The premise, like many games today, is that you get guns and kill your foes. Such games are colloquially called shooters, with an adjective prepended to describe the camera’s vantage point, such as first-person shooter, for when you “are” the in-game character, or third-person shooter, for when you are behind the in-game character and separate from her. The game creator’s choice of vantage point, a choice that is generally fixed within a given game, has a significant impact on the player’s experience.

Bioshock is a first-person shooter, so while playing, one identifies visually with the in-game character. This, together with the careful artistic design of the game, leads to an immersive experience that has one feeling like a part of the in-game world. Whether it’s the campy vending machines, the zombie-like inhabitants of an underwater city, or the collectible audio diaries of a tragic past, the different aspects of the environment entice the player more strongly than in other games, where the emphasis is simply on killing things instead of on emotional depth. In this way, the carefully crafted world of Bioshock achieves an unnerving level of realism.

This unnerving realism shocks most when the game forces the player to make a moral judgment. As an example — the example that inspired me to write this post — the Bioshock world is populated with endearing young girls called “Little Sisters,” whose function it is to collect useful genetic material called ADAM that the player desperately needs in order to survive. While these Little Sisters are actually no longer human, deformed into zombie-like collectors through some strange biological procedure, the procedure that transformed them is reversible, and the player can perform the reverse procedure on them in order to rescue them from their status as zombies and make them girls once again.

When one encounters a Little Sister, which one is forced to do in order to obtain ADAM and survive, one has to kill her mechanized guardian (amusingly called a “Big Daddy”), which prompts the Little Sister to start weeping over her lost companion. In this emotional scenario, with silence but for the sobs of the Little Sister, one is told that one has the choice to either harvest the Little Sister, giving one 160 ADAM but killing the creature, or rescue it, giving one only 80 ADAM but earning a voiced thank-you and look of gratitude from the resulting girl.

Logically, one wants to harvest all of the Little Sisters in order to maximize one’s ADAM. But something feels wrong about killing a child-like creature for one’s own satisfaction. Even though it’s sensible from the perspective of pure self-interest, there’s an aspect of our humanity that appeals to the player, asking the player to consider rescuing the Little Sister.

In my first encounter with a Little Sister, after sitting for a few minutes with the moral choice on display (picture), I decided to rescue it. While this did put me 80 ADAM short, which was frustrating for advancing in the game, I felt like I had done the right thing. Looking back though, that sounds silly. I might have done the right thing, but what does morality in a video game even mean? When the game presents the player with this phenomenally constructed moral quandary, it feels like more than just a game — but it’s still just a game. Why not just harvest all the Little Sisters? The arguments in favor of rescuing are weak — unlike in a Disney movie, the gratitude of the rescued girls doesn’t miraculously help the player defeat foes — yet I chose to rescue.

The Little Sister problem is interesting in itself, but it also raises the larger question of morality in the digital world. Many video games, movies, and television shows today celebrate violence to a ridiculous degree, making gruesome digital death commonplace, and yet a core principle of Hinduism is ahimsa, or non-violence. Is chainsawing your video game opponent to bloody chunks consistent with ahimsa because it’s just a game, or is there something wrong with it? On the one hand, it’s clearly inconsistent with ahimsa when it has clear influence on violent actions in the real world — for example, the killers at the Columbine High School massacre videotaped themselves paying homage to the popular violent video game Doom before the shootings (source). On the other hand, it seems justifiable in some way when it serves righteous warfare as described by Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita — for example, the same violent video game Doom served as the basis for military simulations for soldiers in the United States military.

It’s hard to tell — why did I choose to rescue the Little Sister? Is ahimsa consistent with violent video games and other cultural celebrations of violence? What are the moral consequences of saying that a video game is “just a game”? What do you think? What does ahimsa mean in the digital world?

