# Not Quite a Trope-a-Day: Blue and Orange Morality **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Created:** [October 31, 2024, 8:11pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/not-quite-a-trope-a-day-blue-and-orange-morality/1014 "2024-10-31T20:11:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2024, 8:11pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/not-quite-a-trope-a-day-blue-and-orange-morality/1014/1 "2024-10-31T20:11:46Z")
_I’m posting this one out of order, mostly because I’m finding more and more coming up in the list that reference it – the psychological differences between the eldrae, and indeed the Imperial, on the street and the humanity we’re used to and their effects on their sense of ethics is something that’s rather significant in the ongoing series of things. So here the main examples of this are, and intelligent commentary is welcomed!_ **_[Blue and Orange Morality](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality?ref=eldraeverse.com):_** Well, sure, from their own point of view morality – or at least ethics – is pretty much _Black and White Morality_, but then, here, we’re looking at these things from a human perspective, at which point it looks very much more blue – or orange – than white. Which is to say that – even aside from the issue of incomprehensibility of transsophont and postsophont minds to regular old baselines, or of the lack of transparency of thousand-year or ten-thousand-year plans to people who lack the relevant time horizon – it is a morality very much suited for people who are: _Intensely_ propertarian (_cov __á__ l __í__ r_).  For the eldrae, a soph’s property is perceived very much as an extension of himself; “my house”, “my car”, or “my book” are as much a part of “me” as “my hand” is.  Property ethics, property law, and the appropriate delicacy a chap should observe around other people’s property follow appropriately.  You never appropriate or use someone else’s property, no matter how casually or trivially, without their consent, upon which you may never presume. As a corollary to this, as a propertarian culture, they are comfortable assigning and quantizing value (not necessarily in monetary terms, since money is, after all, merely the quantum of _exchange-value_, which is a subset of value; and some values may invoke transfinite terms) even to intangibles and abstractions.  (Which is not to say that it despises sentiments and principles, or is cynical about non-material things; it merely requires that its adherents understand their own values in these areas.)  Nor do they devalue trade in the same way as human cultures, historical and present, do; entrepreneurship is very highly regarded. (To give some other examples: In this paradigm, relationships, love included, are seen as an exchange of values.  To steal some text for this example from elsewhere, this means that in their idiom, “How much is your love worth?” is a _strict cognate_ for “How much do you love me?” And, of course, the entire series of human romantic ideals about the pure and romantic nature of loving in spite of one’s partner’s lack of values, the more so the more they lack any discernible excellences, and suchlike, are nothing but one big _does not compute_. Our _materialism_ requires a small pile of footnoted background to make sense, inasmuch as our definition (preferring material objects of value to intangible objects which are somehow _above_ value) makes no sense whatsoever in a paradigm in which _everything_ has a value. And while I suspect that the in-world translators wouldn’t actually be programmed this way, the purpose of language being communication and all, I invoke Artistic License to point out that many words have different value judgments attached to them.  _Greed_, for instance, still fundamentally the rapacious pursuit of values (such as wealth, status, and power), but is both (a) readily applicable to the pursuit of non-material values, and (b) an unambiguously _positive_ quality.  Yes, _Greed Is Good_.  (Of course, greed is also often negentropic – see below.)  And, conversely, _altruism_ is definitely not a compliment.) Minds “vast and cool and unsympathetic”, to purloin a phrase.  While not a natural attribute – if anything, the state of nature was originally quite the opposite – _talcor __íë__ f_, literally cold-mindedness, but implying rationality and self-mastery, is highly prized.  Emotions are nothing more than input data, possibly erroneous, to the computer of the mind.  Input _informs_ the output, it does not _control_ it.  One who cannot properly master their passions in all circumstances is at _best_ temporarily incompetent and at _worst_ a danger to everyone around them. (And yes, by Imperial standards, Earth’s emotionally logohorreic societies _desperately_ need to get in touch with their rational sides.  Which is what they’d tell you if they were being polite, and comments about “ranting hysteria” therefore aren’t in play.) Profoundly individualistic.  While not so to the ultimate extent of the _rijzh_ (whose predatory nature makes it almost impossible for them to associate) or the _j __á__ raph_ (whose solipsism is such that they do not recognize the existence of not-self) – they _can_ and _do_ cooperate and form organizations and societies, which those species cannot – personal and abstract liberty is one of their most cherished values, up there with self-integrity.  