Stoicism

**Stoicism** is a school of Hellenistic
philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium. in the early 3rd century BC. Beginning at around 301 BC,
Zeno taught philosophy at the Stoa Poikile (i.e., "the painted
porch"), from which his philosophy got its name. The Stoics
taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment,
and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual
perfection", would not suffer such errors.

While the goal of stoic practice was serenity and virtue, a common misconception was that the goal was either to be cold or emotioless. Stoics do not advocate emotionlessness however, but divide between irrational impulse based feelings which control you and are based on faulty judgement verses feelings which are either benign, or direct responses. Although many differ on which types of feelings count as which. They also did not advocate emotional repression, but rather practice which would prevent irrational drives from arising.

Stoic attitudes in megaten have been associated with law, a bit
in earlier games, but more overt starting in nocturne with shijima,
and then becoming most obvious in IV. Though in nocturne the reference is moreso buddhism.

Like in many eastern religions, stoics
focus on the impermanence of transient qualities, combined with the
solid unchanging nature of what was truly important, such as the
reality of virtues and nature. Stoicism was divided into three parts,
the **ethics, physics**, and **logic**. Different stoics disagreed
about how important each part was, but ultimately they said that the
main part of importance was the ethics, and that the other parts
exist to help practice and understand the context of ethics. I won't
bother talking about their logic, since most logic forms are
interchangeable.

One important facet of stoicism though is that it interpreted zeus as not only a monotheistic deity, but an all-good one, that they more commonly referred to as the logos, the logical ordering structure within reality. The concept of the logos from greek philosophy was incorporated later into christianity, showing up in the book of john as a description for god. In megaten, yhvh is depicted in SMTI as a partially composite figure with zeus, (information on the greek mythology page) so this ties in to how certain depictions in greek mythology and philosophy did actually survive by being subsumed into christian theology and culture. Since the logos, which is also called zeus did merge with yhvh in actual theological depiction. Stoicism is one of many greek philosophies that christianity and later western culture in general drew on, and which understanding of can help contextualize its development.

The only time the word stoic is used directly in the games however is for a shadow in p3 and p4 called stoic snake. While a relatively innocuous enemy, its depiction as more ice-spell leaning and weak to fire is in keeping with stoicism being considered a more law-like quality.

Note that while law draws from stoicism to a degree, it doesn't fully adopt all the stoic attitudes, especially as regards normative issues. And so it should be seen as more of a tendency than an absolute. More information on how stoicism can be mixed with other perspectives being on the bottom in the neostoic section.

## Physics and Theology

**Stoic physics**. Note that at this
time period, the nature of the world, and theology were considered
one subject. So to them, “theology” fell under the definition of
physics. As did metaphysics.

**Materialism**. The stoics were strict
classical materialists, who believed that everything that existed
was, or supervened on solid matter, which at the time were envisioned
as tiny geometric shapes.

**God** or **Logos** (Note that although they also sometimes use the word zeus, their idea of god bears
no resemblance to the general zeus of greek mythology) The stoics had
some elements, of monotheism, polytheism, and pantheism all in one.
Although certain stoics wavered on whether or not the polytheistic
gods existed (made out of matter), or whether it even mattered, the
main God to them was known mainly as the logos, which was a world soul
that everything existed within. However, unlike more abstract or
mindless world-souls, this was seen as an active benevolent and
sentient entity that actively guided the world to its betterment.
Since only matter existed, this world soul was an encoded mind
physically existing across all reality itself, composed of the
elements fire and air. And it was known as the logos, to imply it was
a logical ordering structure that provided sense to the world inside
of it, including the structure of morality. The universe was seen as
a sphere composed of the logos, and even empty space was seen as
filled with it. And outside of it was the only true emptiness, known
as the void. Some stoics considered the greek gods not to be separate
entities from the logos, but merely metaphors for parts of it. With
zeus being considered the main part, and the other gods reflecting
sub aspects. Note that this ambiguity shows the ambiguity of gods
arising from the great will in megaten, and how much seperate
existence they have.

