Project Darkside: or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Black Mage

So, a few moons back, I'm playing Assassin's Creed, and thinking about good and evil, in games, like you do. Particularly in D&D, where the "payoff" for good or evil is so nebulous. More to the point, in a polytheistic universe with no dominance of celestial force in favor of good, what is evil? The best I could parse out was a general distinction between altruism (good) and selfishness (evil). This is a simple binary, by now intuitive to most people, backed up by common sense, personal experience, and not reading Ayn Rand.

This got me thinking about evolutionary psychology. (The group/self binary, not Ayn Rand.) I don't know what to make of evo psych as a science or social science; only the sexiest bits filter out into the mainstream press, and it's anyone's guess what the real research looks like at any given time. The stuff that's well-publicized, at least, tends to be a heady mixture of racism, sexism, and bullshit, and it's been argued that the field basically boils down to explaining modern behaviors (of which there exists little reliable evidence) by noting procedural similarities with ancient behaviors (of which there exists even less reliable evidence). Most of what you read about evo psych will fail to even accomplish the first of those two--if you want to explain why blonde hair is considered desirable by a significant majority of the species, for example, you first have to establish that it's actually true. (In case you were wondering, it turns out that it's because blonde women are more flammable than normal, non-blonde women, which makes them a valuable source of warmth in the cold Bronze Age winters.) David Livingstone Smith's Why We Lie was quite interesting and informative, and seemed to fall prey to precisely none of the huge methodological problems demonstrated in the shit you see in the Emm Ess Emm, so maybe the field's chock full of talented, sensible people who are drowned out by a couple of fame-whoring shitheads. Who knows.

That said, evo psych--not just people who claim to work in the field, but people discussing "natural" morality in general--tends to asume that selfishness is the default, and that works fine for reciprocal altruism. (In a shout-out to my demon-hunting brother, it is truly wonderful that our textbook example for altruistic behavior is derived from vampire bats.) But what about "pure" altruism, in which no obvious survival benefit presents itself? One current answer is that "pure" altruism is basically a glitch; early human societies may have presented few opportunities for altruism that didn't provide a likely survival benefit, so our genes don't account for the possibility. Ok, makes sense enough. Just because a behavior is widespread/universal doesn't mean it's necessarily adaptive, but could also be a spandrel or a malfunctioning of an adaptive behavior due to a change in context.

But really, do those circumstances exist even now? The theory above is meant to explain the Mother Theresas of the world--fuck off, secular contrarians, you know what I mean--but can we say conclusively that she did not benefit from her work? Because we sure as hell did. Missionary and humanitarian work within Christianity have historically yielded huge benefits for Christian cultures, establishing a cultural beachhead in what might otherwise have been hostile lands; while we're at it, poverty in general is a persistent security risk to pretty much everyone. But still, the benefit to the individual seems negligible, even if the benefit to the group--nation, in poli-sci terms, or just a general sense of "people around you"--is significant. Egoism generally assumes that altruism can only be "rational" when its benefit is fairly direct, fairly certain, and can reliably be calculated rationally. ("Rational" is a word I'll be using, and misusing, quite a bit. Bear with me, and try to tolerate some bendy definitions. Have a drink first, if that helps. I'll wait here.)

(Back? Ok.)

So we have the libido--which just means "drives" in early psychological usage, not specifically sex, although sex is certainly one of the strongest--which provides for selfishness, which encompasses reciprocal altruism. We also have this other, nebulous "moral feeling" that sometimes directs some of us to varying degrees of less-reciprocal altruism. (Or maybe we don't, but lots of philosophers think we do, and hey, sake of argument.) It's been suggested that this second urge is social, and not rational (assuming, of course, that they can be separated), but there are problems with this as well. Niebuhr uses the example of the individual whose moral feeling places him in conflict with, and therefore in danger from, his group to suggest that "conscience," his term for this nebulous "other" feeling, cannot be wholly rational or social.

So what if conscience isn't a glitch of the libido, but a key part of it? What if self-preservation, the drive to keep breathing, keep eating, and keep fucking, and make sure one's children survive to adulthood to do the same, has developed ways of presenting itself that are purely survival oriented, but not (consciously) rational, and therefore not calculable, in their expression to our consciousness? In a review of Christopher Strain's Pure Fire, a work concerning self-defense ideology in the civil rights movement, the author was criticized for including essentially suicidal actions under the rubric of self-defense. But there are, perhaps, different kinds of suicides, some quite life-affirming--there's some fine work on the social identity of suicide bombers that would seem to support this idea. Niebuhr's example, like Strain's, just means that the individual in question had determined, though not on a conscious or rational level, that staying in his current community "as is" constituted sufficient uncertainty and terror to be functionally equivalent to suicide, and a less pleasant one than a de facto suicide brought about by direct action.