Depriving someone of their ability to choose is the single worst sin in their moral system (for example, even criminals are offered the choice to die as themselves rather than submit to correction, but they would never consider using prison as a punishment). This also, obviously, means that they don’t care much for peer pressure or social consensus, and would find humans’ instinctive habit of defining moral as normal and normal as majoritarian good for a laugh, although quite possibly a got-to-laugh-not-to-weep one.  An eldrae will fight any group, if not indeed the whole of society, uphill to prove a point, if he believes that it’s right, and society would be rather disappointed if he didn’t. (The social effects are fairly obvious – after all, it’s no guess that people like this find it a considerable pleasure to watch slavers and tyrants – by their admittedly generous definition – receive their just desserts, and an even greater pleasure to make that happen.  One that is worth noting is with regard to employment; employment as we know it is practically nonexistent – not because it actually violates the strict moral precept, but just because selling off chunks of your time in which you will work under orders, vis-à-vis contracting to perform a particular task at your own will, is _insufficiently dignified_ for a free man.) Preoccupied with _m __é__ lith_ – balance and obligation.  As obligation, this is generally quite clear; _pacta sunt servanda_ is the rule of society, and _I Gave My Word_ is in full play.  Promissory statements have the force of contract law – indeed, in the Empire, promissory statements _are the basis of_ contract law, hence the general term _oath-contract_.  (They do warn people about this at port of entry, clearly and distinctly.)  And while, being exceptionally rational, they are careful to hedge appropriately and are exquisitely good at _Exact Words_ when necessary, all the Galaxy knows that a promise from or a deal with an Imperial is something you can take to the bank.  Always.  _Whatever_ it is, and whatever your relationship is, and however much of an utter bastard he might be in other respects. (And, socially, you receive more credit for fulfilling an obligation than for doing something you aren’t obliged to do, because as all know, “obligations met are the foundation of civilization”.) As balance, this manifests as a need for balanced exchange.  It doesn’t particularly affect trade – by definition, any transaction in a free market _is_ a balanced exchange, but in everything outside the markets… well, a favor for a favor is the rule, and while it might not be written down, any Imperial has a very good idea of exactly to whom he owes favors, and from whom he is owed them.  And there is a large part of the below-mentioned complex etiquette that deals with the giving, receiving, and prestation of such things. (Of course, “a slight for a slight” is the flipside of “a favor for a favor”, but it’s one less talked about.  Relatedly, consider the distinct preference for “clemency” over “mercy” in their culture – which _does_ create a favor-debt. This also defines the nature of _charity_ in this paradigm; leaving aside for a moment those direct-action organizations which do what they do simply because it fulfills their _valx __í__ jir_ or _estx __í__ jir_ – for which see below – and therefore receive internal balancing rewards, it tends to take the form of investment, or _venture altruism_.  Your typical venture altruist will invest in improving someone’s life and capacities in expectation of a return on investment, contractual and/or patron-client style. Indeed, it has to be that way, because altruism, like parasitism, is an unbalanced and therefore immoral exchange.  By definition, therefore, anyone who would receive it is insufficiently moral to merit it.) Driven, obsessive, or, if you like, bloody stubborn.  Whether classified as _valx __í__ jir_, the individual form – which you could approximately translate as uniqueness, excellence, will to power, or forcible impression of self onto the universe – or _estx __í__ jir_, the cooperative form – which you could approximately translate as wyrd, destiny, devotion-to-ideals, or dharma – or simply as _qalas __í__ r_, “the driving energies of the individual”, the eldrae tend to acquire a purpose, a loyalty, an interest, a focus, and however trivial the matter may seem, take it to the limit and if possible beyond.  Sometimes this is epic.  Sometimes this intense focus turns on (relatively) trivial things.  But for the eldrae, at least, and quite commonly for people who get caught up in it, there is no escaping the demands of _qalas __í__ r…_ and “my _qalas __í__ r_ required it of me” is an often-unquestionable and as often acceptable answer as to why one happened to do anything in particular. (Even their word for _dilettante_ is probably closer to _polymath_, in practical meaning.) One of its most notable forms, of course, is… [FOR SCIENCE!](http://eldraeverse.com/2012/04/03/trope-a-day-for-science/)  Yes, very much for science.  And with a sense of ethics that – these days, renegades excepted – pretty much manages to encompass informed consent, sophont/prosophont rights and externality, but which considers considerations of [_Potential Applications_](http://eldraeverse.com/2012/04/02/trope-a-day-potential-applications/), social consequences, humanity(-analogs), or squick, to be the sort of pathetic mewlings one expects to hear from the WEAK, the INFIRM of PURPOSE, the too COWARDLY to FACE the FUTURE!  FOOLS!!  You DARE to stand in the WAY of PROGRESS!!! I’LL SHOW YOU, SHOW YOU ALL!!!! Ahem.  