Alignment and Moral Compass

I’ve already spoken at length about morality in my four part series on writing Antagonists (particularly, Part Three: Moral Dichotomies; and Part Four: The Nature of Evil,) and in my article on Religious Fundamentalism and Intolerance. This article looks more generally at morality and the concept of a character having an alignment or moral compass.

Darth Vader’s / Anakin’s ghost. Concept art by Iain McCaig

For those unfamiliar the concept of alignment, it comes from and is popularised by the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons. It gives a sense of a character’s general morality in terms of order and chaos, good and evil. So at one end of the spectrum a character could be Lawful Good, while at the other, a character might be Chaotic Evil. But a character could also be Chaotic Good, or Lawful Evil. There is also Lawful and Chaotic Neutral.

It has been a while since I played, but if I remember correctly, actions by a player that didn’t fit their character’s alignment incurred penalties. It seemed similar to the way the Dark and the Light sides of the Force function in Star Wars. In the sense that a Jedi (say a Lawful Good character, although many Jedi were Chaotic Good) acting out of anger may do something more in alignment with the Dark side. This would then cause the character’s alignment to begin to change (be corrupted) towards say Chaotic Evil (or Lawful Evil).
If you have read my previous articles on the topic, you can probably guess were I’m going next. Personally, I find this black and white moral dichotomy somewhat distasteful for being too rigid to encompass real human behaviours, although in saying that, I find it more interesting than the idea that the ‘good guys’ can do no wrong, or that actions don’t have moral consequences.

However, in modern fiction, these moral compasses may very easily come across as overly simplistic characterisations. People can become so fixated on the idea that a person is good or bad, a nice person or an asshole, that they fail to recognise that these distinctions are almost always relative. Different circumstances are going to bring out different responses from a character, while other people are not all going to see a person in terms of  their self identified alignment.

I recently read a online journal entry by someone agonising over the fact that they want to be seen one way, but so many people see them differently. Because they had some social issues that meant their intentions were often misinterpreted (don’t we all), they felt they came across as an asshole. What I found frustrating reading their writing was the idea that everyone should see them exactly how they want to be perceived. I empathise with their position, but I also think it is unrealistic. Every single person has a subjective experience of every single person that they met. They project their self, their own past experiences and expectations on the people they meet. To expect someone to have a objective opinion of us is completely unrealistic. Especially if we remind them of a past experience, or they happen to met us on a bad day.

I had someone a few years back (after months of being passive aggressive towards me) express that they thought that I had an ‘aura of aggression.’ This is at odds with how most of my friends perceive me as, quote, a ‘chill guy’ (the very idea of an ‘aggressive aura’ is highly amusing to me, given that ‘auras’ are usually some pretty/flowerly hippie mambo jumbo. It has been the source of many in jokes ever since).  What seems to have been happening was that they were projecting, not only their own aggression (they tended to react very badly to even the slightest criticism), but also past experiences of a father who displayed similar behavioural patterns to me (basically being a withdrawn introvert) but that those behaviours, in her father, were often a precursor to emotionally abusive behaviours. There was also the fact I listen to a lot of metal and she apparently didn’t like it, though failed to mention it to me. That combination of factors meant that it was practically impossible for them to perceive me, my intentions, and generally peaceful nature, objectively. This was expressed the one time that they did ask me to turn my music down, and I was very apologetic, I did so right away and expressed that they should tell me if my music was ever annoying and that I would happily turn it down. They were shocked that I was so chill about the situation, but other than their projecting aggressive characteristics on me, they had absolutely no reason to expect me to react differently. Because it was a relatively loud flat, that at one point had two DJs that made considerably more noise than my stereo was even capable of, I never even considered my music to be an issue.

Of course how others perceive me doesn’t change my self perceived general alignment as somewhere around Chaotic Good. And doesn’t necessarily mean that they saw me as Chaotic Evil. But it does reveal how subjective a moral compass can be. That particular person expressed the idea to me that they perceived themselves as, “a good person.”  But while I can understand why they often weren’t,  my perception of them was quite different.

When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow. – Ursula K. Le Guin

Further, can we really state our moral compass if it has never been tested? Most of those whom read this article probably live in a relatively peaceful and abundant society. Thus it is very easy to say “I would never do such-and-such” when you have never been in a situation to test that self perception. How can you say that you would never steal, sell drugs, or engage in some other illegal activity, if you’ve never had starving children to feed? How can you say you would never kill indiscriminately if you’ve never been given a reason to genuinely hate an entire group of people? How can you say that you would never abuse power if you’ve never had any?

In my article on The Nature of Evil, I present the confronting view that maybe we are all capable of evil under certain circumstances. That perhaps it is not always a person’s predisposition to doing evil that causes evil, so much as it is situations that foster evil. This is a very uncomfortable thought, but well worth considering if morality is going to be a theme in your writing, especially given that there are many circumstances that can arise in fantasy that will foster evil. 

Most discussions on morality in traditional fantasy express an idea that it is our choices that define us and our moral compass. The idea that circumstances can foster evil doesn’t negate this theme, it just reveals how much more difficult those choices can become. That our choices define us is a more comforting approach to morality, while idea that circumstances can dictate moral choices is more horrifying in it’s implications. It’s so much easier to condemn evil than it is to address it.

“It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”

What I am suggesting isn’t that you shouldn’t consider a character’s alignment, but rather that you should consider the concept as flexible, and even consider how that character might react under exceptional circumstances. As well as how other characters POV will not always agree with a character’s self perception. I think that the old belief that readers will not like protagonists who don’t always act morally, or who do things that seem out of character, is outdated and a recipe for less than compelling fiction. The general trend seems to be towards moral ambiguity. But even that is an over simplification. What it reveals isn’t that characters have no moral compass, but that the moral compass is relative, and it is that relativity that can give the impression that a character has no moral compass or is acting out of character. What is really shows is that humans are far more complex than a set of defined and inflexible characteristics.