Is Moral Ambiguity Overrated?

Yeah, grey morality doesn't create a dark setting. Bad attempts at creating grey morality can create a dark setting but they don't automatically go together, anymore than black and white settings are automatically cheerful.

And of course just because the hero of a piece is an antihero or otherwise darker character doesn't mean the story is in any way mature or that the conflict is in any way nuanced or ambiguous. When the Punisher mows down a room full of drug dealers and rapists, the fact that he's a bastard himself doesn't add any moral ambiguity to the story—not when the writers are treating his victims as bottom dwelling scum ("The Slavers" arc is especially egregious example of this). Berserk is one of the darkest mainstream fantasy stories ever written, and it features a totally amoral protagonist, but the fact that the villains are literal baby eaters again means there's no moral ambiguity to the story—there's a very clear hero and a very clear villain. There's this notion out there that "dark" somehow equals "better written" or "more nuanced" but it really isn't true—all too often dark works function by making the villains so over the top evil that we'll accept the actions of the less-than-moral heroes, no questions asked. When Guts fights Griffith or the Punisher takes on Tiberiu Bulat there may not be a genuine hero in sight, but there's no moral ambiguity either—you know exactly who you're supposed to be pulling for. That's not to say of course that the reader might not declare "everyone's a dick" and throw the book away, but the narrative is still clearly presenting one side as better than the other, and for there to be actual ambiguity in the story you can't have that.

That's not to suggest all dark stories turn out that way, of course. The Proposition is about as dark as they come, but it's also one of the better nuanced stories I can think of. Charlie Burns gets to make a choice between murdering his older brother, bandit chieftain Arthur, or leaving his younger brother, Mikey, in the hands of Australia's brutal colonial government. Arthur's a terrible man, but he's always been decent to his brothers and his gang includes Aborigines who are fighting for their land, while the government is ineffective, corrupt, and controlled by men like leading citizen Eden Fletcher who are no better than Arthur. None of Charlie's options are good, and you are frequently as confused as to what he should do as he is. Which is the point of the film, and why it can lay claim to the ambiguity that some other dark stories lack.

I don't know that it has to. I mean, as I said in my prior response, whether or not you want to classify the genocidal dictator as "evil" doesn't change the question of "does he need to be stopped?" and so long as the story takes the stance of "he must be stopped" and presents those who are trying to do so as morally right and just, then we're still dealing with black and white morality in the narrative sense, all other factors be damned.

edited 30th Jul '16 2:08:00 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I'd argue Black-and-Grey Morality (or A Lighter Shade of Black) isn't morally ambiguous per say. If I write a story about gangsters ala the Mafia fighting terrorists ala ISIS, there isn't much moral ambiguity. Even though the gangsters are evil, the terrorists are unambiguously worse-therefore, for practical purposes it's a "good and evil" conflict (or at least has the same shape as one).

People who believe that life is more morally ambiguous are more likely to view grey-and-grey conflicts as "more realistic" which they might prefer.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

So, in your opinion, is a story about people trying to rescue victims of a natural disaster running on Black-and-White Morality? I said I wouldn't touch this topic again, but you said "other factors be damned", and I feel inclined to disagree. "Wrong" or "destructive" is a very different thing from "evil" IMO, and while the first two are useful terms, I don't really see the later as necessary and feel the implications it has come to carry can be dangerous.

And I think that not seeing the dangerous dictator as evil can affect a story, by painting eventual punishment of the antagonists not as something righteous and just, but only a dirty job necessary to prevent further wrongdoings. It is generally a change in attitude instead of a different course of actions, but I think it is still a meaningful change.

True, that is part of the appeal, but there is also something else, at least for me: as long as one side is not Made of Evil, a permanent solution that does not involve the total defeat of one of the parties is possible. Too bad that not many works like to play that side of grayer morality, maybe because direct opposition is easier to understand for most than divergent goals that can be chased in many different ways by parties who are willing to compromise if they believe they aren't going to pay the price for it later.

edited 30th Jul '16 2:12:59 PM by EternaMemoria

"The dried flowers are so beautiful, and it applies to all things living and dead."

Concurred. That was the point of the Punisher and Berserk examples I referenced. So long as the story makes it clear that we are meant to support one side over the other, you can't really claim any sense of moral ambiguity. Even ASOIAF, a series that is praised for its supposed ambiguity, has some pretty morally clear-cut conflicts—Robb Stark is unambiguously good, and Tywin Lannister is unambiguously bad. We might like Tyrion, or even Jaime, but there's no real argument for letting Tywin (and his equally monstrous daughter and grandson) win the war.

