User blog comment:Hippogriff12/The Scarcity of Racists in Skyrim/@comment-4588723-20120728013544

Great points from a lot of different voices, esp. @IGotsAName: thank you for raising the bar on the discussion, most of my response is to your comments. I appreciate the observations about coming off as self-righteous, it seems I’ve fallen into that trap and I’m sorry. I also agree that “ You can't really judge someone/something by anything other than your own views.” Obviously my moral beliefs propel my critique, but you have to remember that belief and culture aren’t the same. Sure, your worldview is partly linked to your background, which is why your opinions wouldn’t automatically change if you moved to the US in your example, but as a human your views aren’t predeterminate per your origin – you choose your convictions, find direction on your moral compass as near as you can and follow it – that’s called free will. Americans have opposing views about the social issues you mentioned (capital punishment, racial inequality, etc.), but it can be accurately stated that those problems are indicative of American culture, disagreements and all. Unfortunately, in my experience the majority in our “new world” culture actually ARE apathetic enough to deny the existence of right/wrong, thus escaping any obligation to stand up against problems in their own society.



And there’s the rub: there ARE rational standards that transcend every society on Earth and prove some beliefs to be more valid than others. There’s a fine balance in recognizing the necessary existence of morals, and that no human being’s perspective is complete enough to define them for everyone else. I respectfully disagree with the anon stating that all war is evil, but war does provide an unhealthy opportunity for people to rationalize brutalizing each other, and it’s in situations like that where the need for a standard shows most clearly. It shows too when trolls use their free will to assume that all “Nords are basically redneck vikings” and similarly unintelligent wastes of thought. That person’s ignorance about other cultures “informs” him/her, oxymoronically, to make broad generalizations about a group of people to feel superior to them. The difference between that and, say, the profiling of Elves in Skyrim (incorrectly being dubbed “racism”) is that Tamriel is a different world in which various races are predisposed to certain behaviors and don’t have the same level of free will as humanity. For instance, there are millenia of examples supporting the Dunmer’s reputation as deadly assassins and schemers whose loyalties are generally less permanent than a stubborn Nord’s – there is no parallel for this heritage IRL, so we must accept the premise based on the shared experience of the entire game world, which is really what all video games ask you to do, so it’s not a terribly foreign concept. This well-earned reputation doesn’t make all dark elves evil beings, but it’s reasonable cause for biased treatment in the generally declining and neglected Windhelm (maybe the most realistic depiction of a wartime capital city in the game). Similarly accurate generalizations can be made for all of the playable races, and even impartial game literature describes them in heavily generalized characterizations. This is an unpleasant reality of Tamriel, but it is the reality there nonetheless. That’s why I say our world’s standards are unfit to judge grey areas – or Grey Quarters – in that other world, not because our standards are always relative, but because they apply specifically to the human experience, not the Nord-Breton-Redguard-Imperial-Mer-Khajiit-Argonian experience.