity is only 3 (naughty, by paladin standards; he only actually follows the rules, instead of living them), so Solidarity controls. The paladin was born poor, and so decides to save the commoner child (and then come back and try to rescue or avenge the maiden). If the paladin had been of noble birth himself, he would have chosen the maiden.

Note that the DM does the job of applying and interpreting up to the point of deciding on the relevant stats; after that, when applied to PCs, the interpretation becomes the player’s. The paladin might have decided that his Solidarity score applied more to gender than to class, and so rescue the (male) commoner child, or that he felt more commonality with the social role of the nobility now that he was a powerful 10th level paladin and so chose the maiden despite his own humble origin. (The DM should enforce consistency; a character can’t decide that they’ve always believed in class solidarity after ten years of game time spent robbing their neighbors.) The system (like the old two-axis system) helps the DM or the player simplify the decision and find out what’s most relevant to it; the actual decision remains, as always, in the hands of the player controlling the character.

Good vs. Evil

How does this work in relation to the old system? That is, are recognizable alignment groups still useful? It maps pretty well, I think. As a general principle, the more evil and chaotic a monster or character is, the lower their stat total across the five axes. The maximum stats possible are straight-5s (and that would be a person who would be awfully hard to get along with on a Saturday), totaling 25. Here are some examples of the various old-system alignment creatures.

The Good…

Chaotic Good – Unicorn

Protection 4, Fairness 2, Solidarity 3, Authority 1, Purity 5

Neutral Good – Sprite

Protection 3, Fairness 3, Solidarity 3, Authority 3, Purity 3

Lawful Good – Guardian Naga

Protection 4, Fairness 3, Solidarity 4, Authority 4, Purity 3

…The Bad…

Chaotic Evil – Orc

Protection 0, Fairness 1, Solidarity 2, Authority 3, Purity 0.

Neutral Evil – Goblin

Protection 1, Fairness 2, Solidarity 2, Authority 3, Purity 1.

Lawful Evil – Devil

Protection 0, Fairness 2, Solidarity 3, Authority 4 or 5, Purity 0.

…And The Neutral

Chaotic Neutral – Wood Elf

Protection 2, Fairness 2, Solidarity 5, Authority 1, Purity 1.

True Neutral – Doppelganger

Protection 2, Fairness 1, Solidarity 4, Authority 2, Purity 1.

Lawful Neutral – Deep Dwarf

Protection 3, Fairness 2, Solidarity 5, Authority 3, Purity 4.

Correlations I notice in guesstimating stats for various races:

Neutral races tend to be high-solidarity

Lawful races tend to be prudes unless they’re really evil.

If someone has less than eight to ten points, they’re probably fairly evil. Some species have ten points, because they have a Solidarity of 5 and an Authority of 5, and 0s in everything else. Those are not generally good neighbors. Small differences in points (like SAT scores) don’t indicate much; a person can have 22 points in the stats and be a bully and a jerk who has high standards, while another can have 19 and be a genuinely nice person who’s trying their best. Differences of more than ten points probably do reflect a pretty big divide in terms of moral responsibility.

Changing Alignment

If you find a character regularly overriding the decisions that the alignment system is guiding her too, it is clear that the character’s scores are probably not correct. Alignment stats, unlike regular stats, are freely changeable. DMs should impose XP penalties on players who change alignments opportunistically or too frequently; for most players this should not be a problem, as adjustments will be reasonable. (“I thought my wizard was going to be a big power-seeker in the city, but you know, I’m finding she really just wants to crusade for justice for the poor. My Protection score should be 3 instead of 1, and my Authority score should be a point lower.” versus “If my stupid Purity score is 4, it’s going to be hard for me to justify engineering a coup by seducing the wife of the king. I want it to be 0, at least until I finish my betrayal of my values and need to be respectable again.”)

Using This With D&D

In D&D, not only creatures have alignment – so do many spells, magical items, and even governments. Although the powerful and attractive people at Wizards of the Coast ought to license this alignment system and pay me huge sums of money, they haven’t done that yet. So if you use this system, you’ll need to do one of two things:

1) Use the systems in tandem, and have each character pick a conventional alignment for use within the D&D ruleset. Although it sounds awkward, there’s no reason this wouldn’t work. There are a million political opinions in the US, versus only 7,776 alignment combinations; we get by with two big and two or three little parties. Characters can be neutral good, and have a more nuanced five-axis alignment as well.

2) Translate the conventional alignments into the new system, one by one or with a template (see below). For ordinary objects or NPCs who are relatively unimportant, you can use the following quick approximations:

Chaotic Evil – Protection 0, Fairness 0, Solidarity 2, Authority 2, Purity 0

Neutral Evil – Protection 0, Fairness 1, Solidarity 3, Authority 3, Purity 0

Lawful Evil – Protection 0, Fairness 2, Solidarity 3, Authority 4, Purity 0

Chaotic Neutral – Protection 1, Fairness 2, Solidarity 2, Authority 0, Purity 1

True Neutral – Protection 1, Fairness 3, Solidarity 3, Authority 2, Purity 1

Lawful Neutral – Protection 2, Fairness 3, Solidarity 3, Authority 4, Purity 2

Chaotic Good – Protection 4, Fairness 3, Solidarity 2, Authority 0, Purity 2

Neutral Good – Protection 4, Fairness 3, Solidarity 3, Authority 2, Purity 3

Lawful Good – Protection 4, Fairness 4, Solidarity 3, Authority 4, Purity 4

There will be many special cases, and DMs will have to rule on them. One specific suggestion: for paladins, who are constrained against associating with people of loose characters, I would say that the character is barred from associating with anyone who has less than 5 + the paladin’s level points fewer than the paladin. A 3rd level paladin with 20 points cannot associate with someone with 11 or fewer. DMs should adjust this for their own campaigns.

Conclusion

This is a first draft and as such I am sure I have missed contradictions or left out interpretations that should be clarified. If you find any such, please feel free to let me know, by registering here and commenting.