Morality

Applied metaethics

so morality has various sources in bep society, some more spiritual, some more 'rational', etc. there's also a pretty vast group of people who try to apply morality to how they apply morality; i.e. a form of applied metaethics. instead of deciding on rights and wrongs, it's become quite popular to think up strategies for how to deduce rights and wrongs and market those.

one quite popular instance of such applied metaethics is addressing actions by what we might translate as their energy cost. concepts vaguely adjacent to entropy, such as the world running on a constantly dwingling supply of energy*, have been around in bep society for a very long time, far longer than anybody's been able to blame this pseudo-humbug on physics as a field. thus, many more or less spiritual movements have based their practices around various interpretations of how to conserve energy (the traditional word being more accurately translated as "motive force" but whatever).

one more widespread side effect of such sentiments being common is that sth akin to DNR is common or even default in many peripheral regions; why waste energy on a person that's got a chance to expire naturally anyway, lived a full life, etc? the world is better off falling apart just that little bit slower.

one more ... inconvenient side effect is that from time to time a sect comes along and concludes that a lack of lifeforms would be very energy effective, and starts trying to more or less indiscriminately slaughter everything in sight. the more successful ones of these are born at intersections with other biases, targeting more narrow groups that might not have resources or incentive to "live efficiently" they way the sect at hand demands.

subsnippet: the generalized motive energy cost of justice is a single, short, and commonly used term as a result of all this. it is used to address the extents to which various forms of otherwise righteous actions like revenge or forgiveness should be practiced considering how much they're speculated to usually cost the universe. "if catching up and stabbing takes longer than the argument did, don't bother" and other such ... slightly sociopathic? anecdotes for life. whether the effect of this is to diminish the general population's capacity for empathy, to mitigate the effects on society of many people completely lacking it, or perhaps somewhere inbetween, is unclear.