PS: Perhaps if the Mahabharata had video games, Duryodhana would have been satisfied with the Pandavas and Kauravas logging in for an epic Team Slayer match in Halo 3 on Xbox Live and giving the kingdom to the victor…

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Ultimately these sorts of ethical systems draw an arbitrary line between the animal kingdom, and all other forms of life, oftentimes based on the concept of intelligence or pain, which is very murky. This line is arbitrary because some animals are much less complex than some plants that are harvested for food. Who is to say that placazoa, sponges, or starfish are more worthy than a tree or a venus flytrap? The naturalistic fallacy that a more complex organism is better or worthier is rooted within many moral systems. In summary of this article, I argue the following positions:

Eating food for survival and Ahimsa pose a deep conflict that has not yet been resolved, and which needs to be resolved. “Harm,” “unnecessary killing,” and “number of senses” are fundamentally imperfect moral measurements. They can never be quantified perfectly. However, there do exist perfect moral measurements for eating. One of them is this principle of “symbiosism” that I introduce in this article: Make sure that the living organism does not die! (And make sure you are treat it well while it is alive, to foster a respectful and symbiotic relationship with the organism). This principle can be adopted very quickly by making small, but nonetheless morally significant, changes to vegetarian and vegan diets.

In the discussion on Dharma-open, which spurred this article, Vikram made some excellent points. First, his model of moral “measures” and “limits” clarifies things a lot. A measure is a type of moral standard, such as the amount of harm we are willing to cause an organism. The limit is the boundary value that we decide to be acceptable, such as 50 out of 100. Anything less than 50 would be too much harm, and the person would fail the test. Anything above 50 would be a passing score. Just like on school exams, this test offers a variety of scores, and a score of 90 is better than a 70, even if it is not a perfect score. I agree with Vikram that just because a test is not perfect does not mean that it should be thrown out; there is still some meaning to the grades of 90 and 70.

My argument is based on the fundamental need to find “perfect measures” for ethical eating, and not the commonplace argument against seemingly arbitrary “limits” on those measures. There must be some perfect measures in the foundation of our morality, (even if they are perfect only by our belief that their perfect), otherwise we would end up with an abhorrent lack of moral standards. I agree at the same time, that morality is a continuum, and people can be considered as getting various grades based on their actions. Hinduism may not have space for anyone with a lower score than say a score of 50, but may tolerate other people who “pass the test,” even if they do not live up to the Hindu standards of ahimsa, or other morals (eg meat-eaters).

I wondered why we should settle for a second-rate standard when we can have a perfect standard. This is sort of a long article, so I broke it up into three parts, which hopefully makes following my argument a bit easier.

Part 1: Eating food for survival and Ahimsa pose a deep conflict that hasn’t yet been resolved, and which needs to be resolved.

To address comments about pluralism and tolerance of all behaviors, in the plural framework of Hinduism, there is certainly room for meat-eaters. But as Vikram has also said, there is a paradox between ahimsa and any violence involved in the eating process: “If you think nonviolence is a tenet of Hinduism, then you do have to reconcile that with meat-eating.” If you accept ahimsa, then you need to find a balance between the violence of killing to eat. I feel that being OK with certain immoral acts is a mistake. A “polytheist” still must still oppose certain immoral things, eg killing unnecessarily, even if he is much more open to other ways of thinking. Otherwise, he dilutes his morality into nothingness.

Therefore, we must figure out a way to reconcile the paradox between the ideal of nonviolence and the necessary violence associated with eating. It is a deep problem, I feel, and it is something that Hindus and other religions have been thinking about for centuries. As Vikram said, [hopefully] everybody has a standard on what they would eat, and no religion lacks a standard for what should not be eaten. I think considering the new knowledge and tools we have at our disposal, thanks to modern biological understandings of life, we may have a way to reconcile this inherent paradox, which Hindus or Jains or Buddhists of the past did not have.

Part 2: “Harm” or “unnecessary killing” or “number of senses” are all fundamentally imperfect measures. They can never be quantified perfectly.

