* Edit: See the replies to the previous blog entry.

Ferrous, you raise some good points. I'll do my best to reply.

ABC is essentially caught between the two moralities: does he fight for his alliance, repay his debt to the alliance, even though he disagrees with why he's going to war? Or does he leave his alliance to fight against what he perceives as the forces of evil?

I believe ABC is actually caught in a conflict between ethics and morality. Ethics being the proper conduct in a professional environment as derived from morality. While morality and ethics are used synonymously there is a subtle difference: morals being a general description of right and wrong (good and evil), and ethics is the study of morals as a whole and specifically, the codification of those morals in specific settings.

For an example, say ABC takes a loan from a bank. Now lets say that after some thought ABC decides he doesn't agree with how the bank does business, he thinks their actions are immoral. The question is this: is ABC still obligated to pay back his loan?

He is caught between the ethics of how one conducts business and his own personal morality.

The answer to that question is decided by one's values, and is accepted or denied by the prevailing social clime of which values hold the most weight. Is honoring one's word more important than changing the status quo? Now, since Planet Bob holds honoring a treaty, in essence- honoring one's word, to be one of the highest values, I would say that, without a prevailing planet wide official mandate of proper conduct, sticking to one's word is more important.

And despite ABC's good intentions by refusing to repay the loan in protest of the bank's actions, most people would find ABC at fault. ABC may feel that he is right, but that won't stop the system from readjusting his credit score, a reflection that ABC has proven that he will not do what he previously agreed to do.

To further compound the issue, let's say ABC took a loan from a person he soon discovers is actually a murderous sociopath. What then? Now it would seem that morality out weighs the ethical concerns.

The realm of morality is murky, with one side casting accusations of immoral conduct at one side, and the other providing justification for why they did what they did, ad nauseum. Ethics, however, are more generally agreed upon. And despite how extreme one alliance's actions are, rarely are they to the degree that one's moral stance out weighs the proper ethical conduct. Most would agree that breaking a contract is bad. Otherwise a person could just refuse to follow through on a tech deal, taking the money, just because they disagreed with that person's stance on the current political scheme.

Joining an alliance is almost primarily, if not a business arrangement, then a professional one.

When a person joins an alliance, they are signing a contract full of obligations and rights. A person puts their word on the line and should know what they are getting into before they get into it. So if they leave without following the proper procedure because they are at odds with the morality of the alliance, they may feel they have done the right thing, but on the whole they have diminished the worth of their word and probably jeopardized the health of their teammates who put faith in that person.