Most morality does not differ very much from “this will make me happy” in the moment, not unlike choosing a starter

I think video games help to reinforce the notion that morality is virtually arbitrary. Much like picking your favorite Pokémon, you can split hairs all the live long day as to why one choice might be better than the other, but hindsight, maturity, and wisdom is 20/20, and do you really think, much like a child picking up Pokémon for the first time, some random kid has any frame of reference for the context, facts, systems of reason, strategic standards, or logic involved as to why one ‘mon might be better than the others that would change their decision, or does the choice essentially boil down to the equivalent of a favorite color, or the kid going with their gut instinct and picking one because “I like dinosaur boy”. And really, how much different are any of us than that particular example when it comes to our everyday? All of our choices ultimately boil down to silly subjectivism that will dictate one’s own standards, even if the decision in question is suppose to carry a greater “weight” to it at the end of the day.

Mass Effect 3: another great example of a game that color codes your options, to really drive home the point that moral choices seem as ridiculously reductionist as “what’s your favorite color?”, just to help people really understand the preferential difference involved in the big ouchies they’re about to feel.

I’m not in a great mood today, and my time is short, which goes a long way in understanding why I’m wasting time writing this article, as it does boil down to an arbitrary decision of mine to do so. To that point, I was trying to come up with an idea for an interesting article I could write involving video games, and I came across this write up, detailing the ideas and habits of gamers, in terms of wrestling with morality in video games. Full stop, one of the reasons I included the words “quick posit” in the header is my short hand for saying “I don’t have enough time to do more research or pour more time into the premise of this article, so I’m going to have to shoot from the hip and hope it prompts some interesting discussion” kind of moments.

It’s almost laughably, too big of a topic to be so flippant about, but here we the fuck are. While I’m aware, as someone who greatly enjoys philosophy, how and why ethical systems are concocted, and the relative weight morality has, in playing a vital role within the everyday lives of humanity, I think video games underline to me just how arbitrary morality is. I think this is due to the notion that most people aren’t reasonable, are in fact irrational, and predicate themselves on the sheer notion of whim and fancy caring solely for how they feel in the moment, outside of any greater discipline or logic that would drive them. Video games help to underline this notion, as that article goes into the ideas surrounding ideas like, why someone doesn’t feel comfortable hunting animals in a game, but feels absolutely no guilt in drowning a Sim in a pool for example. The ideas of “moral activation” are brought up, and that’s relevant and fine and dandy, but its related to my point, that activation is a key word, but that once again relates only to the notion of what hits you in that moment, what pushes you to do something, which is still deeply bias and entirely subjective for you at any juncture.

It brings to light stuff like the “Trolley Problem”, and how outside of changing the context in specifically engineered ways, the majority of people would not even entertain the notion of utilizing utilitarianism with regard to the problem, if it was someone they loved vs any other group of people, due to inherent bias. Morality becomes a standard upheld in a random moment by cognitive dissonance and arbitrary notions we think we may be right about, often times with no litmus testing involved whatsoever. Most of the time we won’t even trust a random stranger with something valuable, like our wallet or phone, as a dime a dozen example, but then we trust these people to be responsible in upholding the democratic values of a fucking nation on a whim, as if even understanding the context of something so massive as the integrity of a country and the lives of hundreds of millions of people is as easy a call as “should I trust a stranger with a $20 bill?“, which causes a pause for greater concern within many than the inherently flawed notion of democratic standard.

This post is such an underdeveloped idea, but I didn’t have a lot of time to write something more meaningful, but being interested in both video games and philosophy, a worthwhile notion to put forth. Ultimately, I’m quite cynical, so people are, in the most likely scenarios on average, going to act selfishly, and in the majority standard of the time, selfishness dictates, at least on a low level, that one seeks happiness, so the decision that will follow will be predicated on making themselves happy based on that decision. After that, it’s just gradations, spectrums, and semantics about what kind of happiness they gain from the act, who else it affects, and the mixture of both pain and pleasure gained and or inflicted upon others that is left to parse through. I leave you with a quote from philosopher Thomas Hobbes on the matter of rationality in relation to my posit:

“The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reasons, and if men had the use of reasons they pretend to, their commonwealth- or civic orders- might be secured, at least from perishing by internal diseases.” (Leviathan, Chal XIX)

-Pashford