D&D General Muscular Neutrality (thought experiment)

[Voadam]

I think the best illustration of lawful good is Rene-Jean Page's paladin, Xenk, in Honour Among Thieves. Specifically, when he walks over the boulder rather than deviate from his straight line by even one inch.

Vertical deviation. Just a different axis.

 

[Vaalingrade]

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?

'Hard men making hard choices' are usually just looking to justify the bad things they already want to do.

There is no philosophy I respect less than the 'hard man making a hard choice' to expediate something via murder or mistreating people.

 

[TwoSix]

'Hard men making hard choices' are usually just looking to justify the bad things they already want to do.

There is no philosophy I respect less than the 'hard man making a hard choice' to expediate something via murder or mistreating people.

And that seems like an excellent source of roleplay tension!

 

[Mind of tempest]

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.

if a certain amount of evil is needed for reality to be great I am fairly certain good could find a being whose only job it is to keep it at this level, if evil is a force of nature not all of them have to be equally powerful example gravity is the weakest of our realities core four know forces

 

[Mind of tempest]

'Hard men making hard choices' are usually just looking to justify the bad things they already want to do.

There is no philosophy I respect less than the 'hard man making a hard choice' to expediate something via murder or mistreating people.

explain what you mean by those terms of phrase?

 

[Clint_L]

Vertical deviation. Just a different axis.

Well, great. Now he can't be a 1e paladin anymore.

 

[Voadam]

explain what you mean by those terms of phrase?

Some examples:

24: I am willing to torture to get needed info to save lives.

Punisher: I am willing to make the hard choice to murder really bad criminals that others would capture and turn over to the system that would let them out to prey upon innocents again.

40K: I am willing to exterminate a planet of ours to stop it from turning into a daemon factory. And do whatever it takes to uncover Chaos incursions/subversions.

 

[Voadam]

Well, great. Now he can't be a 1e paladin anymore.

Not a deviation from the good evil axis path.

 

[abirdcall]

One of the things that doesn't seem to be stated clearly here is that Good (in a multiverse where Muscular Neutrality is Actually True) needn't be invested in the continuation of life in order to respect and value it.

It's Nirvana. It's the Rapture. It's the end of the world as we know it, and everyone is fine. Every story comes to an end, and the story of life can come to a good ending.

This isn't secretly evil or monstrous or anything. If the premise is that Muscular Neutrality is Actually True, and people are aware that this is how the cosmos works, it's just what you want as someone who values and respects life. For it to end happily. Heck, Good is altruistic and self-sacrificing - Good is OK with the idea of ending life in service to something greater. And, in that multiverse, if everyone was Good, they'd all be OK with the idea of their lives ending to prevent any suffering from happening again.

Life itself is monstrous. Living beings are worthy of respect, but as a consequence of " Muscular Neutrality is Actually True," life mandates that disrespect exist if it is to exist. It's a blessing to feel the soft spring rain on your face, but if that blessing means a trade-off with a drought-stricken nation devolving into murder and exploitation, then it's not really much of a blessing after all. To honor the living can mean to usher them softly into being non-living.

This kind of Good can be antagonistic, still. If the premise is that Muscular Neutrality is Actually True, we'd expect some "heroes of neutrality" who fight to keep the multiverse alive (and screaming). It's an understandable position from sort of a base animal perspective. The survival instinct is strong. And like, reality is where you keep all your stuff, so if it ended, what, you'd have nor more stuff?! So of course these Champions of the Status Quo, these Radical Centrists, would fight off the thing that could solve everyone's problems. They would not be Good for it, but that's kind of the point. And, of course, this kind of premise makes excellent use of tropes like overly-zealous angels and well-meaning idiots. Ascetic codes like chastity and dietary restrictions can make more sense in this world (don't make more people - they'll just suffer; don't kill animals to eat, that's unnecessary suffering). But antagonism doesn't mean evil in this case. Wanting to bring everyone eternal peace isn't evil, even if it would mean the end of life.

Every story comes to an end. The story of life is no different. It is not monstrous to accept that one day we all must die, and one day, the dead spheres of frozen rock that used to be our planets and our suns will be the last blind witnesses to a dead universe, cold and dark, without any living creature in it, incapable of having life once again. It isn't wicked to believe that nothing is permanent, including the chain of life itself. Indeed, sustaining life beyond its bounds can be wicked, can make more suffering.

I mean, this is also essentially the big decision in Dark Souls. Probably not coincidentally, from a place where Buddhism is a lot more popular, since some of these ideas are VERY Buddhist-coded. "Life requires suffering" is basically the first of the Four Noble Truths, and is also what a universe operating on Muscular Neutrality adheres to.

Important to mention the other noble truths if bringing up the first one.

The third one contradicts your interpretation that it is necessary as there is a path to the cessation of suffering.

The 2nd is that suffering is not caused by hurtful things but by attachment.

Buddhism is not neutral either. Compassion and community are centrally important.

There is also the concept of the Bodhisattva who voluntarily suffers in order to help others with their suffering.

It is the 'middle way' but not in a muscular neutrality way. More in a here is an alternative to good (as warriors) and evil way.

 

[Zeromaru X]

Animals and plants are part of samsara, too. They're as capable of nirvana as anything else. A transient existence isn't just transient for humans.

On their own time, with their own process. By the time they achieve Nirvana, we current humans would have been there for a whole Mahakalpa.

Good, when it falls from its own standard

Good, when it falls from its own standards, is not Good anymore. That's the point I arguing about: for Muscular Neutrality to work, we need to transform Good into something else that is not Good. We need to transform Good into a force that can be just named Evil 2.0 and be done with it.

If we have Good as Actually Good, the Muscular Neutrality doesn't work as intended, as the Neutrality end up as a force that prefers to join forces with Evil (and so, its not neutral anymore as it took a side) so people cannot experience ultimate Good for just its own selfish reasons.

So, this whole experiment has already failed. But you can't blame the experiment, as it was done using a failed concept as its basis to begin with (the Gygaxian Alignments). The only way this experiment can work is if the muscular neutrals are just people following a philosophy rather than a cosmic force trying to enforce cosmic balance.

then life is not inherently Good

Well, no. It can't be inherently just one thing when there are other things influencing as well. There are five forces influencing life, after all (Good, Evil, Law, Chaos and Neutrality).

When you're talking about things like "cosmological good" and "cosmological evil", how the "natural cycle" ended up being the natural cycle seems pretty important!

The natural cycle is either independent of Good and Evil, or dependent of more than just Good and Evil (like Law and Chaos). Either way, how it ends is something that Good could not achieve on its own.