#moralism

so much of disco elysium is looking *up*, so its only fitting that 2 of the 4 ideologies, moralism and communism in disco elysium have symbols relating to the sky - moralism the clouds, the daylight sky, the one the color of forget-me-nots, *aerostatics*, and communism - the stars. the latter one was quite well explored already, so let me give you a taste of moralintern's sky:

and, of course, the resolution of the thought "the kingdom of conscience":

and even though joyce tells us that living under the same sky at the same time counts for a lot:

perception of coalition aerostatics tells us a different story. for a privilledged sunday friend they are peacefully patrolling, joyce herself finds comfort in looking up, kim says they're on a "lookout", and trant doesn't even deny their destructive power, though doesn't seem scared by them himself:

but all of those above are more or less comfortable in society, or find it too painful to recognize the inequalities inherent to status quo (kim. i mean kim here.). soona, noid, cindy have different opinions:

this group doesn't think of aerostatics as helpful, but (at best), dismissive of their suffering. thats why aerograffitos are an interesting part of worldbuilding in de. they're an attempt to be heard by the warships, to have a chance at being allowed change.

the sky just doesn't belong to revachol and her people. it's for moralintern to keep watch, in a strict, supposedly loving way:

it's actually quite often described as feminine, dolores dei is too. this "strict, feminine" way is of a mother watching her children play. not just to keep them safe, but *in line* too. it's sinister, but disguising itself as protection. it's expressed in this world as "balance of terror theory":

i want to come back to this unofficial motto of moralintern: "for a moment, there was hope" along with another hope-related quote:

and a particularly tragic line in my opinion:

that you can mistake an aerostatic for a star if you don't look closely. what a way to kill hope.

I was wondering if this makes sense and is tied into the idea of rehabilitation instead of punishment or if this is maybe still biased and unfair to people or focusing on punishing still

it does make sense! i can definitely encourage this kind of thinking. ive spoken before about how moralist frameworks can end up being more harmful than helpful, and this is one way that can happen. another advantage of this way of thinking is as you laid out, not essentializing people into being wholly one thing on another, which is helpful in rehabilitation yes, but its also helpful in discussion and efforts before harm occurs, and it also is helpful for victims, because if everyone tells you only bad people are abusive or bigoted, then it might be harder to recognize when you're being abused. like a caring parent might seem nice but still be abusive, and so its kind of important to disconnect those two because it makes it easier to get the things we want, whether that is recognizing abuse more easily, or getting people to change their ways, or even having people recognize when they've caused harm without thinking it makes the evil at their core, because that idea can make people really afraid to confront the ways they've contributed to harm.

the one area where i would add to it though, is that its not quite as abstract as you've laid out. there are people who can sometimes be enemies, if only/usually temporarily, but its not because something innate about their mind or even their ideas, its about their positions in society. for example countries at war often are fighting over actual resources, not just abstract ideological disagreements, and those real disputes over limited resources can lead to a lot of conflict thats very reliable and goes beyond an individuals attitude. society is often split into groups like this, who try to fight over resources and positions in society, one of the most important splits of all of these right now is that between the owning class and working class. a more grounded example on an individual level might be seen in the following, part of why its recommended never to date cops isn't just due to the type of people who want to be cops (though that may be an influencing factor), but really its because they can abuse people with impunity due to their proximity to the law and its very enforcement. even if they're not bad people at their core, because of something about their mind soul or body, their societal position allows and encourages them to be harmful repeatedly without consequence, or even with positive consequence.

so when you're looking at what harm is present, or who to support, you cant really essentialize down to if they have any specific internal quality in and of itself, like some people tend to do with stuff like empathy or sadism, you need to look at if they're actually causing harm, and beyond that, you need to look at external qualities, if they're incentivize to cause harm due to their societal positions and relations to the rest of society. Idk if you're white but sometimes white people see POC say stuff like "white people are evil" and freak out because they think they believe its something about their soul or a belief in some innate evilness, but really it makes sense to call attention to this sort of thing because white people are in a societal position which encourages them to harm people of color, even if the tone of "evil white people" or whatever is often a joke or exaggerated, that actual societal position is the underlying groundwork for why those types of things are said about some groups even when someone might not genuinely believe in "evil people" (though i also dont recommend going up to minorities and asking "do you really hate xyz? or is it a joke?" because those questions are asked in bad faith regularly, and if it is a joke, the funniset response is to pretend its not one, and say yeah i hate EVERY MAN EVER, or whatever).