It’s easy to tell whether something is alive or not. All living organisms, regardless of their complexity or number of senses are equally alive, because life is easy to define accurately. Wikipedia has a great set of definitions, from either a biology or physics point of view: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life#Definitions.
Jainism uses one-sensed organisms as an acceptable measure of killing. Still, there exists arbitrariness to the number-of-senses as a measure of worthiness, particularly in the context of evolution and modern biology. The same goes for harm, or intelligence. Similarly, vegetarians and vegans must realize the flaws in the choice of measures. I think vegans and vegetarians are alike in that both make a blunder when it comes to killing plants and thinking that it is OK. It seems ludicrous to consider plants on a similar level as animals, but I think this is more a product of cultural desensitization, or misunderstanding of scientific knowledge, than inherent moral accuracy.

“Do not harm” and Ahimsa are great principles, but they are not as objective as “do-not-kill,” because they involve other value judgments that are at least somewhat subjective. An analogy might be why many people would say torture is OK in some circumstances, even if they say killing is not ever OK. The number-of-senses argument is a heuristic to approximate the worthiness of an organism. But I am confused, at least to some degree, at these attempts to measure the worthiness of a life. Is it not fundamentally a subjective measurement? On the other hand, whether or not something is alive is an objective measurement. If we accept for practical reasons that it is OK to kill a plant, why not kill animals also? The slope appears to be slippery for me, unless we try to strive against killing on all levels (if we truly value the philosophy of “ahimsa” or nonviolence as Hindus/Buddhists/Jains/vegans/etc).

I feel that the Jain concept of senses may have been an acceptable heuristic in the past, but it is not an acceptable measurement nowadays, at least for the sake of consistency. Furthermore, it may appear that a simple recategorization of complex plants as multi-sensed organisms may solve the problem, but when they eat plants, Jains (as well as Hindus and Buddhists) appear to condone the killing of simple organisms, such as certain plants, for practical reasons. “Do not harm” is necessary but not sufficient, because it allows one to say: I can kill plants out of practical necessity, and that’s OK, because they do not feel as much pain as animals do. The quantification of pain is a subjective measurement. This is the same argument used by many meat-eaters, who do not consider their food to be worthy of living.

Part 3: Potential “perfect measurements” for eating.

The solution to this problem is the dietary consumption of the products (eg fruits or milk) of plants and animals, not the plant or animal itself. The consumption of a plant product is not the same as the consumption of a plant, because the plant is allowed to live. The consumption of an animal product like dairy or eggs is similar, because the animal likewise is allowed to live, that too, live well, if people are following the principle of symbiotic living. This type of diet is certainly possible nowadays. Let me list the moral grades in a straightforward way:

Killing no organisms, even bacteria: 100 (impossible or suicidal)
Synthetic-meat eater, who is otherwise equal to the Ethical vegetarian: 80
Ethical Vegetarian who eats milk/eggs doesn’t kill plants: 80
Fruitarian who only eats nuts and fruits: 80
Ethical Vegan who still kills plants: 70
Regular lacto-ovo vegetarian who buys organic, free range eggs and milk: 70
Regular meat eater who avoids endangered species: 55
Indifferent meat eater who “kills anything:” 45 (failing score, and one that shouldn’t be tolerated)

The solution of being a vegetarian who doesn’t kill plants is not as fantastical as it may seem. As I stated above in the summary, just make sure that the organism does not die! (And make sure you treat it well when you are keeping it alive). We should strive to minimize both killing and harm, and so we should abstain from practices such as consuming dairy and egg products procured from factory farming methods. When we think that killing a plant is okay, because we feel that it lacks the same worthiness as an animal, we are making the mistake of species-ism (think racism). I have heard this analogy being proposed by various Harvard professors, such as lawyer Alan Dershowitz and philosopher Christine Korsgaard. This symbiotic solution is certainly possible nowadays, and in the future, perhaps possible for everybody, even meat-eaters.

