As algorithms divide us, who should we be loyal to?

An ethicist’s answer, shows we need courage and wisdom too.

Isaac Frisby

Isaac is a PhD candidate in Theology at Durham University and preparing for priesthood in the Church of England.

Three people sitting looking out over viewpoint are silhouetted against the sky.

Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash.

What is loyalty? As we plunge into this new year of 2025 it seems as pressing a question as ever. The war in Ukraine rumbles on, a fresh Labour government continues to struggle with public opinion, and America returns to the unpredictable rule of the first president in its history to be a convicted felon. The algorithms of social media continue to segregate and amplify different audiences into ever more closed feedback loops and echo chambers. This may bolster loyalty to a point of view, but estrange us further from our friends and neighbours whose loyalties lie elsewhere. All of these and many other cases highlight the conflict of loyalties in our society and wider world. What is even more obvious is that if we are to make peace, cultivate love for enemies, and pursue the common good, then perhaps the most in-demand virtue of 2025, at the top over every wish list, might just be loyalty.

But what really is loyalty?

I was struck by a persuasive answer given by Dr Tony Milligan, research fellow in philosophical ethics at King’s College London, during his appearance on a recent episode of The Moral Maze on BBC Radio 4 that asked ‘is loyalty a virtue or a vice?’ He said loyalty is, “Sharing another person’s commitments and the willingness to go through various kinds of adversity in order to pursue those commitments and to further them.” Under cross examination and asked if loyalty is then an absolute virtue he responded, “I think that it’s absolute in the sense that we absolutely need to have it, that it’s basic to the human condition and not optional.” His second interrogator, Giles Fraser, then suggested a ‘high doctrine of mates’. In this doctrine you are loyal to your mates in all circumstances, even if they are ‘wrong-uns’. Dr Milligan’s response, when asked how he would characterise this ‘doctrine of mates’ position, was fascinating: “Addiction.” Fraser then asked if that addiction could be love. “It’s a case of love, and we don’t get to choose the people that we love. We find ourselves in the predicament and then try to make the best of it…I love my wife Susanne, I’ve been with her 31 years, and it’s love, and it’s also addiction. I just can’t envisage a world in which I would be without her.” This framed Dr Milligan’s final powerful point: love, and the loyalty which love entails, gives us our sense of value.

I can bear witness to the truth of Dr Milligan’s intertwining of love and loyalty. Last autumn I became a father for the second time. My love for my eldest is so great that there was a real question: ‘if my love for my eldest is so total, so all encompassing, how can I possibly love a second as much?’ This question melted away as I gazed into her screwed-up face, moments after she entered the world. I am completely dedicated to ensuring that she flourishes and I would “go through various kinds of adversity in order to pursue” her flourishing. As Dr Mulligan also said, loyalty “is basic to the human condition and not optional.” Of course, how this total and non-zero-sum loyalty of love to both of my children actually works in practice requires of me thoughtful negotiation. If one wants to go to the park and the other wants to go to the swimming pool I cannot split in two and do both things at once. Loyalty, as finite human beings, requires wisdom in living in the middle of a messy network of demands and desires, of the preferences and needs of others.

If loyalty is then one thing, it is the willingness to recognise that we are tied to other people, whether we like it or not. Cain’s question to God, when God came looking for Abel, is still pertinent: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Perhaps the greatest disloyalty is the implied ‘no’ in Cain’s rhetorical question. In denying that he is bound to his brother he is disloyal not only to Abel, but to himself because he denies his own humanity and isolates himself from the humanity of other people. If we isolate ourselves, having loyalty only to ourselves, we lose the joy of being fully human. If we simply kill those we dislike, whether literally (in war or murder) or metaphorically (‘unfriending’, cancelling, pretending they do not exist), then we follow Cain. Loyalty, as the tie that binds us to the messiness of the real world where people vehemently disagree all the time, requires not only wisdom then but courage also. It takes courage to commit to one person in marriage. It takes courage to raise a child. It takes courage to continue to talk with and to love those with whom you deeply disagree.

When practising our 2025 New Year’s resolutions let us make sure that amongst the commitments to get back to the gym and practice that new hobby that we remember to practice loyalty. Loyalty not only to those we love, but to those we might come to love. Let us be wise enough and brave enough to be fettered to those with whom we disagree, loyal to the humanity that binds us together.