For a story to truly claim to have moral ambiguity to it, then it should be possible to make an argument for either side winning.

A hurricane isn't a faction in a conflict. A person is. That's an inane comparison. Anyway, a group of sane, responsible, and generally moral people trying to topple an "insane" tyrant is pretty much the definitive black and white conflict. One could make it grey by presenting it the way you've described, but that's an authorial decision, not something innate to the conflict.

edited 30th Jul '16 2:17:50 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Why is a person a faction and a hurricane not? Because the person has agency? What if instead of hurricane it was a rabid dog? Would it still be Black-and-White Morality? What if I don't believe in free will either?

And note that I am aware the Black-and-White Morality trope applies to certain stories, I am just defending why I don't believe one should label people as "evil" IRL. BTW, I am dropping out of this discussion, as it seems I can't help but further derail this by defending my views, which I only exposed in order to explain why I dislike Black-and-White Morality as a trope.

In fact, feel free to not answer, or answer with a PM. We aren't supposed to discuss my personal philosophy here.

edited 30th Jul '16 2:30:18 PM by EternaMemoria

"The dried flowers are so beautiful, and it applies to all things living and dead."

If you don't believe in free will there's much point in having a discussion of why anybody does anything. But in any case, yes, people have agency. And unless proven to be clinically, legally insane, we have to assume they have agency. To lump the likes of Hitler or Pinochet in with the genuinely mentally ill is to effectively slander the sick.

Why? Hitler also ate sugar, and I don't call people potential nazis because of that. In fact, I feel offended by the implication that I was damning an entire group by vague association.

That is also part of why I don't like the idea of calling people evil: the term carries the implication that it is ok to hate them and hatred is a very volatile substance.

EDIT: and just because I may or may not believe in free will (remember, I wrote it as a possibility only), does not mean discussing about motivations is pointless. Only that I may see them under a very different perspective.

EDIT2: and I see what others call "evil" as a sickness of sorts: something to be avoided, sure, but not a reason to hate people who were driven to the wrong path by it, even if sometimes extreme measures may be necessary to limit their damage.

ps: WHY AM I STILL DERAILING THIS THREAD?

EDIT3: I have no idea where that "" emoji came from. There is nothing silly about this discussion.

edited 30th Jul '16 2:54:29 PM by EternaMemoria

"The dried flowers are so beautiful, and it applies to all things living and dead."

When someone commits genocide it's pretty okay to hate them.

Well, I believe one should try to never feel hatred towards other people, no matter their actions, for reasons I will not explain because I fear further derailing. Now, I think this discussion managed to illustrate why some people may like different morality tropes even if that was not quite goal, so how about we call it a day? I don't know about how others feel, but arguing about my worldviews is tiring.

"The dried flowers are so beautiful, and it applies to all things living and dead."

A story with Black-and-White Morality can have the good heroes and innocents get maimed and hideously tortures by the evil side all the time, thus making the story dark (if that's what 'dark' means). There's no moral ambiguity however, since the auidence knows that when the heroes are tortured, it's a bad and horrible thing.

Which is why Black-and-White Morality is a thing - the auidence knows who to support, who to oppose, who to cheer for, who to leer at, how exactly they should direct their emotions. Black-and-Grey Morality has the appeal of the (anti)heroic side not being goody-two-shoes, while still allowing the auidence to root for them by virtue of the villains being even more horrible.

More and more moral ambiguity is being asked for, but it seems writers want to provide a side for the auidence to root for and a side for the auidence to leer at. Don't want Darkness Induced Auidence Apathy, for one thing.

edited 30th Jul '16 8:03:22 PM by hellomoto

And the funny thing is that Black and Grey Morality doesn't actually create a morally ambiguous situation. If the choices are between mundane corruption and genocidal madness, there's no choice at all.

There are ways to have the best of both worlds. Simply make the sides different enough in other aspects - like making the conflict thematically one of Order Versus Chaos or harmony versus discipline, and you're good to go. Audiences will prefer whichever is closer to their worldview, but there's no need for only one way to be the right one. There is such a thing as moral pluralism.