The principle of symbiosism both encompasses the argument of “do not harm,” and also “do not kill.” This does not mean that we throw “do not harm” out the window. Rather, we should be careful how much weight we give to such inaccurate measures. In the above numbers, I don’t drop the measurement of “do not harm” from the equation; I am just giving “not killing” much more moral weight, because “harm” is a controversial and inaccurate measurement. As a result, theoretically, vegans and the lacto-ovo-pesco vegetarian would score a 70 on the test, if they both kill the same number of organisms, and simultaneously strive to prevent harm or suffering in those animals/plants.

In addition, perhaps a scientist in the future can invent a method of growing food powered by sunlight or some other renewable energy source. Plants do it every day, but what if we could build an efficient machine that could grow synthetic tissues, packed with nutrients, at almost the same cost as a bag of rice? In fact, PETA supports this sort of a measure, and has recently made a fund for anyone who can grow synthetic meat. In that sense, this future carnivore who would rather eat synthetic chicken could score a 80, but the vegan who eats a killed plant still is stuck at 70. This certainly feels like a weird conclusion, but it is reasonable because we are measuring how the food is acquired.
As a result, this way of thinking allows nuts, fruits, but not necessarily harvesting vegetables (eg potatoes), which may end up killing the plant. This also allows dairy, eggs, but not meats, unless they were generated artificially without killing of any animal. I am too culturally ingrained in my love for vegetables to give them up, but do you see how this system is fundamentally better than the others? Slight shifts in diet could lead to a future that truly maximizes the moral good of eating, in a way that does not involve double standards, or imperfect measurements.

In conclusion:

I hope this article clarifies why I feel that there is a paradox in the philosophical arguments in traditional veganism/vegetarianism of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, and proposes a not-too-difficult solution to this problem. On a practical level, we may have to settle for just minimizing unnecessary killing, but that does not justify killing. Necessity of killing is a fundamentally imperfect measure, just like harm or intelligence. The only perfect measure is “not killing,” because there is a universally acceptable definition for life. There is no such consensus on other measurements, such as suffering or nonviolence. Even nowadays, we can avoid the killing of organisms by purchasing foods that were harvested without killing of plant/animal, and this would be a much more moral solution than other, cruder approximations based on imperfect measures.

On a practical level, I am not trying to say everyone must stop eating plants or even meat altogether; I am just saying that if we want to avoid eating a slice of ham, then why not avoid eating a vegetable that was produced by killing a plant? And on a stricter level, shifting to a completely symbiotic diet is not impossible. This diet would be considerably easier than fruitarianism, which is similar in that it proscribes anything that kills a plant, as well as dairy and eggs. My gut feeling is that if a person can make the effort at being a vegan, then he can easily be a practitioner of symbiosism, “a symbiosan.”

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Once you know you have the ability to do significant harm to another, you are less likely to use that power unnecessarily.  One of the most commonly repeated phrases in my martial arts classes is “the best self-defense is not being there in the first place.”  The emphasis is on avoiding a fight whenever possible and realizing that you do not have to prove anything to anyone else.  Thus, learning a martial art allows one to better avoid conflict by making one more hesitant to fight if there is another alternative.

In addition to the physical aspect of non-violence, ahimsa can also refer to non-violence in speech and thought.  While thinking about the martial arts Codes of Bushido – benevolence, courage, honor, justice, loyalty, politeness, and veracity — I noticed that benevolence, honor, and politeness in particular played into this aspect of ahimsa.  In honoring another person’s beliefs or achievements, one avoids speaking harshly of them.  Similarly, in being polite to another, one avoids addressing them negatively.  Finally, through benevolence, one not only avoids harsh words, but also harsh deeds, which is the aim of ahimsa.  While they at first seem to be polar opposites, martial arts can be seen as a method of furthering one’s understanding of non-violence.

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