The word logos was later used by
Christians to refer to Jesus, and the ordering properties of God in
general. Making the beginning of the gospel of john something that if
you read in the original language was a literal appeal by him to
people familiar with stoicism that their God was ultimately just the
christian God. Making a tying between law and stoicism using
christian symbolism rather on point. Also, angel
being represented more serene like stoic sages did not happen until later on, potentially due to stoic
influence anyways. It is unsure whether this is a coincidence or not
though. Notice also that the holy spirit is described like a world
soul that you cannot communicate and does not speak directly. Though
this may not be directly stoic influence.
Note here that although it was a
sentient entity, the logos did not communicate with humans, or even
the gods directly. It was simply an ordering principle of reality
that you must extrapolate the will of from studying reality and doing
philosophy, since there was no divine revelation from it. (Although
some stoics did believe that omens may be causal signifiers of bad
things to come. This wasn't necessarily divine revalation, just
something they assumed had to do with causal necessity. And even this
was rare for them). Minus the explicit sentience, this is actually
another loose megaten tie in, especially in IV where the silence of
God, and angels trying to extrapolate his will, and lucifer
complaining that it doesn't matter is a big theme.

Although they focused on this less than
hindus did, stoics pointed out that people, and even the gods existed
as microcosms of Zeus who gave pieces of himself to them to cultivate
by virtue. And they said that one way to look at the relation between
life is via the metaphor of being different pieces of one organism.
Something they thought that in some sense was literally true, being
pieces of zeus who all lived inside of. Although as stated, this was
more of a novelty useful to point out as metaphor to them, rather
than something that mattered to their practice or came up much. This
also led to a form of more radical egalitarianism, since they pointed
out that anyone could if they properly worked to become a sage, tune
into this cosmic consciousness to arrive at good conclusions, that if
right even the gods could not be “more right” than. Though they
noted that the gods were probably wiser than they were. This led to
them downplaying the need for temples or revering of the lower gods,
and so was obviously closer to monotheism in this sense. Note that
their wavering on gods also made them waver on the existence of a
concrete afterlife. But they pointed out that this is something that
you should not concern yourself with, since your goal is living well
in this life. (Augustine later flipped this for christianity to say a
truly good life was something that takes place in heaven, and this is
leading there). Note also that this explains in some sense the idea
of the great will in megaten, and their relation with it. it is
literally in some sense the summation of all life, that life exists
as pieces of. So focusing on that relation, and dubbing it the core
of what to focus on about God is a useful lawful approach to
morality.

The importance here of the archetype of
the sage rather than the sentient gods shows up in law as well, where
angels (and even polytheistic gods, especially in I and SJ) are there
to help set up the lawful world, but are not a huge focus. Even YHVH
is not as huge a focus in the sentient, rather than the abstract
sense. And zayin's lines in the added scenes of II about
God not having one face, but about how anyone can become a face of
god ties into the idea of the sage, loosely. Since of course stoics
focused heavily on deciphering God's will by reason as individuals,
with sages or enlightened individuals being the main embodiment. But
sages were not considered divine in their own right, but merely in
high knowledge of the will of the logos. Which ties into law's focus
on the idea of faces of God being more of a messenger of God than
literally independently divine. (Obviously this isn't one for one,
but you get the idea.)

**Pneuma** in its purest form can thus
be difficult to distinguish from logos or the "constructive
fire." In the Stoic universe, everything is constituted of
matter and pneuma. There are three to four main grades or kinds of
pneuma, depending on their proportion of fire and air, in increasing
order of complexty, and this explained the difference between “dead”
matter, plants, animals, humans, etc. Note that the pleuma was
considered the substance that the individual soul was composed of,
but was a physical substance. And the individual soul was made of the
same elements as the world soul.

**Ekpyrosis** is a Stoic belief in the
periodic destruction of the cosmos by a wave of fire every Great
Year. The cosmos is then recreated (palingenesis) only to be
destroyed again at the end of the new cycle. Some stoics even
believed that each cycle would be identical to the previous one. So
while they did not always believe in a specific afterlife, (although they generally assumed there was one) they noted
that reincarnation of a sort may exist regardless.

## Ethics - General

### Virtue Ethics

**Ethics**. The stoics divided their
ethics into three disciplines, called \*\*the discipline of desire, the
discipline of action,\*\* and \*\*the discipline of judgement.\*\* These in
order meaning training to overcome unruly emotional impulses for the
first, training, to perform the right action for the second, and
training to have an objective understanding for the third. They
emphasized that the discipline of desire was the most important to
begin first, since without reigning in damaging emotional reactions
to events, objectivity, and thus even knowing the right action, much
less guarantee that one will perform it is unlikely. The discipline
of judgment was considered the applied form of logic, as applied to
their ethics.
**Practical wisdom** was what the
stoics defined philosophy as about. Namely, it wasn't meant to be
purely abstract, but to literally be a method to enhance ethical
practice.

