D&D General Muscular Neutrality (thought experiment)

[Voadam]

Taking it as given that

1. Muscular neutrality between good and evil is a metaphysically valid position,
2. "Good" is "altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings",
3. and "Evil" is "harming, oppressing, and killing others",

what justifies a position of muscular neutrality

I am not quite sure what is meant here by metaphysically valid.

Do you mean thinking of muscular neutrality as good or something different?

I normally think of evil in the 3e view as someone who is overall toxic and malevolent whether they think of themselves as good or not.

Neutral is not a toxic monster but also not a saint or martyr or a crusader. They are actively out for their own benefit.

A good person is overall good but not necessarily perfectly good and can be someone you don’t like or want to be around or subject to.

Same for a good kingdom, it is overall good on balance but that does not mean you want to be subject to them or not compete with them for power or resources.

I see the circle of eight as liking the free city and so they don’t want evil to overrun them but they also don’t want a powerful non-evil neighbor to take over either, even if the neighbor kingdom or theocracy or caliphate is overall good. So the circle takes steps to muscularly make sure their neighbors do not sweep over them.

 

[abirdcall]

I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that "muscular neutrality" was imported from Moorcock's setup where the victory of either Law or Chaos would destroy humanity, without anybody doing the importing thinking through how the victory of Good is intrinsically different than the victory of Law. And I observe that every defense of muscular neutrality I see winds up redefining Good into meaning something that far more naturally parses as Law (see not just this thread, but, say, Dragonlance's take on the Kingpriest), implicitly collapsing us from the 1978 nine-alignment paradigm back into the 1974 three-alignment paradigm.

Which is to say, the concept works just fine with D&D as Gygax reportedly always DMed it, but doesn't work at all with nine-sector alignment as written.

The interesting question left, I think, is whether muscular neutrality works in 1977's five-alignment D&D. If human survival/flourishing requires a balance between the cosmic forces of Law and Chaos, but the only cosmic force that is neither Lawful nor Chaotic is Neutrality, there's room for a case that the promotion of the good might require preventing the ultimate victory of (one of) the cosmic forces of Good.

Not true. We have examples of it in the 9 alignment system.

The Lady of Pain is case in point.

 

[Shiroiken]

Why thank you , and I am not averse to quibbling over the definitions. How would you have defined Good and Evil?

I see Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos as fundamental forces of the universe, which is why the outer planes are based on them. In addition, there's varying degrees of each, such as "evil," "Evil," and "EVIL." A goblin raider is evil because it does evil things (pillage, murder, etc.), not because of it's philosophical viewpoints. Lord Soth is Evil because he actively supports and promotes the empowerment of evil in the world. A demon is EVIL because it is an embodiment of the force of evil in the universe. The goblin might be redeemed by showing it a better way to live, but it would be difficult to convince Lord Soth to abandon the cause of evil... while a demon that is redeemed is no longer a demon by definition (which would be a rare thing indeed!).

Each of these can be put into the view of good, law, and chaos as well. Most people would be some form of neutral or lower case good/evil/lawful/chaotic, as they don't actively promote one side or the other, but have their own tendencies. Adventurers and other powerful individuals are more likely to be capital Good/Evil/Lawful/Chaotic, but even they are much more likely to be simply living their lives, rather than supporting a philosophy. Deities, celestials, fiends, modrons, and other outer-planar beings are almost certainly GOOD/EVIL/LAWFUL/CHAOTIC, but even then you might have exceptions (albeit rarely).

As for what "good" and "evil" mean, I think this is tricky because people tend to automatically imply their modern views. Since this is always changing, it means that each generation is likely to have their own versions. Most people will agree with common things, but when you get into the weeds that involves killing (a staple of D&D), it becomes murky. For me, killing a goblin raider is simply punishing a criminal, but a Good character might try to redeem it instead. A Good character is much less likely to attempt to redeem an Evil character, since they're likely just as entrenched in their views. Trying to redeem an EVIL being is likely a futile quest, but one a GOOD being might embark upon.

the balance between good and evil need not be 50/50 it could 95/5 with good being the higher value?

neutality always seemed more sane in a stasis versus chaos situation where both are needed but one winning is hell

Probably want to get involved when it hits 70/30, because of the snowball effect. One side can be winning, but once it gets too far, it becomes easier for that side to take control completely.

 

[TwoSix]

No?

