Enemy: A Morality Tale (Pentenary Special)

To celebrate five years of Only a Game, a special series of bite-sized serial posts will be running twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays, from Monday August 2nd until Monday October 18th. Each post is shorter than 500 words, and the twenty three parts  form a complete discussion exploring some of the key themes from the first five years of the blog.

Who or what is our enemy? In the plural societies of the twenty first century, politics and culture have become battlegrounds for rival ideologies. Psychological studies have shown that beneath all such conflicts lie cognitive biases; we place more stock in our own arguments than in those of our opponents, and form concepts of groups we belong to and others we fight against. All too easily, the "out-group" is declared an enemy, and discrimination and persecution follow. When we label people our enemy, we open the door to evil.

Part Index

1. Natural Evil
   (Monday August 2^nd)
2. The Edge of the Abyss
   (Thursday August 5^th)
3. The Gene Confusion
   (Monday August 9^th)
4. Moral Ideas
   (Thursday August 12^th)
5. The Nature of Motive
   (Monday August 16^th )
6. Anatomy of Instinct
   (Thursday August 19^th)
7. Living Together
   (Monday August 23^rd )
8. Evil Animals?
   (Thursday August 26^th)
9. Human Ideals
   (Monday August 30^th)
10. Imaginary Morals
    (Thursday September 2^nd)
11. Religious Stories
    (Monday September 6^th)
12. Myths of Selfishness
    (Thursday September 9^th)
13. Three Ethical Paths
    (Monday September 13^th)
14. Right vs. Good
    (Thursday September 16^th)
15. Universal Standards
    (Monday September 20^th)
16. Common Ground
    (Thursday September 23^rd)
17. Bias
    (Monday September 27^th)
18. The Enemy
    (Thursday September 30^th)
19. The Allegations Against Religion
    (Monday October 4^th)
20. Institutional Evil
    (Thursday October 7^th)
21. Possible People
    (Monday October 11^th)
22. The Addiction to Victory
    (Thursday October 14^th)
23. Evil Unmasked
    (Monday October 18th)