**Virtue ethics.** The stoics were
strict virtue ethicists (In part, since this was more or less the
only moral theory existing at the time). Which is the idea that
morality is cultivation of virtue, rather than about any specific
action. And that having more virtue was more moral, with outside
virtuous actions instrumental to cultivating virtue. Law obviously
doesn't really follow virtue ethics, and neither does neutral, and
chaos arguably does in a way, but not in any format that the stoics
would approve of. (Nietzche is considered a form of virtue ethicist
where the virtue are self oriented and indulgent ones, as is ayn
rand.)

Stoics actually took virtue ethics to a
semi radical conclusion that some others did not (although less
radical than the cynics, see below) saying that the only thing that
matters in any sense is virtue. Suffering or happiness didn't matter
at all. However, they did break down their value theory into five
categories to make a meaningful distinction that didn't leave people
clueless. They said that the only things truly good or evil were
virtues and vice. Everything else was indifferent. However, within
the indifferents there were still preferred indifferents,
indifferents to avoid, and things indifferent in the stricter sense.
They pointed out that some things are naturally preferred by people,
and so they gravitate to them inherently. And is it is okay to engage
in preferred indifferents, or happy experiences, so long as doing so
does not lead to vice. This was a departure from the even more
ascetic cynics who believed you should not even engage in happy
experiences since only virtue mattered. Virtue ethics as a whole is
still one of the main theories of ethics, although it has fallen out
of favor over time, due to other theories superseding it, as well as
other theories incorporating theories of the importance of virtue
into them in ways seen as more sensible.

An important aspect of their ethics on
the aside from is that they insisted that people who are heavily
filled with vice, rather than being thought of as willfully evil
should be thought of like dogs tied to cards, stuck on the whim of
their emotions and weaknesses being pulled everywhere it takes them.
This was not meant to alleviate all responsibility, but like some
later christian ideas was meant to downplay judgement of them as
individuals, to focus on instead helping them. This also shows up in
IV on law. Note that johnathan uses the word evil, whereas merkabah
shifts to the more vague designation of filth. Avoiding making a
necessary judgement of morality, but flatly stating that something is
a problem. (Though he does call lucifer evil one time.)

**Preferred indifferents**. To the stoics, the good and bad were
simply virtue and vice. Suffering and pleasure were theoretically
indifferent. However, they saw it as natural for people to desire
pleasure, and so considered this what they called a preferred
indifferent. This means something that people want, even if having it is
 not in itself considered a good in the moral sense. But it is okay to
have, so long as it does not conflict with virtue to have. They did not
believe in making yourself suffer or depriving yourself of comforts for
no reason. Only in being ready to when necessary.

Since law is using a utilitarian framework, rather than a virtue
ethical one, the concept could be adapted slightly to make sense in such
 a context. To a utilitarian the good is raising utility. However, it
does not differentiate between where this utility exists. A preferred
indifferent to a utilitarian framework then would be you having this
utility, rather than it being sorted in a morally equal way where you do
 not. Utilitarians, despite prioritizing the big picture are not life
denying however, and see this experience as fundamentally the essence of
 the good. Even if the big picture good should be prioritized over your
own. Not because its not valueable, but because its too valuable to be
selfish about.

**Cosmopolitanism**. One major aspect of stoic teachings was its emphasis on cosmopolitanism. At a time when most people were ordered into separate city-states focused on their own interests, zeno emphasized that "all the inhabitants of this world of ours should not live differentiated by their respective rules of justice into separate cities and communities, but that we should consider all men to be of one community and one polity, and that we should have a common life and an order common to us all, even as a herd that feeds together and shares the pasturage of a common field." \

This emphasis was not just about laws, but about morality in general, understanding that one should focus on everyone, rather than the ingroup, and even including people who might be at odds with you. This focus setting a large tone for the west's later focus on universal systems. Note how law, being defined as western themed focuses more on cosmopolitanism, whereas chaos focuses more on ingroup logic. Being more eastern themed, chaos relates more to the eastern emphasis on morality relating to your ingroup.

