System Morality (TW)

by Allegra

[Posted on a private board affiliated with reddit.com/r/did/:

On the idea that within a multiple system, some aspects of outerworld morality, such as sexual relationships between system members, simply do not apply:]

Our take on this is very, very different. Our system is a family. The kind of relationships that you describe are like incest to us.

That being said, we've worked on not judging other systems, because their paradigm may be different.

[On the idea that littles aren't just our "inner children" who we should be expected to just effortlessly nurture:]

Well, it depends on how you define "children." There's the narrow group of children who are your offspring. But "children" can also be broader, such as "the children in Ms. Smith's first-grade class" or "the children of Bismarck." The narrower the definition, the more likely you'd feel pressure to be responsible for their well-being.

Our original paradigm was based on the narrowest definition. We still see ourselves as family, but each adult, instead of being a parent to a specific system branch, is now the older sibling of that sibling branch. This modification of the paradigm takes the narrow "parenting" onus off, because we're no longer the parents but an adult sibling in a parenting role, because of the absence of a shared parent. By our logic, if the adult sibling is inadequate in any way, it's not as intrinsically bad, because this adult was never "supposed" to be the "real" parent in the first place.