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The Morality of Tyranny
Kamar
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Registered User regular
This has been rolling around in my head for a while, after I was thinking about how a character in my WIP novel should behave, given his near-limitless power and good nature. It reminded me of my "perfect government" thread, where until I changed to word a large portion of my responses where along the lines of "I'd do nothing because one man shouldn't have such power". At the time, I kind of agreed with that.
But now I've through about it some. If we assume a person's goal is to do good to the best of their ability, and the best of their ability ends with them as god-king, is it a morality failure? They might even be wrong about what's good and what isn't, but is the person immoral to use their power to do good as they see it?
Whether their actions cause others to see them as heroes or villains, wouldn't they be failing their own morals to not do what they see as right to the best of their ability?
Just because pushing their morals to the best of their ability means becoming god-king doesn't to my mind, make them evil or immoral.
I'll be honest by saying I'm almost as curious about this discussion for the sake of developing my character as for the theoretical aspect of it. But that theoretical aspect is certainly interesting.
But now I've through about it some. If we assume a person's goal is to do good to the best of their ability, and the best of their ability ends with them as god-king, is it a morality failure? They might even be wrong about what's good and what isn't, but is the person immoral to use their power to do good as they see it?
Whether their actions cause others to see them as heroes or villains, wouldn't they be failing their own morals to not do what they see as right to the best of their ability?
Just because pushing their morals to the best of their ability means becoming god-king doesn't to my mind, make them evil or immoral.
I'll be honest by saying I'm almost as curious about this discussion for the sake of developing my character as for the theoretical aspect of it. But that theoretical aspect is certainly interesting.
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... at least, that's what I learned from reading Brave New World.
But we don't really judge whether or something is immoral based upon whether it's internally consistent.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
I'm wondering if the tyranny itself is immoral. Does taking up that amount of power represent a morality failure in and of itself?
If a person invents a device tomorrow that makes it impossible for anyone in the world to kill another in anger, is it immoral to activate it without asking anyone? I'd lean toward no. But if we flip this, to something we don't like, does it still hold true?
edit: What do we determine morality by, then? It can't be just majority consensus, that's ridiculous. Off the top of my head, I'd guess a more accurate definition of something that is immoral is something that causes undue harm to another. Would seizing absolute power, in and of itself, cause undue harm?
Correct. If a person used tyrannical power to do immoral things it would be immoral.
The best example I can think of is Joesph Stalin. He turned 3rd world Russia into a superpower.
Along the way he killed millions of people.
Was industrilising Russia a bad thing: No
Was killing millions a bad thing: Yes
My own belief is that the means don't justify the ends and the morality of tyranny boils down to belief.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I think it depends on the nature of the control. Is it control that, in its absence, you would consider vile and something to be resisted, like mind-control?
Edit: Or say, if you started as an outsider, then were subjected to the control, then removed...would you be glad or sad? That kind of thing would be my basis for answering the question.
As a forinstance, what it you'd been born in a completely different part of the world, with different social norms, religions, etc. Should that have any bearing on your current views, that you might have been raised Hindi or in a nameless jungle tribe?
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Controlled and happy is bad since things don't exist in a vaccum. Things will go wrong and it will leave the controlled vulnerable if the controllers opt to ignore/delay/etc. Better to be miserable and have the free will to improve your life.
Okay, that aside. Let's take this from a utilitarian, consequentialist sort of perspective. We know from 20th century history that deeply authoritarian, centralized governments can generate wealth extremely rapidly - however, deeply authoritarian governments can also reduce their country to a wasteland far faster than a lousy democracy. Here is a relevant graph:
source. I confess to not having read the paper yet (got a huge backlog of other RL-relevant things to digest).
Everyone always mentions Stalin and Hitler but in fact these governments did not generate much wealth compared to other regions in the same period; contrary to popular perception, no Axis or Soviet leader "made the trains run on time", even using the pre-dissolution inflated Soviet statistics. The people you should be thinking of as wealth-generating dictators as people like this guy. Or this. Or, hell, post-Deng PRC.
A likely narrative is that the alternative to centralization and tyranny is not necessarily idealized consensus democracy but factionalization and the formation of entrenched interest groups. In the absence of a democratic tradition - a culture and set of institutions that make democracy functional - there may be no alternatives to tyranny with comparable wealth-generating performance.
Which leads to the question of what background your country actually has. If your hypothetical dictator plays Vetinari-esque games with all the local ethnic and interest groups that deeply distrust each other, and pulls it off, then there may be no desirable alternative. If your dictator rules over peaceful modern Canada, there's no real reason to centralize that much authority.
Brave New World: utopia or dystopia?
Free and happy is the goal, right?
EDIT: No, wait. People want freedom because they think being controlled cuts into their happiness, which it usually does. That said, giving all of your citizens a lobotomy to keep them happy all the time while they toil in the salt mines would be a moral society. Advancements and improvements are desirable but not necessary for a 'working' society.
And many countries have relatively free immigration. A tyranny doesn't have to be a world government; many non-Soviet dictatorships allow free emigration. And people immigrate to these countries in large numbers.