### Natural Law

**Natural law** is a concept which
while you don't hear it as often anymore used to be an important
concept to use to frame how morality worked Namely, that while humans
make laws for their cities that can change, that there is some kind
of law within nature in general (note that nature here as a term
meant something closer to reality than to our ideas of nature now)
which by its nature is universal. Although this was seen by them as
having been created by the logos, or ordering principle of reality,
they also pointed out that it existing in nature alleviated the need
for it to be a divine decree in any sense. What is right for you to
do simply is part of reality. And you should be able to use logic to
understand this much and make a system of ethics even without a
system of theology or meta ethics explaining where you think these
rules came from. In modern day the need to specifically ask whether
ethics should be described as a law of nature has been subsumed into
other traditions, and so no one really uses the term natural law
anymore other than in religious traditions. Even there is is often
relegated to outdated extremely sketchy ways for more traditionalist
ones to explain by what angle they think
homosexuality
is dubious, by using classical ideas of teleology or the natural ends
of items. Which is ironic, considering the source.

Although the term natural
law
is not used in ethics much anymore, it is important in the history of
philosophy to explain one of the reasons that western ideology like
christianity is considered law, and eastern religions sway more
chaos. (not exclusively. Many eastern gods show up in law as well,
but not as commonly since angels tend to monopolize its plot roles).
Natural law has to do with the development of the idea of phrasing of
moral statements as imperatives. (Note that Judaism however did this
before hearing of the concept). This is something that in the east
did not exist to such an extent. Moralty in the east was seen as a
good thing to do, but was not really seen as something you “had”
to do. These distinctions may be nuanced in various ways, especially
since in the east they still believed bad actions would send you to
hells, but the differences do lead to the idea that although not
necessarily correct, leads people to think eastern religions are more
lenient. Which is why half of the internet thinks buddhism is
nihilistic and has no rules, neither of which are true. The
connotations of them were more that virtue and skillful practice in
the east were seen as something it was incoherent to try to force,
since while you can punish bad actions, and reward good ones, and it
is right to do so, virtue itself is not something that is external to
the individual. Early ethics in history in both the east and west did
have a larger focus on virtue ethics than they do now.

### Goals and Virtues

**Eudaimonia (contentment)** is a word
used in different Greek philosophies to refer to their different
goals of what each of them saw as the end state of human flourishing.
For the stoics, it was seen as a state of peace or serenity that the
sage would exist in once free from passions. Eudaimonia was defined
as the final goal not just of stoicism, but of many greek
philosophies. A direct translation translates it as happiness or
contentment, but in practice this is not what it meant, but meant
something more like “good life.” The point of philosophies like
stoicism of course was that shooting for just your own happiness
directly was not by itself the path to the good life, but rather you
needed to cultivate proper virtues, which would then by their nature
make you happy as well. But your goal should not be the happiness,
but rather then virtues.

**The four cardinal virtues** is a
later name for their categories of what the primary virtues
ultimately reduced to. There were many virtues, but in practice they
could each being seen as reducing to a form of these. These are:

1: wisdom. Knowing what should be done,
and how to live.

2: courage. The strength to do what you
should.

3: justice. Namely, putting the wisdom
into practice. Doing what you know should be done fairly.

4: restraint or temperance. Simply, the
strength to avoid doing what you shouldn't.

### Political theory

**Zeno's republic** deserves at least a
passing mention. Although not much remains of it, and many later
stoics said it was not a high quality text, zeno made his own writing
called the republic, likely as a response to plato's, describing how
their ideal society would function. People were more androgynous and
there was one type of
clothes
both sexes shared. There was some vague type of government described
as somewhat egalitarian, but sages would be the ones in positions of
power. And the society would be arranged such that it would exist for
the cultivation of sages. Interestingly, according to his contemporaries, zeno was only interested in men, so his description of the ideal society may have reflected some of those tendencies.

