Whenever I write about the six-virtue hexagon or the R-S-I moral field, the natural question bubbles up: How does this compare to utilitarianism? Or Stoicism? Or Christianity? Or secular humanism?
It’s an understandable question, but also the wrong one, as the comparison itself is a category error.
Trying to measure moral geometry against traditional worldviews is like trying to compare a compass to a destination, or a coordinate system to the points plotted inside it. The hexagon isn’t a doctrine. It isn’t a moral law. It isn’t a theory of rights, a theology of salvation, or a calculus of outcomes.
It’s a framework, a geometry of the moral field itself. And I think it is superior to other attempts to map out moral space.
In other words, it doesn’t live at the same conceptual layer as the systems people want to compare it to.
Most moral frameworks do one of four things:
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Utilitarianism cares about outcomes: the most good for the most people. (S)
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Deontology and religious command theories care about duties: the right thing regardless of outcome. (R)
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Virtue ethics cares about character: cultivate courage, justice, temperance, and so on. (I)
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Humanism and liberal individualism center the human as the primary unit of moral value.
These are answer-producing systems, as they tell you what matters, what to value, what to aim at.
Moral geometry doesn’t tell you what matters, but how values behave once you start using them.
Geometry doesn’t replace a worldview; it reveals the shape and dynamics of whatever worldview you already have.
Take a simple example: courage.
• A Stoic sees courage as inner steadiness.
• A Christian might see it as faithfulness under trial.
• A utilitarian sees it as willingness to bear cost for greater outcome.
• A Nietzschean sees it as an expression of will.
All different. All potentially incompatible. But all of them move along the same geometric vector: the direction of Courage.
What the hexagon does is show:
• where courage naturally distorts
• how it bends toward its shadow (vengeance, bravado)
• how it interacts with adjacent virtues (justice, temperance)
• what happens when it is pursued with the wrong apex orientation (self-exalting instead of other-centered)
Your content is yours. Geometry just exposes the field where content takes shape.
This is why the “which system is better?” question doesn’t fit. Geometry doesn’t answer in that arena. It doesn’t want to.
The Better Analogy: Infrastructure
If utilitarianism, Christianity, Stoicism, and secular humanism are buildings—homes people inhabit—then moral geometry is the ground beneath them, the unseen grid that makes construction possible.
• You can build a cathedral on it.
• You can build a bungalow.
• You can build a high-rise.
• You can even build nothing at all.
The ground does not care what you build. It just defines the dimensions in which building is possible. Defining a moral space is not the same as giving direction within that space!
So what does my patented, sdm-trademarked Moral Geometry actually provide? Something beyond the current frameworks:
• A language to describe moral drift (curvature).
• A way to map conflicts and mixtures of virtues.
• A model of internal orientation (the upward vs. downward apex).
• A coordinate system for any worldview to exist inside.
This is why the comparisons fall flat. You don’t measure a map against a religion, or a compass against a doctrine. They answer different questions.
Hexagons, Apples, and OrangesSo no—moral geometry isn’t “better than” utilitarianism, or Christianity, or virtue ethics. It’s not even in the same sport.
Traditional worldviews tell you what is good. And they usually do so in a binary system: yes/no, good/evil. Moral geometry is a 3D coordinate system. The 2D virtue hexagon tells you where goodness changes, how goodness relates, how it moves—how it bends, strains, inverts, and interacts under real-world conditions. It locates goodness relate to relational, suffering, and intentional moral axes.
Apples and oranges are at least both fruits. But a hexagon is something else entirely.