We’ll continue when our narrator returns from _The Madness Place_. (Incidentally, much the same applies in the alternative forms _For Art!_, _For Craft!_, _For Engineering!_ and _For The Humanities!_) Opposed to entropy in all its forms.  Obviously, as natural immortals, that includes death as the most obvious and also most blindingly wasteful form (hence the missionary groups in favor of spreading said immortality); but includes ideological opposition to chaos (vis-à-vis emergent order), loss of information, disease, biosphere loss, waste, damage, and destruction in general.  And they take their negentropy _seriously_.  _Recycling_ is morally laudable, as a way in which the old is used to produce the new, and unlike most environmentalist interpretations, you can consume vast quantities of energy to produce aesthetic effects, and so forth, and terraforming and the artificialization or use of nature is all perfectly acceptable… …but if you aren’t offended by carelessness, guilty at accidentally dropping glassware or scraping things in passing, appalled by neglected maintenance, and _morally outraged_ by concepts like inbuilt obsolescence, you’re doing it wrong.  (To use a more active example, if terrorists flying loaded airplanes into occupied buildings with a death toll in the thousands sends _us_ to war with controversy and protest, then contrastingly, in their paradigm, people flying completely empty airplanes into likewise empty buildings with a death and injury count of _zero_ sophonts would be quite adequate to label said group a bunch of irredeemable entropy-cultists in dire need of killing in the public _zeitgeist_, with little fear of contradiction.  Adding the death toll back in, of course, would only makes it more so.) And then there is also _teir_, which while glossed “honor” and in fact terrifyingly idealistic, has a lot more to do with self-integrity, intellectual integrity, contractual integrity, and the proper ways to go about all the other aspects of morality mentioned herein than it does with many of the things Terrans would ascribe that name to: inasmuch as it avoids gender-imbalanced chivalry (Eldraeic culture has always been pretty gender-egalitarian), says almost nothing about sexuality, deplores martyrdom, while it does preach courage is also appallingly [_Combat Pragmatic_](http://eldraeverse.com/2012/02/20/trope-a-day-combat-pragmatist/) (they would agree with Mass Effect’s salarians about the stupidity/insanity of declarations of war/telling your enemies that you’re about to attack them, for example; and consider assassination one of the _best_ methods of fighting, which _ought_ to be unfair, or you’re doing it wrong), and is absolutely not ever to be confused with _face_ (i.e., does _not_ depend on what other people think of you; that’s reputation, or _dignitas_, which may be  important, but is (a) not relevant to one’s honor, and (b) distinctly subordinate to it, in that one should always throw _it_ away to preserve one’s honor; see also _Who You Are In The Dark_) or _thar_ (bloody-handed primitivism). Lovers of excellence, in _all_ its forms.  Thus, pride is a _virtue_, as long as it can be justified, and humility is very much _not_.  And the proprietary outright sneer at those who do _not_ strive to shine (note the distinction, here, encapsulated in the word _strive_) and their “dullist” apologists is an _expression_ of morality. Self-consciously civilized; Eldraeic language, etiquette, social rituals, and civilization in general is baroque, complex, grandiose, and exceedingly polite, even to non-sophont machinery – including the careful separation of social relations from each other, when different ones exist between the same individuals – in at least a semi-deliberate attempt to cultivate, reinforce, and demonstrate local notions of the civilized virtues, and thoroughly repress any atavistic impulses that might try to crash the party.  (After so much genetic and memetic engineering and self-reinforcement, this is _probably_ unnecessary, but for the same reasons, inevitable.)  Besides, it’s _beautiful_ – and beauty, too, is an expression/symbol of positive morality_._ (Which is why cacophiles also end up in the long, long list of barbarians whom society disapproves of.) * * * This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at [https://eldraeverse.com/2011/12/01/not-quite-a-trope-a-day-blue-and-orange-morality](https://eldraeverse.com/2011/12/01/not-quite-a-trope-a-day-blue-and-orange-morality) ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2025, 8:16pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/not-quite-a-trope-a-day-blue-and-orange-morality/1014/2 "2025-08-23T20:16:00Z")
As a side-note to many things, including discussions on other threads, I would add that if I were writing this one today, I might add that many things about the Eldraeic mindset would be clearer if you looked at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for humans, and considered that for _eldrae_, **self-actualization** is the big chonky one at the bottom of the pyramid. Not physiological needs. (One might also add that a key in understanding how their self-actualization and esteem layers fit together might be finding the inability to tell the difference.) This is, of course, imperfect as it’s applying a human model to creatures who aren’t, but it may help finding places to grasp the questions. ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2025, 8:16pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/not-quite-a-trope-a-day-blue-and-orange-morality/1014/3 "2025-08-23T20:16:00Z")