I believe IRL in a cosmological Good that would not do that. It's kind of essential that that is not part of His nature.

I'm making very sure not to bring anything IRL into here. This is just roleplaying out possible fictional perspectives to assign to "cosmic" forces.

Careful what you mean by this. Are you using "local" in the geographic sense, or the mathematical sense?

Both, really. Most cosmological forces are going to be primarily composed of local (restricted to one nation, planet, plane, etc.) agents and factions. But the big picture drivers are, by necessity, going to look at the big picture. They're concerned with endpoints, where the functions peter out into asymptotes or continue onwards towards infinity.

The trolley problem is irrelevant to my point. I'm talking about how in order to maximize good for all people, you would have to harm a hell of a lot of people to get there, which would be Evil. Most cosmological Good forces are not willing to do blatantly evil things (mind control, coercion, murder, extortion, eugenics, etc.) even if those things would truly provably make the world objectively better
...and it's usually not the case that that is a truly proven result of these actions.

It's essential to mine.

I think it's quite possible, certainly within fantasy fiction, to have a force that is recognizably "Good" that doesn't feature the elevation of agency as its primary metric of what "Good" is. Heck, the whole point of "muscular neutrality" could be the protection of agency and free will, even when that allowance causes widespread suffering, conflict, and destruction.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm making very sure not to bring anything IRL into here. This is just roleplaying out possible fictional perspectives to assign to "cosmic" forces.

That's fine. My only point in bringing it up was that it isn't some weird bizarro thing for a cosmological force for Good to have lines it absolutely will not cross, even if crossing them would provably lead to the world being better, because there are some things that are simply Not Acceptable, no matter how much good might come of them down the line.

And this works at all levels. It might be the case that if I were to murder a specific set of individuals today, right now, people who have committed no wrongs worthy of commentary, then in a thousand years we would live in an absolute perfect utopia, completely free of all suffering and without any coercion or exploitation.

I still would adamantly refuse to murder those people. "Utopia justifies the means" is an extremely, overwhelmingly dangerous argument to make. As soon as you start justifying heinous acts because eventually they'll pay off, you have just invited every possible question of "well what if you do just a little bit more evil now, to get a better world sooner, or to make that better world even better, or to share it with more people, or..." You no longer have the ability to just reject those questions as flatly unacceptable behavior; you have to give a reasonable answer as to why this evil act, at this time, is justified, while that evil act at that time is unjustified.

Both, really. Most cosmological forces are going to be primarily composed of local (restricted to one nation, planet, plane, etc.) agents and factions. But the big picture drivers are, by necessity, going to look at the big picture. They're concerned with endpoints, where the functions peter out into asymptotes or continue onwards towards infinity.

Okay but if you're using "local" to mean two different things (mathematical optimization and regional variation), you're going to make swiss cheese of what I said--which is why I balked. I was exclusively using it in the mathematical optimization sense. If one is currently at a (mathematical) local maximum of the perfection-of-the-world function, then by definition you must make the world worse before you can make it better. There are plenty of takes on Good--both cosmological and personal--that refuse to be party to making the world worse. Especially if making the world worse actually results in going negative, making the world actually evil, before you can make it more good than it was before.

Again: "utopia justifies the means" is an incredibly dangerous position. It invites many of the worst impulses a sapient being can have, all while sincerely believing that following those impulses is good for the victims beneficiaries of that "compassion."

It's essential to mine.

I think it's quite possible, certainly within fantasy fiction, to have a force that is recognizably "Good" that doesn't feature the elevation of agency as its primary metric of what "Good" is.

I disagree, about as strongly as it is possible to disagree, with your dismissal of moral agency as the critical differentiator (but more on this in a moment). In the absence of agency, choice is irrelevant. Hence, to choose to do good in the absence of agency means nothing. A robot (for example) catching a person before they fall off of a building has saved a life, but it has done so purely because it is following the programming inserted into it. We do not say that that robot is morally upstanding because it did the one and only thing its programming permits. Likewise, while we might praise a dog that helps rescue people who are stuck in the snow, their extremely minimal individual agency limits their ability to actually be good or evil. It's not just the absence of agency in general, it's the absence of sufficient agency.

However, rereading what you've said here, it looks like you're stating that "elevation of agency" defines Good. That is not the case. That would be like saying that being liquid defines, say, Coke. Being liquid is certainly a necessary condition for a substance to be Coca-Cola, but it is definitely not a sufficient condition. Likewise, it is necessary for anything worthy of the label of "Good" to prioritize agency, because in the absence of agency, a person is identical to the robot example I gave above, an automaton carrying out programming without moral merit. What actually defines Good is what actions the entity/force/etc. actually encourages (or discourages).

