I was strolling through Thera meditating on the nature of morality when
I came across Callibius.

"Greetings, friend!" I called out. Callibius returned the greeting and
asked how I was doing. I told him of my meditations.

Callibius then replied, "Morality. A scourge upon mortalkind. The
immoral life is far superior to the moral life. It offers more reward
and happiness!"

At this a priest from Shallam overhead Callibius and shuffled over to
us. "Sinners! What blasphemy is this? Repent thine heathen ways, and
enter the light. Do not blaspheme morality, for it is the ideal way of
life! Know this in thine heart, lest damnation fall upon thee and I must
smite thee in holy judgement unto the altars of righteousness!"

Callibius glanced over at me and rolled his eyes; we were both all too
familiar with the closed minded prejudice and judgmental attitude that
these sorts have. Nonetheless, I decided to humor the priest for a
while. "Perhaps you are right. But in order to say for certain, we must
come to decide what morality is and indeed prove it is worthwhile." And
to Callibius I said, "And though what you say intrigues me, I want to
hear out the priest first."

Settling down some, the priest replied, "I know of you, Saruman. You
twist words and turn them around. Most vile you are with them! But I
will not let play such games with me. Go ahead with yourself."

"Well I am sorry to hear that, though I have always felt that I present
the words and arguments that an opponent says as support for any claim I
make. If you do not like what you claim, then it is perhaps wiser to
recant than to try to shift the blame for pointing out a fallacy by
calling it 'twisting words'. But as for the topic at hand, what would
you say morality is? I suspect it is that which is good for the
community as a whole. Would you also agree with that?"

With a snide harrumph, he continued, "Some would say that morality is
doing what you can to benefit your allies while harming your enemies. By
helping those who help you (your allies) while putting down those who
hurt you (your enemies), you benefit yourself and society most. Is this
an assessment that we can come to a mutual agreement upon?"

I nodded my head affirmatively.

"I believe this is how we of the Church live. We have a code of conduct
and a system of values. Those who aide us in those values we give aide
to, and those who seek to diminish us or destroy us and our life values
we in turn seek to fight. What is owed to friends are good deeds, and
what is owed to enemies are bad deeds. That is a moral way of life, and
it is the most beneficial way for a society to live."

I pondered this for a moment and replied, "When you say allies and
enemies, do you mean those who appear to be your allies and enemies, or
those who genuinely do you good or bad?"

"It would seem fair to suggest that one treats as friends those one
regards as good, and as enemies those one regards as bad."

"But what of cases when someone is mistaken? In such cases is it right
for someone to do good to a bad person and do harm to a good person?"

"I do not think so. Perhaps my wording was flawed. Mayhap I propose a
different way of putting it, more along the lines of what I was
envisioning. It is right to do good to good people and to do harm
wrongdoers. In fact, I think we can stay with the original proposal if
we redefine an assumption. I think that allies and friends should be
defined as someone who actually is good to you, not just someone who
appears to be good, and enemies are those who actually seek to do you
wrong, not just those that appear as such."

"So a good man is a friend and a bad man is an enemy. It is thus a moral
life to do good for friends, provided they do good, and to do harm for
enemies, provided they too do harm. Similar to, though perhaps not
precisely the same as a 'Do unto others as they would do unto you'
mentality. So now my question is this, can a moral person harm anyone at
all?"

"Of course he can! The Church demonstrates this in their purges against
those who seek evil or chaos."

"So tell me if you agree with this. When something does harm to an
animal, does that animal improve or deteriorate in respect to what is
good for that animal?"

"They deteriorate. A dog can become mean spirited and bite its master if
done enough harm, or a falcon turn on its knight companion if it is
poked and slapped enough. So clearly they deteriorate in what it is to
be a good animal."

"And does the same hold true for other things? Trees, buildings, and
anything else?"

"Certainly. Doing harm to anything makes it deteriorate in its good
qualities."

"So it follows that doing harm to a person makes him less good."

"Yes."

"And a moral person is a good person?"

"Of that there is no doubt!"

"So by your definitions, it follows that one who is done harm becomes
less moral. Ill-treated people become prone to bitterness and hatred and
grudges, for example. Now tell me, is it possible for an artist who does
good in the artistic sense to use his skill to make people less artistic
or for a learned teacher who does not use his skills in a harmful way to
make someone decrease in intelligence?"

"Why certainly not."

"Similar situations hold true for many things. So does it make sense
that a moral person can turn other people immoral if he uses his skills
in a good way?"

"No, that seems impossible. Turning people to immorality can never be
moral!"

"So just as cooling things is not the function of heat, but of its
opposite, and darkening things is the function of light, not its
opposite, it must also be true that harming others, which causes people
to deteriorate and thus go towards immorality, is not the function of
morality, but of its opposite."

The priest paused momentarily to think about that and hesitantly nodded
his head, which was slowly turning red.

"So then, it seems that by your definitions, it is not the job of a
moral person to do harm to a friend or anyone else, but rather that such
is the job of his opposite, an immoral person. So the claim that a moral
person owes harm to enemies turns out to be a claim no clever person
could make. It's false: we have found that it is never moral to harm
anyone."

The priest stood silently.

"Thus there are sadly many organizations and people in this realm that
are immoral. Organizations like the Church that actively supports
genocide of those who do not follow their personal values. Is this not
right?"

At that the priest grew furious. He huffed and turned even redder, rage
burning in his face as he gripped his mace tighter. He opened and closed
his mouth a few times as if to say something, but in the end he simply
stomped off to the north, muttering curses about fleas and humgiis. I
know not what stayed his hand, for I was sure he would seek to smite me
for choosing a life with the Occultists as his kind has often done.
Perhaps he saw a shed of truth in what we had discussed, and thus saw
the wisdom of pacifism.

Penned by my hand on the 10th of Phaestian, in the year 329 AF.