## Ethics - Equanimity

### General

**Stoic equanimity** is the thing they
are most known for, and so can be distinguished from its pure ethics.
It should be noted however that in practice to them they considered
it part of their ethics. Both since it was virtuous in nature, and
because its purpose was to become and maintain virtues in other ways
as well. Someone who perfectly mastered their teachings would become
a sage. There were various means they used to maintain this calm,
from the view from above, to various means to stay in the present
moment. Unfortunately, most of their traditional practices there are
not good records of.
**Proto passions** are automatic
responses to events. These they said were in a sense out of your
control, and so even a sage may have proto passions which are
seemingly unruly. But they do not develop until full passions until
you feed into them. A sage may have an immediate response to
something tat surprises them, being human, but would not feed into
this and would never make incorrectly reasoned conclusions based on
it. Part of this equanimity was facilitated by various meditative techniques. One of such being to identify your circle of influence. If something was outside your control, you need not worry about it. If it was within your control, you should focus on doing what you should as regards it, rather than having a mental reaction. The ultimate takeaway was that you can only ultimately control your own actions and reactions, and your circle of influence is only what can be effected by those.

### Passions

**Passions** (or **pathos**) were seen
as the negative passions that cause errors in reasoning and moral
action. You can also translate them as emotions, since it should be
noted that even some weaker everyday emotional attachments were seen
as damaging by them. They reduce to four general responses. Note that
these four passions are a combination of two binaries.

1: appetite. or irrational desire for a
future event.

2: fear or irrational aversion to a
future event.

3: pleasure or irrational clinging to
an experience one already has.

4: distress or irrational upset at an
experience one already has.

### Sages

**The Sage** or **Sophos** was the
archetype of a person of moral or intellectual perfection, who did
not experience the passions at
all.
In practice this was seen as a near unreachable goal, and so the goal
of stoicism was merely to move as close towards it as one can. In
fact, The standard was so high that Stoics were unsure whether one
had ever existed, if so, possibly only Socrates or Diogenes of Sinope
had achieved such a state. They considered this then not something
one could be or identify, but simply an
archetype of perfection to use as a reference point about what to move to.
Nonetheless, they still used people they believed were very close as
real world examples, albeit with a warning to accept that they were
not perfect, and so were fallible. All fallible people were described
as “insane” to an extent in that none of them were above wrong
judgments. A sage however was seen as incapable of making wrong
judgments at all. Which they rightfully understood was a standard
none may fully embody. They believed that from the logos was an
implicit command in reality to live your life moving to sagehood to
the best of your ability, and this was ultimately what morality was
about.

### Asceticism

**Askēsis** is a way of life involving
constant practice and training towards the goal of becoming a sage.
It translates to asceticism, but the more extreme world-shunning
mentality that that word later came to be used for is not quite
identical to the stoic use. Unlike other ascetics, the stoics did not
think you inherently needed to deny yourself everyday forms of
happiness, as you have preferences by nature, but someone fully
virtuous would be willing to deny themselves anything they need to at
any time if doing so was virtuous. In practice this would generally
mean not having strong preferences for irrational impulsive types of
pleasures that may be tied to vice however. Note that although law
in-game does not profess a form of virtue ethics, that this concept
does closely tie to their approach. Which is why law heroes tend to
sacrifice their lives.

### Dispassion

**Apatheia**, translated as without
passion was seen as a state of peace or serenity that the sage would
exist in once free from passions. Once one becomes a sage this cannot
be disrupted by anything. It refers to a state of mind where one is
not disturbed by the passions, or “emotions”. Although it sounds
similar to the word apathy, a more accurate translation would be calm
or equanimity, rather than apathetic or indifferent. The word
apatheia has a quite different meaning to the modern English apathy,
which has a negative connotation. Stoics themselves warned that
freeing yourself from unruly emotions was not meant to be cold like a
statue which did not care about others, but that the goal was to be
free from irrational cravings and aversions that pulled you around
and made you biased, so that you would be free to be virtuous in an
understanding way. And that this would ultimately make you enjoy life
more besides, since you are free from your damaging irrational
appetites that disrupt your ability to.

