I've been thinking about conflict vs mistake theory lately, especially since the events of October in Israel last year.
I've been particularly trying to understand where support for Palestine (and Hamas, implicitly or not) comes from. Much has already been written about this of course, whether it's the bigotry of small differences or the trap of the "oppressor/oppressed thinking," the hierarchy of oppression, and so on.
What I found striking and want to discuss here though is the strain of thought responding to "how can LGBT+ support Palestine" by declaring, e.g., from Reddit:
It's easier to focus on getting gay rights when you're not being genocided.
Or from a longer piece:
The interviewer asks him, “What’s your response to people who say that you’re not safe in Palestine as a queer person?” Dabbagh responded, “First and foremost, I would go to Palestine in a heartbeat. I have no fear. I love my people and my people love me. And I want to be there and be part of the movement that ends up leading to queer liberation for liberated Palestinian people. If you feel that such violence exists for queer people in the Middle East, what are you doing to change that for that community? The first step is the liberation of Palestine.
I don't claim it's the most common strain of thinking, but to me this largely cashes out as "they are homophobic because of oppression/imperialism/Jews." As an aside, contrast with the way "economic anxiety" plays out in the US.
The part I want to focus on is this kind of blend of mistake and conflict theory -- there's conflict, yes, but it has a cause which can be addressed and then we'll all be on the same side. I'm skeptical of this blend, which seems to essentially just be false consciousness: if not for an external force you would see our interests align.
I think this mode of thinking is becoming increasingly popular however and want to point to the two most recent video games I put serious time into (but didn't finish) as examples: Baldur's Gate 3 and Unicorn Overlord (minorish spoilers ahead)
[Again, minorish spoilers for Unicorn Overlord and Baldur's Gate 3 ahead]
Baldur's Gate 3 was part of a larger "vibe shift" in DnD which I won't get into here except to say I think a lot of it is misguided. Nevertheless, there are two major examples of the above:
The Gith'Yanki are a martial, fascist seeming society who are generally aggressive powerful assholes. A major character arc for one of your team Gith'Yanki team members however, is learning she had been brainwashed and fed lies not just about the leader of the society and her goals, but also the basic functioning of the society. For instance, a much-discussed cure for a serious medical condition turns out to be glorious euthanasia.
The Gith have been impressed with a false consciousness, you see, and your conflict with them is largely based on a misunderstanding of the facts.
More egregious is the character Omeluum, who you meet early in the adventure. Omeluum is a "mind flayer" or "illithid":
Mind flayers are psionic aberrations with a humanoid-like figure and a tentacled head that communicate using telepathy. They feast on the brains of intelligent beings and can enthrall other creatures to their will.
But you see, even these creatures turn out to be the victim of false consciousness--Omeluum is a mind flayer who has escaped the mind control of the "Elder Brain." After fleeing, he happily "joined the good guys." You might think it's an issue that his biology requires he consume conscious brains, but fortunately he only feeds
on the brains of creatures of the Underdark 'that oppose the Society's goals', and wishes to help others of his kind by discovering a brain-free diet.
In the world of DnD (which has consciously been made to increasingly mimic our own world with mixed results), it seems that but for a few bad actors we could all get along in harmony.
Anecdotally, the last time I ran a DnD campaign it eventually devolved into the party trying to "get to the root" of every conflict, whether it was insisting on finding a way to get goblins to stop killing travelers by negotiation a protection deal with the nearby village which served both, or trying to talk every single cultist out of being a cult member. I'm all for creative solutions, but I found it got pretty tedious after a while.
The other game, Unicorn Overlord, is even more striking, albeit a little simpler. Unicorn Overlord is a (very enjoyable) strategy game where you slowly build up an army to overthrow the evil overlord. What you quickly discover, however, is that almost without exception every follower of the evil overlord is literally mind-controlled. The main gameplay cycle involves fighting a lieutenant's army, then using your magical ring to undo the mind control. After, the lieutenant is invariably horrified and joins your righteous cause.
I should note this is far from unusual in this genre, which requires fights but also wants team-ups. It's a lot like Marvel movies which come up with reasons for heroes to fight each other then team up, like a misunderstanding or even mind control. Wargroove was especially bad at this, where you would encounter a new friendly and say something like "Hello, a fine field for cattle, no?" but the wind is strong or something so they hear "Hello, a fine field for battle, no?" and then you fight. Nevertheless, the mind control dynamic in Unicorn Overlord is almost exclusively the only explanation used.
Funnily enough, I think in these an other examples this is seen as "adding nuance," but I find it ultimately as childish as a cartoon-twirling villain. The villain is still needed in fact (Imperialists, the Evil Overlord, The Elder Brain, The Queen of the Gith), but it's easier to explain away one Evil person who controls everything than try to account for it at scale.
Taken altogether, I can't help but think these are all symptoms of the same thing: struggling to explain conflict. The "false consciousness" explanation is powerful, but seems able to explain anything about people's behavior.
