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Setting Brainstorm: A world without evil
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6721549" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>That's a good point, and rereading what I wrote it does tend to minimize the existence of neutrality. For these purposes, neutrality for me represents the idea that you aren't actively compelled to do good or evil, and tend to be passive to the idea of doing either great evil or great good. You lack either the quality of mercy or cruelty. </p><p></p><p>But I'm not sure that it overturns the general gist of my point. For one thing, one of the biggest justifications for neutrality is often that faced with the reality of injustice, good is an inadequate response and you have to chart a middle path between benevolence and defensiveness. But that justification blows up entirely, because the plague takes care of anything that becomes too dangerous. What are you trying to maintain a balance with? </p><p></p><p>Neutrality tends to exist in the very real problem that you often can't cure an injustice without causing an injustice. You can't stop a war without fighting a war. You can't stop a murderer without doing violence to the murderer. You can't restore something that is stolen without taking things from people who believe they earned them in good faith. You can't do something for the good of the group without risking harm to individual members. You can't secure something against trespass, theft, and vandalism, without creating a burden of access for people with legitimate need. The public good you do on behalf of some cause comes at the expense of not doing public good in some other cause. And so on and so forth. Neutrality tends to view this challenge as a call to a 'golden mean' and due moderation. But implicit in this argument is the reality and presence of evil, something that the plague is going to continually refine out.</p><p></p><p>An alternate approach to neutrality is that neither good nor evil actually exists. But the plague overturns this regardless of how you come at the problem. Either it's true that good and evil are real, and the plagues selective ability to choose victims is proof of that. Or else it is true that even if before the plague, good and evil were relative concepts the absolute reality of the plague has de facto created an absolute standard of what is good and what is evil. Anything that encourages and promotes the plague, promotes destruction and suffering and therefore absolutely is to be avoided.</p><p></p><p>I can see your world being the setting for several interesting stories, but not for the sort of 'adventure' stories D&D normally produces.</p><p></p><p>1) It's an interesting question of whether the Neutral people of this world would seek to cure this plague (perhaps with the intellectual motive of restoring balance or true free will to do evil) and whether the Good people of this world would try to stop them and whether the plague itself would count attempts to cure it as evil. That particular brain twister blows my mind. Likewise, if the world has been living with the plague for a very long time, it's an open question whether any of the parties involved in trying to cure the plague would actually understand the consequences. This is one of the few scenarios that I can see provoking prolonged and possibly violent conflict. It's not clear to me what the resolution would or ought to be.</p><p></p><p>2) An alternate scenario is that ultimately the plague is universal and that no one can avoid catching it. Sooner or later, everyone, no matter how good they try to be catches the plague because they do something or think something that provokes it. This is another mind blower, because again it relates to how the good people actually would view the plague. There is a strange contradiction here. Although the plague is only punishing evil, is it true that the ultimate work of such a plague should be viewed as good? After all, isn't the pervasive evil of the world one of evil's intellectual justifications for visiting destruction on everything? In this case, even more so than the above scenario, there is a potential for great conflict over the question of the plagues goodness between nominally good persons, and the ability to cure or not cure the plague provides a point of contention that two decent men could have. After all, can you really trust the goodness of the plague. This is particularly true the more it seems the plague lacks the quality of mercy. If you can get better by sincerely repenting, I think the conflict then again largely goes away.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6721549, member: 4937"] That's a good point, and rereading what I wrote it does tend to minimize the existence of neutrality. For these purposes, neutrality for me represents the idea that you aren't actively compelled to do good or evil, and tend to be passive to the idea of doing either great evil or great good. You lack either the quality of mercy or cruelty. But I'm not sure that it overturns the general gist of my point. For one thing, one of the biggest justifications for neutrality is often that faced with the reality of injustice, good is an inadequate response and you have to chart a middle path between benevolence and defensiveness. But that justification blows up entirely, because the plague takes care of anything that becomes too dangerous. What are you trying to maintain a balance with? Neutrality tends to exist in the very real problem that you often can't cure an injustice without causing an injustice. You can't stop a war without fighting a war. You can't stop a murderer without doing violence to the murderer. You can't restore something that is stolen without taking things from people who believe they earned them in good faith. You can't do something for the good of the group without risking harm to individual members. You can't secure something against trespass, theft, and vandalism, without creating a burden of access for people with legitimate need. The public good you do on behalf of some cause comes at the expense of not doing public good in some other cause. And so on and so forth. Neutrality tends to view this challenge as a call to a 'golden mean' and due moderation. But implicit in this argument is the reality and presence of evil, something that the plague is going to continually refine out. An alternate approach to neutrality is that neither good nor evil actually exists. But the plague overturns this regardless of how you come at the problem. Either it's true that good and evil are real, and the plagues selective ability to choose victims is proof of that. Or else it is true that even if before the plague, good and evil were relative concepts the absolute reality of the plague has de facto created an absolute standard of what is good and what is evil. Anything that encourages and promotes the plague, promotes destruction and suffering and therefore absolutely is to be avoided. I can see your world being the setting for several interesting stories, but not for the sort of 'adventure' stories D&D normally produces. 1) It's an interesting question of whether the Neutral people of this world would seek to cure this plague (perhaps with the intellectual motive of restoring balance or true free will to do evil) and whether the Good people of this world would try to stop them and whether the plague itself would count attempts to cure it as evil. That particular brain twister blows my mind. Likewise, if the world has been living with the plague for a very long time, it's an open question whether any of the parties involved in trying to cure the plague would actually understand the consequences. This is one of the few scenarios that I can see provoking prolonged and possibly violent conflict. It's not clear to me what the resolution would or ought to be. 2) An alternate scenario is that ultimately the plague is universal and that no one can avoid catching it. Sooner or later, everyone, no matter how good they try to be catches the plague because they do something or think something that provokes it. This is another mind blower, because again it relates to how the good people actually would view the plague. There is a strange contradiction here. Although the plague is only punishing evil, is it true that the ultimate work of such a plague should be viewed as good? After all, isn't the pervasive evil of the world one of evil's intellectual justifications for visiting destruction on everything? In this case, even more so than the above scenario, there is a potential for great conflict over the question of the plagues goodness between nominally good persons, and the ability to cure or not cure the plague provides a point of contention that two decent men could have. After all, can you really trust the goodness of the plague. This is particularly true the more it seems the plague lacks the quality of mercy. If you can get better by sincerely repenting, I think the conflict then again largely goes away. [/QUOTE]
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