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On a more whimsical note, yesterday while Stumbling I saw an amusing cartoon depicting various famous characters as exemplars of the various moral orientations in the Dungeons & Dragons™ role-playing game universe. For the geekier among us, this is probably one of the more simplistic yet recognisable ways of describing the moral character of an individual - at least, a fictional one. There’s a good explanation of the system here, but basically your moral orientation - or “alignment” in D&D parlance - is described along two orthogonal axes. One axis indicates whether you are rules-oriented or not (”Lawful vs. Chaotic”); while the other shows whether you consider the needs of others as equally, or less important to your own needs (”Good vs. Evil”). Both axes have a “neutral” value in between the extremes.

After seeing the cartoon, and the list of fictional and real characters mapped against each possible value, I thought it would be fun to place countries along these moral axes - based on my own unbiased opinion, of course. Here we can use domestic and foreign policies of each nation as key indicators, being roughly equivalent to individual behaviour and attitudes toward others.

Lawful Good: Tibet. If I was blogging at the time of Abraham Lincoln, I might have put United States here. As it was, it was actually quite a challenge to think of an acceptable alternative. In the end I picked Tibet (pre-annexation), as a quaintly conservative yet benign country ruled with the velvet glove of theocratic Buddhism.

Neutral Good: New Zealand. Its geographic isolation may give Kiwis a false sense of security on the world stage, but the country has a generally compassionate stance in foreign policy. While not quite as progressive as Sweden, New Zealand has become less traditionally conservative and rules-oriented than some.

Chaotic Good: Sweden. OK, they may be insufferably liberal and progressive, but you have to hand it to them; Sweden manages to take the moral high ground in many global issues. Most recently they made a commitment to be oil-free within 15 years, and they were one of the first nations to grant Universal Suffrage. But to be this progressive you have to be somewhat of a rebel; so they tend to fall at the Chaotic end of the rules spectrum.

Lawful Neutral: United States. The US has a principled, written constitution. But it has suffered in recent times with a “do as I say, and not as I do” reputation. And post-9/11, even their own rule of law and cherished values are being replaced with the mundane imperative of national security.

“True” Neutral: France. France, along with Switzerland is one of the quintessential neutral countries of our time. It is self-interested, to be sure, but not to the point where self-interest excludes all else. Similarly it is also somewhat rule-based, but centuries of invasion has made France strongly individualistic, and that pretty much sums up France’s disposition toward the world.

Chaotic Neutral: Russia. The core nation of the former Soviet Union, Russia is still finding its way after the trials of glasnost and perestroika left it weakened, humiliated and lacking vision. Putin’s current government seeks glory on the international stage once again, but does not appear to be interested in following many rules other than its own few.

Lawful Evil: China. Still a stronghold of the Confucian ideals of familial duty and obedience, China is a byword for tradition, law, and authority by divine mandate. It is also the very definition of self-interest, showing that it is prepared to obtain global parity with other world powers by means fair or foul, through aggression both passive and active, while shamelessly stealing technology as diverse as Horticulture and Stealth.

Neutral Evil: Myanmar. Under an iron rule of military dictatorship, the current regime of Burma showed the world recently just how ruthless it was in repressing its own people in order to survive. Not even the orange-robed monks were safe from the brutality of one of the largest military forces in Asia.

Chaotic Evil: Zimbabwe. This alignment being almost entirely due to the regime of Robert Mugabe. Formerly a freedom fighter in the time of Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, and a hero of black nationalism, he is now a despot with questionable sanity, presiding over hyperinflation, nonexistent human rights and a belligerent attitude toward any nation that dares question his withered hegemony.

So there you have it! Hopefully this will not affect my chances of getting an entry visa to some of the above countries should I do a world trip in my autumn years.

I must be mad. I’ve just started writing an essay without any prospect of academic credit. This is something I never would have done while at university; it was enough of a struggle to get mandatory terms essays down on paper. You see my head is frequently crowded with thoughts, but they tend to resist being developed fully into printable form without the carrot and stick of deadlines. They’re quite happy to zip around in my head, preferring not to be directly observed - like streetwise Schrödinger’s cats.

But I’ve decided I need to get something clear in my head. For some years now I’ve had the feeling that there some peculiar underlying moral assumptions common to the loose assemblage of identity politics, progressive social agendas and discourse that is sometimes collectively referred to as “political correctness”. But I haven’t yet managed to pin it down - and the increasingly hackneyed status of the ‘PC’ label makes any such analysis perilous indeed (if you’re like me, you probably now cringe a little whenever you hear the expression - particularly if is followed by “gone mad”). But let’s forget about that term for a moment, because I’ve noticed something else. When an advocate for progressive social change puts their message into the media, I am fascinated by what often appears to be a dissonance between the stated moral principles and the spokes person’s implicit moral reasoning. The question is: Is ‘political correctness’ a confused concept in more ways than one? Or is there a relatively coherent ethical framework underpinning the various movements grouped under that label? I want to answer this question soon - my thoughts on the subject are cluttering up the attic of my head, and I’ve decided I need the space. It’s time to let out those cats.

What struck me about a recent news item in The Dominion Post was that an admittedly large, but otherwise rather unremarkable-looking prisoner was noted for his ability to inspire terror among fellow inmates. Convicted murderer Graeme Burton (aka “The Bear”), despite having only one leg, wielded a great deal of power and intimidation at his former residence at Rimutaka Prison, being described by others at the facility as a man “that no-one said ‘no’ to”. Why was this?

Those who have ever studied psychology will probably have heard of Martin Seligman, a researcher who carried out a seminal study in learned helplessness. In this experiment, a group of confined dogs learned to avoid electric shocks by pressing a lever, while another group were subjected to shocks that were apparently random. The dogs in this group eventually became immobile; learning that nothing they did could help them, they entered a state of what we would describe as despair. Interestingly, however, when they were placed in a different situation in which electric shocks could be avoided, the group of dogs with learned helplessness did not even attempt to avoid them.

So what made Burton so particularly terrifying? The press chose to focus on his imposing size as a major factor. But a large part of the answer can perhaps be found in one particular dynamic in abusive relationships. Learned helplessness is a classic behaviour trait exhibited by abused partners. The abused partner eventually ‘learns’ that nothing he or she does can be enough to avoid violent episodes in the relationship, and so ‘gives up’ trying to avoid them altogether. Graeme Burton, in addition to being known for his manipulative personality, was also feared for the fact that he could be friendly in one moment while violent the next. Those who lived near him quickly found that nothing they did could control the schedule of rewarding (friendly) and punishing (violent) behaviour. In the confined environment of a prison, then, it perhaps is unsurprising that despite being only one amongst many violent convicted criminals, a combination of physicality and unpredictable personality made ‘The Bear’ into an object of fear - and not simply a challenge to be overcome.