Unclean resources: the Collector base and Maelon's genophage data

I'm making this thread to discuss the ethics and meta-ethics around, and relevant to, the Collector base decision in ME2 and preserving and using Maelon's genophage data to produce a reversing agent for the genophage in ME3 and ME2. This is an offshoot of a debate in the "Unpopular opinions" thread, which I think deserves its own space.

I'm using the title "Unclean resources" because whatever decision we make in the end, most of us likely share a certain discomfort about keeping the Collector base and preserving Maelon's data, and you can identify this discomfort as the same intuition that brings people from specific cultures to label something "unclean", "impure" or "tainted", a sort of unreflected, intuitive rejection that results in the desire to keep away of the element in question, regardless of whether they end up condemning contact with it or use of it as immoral.

The essence of condemning use of the CB/Maelon's data on this basis lies in Mirandas statement that the idea of using "anything from" the CB "feels like a betrayal" (which I really hate, for reasons very much relevant to this debate). The plain fact is: there is no one who would be betrayed by, say, deciphering the methods of Reaper construction, so why does she say this? In a debate about Maelon's data on another thread, someone said that not using them is "a matter of principle" for them. Which moral principle would be violated by using those data? It is none that I recognize, but people use different principles, so I ask: which one is it for you, if you condemn use of those data?

At the other extreme, there are those like me, for whom keeping the CB is, well, almost a moral obligation - which is, I'm quite sure, as incomprehensible to those at the other end of the scale as their position is to me. Why do we think like that, and on which intuition is this based? I have a strong desire not to condemn the action. I can give a number of good reasons for keeping those data, but I don't really know where that desire not to condemn it comes from. It's most certainly not because don't care about the Reaperized people, or the people killed by Maelon, as a few people at the other extreme of the scale have accused me. Meanwhile, my side has accused the other of being guided by sentimentality. 

Between those extremes are a number of commonly held opinions, such as "I don't want to support Cerberus and their atrocities" (of course, now we all know it didn't matter because Cerberus got enough from the CB debris anyway, but back then we didn't know), "We can't destroy a resource that may be the deciding factor between extinction and survival" (of course, now we all know it was not relevant, but back then we didn't know).   

The objective of this thread is to explore, not to find who is right or wrong, and if I descend into that kind of thinking I'll apologize in advance - I feel passionately about this, my reasoning is as much influenced by my passion as everyone else's, and after all we are talking about morality, where we are all predisposed to being judgmental.

I would like to stress that according to most current research on the subject, our morality is intuitive at its base, and reasoning comes after it. So, if you have perfectly good reasons for your decision, that hold up to rational inquiry, I would still like you to think about where the desire to use them - the desire to condemn or not to condemn, comes from.

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With that out of the way, I'll describe how I react to situations like this, with a focus on the emotional component. In short, I'll always try to find reasons to keep the resource. I don't know if I describe this appropriately, since I have little data to compare it to, but destroying those resources feels like sacrilege to me, comparable to burning books (that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark sometimes makes me cry), only stronger. I can give a number of reasons for my decision to keep them, which I think hold up to scrutiny if you use strategic reasoning and consequentialist ethics (this is an enemy HQ and we're in a war for survival, as the most relevant IMO, or for the genophage data "I don't know if I'd cure the genophage, but surely it's better to keep the options open"), but, while those are perfectly valid, in the end it would probably be more to the point to say "I desperately don't want to destroy them". I have played one or the other game where I destroyed those resources. The effect: for the rest of those games, I felt like I had betrayed myself.

Why that? I can only speculate. One of the reasons may be that I'm a techno-progressivist. Anything that furthers understanding of something is of great value, and you don't destroy it without a pressing necessity. It would probably be correct to say that for me, understanding, knowledge and technological capability have a moral weight. They are, not just in a practical but in a moral sense, a good, because advancement is fundamentally desirable. Another reason is very likely that I don't believe in intangible evils and victimless crimes. I have always experienced any claim for their relevance as arbitrary. Of course, destroying those resources comes across as a sacrilege to me, and neither does that have victims, so I'm basically using the same category myself, in order to explain my own actions if not to condemn others. Not that I don't *desire* to condemn others who destroy those resources, but I don't want to be a hypocrite and so I won't.

Oddly enough, the main argument I end up using for keeping the CB has little to do with all that: Survival is more important than morality. This is a fundamental assertion. On the individual level, it can be countered by the assertion that some things are worth dying for, which I do not contest. Things are a little more difficult if it comes to survival of the species. On that level, it can only be countered by the claim "If we keep that resource, humanity will become something not worth existing". This position, while I don't agree that it applies here strongly enough to be compelling, has some merit, if we consider what TIM does to the Cerberus troopers in ME3. I've never seen anyone use that as an argument, but is the only one I could use without feeling as if I betrayed myself.....

So, that was my part. Imagine my surprise about finding an argument against keeping the CB that I can actually use, by my own reasoning, 6 years after ME2. I still prefer to keep it, and I don't find the new argument compelling enough to apply with necessity, but at least I can now envision a Shepard who destroys it who I could play. Of course, it uses consequentialist reasoning, so my meta-ethics have stayed intact.

Now it's everyone else's turn.