[MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	J C Lawrence [SMTP:claw at under.engr.sgi.com]
> Sent:	Wednesday, July 01, 1998 1:06 PM
> To:	mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject:	[MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun 
> 
>   Can a player base cohesively and effectively enforce ethical lines
> as population scales?  
> 
In these days of ethical relativism, it's worth considering that while
ethics prove not to be absolute, there is a very strong need for LOCAL
ethical absolutism--my goofy term for an awareness that rules differ
elsewhere, but that locally, they must be treated as firm for the sake
of the integrity of the local group. This suggests that while a very
large group may not be able to define, explicate, and enforce its ethics
globally, subgroups within said larger group may very well be able to do
so, provided they are able to amend the rules for local conditions.

This is how the real world works--in a different context Mike S called
it cell division model, Dr Cat something else, and what we call it
doesn't really matter--it's a matter of a degree of local autonomy that
is subordinate in certain big ways to a larger group. The smaller group
is small enough to organize effectively to enforce the ethical lines it
chooses to draw under the guidance of the larger group. It's also a
fairly basic tenet of the American governmental structure, though it
doesn't always seem to play out thus in practice...

-Raph