Users browsing this thread:

**Seraph** · 07-29-2020, 02:31 PM

The Southern Journal
The Official News Outlet of the South Pacific

The Role of Compassion in a New Defender Moralism

By Anonymous.

For some time I’ve found myself seeking a better model of R/D than those offered by any major defending organization. Neither, the model that finds R/D to be just part of a game, nor the model that accuses raiders of deeper evil sit well with me. The former flies in the face of my beliefs in self-determination and reads as an arrogant effort by the R/D community to place the self-determination of others beneath their own sense of fun. The latter flies in the face of my inability to see people as inherently good or evil, rather just shaped by their social conditions into identities, actions, and behaviors.

Upon reading Seraph’s “In Defense of A New Defender Moralism”, I found myself largely agreeing, but identifying a crucial difference in terms of how I justify a tolerant moralism: a greater emphasis on attempting to empathize with individuals than on the rights of communities.

Communities certainly deserve respect. However, the arguments raiders give often tell us that the regions they raid are “mostly inactive”, that raids “actually increase activity”, or that natives “can just move elsewhere”. These arguments are rarely fully true and, even if they were, do not speak to the effect raids have on individuals.

Raids, beyond any reasonable doubt, often cause meaningful emotional distress to natives and this observation is the core of why I believe all raids — griefing, occupation, Delegate-bumping, tag raiding, and all other adjectives intended to sell us on the idea that this raid is acceptable — are wrong. Natives often indicate that they want the disruption to end, that a raid has hindered the plans they had for their region, that their region’s growth was inhibited by the raid, or that they feel intimidated or scared by raiders. Even if their community was not what the mainstream NationStates Gameplay community would describe as “active” or “well-developed”, that doesn’t make the feelings of the natives as individuals less valid. In contrast, it makes the determination that the fun of the raider outweighs the distress of the native profoundly arrogant.

Those (the original article included) who make excuses for short term, tag-only, non-griefing, [insert adjective here] raids are missing this crucial piece. No matter how insignificant or easily reversible a raid is, it always runs a significant risk of hurting others. Whenever a Condemn resolution is drafted after a small region is tag raided, the collective laughter at the expense of the author, often a relatively inexperienced player trying to make their home, is cruel. Perhaps the offense committed does not merit a Security Council Condemnation, but its writing certainly demonstrates a legitimate distress, and therefore harm, caused by the raid.

Is there such a thing as an ethical raid? I guess a raid that occurs with express prior consent from an overwhelming majority of the natives in the region where one could be confident beyond a shred of a doubt that no one will ever resent the raid. At that point, the raid is more of a joint regional event than a raid and I'll never object to that.

This brings me to how I feel about raiders. I think there is something genuinely gross about reveling in native distress. I also recognize that many raiders probably don’t actively revel in native distress, although they certainly perpetuate it. Mostly, while I reach an unwavering conviction that raiding itself is deeply wrong, I have extreme difficulty saying it makes someone a bad person. Broadly, I’m not sure what it means to be a bad person (or a good person for that matter). However, that doesn’t mean I don’t try to do good and avoid doing wrong, including as it relates to defending in NationStates.

Raiders are also people who are full of complexity. When raiders explain why they raid, I really think I understand. The same compassion that calls me to sympathize with natives also calls me to sympathize with raiders as people. If raiding is where someone found their sense of community and home, I understand why they raid. I just wish the world was full of more opportunities for all people to find their communities, their friends, their home. I think raiders themselves have every right to find happy internet homes with friends who support them and activities that entertain them. I just wish those communities were not built on deliberately causing distress to others. Despite my tolerance for raiders, I will always believe that raiding is wrong and describe it as wrong.

It is from this recognition that I believe defenders must focus first on their own communities. The best strategic and paradigmatic response to raiding is to make more, stronger, diverse communities built on compassion and friendship. Communities where you play games and people randomly ping you sometimes and you feel like there are all these people with whom you share something small but important. For those who enjoy an R/D game, maybe these communities defend. But more importantly those communities should be built on a defender ethic of supporting their members and allowing their members to live more fulfilling lives.