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Review

Character

Culture

Film & TV

3 January 2025

4 min read

The utter humanity of Wallace and Gromit

Choices in front of and behind the camera tame technology.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

A still from a claymantion film shows three characters, Wallace, Gromit and a robot garden gnome marching out a garden shed.

AI: here to help.

Aardman Animations.

In 1993, Aardman Animations released Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers. It follows hapless inventor Wallace and his long-suffering dog Gromit as they rent out their spare room to a penguin, Feathers McGraw, who is subsequently revealed to be a master criminal, narrowly pipping Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter and Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh to the title of cinema’s most sinister villain. (Trust me: you will never look at a red rubber glove the same way after The Wrong Trousers).

At the film’s climax, perpetual good-boy Gromit chases McGraw through the house via a series of increasingly convoluted model railway tracks, even as he has to build the very tracks he’s riding on. There is a strong argument to be made that it is best scene in cinematic history.

Fast forward to Christmas, 2024, and Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is shown on BBC One on Christmas Day. It tells the story of Feathers McGraw – who has lost none of his quiet menace – plotting revenge on the eponymous duo, this time by taking over a series of technologically advanced garden gnomes Wallace has invented.

While nothing in Vengeance Most Fowl tops the train chase from The Wrong Trousers – indeed, how can one improve on perfection? – it is another magnificent addition to the Wallace and Gromit oeuvre.

Moreover, it is a remarkably prescient tale about the dangers of technology, and the beauty of humanity. It is the perfect antidote to much of modern cinema and almost single-handedly restored by faith in film as an artistic medium. Vengeance Most Fowl is such a success because it oozes humanity in every single frame. However, this humanity appears most clearly in three distinct ways.

First, in its story. The inciting MacGuffin of Vengeance Most Fowl is the new garden gnomes Wallace has concocted. Feathers McGraw takes control of Wallace’s gnomes by hacking into its software and switching it from ‘good’ mode to 'evil’ mode. (Like everything in life, this is a joke The Simpsons got to first: in 1992’s “Treehouse of Horror III,” Homer accidently buys Bart a Krusty the Clown doll accidently set to ‘evil’ mode rather than ‘good’ mode.)

Vengeance Most Fowl offers a more nuanced take on technology than most. It’s neither straightforwardly good nor straightforwardly bad; it depends entirely on the user. We see the benefits of the gnomes as they help people with their gardening. But put them in the hands of the wrong person – or penguin – and they become tools for evil. Vengeance Most Fowl is not an anti-technology film, then, but is realistic about the fact that some humans – and, indeed, penguins – will inevitably seek to use technology for nefarious ends.

Second, in its voice acting. Vengeance Most Fowl is the first Wallace & Gromit film released following the death of long-standing Wallace voice actor Peter Sallis. It is genuinely remarkable, then, that no AI was used by Aardman to replicate his voice. Instead, this is left to Ben Whitehead and the results are certainly worth it.

Where many film studios or production companies would have used technology to offer a ‘fake’ Sallis performance – think Peter Cushing in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, for example, or even the use of AI to reconstruct John Lennon’s voice for the lost Beatles single “Now and Then” – Aardman did not. Instead, they made a very conscious decision to have Whitehead offer a deeply human performance as Wallace. When (SPOILER ALERT) at the end of the film Wallace tells Gromit that he can live without inventing, but he can’t live without his dog, the emotional pay-off is so genuine because it is real. Because it is a thoroughly human moment.

Third, in its cinematography. Claymation is a medium only adopted by artists who hate themselves. That’s the only reason I can think for making an entire film using such a slow, tedious process. It is also a deeply human art form. It is the result of tens of thousands of hours of painstaking and repetitive work. It is yet another conscious choice by the team at Aardman to create something that is thoroughly and unmistakably human.

All of this, I think, says something about how Wallace & Gromit manages to feel like such a breath of fresh air. It has not been committee-d to death, or market research-ed into beige-ness. It is full of stupid little jokes (like Gromit reading Virginia Woof) and localised references (“Yorkshire Border: Keep Out!” followed by “Lancashire Border: No, Your Keep Out!”).

The cost of making Wallace & Gromit films is too costly for them to be cheap, mass-produced disappointments churned out at an increasing rate of knots. They are lovingly hand-crafted works of art and, given the current state of much cinema and TV, they are nothing short of minor miracles.