The most direct depiction of this in
game being how you are depicted in the law ending of IV when you
answer the questions correctly. In fact, earlier on lilith even
describes it in a stoic like manner, talking about (If you respond
unemotionally) how you gave your mind and body over to God, who in IV
is described as more abstract. Christianity itself obviously doesn't
have this same kind of focus on nonemotionality (even though
ironically Jesus was described in this way. It just didn't catch on
as a main focus or practice to shoot for). Contrast this approach
with the more neutral aristotle, who claimed that virtue was to be
found in the golden mean between excess and deficiency of passions
(which he called metriopatheia). The stoics wanted to be free from,
and the master of them all. Note of course that since stoics thought
that the logic of the universe was the same as “God,” and your
inner nature that coincided with the natural law came from God as
well, they would have described living properly virtuously in a sense
as this as well. There are actually parallels between taoism and
stoicism drawn in which morality is a microcosm of the logic of
reality that has to do with one's inner nature, and properly
following the logic of it. And of course if you consider the great
will from the perspective of a collective, and replace references to
god with collective, lilith's description explains lawful ideology.
Which works well with stoicism, since you each have a small piece of
the essence of the logos, and moving in tune with it is something you
can do without direct divine commands.

### Positive feelings

**Eupathos** or **eupatheia** or **good mentalities / feelings** were what a sage would have instead of
passions. The sage has no 'appetites', but does have 'wishes', whose
species include kindness, generosity, warmth and affection. Generally
there were three main ones.

**1: Joy or Serenity.** In this format it
would not be the more banal version, but a feeling of elation or
peace of mind. Serenity, as opposed to irrational pleasure that
frames itself in terms directly of needing an object. Stoics often
pointed out that it is not things that cause you suffering, but your
responses to them. And so you techncially have the power to revoke or
change the response at any time, if not easy in practice.

**2: Caution or discretion** is a rational
feeling of avoiding the bad.

**3: Wishing or willing.** It is the sage's
form of preferring the good, so as to be able to act. But
understanding that all that matters for them to do is be virtuous.

Stoics answered claims that they were a
lifeless philosophy by pointing out that they were not trying to
become cold, but rather joyful in
the sense of that once they were free from negative cravings the
replacement would be a state of constant serenity. This would help
them be more virtuous towards others, but at the same time they
thought that this focus would actually increase their own hapiness by
detaching it from irrational impulse that could not be sustained.

**Natural affection / love** is another thing that
although not defined as an emotion per say is a sense that the sage
would have. Sages would rationally naturally wish well for all
mankind as the equal to themselves, since all people exist to work
together as if they were parts of the same organism. Note that stoics
see clinging love as wrong. Only freely given love that does not
cling is optimally correct. The idea of all seeing yourself as
attached to one organism being in part what law derives lawful
morality from, in reference to the great will. Which in the context of the games, God is a kind of abstract collective of all life.
Which law then sees following and complying with as acting for the
maximal benefit of the all in an agent neutral sense.

Note that this
led to stoics having internal discussions about whether that meant a
sage would ever love and marry one individual, or whether that was a
mark of not yet being one. But they concluded that in a similar way
to how pragmatically living morally has to be focused on individual
events, there was nothing wrong with a sage focusing love specially
on a family, not to mention that nothing wrong with it being a
preferred indifferent as well, so long as it does not lead to vice.
So the stoics sought to take some ascetic practice, but formulate it
into something that did not result in someone arbitrarily living on a
mountain whipping themselves with no benefit to anyone. Especially
since proving you can survive harsh treatment is not particularly
virtuous if you don't turn this to helping others anyways.

## Neo-stoicism

**Neo-stoicism** refers to modern tendencies to update and improve upon the idea of stoicism. It first emerged in the sixteenth century as a means to merge aspects of stoicism with christian doctrines, but later became adapted for modern use via various writers such as Nussbaum.

Nussbaum divides stoic doctrine between the descriptive views and the normative views. Saying that while their understanding of how emotion can influence action negatively is closer to being accurate, their normative idea that the only thing of value is our rational nature is a harder sell. And that a more moderate take to stoicism should be taken, which instead of treating even positive feelings like compassion like just another passion that is dangerous, allows emotions to pass through and decide on them rationally. Hence, it would be shifted away from an explicit moral doctrine to a more general tool that can be mixed with various views.

Law in the games of course adopts a neo-stoic tone. Both in that it contains a merging of stoicism with christian aesthetics, but also in that it is not strictly tied to ancient stoic normative views, seeing it in a more moderate light. While law does seek for the transformation of humanity to largely be rid of aggressive emotional tones that lead to detrimental outcomes, they never adopt some of the strict anti compassion tones that are sometimes associated with stoic doctrine. Although it is worth noting that their willingness to sacrifice some for the greater good in a calm way can be seen as placing the outcome above compassion.