My suspicion is that mistakes and genuine conflict can both occur, but this blended approach leaves something to be desired I think. I had an idea a while ago about a potential plot twist for Unicorn Overlord where it's revealed you aren't freeing anyone -- you're simply bringing them under your own control but you don't notice. That feels a bit like the fantasy all of this is getting at I think: I have my views because of Reasons or Ethics or Whatever, and you would agree with me if not for Factor I'm Immune To.
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Notes -
I'd go a bit further, and say that they often touch on a nerve of insecurity about why others would conflict with them.
One of the bugs/features of irredeemable villains and mind-control alike is that it poses no moral conflict or tension with the protagonist's moral position. When adversaries literally can't be reasoned with, it means there's no morality challenge the protagonist needs to do with their fundamental position. This is true regardless of whether the adversary is a monster or a mind-controlled victim- the main heroic struggle is how to handle and overcome the adversary (and moral quandries about killing, or mercy, or endangering many to save one), not whether the adversary should be overcome.
This dynamic does not exist if the people who are opposing you are reasonable, moral people, with whom you are in a conflict with due to choice rather than necessity. While sometimes (often) you can easily come into conflict with reasonable people for reasons beyond your control (such as if they are conscripts in a foreign army- a metaphorical analogy to the mind-control), you can also come int oconflict with reasonable people if you, yourself, are the less reasonable one.
This is an issue for fiction, and especially power-fantasy fiction like RPG games, because one of the narrative elements of player-centric fiction is agency. You play the game/indulge in the media in the first place to feel powerful, to escape the limitations of your real life, to live vicariously through a character-avatar that can do what you want to do.
But what a lot of people want to do is be the nice and popular person. A reoccuring trend of most moral choice system RPGs is that an overwhelming ratio of people play... conventionally morality heroic paragons of virtue. Paragons of Mass Effect as opposed to racist Renegades, Lawful-Good Paladins rather than sociopathic chaotic-evil liches, and so on. Even 'neutral' characters almost always end up 'doing the right thing' in the end / extreme circumstances. People like being popular, and being nice.
You don't get to feel that if your avatar of agency is the unreasonable person picking fights with people who never harmed you, and wouldn't be fighting you if you didn't take the fight to them. The character's agency, and the player's desires, come into tension if the opponent is someone who'd give you shelter as a guest and hide you from the Evil Empire, but would also risk death (and almost certainly die) standing up to you for pursuing some vendetta that endangers others. If the character would stand up to the bad guys, but also stand up to you, wouldn't that mean... you might be the bad guy?
There are certainly series that would double-down on 'yes' and relish this. Grand Theft Auto makes no mistake that you're a crook. But in heroic-fantasy stories, this conclusion often needs to be avoided to avoid player moral incongruity. Therefore, the possibility needs to be removed.
For the player to feel good about themselves no matter what they do, good people should never oppose them. Therefore, the only reasons to oppose the player that leave their moral superiority unchallenged are those without agency (who satisfy the moral power fantasy by freeing them) or those who aren't good at all (who satisfy the moral power fantasy by being overcome).
This is in issue in real life as much as in fiction. Up to 1900, schoolboy history takes for granted that most wars are fought by patriotic men displaying martial virtue on both sides. (Wars against Muslims may or may not be an exception depending on who is writing - the version of schoolboy history I grew up with made a big deal about how Saladin was as much of a chivalric paragon as Richard the Lionheart. In so far as an actual villain was needed, it is the snivelling, sneaky, backstabbing French or Bad Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham on the home front). My favourite treatment of the subject is Kipling's Ballad of East and West, which famously begins "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet" but makes clear that it is going to refute this proposition before the first stanza is out - "There is neither East nor West ... when two strong men come face to face". The idea that both sides could be fundamentally good by the standards of the age and be fighting over a genuine irreconcilable difference is unremarkable.
Beginning with WW2, schoolboy history takes for granted that all wars are caused by the fundamental wickedness of one side. Even the footsoldiers can only be excused by denying their agency. The fact that WW2 was mostly caused by the fundamental wickedness of one side helps this transition but the actual tipping point is WW1 - the documentary evidence makes clear that the people starting the war did not think their enemies were driven by wickedness, and serious modern historiography agrees with them. But WW1 was so destructive (as in three of Europe's leading dynasties were cancelled and the British and French traditional elites were so depleted in numbers that they could no longer rule even if the people wanted them to) that conflict theory with sane actors was, with hindsight, inconceivable and mistake theory was morally unsatisfying, so people turned to "the Central Powers were motivated by wickedness" as a cope.
After WW1, institutions like the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact are set up on the assumption that most wars are caused by the wickedness of one side and that collective punishment of the wicked is the way to bring an end to war. This is, of course, a midwit view. The "sophisticated" alternative is that some wars are indeed caused by the wickedness of one side, but that most wars are caused by the fundamental wickedness of both sides. The view that sane, neutral or good actors can have a conflict worth fighting over for sane reasons is now fringe.
I'm not convinced that it's false, though. You can fudge it by saying things like "he wanted to conquer the enemy because he honestly sincerely thinks the enemy's country belongs to him", and insane and bad actors really like to say that kind of thing. But I'm hard pressed thinking of any conflict in the modern era where sane, neutral, or good actors have a conflict worth fighting over, except maybe for wars of independence, and we don't have too many chances for those any more.
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