Heck, the whole point of "muscular neutrality" could be the protection of agency and free will, even when that allowance causes widespread suffering, conflict, and destruction.

And I would argue that any setting which has done that is a setting where "Good" has been watered down into either merely "Lawful" or into some insipid caricature, usually by making its members incapable of moral choice (they're preprogrammed robots) or too stupid to understand that what they think is beneficial is actually very, very detrimental.

The difference between the two--merely Lawful vs insipid caricature--is often whether the so-called "Good" beings/entities/forces/etc. are aware that their actions will cause the harm that the "muscular' Neutrals wish to avoid. If they know and understand it and pursue their goals anyway, they were never Good in the first place, they were just Lawful in a funny hat. If they don't know and cannot be made to know, then either they refuse to learn, and are thus idiots, or are genuinely incapable of learning, and are thus automata. The automaton isn't stupid, but it lacks agency. The idiot has agency, but is too stupid to actually use it.

Essentially, in order to have the "muscular" Neutrals be truly, genuinely reasonable, they have to actually be right about the "balance" they protect. If their balance is illusory or ineffable, something they pursue as an article of faith because it is functionally beyond proof, then the "muscular" Neutral lacks any actual moral argument; they do crazy things for crazy reasons. But as soon as you admit that the "muscular' Neutral is actually right about existence, Good (and many forms of Evil) must become either too rigid or too stupid to understand that their actions will cause harm to the very beings they wish to aid and protect.

 

[TwoSix]

And this works at all levels. It might be the case that if I were to murder a specific set of individuals today, right now, people who have committed no wrongs worthy of commentary, then in a thousand years we would live in an absolute perfect utopia, completely free of all suffering and without any coercion or exploitation.

I still would adamantly refuse to murder those people. "Utopia justifies the means" is an extremely, overwhelmingly dangerous argument to make. As soon as you start justifying heinous acts because eventually they'll pay off, you have just invited every possible question of "well what if you do just a little bit more evil now, to get a better world sooner, or to make that better world even better, or to share it with more people, or..." You no longer have the ability to just reject those questions as flatly unacceptable behavior; you have to give a reasonable answer as to why this evil act, at this time, is justified, while that evil act at that time is unjustified.

But it makes perfect sense to have a fictional faction that is defined as "good" that absolutely would make those trade-offs.

"Good but dangerous" is exactly what we would want in a setting with muscular neutrals! They still take care of orphans, heal the sick, provide a shoulder to cry on. They agonize over decisions that will cause anyone to come to harm. But they absolutely WILL do it in pursuit of the utopian endpoint, where evil and suffering are eradicated.

(And as a slight aside, if you're doing this in the 9-point system, you also need to define what differs between LG and CG, is it just a difference in emphasis and methodology, or do they have distinct, opposed, endpoints?)

Again: "utopia justifies the means" is an incredibly dangerous position. It invites many of the worst impulses a sapient being can have, all while sincerely believing that following those impulses is good for the victims beneficiaries of that "compassion."

And again, that's what makes it so compelling for fictional positioning. "Muscular neutrality" makes more sense if "good" is strong, dangerous but compelling.

I disagree, about as strongly as it is possible to disagree, with your dismissal of moral agency as the critical differentiator (but more on this in a moment). In the absence of agency, choice is irrelevant. Hence, to choose to do good in the absence of agency means nothing. A robot (for example) catching a person before they fall off of a building has saved a life, but it has done so purely because it is following the programming inserted into it. We do not say that that robot is morally upstanding because it did the one and only thing its programming permits. Likewise, while we might praise a dog that helps rescue people who are stuck in the snow, their extremely minimal individual agency limits their ability to actually be good or evil. It's not just the absence of agency in general, it's the absence of sufficient agency.

However, rereading what you've said here, it looks like you're stating that "elevation of agency" defines Good. That is not the case. That would be like saying that being liquid defines, say, Coke. Being liquid is certainly a necessary condition for a substance to be Coca-Cola, but it is definitely not a sufficient condition. Likewise, it is necessary for anything worthy of the label of "Good" to prioritize agency, because in the absence of agency, a person is identical to the robot example I gave above, an automaton carrying out programming without moral merit. What actually defines Good is what actions the entity/force/etc. actually encourages (or discourages).

