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Good vs Evil: a matter of aims or a matter of means?
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<blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 1922830" data-attributes="member: 1106"><p>Although this suits the needs of the game, I think that the real answer is that our morality is not a universal axiom at all (as is sometimes implied), but merely a human social construct, complete with a huge species bias, and is therefore only meaningful or useful if you're a human dealing with a world that involves other humans.</p><p></p><p>Therefore, I think that one of the tripwires in applying real world morality to D&D is that the categories of "person" and "animal" need lots and lots of extension because of the existence of hundreds of kinds of monsters - into grey areas like "person-like monster" and "animal-like monster" and "unredeemably savage monster" and "always evil monster" and so forth, and our morality system struggles to support such ideas because they don't have to be dealt with in the real world.</p><p></p><p>Our morality is really that fragile and impotent when it comes to species discrimination...where does one draw the line between "person" and "monster"? A lot of morality rides on that - it's the difference between being able to put something down like a farmer might a rabid dog or not. We can agree that demihumans are peoples...but the line needs to be drawn somewhere (some monsters are far worse than savage animals)...perhaps amongst the humanoids (probably at troll, but that may be just racism on my part). <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="rounser, post: 1922830, member: 1106"] Although this suits the needs of the game, I think that the real answer is that our morality is not a universal axiom at all (as is sometimes implied), but merely a human social construct, complete with a huge species bias, and is therefore only meaningful or useful if you're a human dealing with a world that involves other humans. Therefore, I think that one of the tripwires in applying real world morality to D&D is that the categories of "person" and "animal" need lots and lots of extension because of the existence of hundreds of kinds of monsters - into grey areas like "person-like monster" and "animal-like monster" and "unredeemably savage monster" and "always evil monster" and so forth, and our morality system struggles to support such ideas because they don't have to be dealt with in the real world. Our morality is really that fragile and impotent when it comes to species discrimination...where does one draw the line between "person" and "monster"? A lot of morality rides on that - it's the difference between being able to put something down like a farmer might a rabid dog or not. We can agree that demihumans are peoples...but the line needs to be drawn somewhere (some monsters are far worse than savage animals)...perhaps amongst the humanoids (probably at troll, but that may be just racism on my part). :) [/QUOTE]
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Good vs Evil: a matter of aims or a matter of means?
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