In general, you're aiming for happy. Everything else is negotiable based on what actually makes you happy.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I reject the dichotomy presented and answer both :P
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Also: slavery!
Well I try to think that there's something more than just bread and jobs in determining whether something is good, particularly when there's no element of individual choice in the society anymore.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Which is the problem with your question. What you're asking depends entirely on the context.
Brave New World also made some extravagant assumptions about how people behave - in effect, the people in BNW are not what the people we are would behave.
It's rather like describing a hamster habitat where there is always sunflower seeds and running wheels and everything hamsters would want. That's great for the hamsters, but that's not what we want. To try to imagine ourselves into such a world we already have to posit it breaking down - hence Bernard, the Alpha Plus who doesn't live up to the standards of an Alpha Plus. Of course it is horrifying. But it's not populated by people.
I really don't see how a communalism-centric culture has to do without individual freedom/choice. They're not inherently disposed against each other that people who don't necessarily value their own individualism thus don't mind being controlled by their government. Moreover, a totalitarian government will necessarily not be providing for those (presumably minorities otherwise they probably wouldn't be under an autocracy) that wish freedom/choice (if we take that individual/group wishes for their government matter in terms of how they should be governed).
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
It has to do with the value of individual freedom/choice. The US is not the standard when it comes to how we view personal freedom, which was my point. There are plenty of cultures where the whole precedes the self, so I don't see how totalitarianism is inherently wrong.
That's no more a question of morality than the US being run by Democrats or Republicans - it's just a political system and by itself holds no moral weight.
Japan isn't authoritarian and has no problems repressing its own minorities, which it does in fact have (or being deeply xenophobic in general).
Furthermore, in absence of a liberal culture, it can take a dictator to protect minorities from the mob - hence (for example) fairly safe Jewish and Christian quarters in Baghdad prior to US invasion.
The issue of freedom and choice is almost wholly orthogonal to the centralization of executive power.
Don't forget the social conditioning. They are slaves with predetermined destinies, sure, but no one is whipping them, they're not chained, and the front gate is wide open. After a childhood full of hypnotic suggestions and electric shocks, they don't want to escape. They work their eight hours, pop some Soma tablets, have some sex, go to bed, get up the next day. Daily sex and drugs? They have it BETTER THAN US!
That's not really the point that I was arguing, nor does it really have anything to do with my response. Your last sentence is what I'm responding to: why are you presupposing that communalist cultures by definition want/prefer totalitarianism? There's nothing inherent about non-individualist value preferences that mean they automatically fit with autocratic governance.
That's no more a question of morality than the US being run by Democrats or Republicans - it's just a political system and by itself holds no moral weight.[/QUOTE]
Of course it is. If the government is setup for the purpose of running its society and it is, by construction, always going to be not providing for a segment of its population (not by political choice, but by the very way in which the government is structured) then it would be inherently bad.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
If you're trying to suggest that all dictatorships are identical to BNW - there are real actual dictatorships that work pretty well, without any attempt to conditions their people a la Brave New World. Dictatorships populated by, you know, people.
I'm not entirely sure what this has to do with anything considering I'm not arguing that non-autocratic systems can't not provide for their citizenry in some ways. I'm arguing that a non-individualistic culture isn't inherently predisposed towards non-democratic governance.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
I was referring to your second sentence, actually, where you said that "a totalitarian government will necessarily not be providing for those that wish freedom/choice". Which is true, but neither does a democratic government.
That's not what I was arguing, either, it was that person freedom is not the same all across the board. I didn't mean for it to come across as "these people don't value personal freedom as highly so totalitarianism is cool with them" but rather "lacking personal freedom is not, by itself, a bad thing, and there are cultures where personal freedom is not held in as high esteem as it is in the US and other Western countries"
This is in part my response to zombie, but yes, I'm making a distinction between structural and political deficiencies in the governance for providing for their populace. Both a democratic or autocratic system can trample over a number of people's wishes/rights/whatever, but a democratic system starts from the principle that all are equal (implying choice/freedom) whereas an autocratic system does not have a similar starting point. As such, democratic non-performance is by political choice/failing whereas autocratic non-performance (assuming its in the realm of not providing for those that it's already predisposed against, and not some random non-performance) is structural.
In implementation you can have a number of varying degrees of difference, but I think that the starting principles will inherently still impact the general tendencies of what these governance structures are willing to allow.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Except it never has before, and even if it does it will eventually be skewed by the majority.
Oh well I would agree with all of this then, since I'm not arguing an objectively normative 'freedom is better for a person to value than non-freedom' but rather 'freedom is better for a government to provide since it allows for the valuing of all forms of non-freedom and freedom valuations within its populace as you will never have a population homogeneously valuing only one thing rather than a range of values.'
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Which is true, but these values, to me, don't reflect morality.
No, a liberal state starts from the principle of equality. A democracy starts from the principle of majority rule. A democracy can explicitly deny equality; the United States did so at its inception.
You can't really separate equality/choice entirely from the definition, especially when you tie it to majority rule which implies a level of individual choice by the populace. That you can alter it to differing degrees just fits in with my suggestion of political differences rather than structural.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12