But that still assumes that the point of "good" is to allow moral choice, and test the recipients. That the point of "good" is to struggle against a selfish choice and make the altruistic one.

Like in @I'm A Banana's post above, what if cosmological good is just the recognition that suffering is omnipresent, "ontological goodness" is false, and the best case scenario is oblivion? (And what I love about that post is that viewpoint could be used for "good" or "evil", depending on the setting.)

The difference between the two--merely Lawful vs insipid caricature--is often whether the so-called "Good" beings/entities/forces/etc. are aware that their actions will cause the harm that the "muscular' Neutrals wish to avoid. If they know and understand it and pursue their goals anyway, they were never Good in the first place, they were just Lawful in a funny hat. If they don't know and cannot be made to know, then either they refuse to learn, and are thus idiots, or are genuinely incapable of learning, and are thus automata. The automaton isn't stupid, but it lacks agency. The idiot has agency, but is too stupid to actually use it.

I don't see it that way. Let's say that cosmological Good has an end-goal of wiping out all of the evil planes, which will cause the destruction of the multiverse but all souls will be brought together into a singular, joyful communion.

That's a perfectly feasible, logical "good" endpoint that a "muscular neutral" who values the status quo and personal autonomy more than happiness can oppose.

Essentially, in order to have the "muscular" Neutrals be truly, genuinely reasonable, they have to actually be right about the "balance" they protect. If their balance is illusory or ineffable, something they pursue as an article of faith because it is functionally beyond proof, then the "muscular" Neutral lacks any actual moral argument; they do crazy things for crazy reasons. But as soon as you admit that the "muscular' Neutral is actually right about existence, Good (and many forms of Evil) must become either too rigid or too stupid to understand that their actions will cause harm to the very beings they wish to aid and protect.

Where I think I differ from you is that you're setting a requirement for Good to be "maximally benevolent" in order to be worthy of being considered as a "cosmological Good". Whereas I think, per the parameters of the OP, that a "good but dangerous" force can still be considered Good but also capable of being rationally opposed.

It's only if one force is actually capable of always taking the methods that are maximally benevolent that the existence of the "neutral" force would become irrational.

 

[Vaalingrade]

But it makes perfect sense to have a fictional faction that is defined as "good" that absolutely would make those trade-offs.

"Good but dangerous" is exactly what we would want in a setting with muscular neutrals! They still take care of orphans, heal the sick, provide a shoulder to cry on. They agonize over decisions that will cause anyone to come to harm. But they absolutely WILL do it in pursuit of the utopian endpoint, where evil and suffering are eradicated.

Ah 'hard men making hard choices'.

I thought for this exercise we weren't supposed to posit 'good' that's actually just as evil as evil.

 

[TwoSix]

Ah 'hard men making hard choices'.

I thought for this exercise we weren't supposed to posit 'good' that's actually just as evil as evil.

So is making a hard choice in pursuit of a greater good evil?

That's the whole point of setting up these conflicts in the fiction, to explore these conflicts. If these questions were easy, we wouldn't have philosophers discussing these concepts for thousands of years without coming to a universally accepted answer, would we?

What's the point of a setting that just puts whipped cream on top of your "I already know what good is" ice cream?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But it makes perfect sense to have a fictional faction that is defined as "good" that absolutely would make those trade-offs.

I disagree. That, to me, is putting on a jersey. It devalues the moral/ethical thought--or worse, is one of those pernicious "maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle" things that pretend centrism is always awesome.

"Good but dangerous" is exactly what we would want in a setting with muscular neutrals!

There is a difference between "Good with teeth"--which I agree is required--and "Something pantomiming in the flayed skin of Good, going off and doing all sorts of objectively Evil things."

They still take care of orphans, heal the sick, provide a shoulder to cry on. They agonize over decisions that will cause anyone to come to harm. But they absolutely WILL do it in pursuit of the utopian endpoint, where evil and suffering are eradicated.

Okay. I'm not interested in a Good that becomes a monster in the name of utopia. That's not what I call Good. That is exactly the sort of monster that the things I would call Good prepare to fight.

And again, that's what makes it so compelling for fictional positioning. "Muscular neutrality" makes more sense if "good" is strong, dangerous but compelling.

But it isn't compelling. That's the point. You've just made yet another "but what if the people who THINK they are Good are actually just Nazis with better publicity?"

