Friday, January 14, 2011

If your ethical model defeats you........

“If your ethical model defeats you, change the model “– DBC Pierre in “Lights out in wonderland “

Moral values, ethical choices, good vs. evil, black or white – these all are topics of deep discussion and vary from person to person depending on their own perspective and views.  Still sometimes it drives me crazy that what should be the ideal structure to believe in. May be there is no ideal model of values as it has been taught to us as a child.

I happened to come in contact of a novel by DBC Pierre, titled “Lights out in Wonderland “. I’m an impulse buyer. As I gone through beautifully bleak and weird cover graphics and cryptic, allegorical excerpts, my impulse to read this novel goes sky high and I bought it. It’s about a guy who decides to cut short his life but before that he wants to indulge in decadence. Yes, novel is all about decadence in its purest form. (Still I went through few chapters only :). It raises so many questions about the validity of values and ethical model. Why we are so much rigid in accepting any new perspective? Why we strictly stick to model where everything we want to be divided into black and white only? Why we really don’t have any freedom of choice to live on our own way and make decisions on our own?  

In India (yes, I deliberately opt for India and also some “so called” traditional stats like Gujarat), idea of these moral values and ethical structure is so forcefully imbued into mind of a child so that as one grows up, this entire model cemented it’s place with so much ferocity that it becomes indestructible and rock-solid. And when time comes to test it against real world scenarios, it will attribute, person having it, with zeal of resistance and rigidity. It becomes so much difficult for the person to embrace the change that he/she outright rejects it without any proper notion and reason (even though change is good one). I believe that with too many social interactions we are losing individualism. We are losing right to live on our own notions and hence for our own happiness. Please bear in mind that I’m not indicating to severe social ties and relationships (in fact they are the most beautiful things that can happen to you in this hopeless era). It’s about choosing what you feel right without any interruptions. It’s about getting free reign to take decisions for your own life(of course after maturity) .It’s about constructing your own model and changing it whenever you feel right as per basis on your lifetime learning experience(good or bad, whatever).

If you really want to have a feel of choices and its consequences, you should opt to play good RPGs (Role Play Games).Even though most games provide you very broad line choices between good and evil, sometimes they really test you with moral choice which is falling into dark grey shade. One such incident I can remember is with Fallout 3 (my most favorite post-apocalyptic game with retro-futuristic environment).

There is one quest in the game where you caught between struggles of two extreme socially distanced groups. One is composed of civilized and well mannered people who had maintained there high living standards (even in the nuclear desolate world), residing in Tenpenny tower (a high rise structure still intact in the city).Other one is composed of  radiation infected and mutated ugly people who are living with very low life approach, called “Ghouls”. As you can expect that this big social chasm leads to conflicts between the two and the later one wants to take control of tower which represents dominance of richer life over others, while the former one wants to defend it and not to share their wealth with low lives as they dare to maintain their values intact in this devastated world. Now you had to take side and take moral decision to support one of them. Leader of the “Ghouls” (the mutated people) asks you to open secret passage in the tower so as entire of his army can ambush and capture the tower. On the other hand protector of the tower gives you the assignment to assassinate leader of the “Ghouls” to end the conflict and rebel. (There is one peaceful solution also where you can avoid the violence la “Mahatma Gandhi” style. If you had developed your speech skill proficiently, you can convince both sided to live together in unity. That’s where RPG really shines J ) . First I decided to help the ugly Ghouls as I sympathized with them on living a better life. But as soon as I opened the gates for them my decision proved flawed to me as ghoul army just destroyed everything in the tower and killed and slashed all the people in the tower, bringing down the civilization to their own low, savage level. So I decided to load previous save game and this time I supported the residents of Tenpenny Tower by executing the Ghoul leader with slipping a live grenade in his pocket while he was sleeping. But again I felt betrayed by my moral decision as just because ghouls are ugly and savant didn’t mean to end their rights to lead good life.

What if this is the real world scenario (not just the game) where any decision you make will have deep percussion s on the various aspects and lives of others and you can not reverse it. In Joker’s words “you changed it everything forever.“ (In The Dark Knight to Batman). One thing is for sure: You can not make everybody happy. And that’s why we better not strongly stick to our ethical values and give some space to ourselves as well as others to experiment and hence learn from it.

There is no right, there is no wrong there are only consequences.