To that effect, for instance, the conflict in the Star Wars Legends continuity eventually evolved to one of freedom versus stability in the face of hostile incursion, which is a perennial question in real life. Putting battle-hardened soldiers and pragmatic autocrats against honest yet bureaucracy-shackled idealists can contain any number of shades of conflict, especially since in the upper echelons of power, incompetence can be as bad as malice.

For that matter, just about every MMO (and Blizzard strikes again here) aims to have vastly different sides that still avoid falling into monochromatic moral categories. Heck, that's how cultures work in real life - ask any foreign wrestling heel on whether being the bad guy actually has an effect on the cheering and leering of the audiences in the country he's supposed to be from. Good, bad, people root for the guy with the gun the home team.

I don't see why you think Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy has anything to do with moral ambiguity.

A story that runs on Black-and-White Morality, but always ends with the heros dying with honour without acvomplishing much else, is probably as dark as a story about Evil vs. Evil, if not darker, while Grey-and-Grey Morality (or the much rarer White and Gray Morality) are capable of making a conflict end in many more ways other than complete defeat of one side, like diplomacy and compromises, partial merging of factions who were Not So Different, hostility simply dying out with time, and other endings that may not be your sterotypical happy ending, and may not mean that things are quite over, but IMO send a much more positive message than Yet Another Military Victory Against The Forces Of Evil™.

"The dried flowers are so beautiful, and it applies to all things living and dead."

It doesn't—but bad writers, as several of us have noted, often think it needs to be.

About Law and Chaos system, something interesting who i note is who the Shin Megami Tensei with its war of angels and demons, try to despict both Law and Chaos as equally evil and who only Neutral is the good path, Neutral is supossed to representate humanism -no, this is not Fantastic Racism, they have fairies friends- (most Neutral endings outright try to send angels and demons back).

Is strangely interesing, because both Law and Chaos are charicatures of Real Life ideologies.

Law is Utilitarianism, cold dogmatic logic and stocism, associated with Abrahamic Angels and sometimes with Hinduists gods.

Chaos is...Objetivism mixed with Nietzche and satanism, representated for demons for several religions.

You know ATLUS, i know who extreme Utilitarianism is creepy, but i`m sure who is a better ideology than Radical Objetivism.

And Neutral, the moderate party, is annoying, between the line of Humanist and Fantastic Racism. They are deontologists, and ALTUS LOVE say who Neutral is great.

PD: If you ask, why not moderate versions of the factions? That is the point of the franchise, SMT is like a thought experiment in videogame format, it ask you what ideals you hold, and then force you to going to the extremes, in a sort of test of morality. ATLUS paint the routes as Dark-grey as they can, but ultimately ends in a natural result of the idea. Law/Radical Utilitarianism create a world when humans had evolved in a better species with a collective oriented view, in a society where Happiness is maximizated, the people in it is happy, in an alien yet sincere way.

Chaos/objetivism....em...Lucifer usually talk about how the cycle of life is so cool, destroy society and then your Player Avatar ends in a position of power (King or general of Lucifer, depending of the game). I love how "muh freedom of choice!" usally ends in literal monarchy.

But Is Objetivism, that wasn`t obvious?

edited 2nd Aug '16 3:29:56 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

I'm not sure how complaining about Shin Megami Tensei fits in with the whole moral ambiguity topic.

From what I can tell, it actually presents a rather interesting conundrum. On one hand, the story seems to advocate for a balanced approach between two philosophical extremes, which may be taken as going for gray as opposed to black or white. On the other hand, as both extremes are presented as "bad" while the neutral path is much closer to being "good", the tale can actually be considered one of Black-and-Gray Morality at best.

I am reminded of how Jade Empire initially claimed to have a balanced moral framework more or less putting harmony versus discipline rather than good versus evil... yet in practice, the Way of the Closed Fist still amounted to being a belligerent jackass. Subtle.

edited 3rd Aug '16 12:12:26 AM by indiana404

gotta delve into the conversation again. i wanna ask you one little question, is there such a thing as light gray and dark gray morality? it just popped up in my head one day and i had to say it.

MIA

Black and white and grey morality are just labels. So the only way for such a thing to be impossible is for you if you were incapable of writing it.

Yes, but it can seem like splitting hairs (since where "white", "light grey" and "grey" all meet and end is kind of arbitrary). It does have a name, though: A Lighter Shade of Grey.

As said above, the problem is determining whether a character is "light grey", "flat-out good", or "neutral". I suppose the line would be something along the lines of "neutral at worst".

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"