But that still assumes that the point of "good" is to allow moral choice, and test the recipients. That the point of "good" is to struggle against a selfish choice and make the altruistic one.

Which is exactly what the thread told us to presume. It's literally there, explicitly:

"Good" is "altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings",

It literally is the case that, per the thread, Good is to be defined as altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings.

Like in @I'm A Banana's post above, what if cosmological good is just the recognition that suffering is omnipresent, "ontological goodness" is false, and the best case scenario is oblivion? (And what I love about that post is that viewpoint could be used for "good" or "evil", depending on the setting.)

Precisely the fact that it can be used for "good" or "evil" is why it is not, and cannot be, Good.

I don't see it that way. Let's say that cosmological Good has an end-goal of wiping out all of the evil planes, which will cause the destruction of the multiverse but all souls will be brought together into a singular, joyful communion.

Then it is not Good. It is something monstrous to be opposed.

That's a perfectly feasible, logical "good" endpoint that a "muscular neutral" who values the status quo and personal autonomy more than happiness can oppose.

It is a perfectly feasible, logical endpoint. It is not a Good endpoint. It is merely something masquerading as Good. It may bear the label "Good", but it simply, flatly isn't actually Good. Just as an author can just fiat declare whatever they like, regardless of whether it makes sense or is even logically sound, they may give something the label "Good", but that does not make whatever got that label actually Good. It may be any number of other things, but it is not Good, neither by my own definition of the term, nor by the definition given to us in the OP.

Where I think I differ from you is that you're setting a requirement for Good to be "maximally benevolent" in order to be worthy of being considered as a "cosmological Good". Whereas I think, per the parameters of the OP, that a "good but dangerous" force can still be considered Good but also capable of being rationally opposed.

Maximal benevolence can still be quite dangerous. (I would use a Biblical analogy here, specifically to angels rather than the Big Man Himself, but you asked me to not make such references.) Per the parameters of the OP, it has to be maximally benevolent: it must be genuinely altruistic, genuinely respecting life, and genuinely concerned for the dignity of sentient beings. The thing you have described is almost certainly not altruistic except under tortured or insane "logic", it does not respect life in the least (since its goal is, by definition, to end every life, everywhere, forever), and it does not respect the dignity of sentient beings because it doesn't want there to be sentient beings, plural, it wants there to be one and only one being.

It's only if one force is actually capable of always taking the methods that are maximally benevolent that the existence of the "neutral" force would become irrational.

Being actually capable of doing it vs always wishing to do it are two different things. Further, choosing not to act when all of the active choices are bad options may be the best choice. This is why I used the "local maximum of a mathematical function" thing earlier. It may be that some maneuvers are simply unacceptable, no matter what downstream consequences they might have: sure, if you move in the [2,4] direction you might get to a higher maximum than what you're currently at, but it would require moving toward something Evil first, and that is simply unacceptable.

That doesn't mean that Good--fully sincere, maximal-benevolence Good--cannot still be dangerous. It absolutely can! It can be supremely dangerous! But it will never be dangerous by way of choosing to do something that is short-term horrendous with the justification that it will be long-term utopian. Superman stories, such as some of the better comics (e.g. Red Son, Kingdom Come, and What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?) and animated media (specifically the DCAU Superman) are quite good at demonstrating what a dangerous maximal-benevolence Good can look like. E.g. just because Supes is maximally benevolent doesn't mean he's omniscient; he gets played by Lex Luthor more than once in JL/JLU because Lex is subtle and crafty and knows how to push Superman's buttons. He may be maximally benevolent, but he still gets angry, he still feels jealousy, keeps secrets, doesn't fully trust others to get tasks done, etc. There are times where he simply can't save everyone, and he mourns the loss. Everything he does comes from a place of wanting to do the truly most benevolent thing each time, every time, but he still makes mistakes and misjudges situations. The DCAU Superman is an excellent display of a truly, completely unvarnished Always Good character who is still dangerous, even shocking at times when he's backed into a corner and has to come up with a third option.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I see the circle of eight as liking the free city and so they don’t want evil to overrun them but they also don’t want a powerful non-evil neighbor to take over either, even if the neighbor kingdom or theocracy or caliphate is overall good. .

Sounds like someone is denying that Pholtus is the one true way.

Don't worry, non-believer. You will see the LIGHT. Whether you want to or not.