So, essentially, what we have here is hard to pin down within the philosophical schools with which I'm familiar. In its early, pen-and-paper conception, I called it ethical nihilism, which is apparently a phrase both vague and in use, so here I use the more humble "Project Darkside," or simply D. It's egoistic, certainly, but not rational. It leads to a kind of enforced altruism (or "altruism," if you please), for reasons to be discussed, but doesn't require a god's-eye view like utilitarianism. It is ultimately consequentialist, but posits moral actions with no clear consequences in sight. More to the point, it encourages no particular actions, but seems to do a good job describing how people actually live; yet, by its insistent directionality it seems to be proscriptive as well as descriptive. It posits that morality is not a duty, per se, but but something that arises, emergently, from the chance interactions of horny people who don't want to die. Things like aggregate happiness, respect for free will, or adherence to rules derive their value from their contribution to the needs of the libido, and may be provisionally discarded when it's convenient to do so, i.e. when they cease to contribute. (And there it is, folks, the sentence that can be quoted out of context to undermine my credibility in anything I say or do in the future. Public office, here I...stay quietly away from!) Which is where it gets a bit creepy.

Because we can't accurately imagine the past or recreate lived experience from texts, D suggests that morality is entirely contextual. The treatment of women as property--or, if another of my pet theories is correct, the creation of the concept of "property" as analagous to women--might be so historically pervasive because, under different material/cultural conditions, it was actually beneficial overall. It's clearly not now, but when someone disagrees, all the ethical nihilist feminist may offer in reply is that the enslavement of women is detrimental to one's ability to keep breathing. (Conveniently, it allows said feminist to morally add, "...because if you keep doing it, we'll kill you.") So it's pretty damn relativistic about rights in general, and rights advance only by economic pressure and the threat of violence, but is that really so different from now?

Now, the theological implications. It's obviously compatible with atheism, and a rationalist would say it requires atheism, but a fan of D would make a rather crap rationalist. If religion is viewed primarily in terms of its value as tribal affiliation, things get muddier. It's fairly compatible with transcendentalism, or unitarianism, or the American civil religion, of course; interesting, since those traditions all draw heavily from Europe, but are also as American as cherry pie. Or, well, you know.

In more old-school religion, D is oddly compatible with the doctrine of total depravity. In fact, it might be the doctrine of total depravity, with a weirdly sunny eschatology tacked on. Simply put, if the sum of all human kindness and decency is an unconsciously calculated selfishness, it's easy to see exactly what's wrong with the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. We can't be moral because we can't even conceive of what real disinterested love would be. Or, for that matter, real faith in God. Faith is instead something we believe provisionally and socially, and through that loophole, you could drive a camel.

Now then. Back to the games.

Character Sheet

Back in the day, I had the good fortune to be friends with a bunch of nerds. These nerds, taken collectively, connected me to most of the various nerd tribes, but there was a specific preponderance of Tolkien among their specific schools of nerditude. 2000-2003 were good years to be a Tolkien nerd, thanks to the efforts of various Australians, and it was comparatively easy to pick up my slack in that area. (Full disclosure: I still have not read Lord of the Rings. I read The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring, but got caught up in thesis prep about 60 pages into The Two Towers. So my thoughts on Tolkien aren't exactly authoritative.)

My nerd lineage starts with videogames and spreads out from there. I've never seen the pre-Special Edition Star Wars, and therefore never saw any of them until I was 15 years old. Nonetheless, at 15, I developed a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the universe through games and a wonkish interest in Joseph Campbell. Similarly, I've never played Dungeons & Dragons, but picked up the basics of the ruleset through adaptations, and the elements that spread throughout the RPG genre. So, as I watched the Rings movies, I'd see a lot of things I recognized from various RPGs, many of them Japanese, and my Tolkien nerd friends would smugly assert that, of course, everything in the fantasy genre has a straight line back to Tolkien.

I thought this was a little odd at the time, in that even I knew that Gary Gygax and company had at least one other major influence, Robert E. Howard, in establishing the D&D universe. From what I've read since then, it turns out that Gygax wasn't a big fan of Tolkien--he liked the American pulps, mostly--and the references to LOTR in D&D mostly amount to marketing ploys. More to the point, however, what makes D&D important has very little to do with evocative world-making. I don't know if Gygax's rule system was the first or even the most effective of its time, but it seems to me that the relevant thing about D&D as it relates to videogames and simulation in general is that it devised a system for measuring human behavior through the narrativized interaction of random and non-random statistics.

