A Structural Morality Model: Value Optimization, Compromise, and the Non-Terminal Moral System

This paper proposes a structural model of morality in which moral behavior is understood as value optimization within plural, imperfect, and correctable value systems. It replaces the binary division between justice and evil with a three-region topology of just action, gray-zone self-interest, and eliminative evil, while adding safeguards for severe non-eliminative harm, cumulative destruction, moral standing, boundary integrity, and truth under uncertainty.

The central claim is that moral maturity is not the production of permanent verdicts, but the preservation of compromise, repentance, forgiveness, protection, investigation, containment, de-containment, and self-overturning when prior judgments prove incomplete or wrong.