by stego-tech | 2026-01-25 17:39:20+00:00
This hits the nail on the head. I liken it to a scale or ladder, each rung representing a new level of understanding:

1) Basic morality (good vs evil) with total agency ascribed to the individual

2) Basic systems (good vs bad), with total agency ascribed to the system and people treated as perfectly rational machines (where most of the comments here seem to sit)

3) Blended system and morality, or "Systemic Morality": agency can be system-based or individual-based, and morality can be good or bad. This is the single largest rung, because there's a lot to digest here, and it's where a lot of folks get stuck on one ("you can't blame people for making rational decisions in a bad system") or the other ("you can't fault systems designed by fallible humans"). It's why there's a lot of "that's just the way things are" useless attitudes at present, because folks don't want to climb higher than this rung lest they risk becoming accountable for their decisions to themselves and others.

4) "Comprehensive Morality": an action is net good or bad because of the system and the human. A good human in a bad system is more likely to make bad choices via adherence to systemic rules, just as a bad human in a good system is likely to find and exploit weaknesses in said system for personal gain. You cannot ascribe blame to one or the other, but rather acknowledge both separately and together. Think "Good Place" logic, with all of its caveats (good people in bad systems overwhelmingly make things worse by acting in good faith towards bad outcomes) and strengths (predictability of the masses at scale).

5) "Historical Morality": a system or person is net good or bad because of repeated patterns of behaviors within the limitations (incentives/disincentives) of the environment. A person who routinely exploits the good faith of others and the existing incentive structure of a system purely for personal enrichment is a bad person; a system that repeatedly and deliberately incentivizes the exploitation of its members to drive negative outcomes is a bad system. Individual acts or outcomes are less important than patterns of behavior and results. Humans struggle with this one because we live moment-to-moment, and we ultimately dread being held to account for past actions we can no longer change or undo. Yet it's because of that degree of accountability - that you can and will be held to account for past harms, even in problematic systems - that we have the rule of law, and civilization as a result.

Like a lot of the commenters here, I sat squarely in the third rung for years before realizing that I wasn't actually smart, but instead incredibly ignorant and entitled by refusing to truly evaluate root causes of systemic or personal issues and address them accordingly. It's not enough to merely identify a given cause and call it a day, you have to do something to change or address it to reduce the future likelihood of negative behaviors and outcomes; it's how I can rationalize not necessarily faulting a homeless person in a system that fails to address underlying causes of homelessness and people incentivized not to show empathy or compassion towards them, but also rationalize vilifying the wealthy classes who, despite having infinite access to wealth and knowledge, willfully and repeatedly choose to harm others instead of improving things.

Villainy and Heroism can be useful labels that don't necessarily simplify or ignorantly abstract the greater picture, and I'd like to think any critically-thinking human can understand when someone is using those terms from the first rung of the ladder versus the top rung.