Case in point: A D&D character is fundamentally comprised of 6 base statistics: Strength ("the muscle and physical power of your character"), Dexterity ("agility, reflexes and balance"), Constitution ("the health and stamina of your character"), Intelligence ("how well your character learns and reasons"), Wisdom ("willpower, common sense, perception and intuition"), and Charisma ("force of personality, persuasiveness, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness").

Ok, that's all well and good, but what do they do? Narrative niceties aside, the issue is how it ties into actual gameplay. (I'll be referring to the NWN ruleset here, so, y'know, take heed.) Strength covers carrying capacity, melee weapon damage, and the "discipline" skill, which resists various combat skills. Dexterity covers bow damage and dodging, as well as hiding, sneaking, lock picking, parrying, pickpocketing, and setting traps. Constitution covers HP (i.e. how much damage one could soak up and survive), as well as concentration and the barbarian's "rage" ability. Wisdom allows characters to ask more insightful questions to NPCs to get better information, covers divine magic for clerics, druids, paladins and rangers, enhances monks' dodging abilities, and contributes to healing, listening, and looking. Intelligence covers the acquisition of new skills (general learning speed), as well as arcane magic for wizards and the disable trap, lore, search, and spellcraft (counter-magic) skills. Charisma covers arcane magic for bards and sorcerers and contributes to animal empathy, singing, persuasion, taunting, and using magic devices.

So we're now in a bit deeper; certainly better than the bare-bones "physical/mental/other" trinity from which most RPG rulesets are, ahem, divined. And we've covered a good many things a hypothetical person could do, with a semi-coherent system for what skills govern which actions.

What interests me most at this point is the treatment of the mind: at first glance, two of the main stats, intelligence and wisdom, seem to cover this category. The manual notes that high intelligence and low wisdom makes for something of an idiot savant, while high wisdom and low intelligence makes for a kind of non-specific street smarts. After all, "wisdom" comprises a fairly wide array of concepts--willpower, common sense, perception and intuition--it's a pretty heavy stat, from a narrative level. (Notably, Arcanum goes to the trouble of breaking it into "willpower" and "perception.") So we have two stats standing in for "mind." Except...charisma? That's more "interpersonal" than smart, so maybe that's a third category. And once we're into threes, hoo boy. One could alternatively divy up the stats into physical, mental and spatial/temporal, or internal, external and liminal: strength and constitution for the objective, visible world, intelligence and charisma for mind and speech (speech being, in this projection, a manifestation of the inner self), dexterity and wisdom for the relation of the world to the self. That these pairings seem to oppose each other--constitution makes enemies' strength less effective, wisdom counteracts dexterity skills--adds some legs to this model.

One more thing about these skills, which have (of course) evolved considerably over many iterations of D&D: saving throws. Certain attacks, curses, etc. can be turned aside by fortitude (constitution), will (wisdom), or reflex (dexterity) saves. In the 4th edition ruleset, all six stats contribute to saving throws, essentially pairing off the starting six: strength and constitution, dexterity and intelligence, wisdom and charisma. And this pairing also makes a kind of sense, which raises a new question: do any of these stats really work in isolation? I mean, in the universe we actually inhabit?

In practice, it's difficult to build muscle without also improving endurance and general cardiovascular health. Dexterity is a matter for people with more medical knowledge than I, but there's certainly a fairly significant physical component. Similarly, how well can one actually think with an unhealthy body? If the brain itself--a physical organ that runs on oxygen and regulates an unfathomably complex machine via electrochemical signals--doesn't problematize mind/body dualism, perhaps the ubiquity of anti-depressants in modern American society will. And shouldn't the "willpower" part of wisdom affect all of these?

Working from this concept, one could easily split up the starting six into primary and secondary groups, making the secondary stats by combining the primary. Wisdom and dexterity are pretty convincing as the building blocks of charisma, at least where I'm stanging--dexterity is already associated, metaphorically, with wit and mental processes, and a general comfort with and awareness of one's company and surroundings is always the part of interpersonal relations at which I suck.

There are a theoretically infinite number of these kinds of models that can be produced, of course, even with a relatively small number of variables, just by rearranging the relationships between them. And each of these models would no doubt be consistent with some aspects of observed or imagined reality and not others. RPGs aren't my favorite genre to play, but they're definitely my favorite genre to think about, for the same reason I find my liberal-arts-major knowledge of science so useful in my everyday walkin' around time: it gives you a new way to look at your regular, boring-ass life.