[FUPQ-05] Remember professional ethics

Day 3,678, 15:47 • Published in USA USA • by Pfenix Quinn


The Free University of Phoenix Quinn is a service of the Socialist Freedom Party, an open and welcoming internationalist anarko-syndicalist tango dance collective and mutual aid society based in e-USA


This is Lecture Number 5 of a 20-part series on Combating Tyranny. It's derived from Timothy Snyder's wee book ON TYRANNY, adapted to our New World context. The lecturer is R.F. Williams, a fun-loving old fart who contributes little to game except for eulogizing his long-dead hero, Phoenix Quinn.

Encuentre traducciones al español de estas conferencias en VANGUARDIA SOCIALISTA.



Remember professional ethics.

When political leaders set a bad example, commitment to just practice and fair play becomes more important. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants. Work camp directors of a carceral state seek businessmen who are interested in exploiting slave labor.

Murderous dictators and mafia-style leaders like to deploy lawyers to give their crimes the veneer of legality. Then whatever is good for the corrupt leader becomes the "law". For example, lawyers were overrepresented in the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi special forces who specialized in mass-murdering Jews, Poles, Roma, communists, the handicapped, and others.

Those lawyers, along with many businessmen, doctors and civil servants who participated in the atrocities of the Third Reich, could have insisted that there can be no justice without due process, no surgeries without patient consent, that slave-labor is immoral and illegal, and that bureaucrats have every right to refuse to process the paperwork of state-sponsored murder. If they had done so, it would have been harder for that particular real-life fascist regime to carry out its dirty work.

Obviously, the situation in a game world is far less dire. But dealing with simulated e-versions of such bad examples can serve as a kind of thought experiment for us, as a tiny training ground if you like. Such situations offer opportunities for a kind of play that transcends the mundane game.

Professions create ethical conversations. That is something that is virtually impossible between a lone individual and a repressive, distant regime. Professional groups have common interests. They establish norms and rules to which they are obliged. Remembering professional ethics is particularly important when one is told that a situation is exceptional.


A dignified military has code of conduct which does not call for soldiers to "just follow orders" under any circumstances. Rather, it instructs them to behave in a professional manner.

An undignified government, whether in our New World or in the real one, is one that diminishes and demeans the true nature of professional ethics by turning a noble profession into nothing more than an appendage of the leader and his cabal.


Remembering professional ethics is how we avoid find ourselves saying and doing things, in the emotion of the moment, that we might previously have considered unimaginable.










At the end of this lecture series, wicked cool certificates and degrees will be issued by Brother Williams based on responses provided in the comment sections. Participation counts. Indicate attendance by leaving a comment or endorsing the article. Higher degrees are awarded according to the degree of critical thinking, mindfulness and humor exhibited by responders.

Examples of questions you might want to address in responses to this lecture:
* Was there a moment in the game where you had to choose between "doing the right thing" vs. "following the leader"?
* What kinds of "professional" alliances might it be possible to form within the game world?