D&D General Muscular Neutrality (thought experiment)

[Voadam]

Evil is not trying to be good, it is just toxcily hurting people.

Good is trying to be good.

Neutral is just trying to seek their own benefit whether that goes against good or evil.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

The thing about this so-called "muscular" neutrality is that I can't see it not becoming "lawful neutral" after a while, it primarily talks about good and evil but how would you determine the right "balance" or "superposition" of good and evil in the universe without a codified, lawful, downright mathematic formula?

 

[I'm A Banana]

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

Well, not really necessary for this thought experiment. It's Nirvana-esque, but not literally the same thing. The real world that Buddhism developed to address is not a fantasy world of provably true Muscular Neutrality - it's definitely NOT the same thing. Nothing falls apart if there's not a 1:1 analogy.

That said, I'm not against pushing this thought experiment 'till it breaks.

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

It's not a contradiction, as far as I can see.

The path to the cessation of suffering requires the end of existence (ie, biological existence and individual consciousness). This naturally follows from the premise: existence is suffering.

Good and Evil would differ in the how, but in the overall goal? Shared. The end of existence.

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

I think this would be a proposition that both Good and Evil agree with in this setting.

Evil would be kind of nihilistic. "Caring about stuff is what makes you weak, and what makes you able to suffer. I'm going to make you suffer, because I want it all to go away. I will exploit your foolish attachments. I will torment you. It will be awful, and then it will be over."

Good, more compassionate, but not exactly disagreeing. "You hurt because you care about this thing that hurts you, whose nature is to hurt you. It makes sense that you would care about it, but it can't care about you back. Care about yourself. The rest of us care about you, that's why we're having this conversation, friend. Remove yourself from this abusive dynamic. Remove your attachment to this world. Be free, free others, and eventually, we'll all be free. The world can end. You needn't be attached to it."

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.

I think this is all pretty compatible with the setting's conceit. Good is still compassionate, and still wants to build community. Dying forever isn't inherently evil, especially with a life well-lived among friends. Good just acknowledges that a life well-lived among friends, for everyone, means that the end is near. And that's nothing to fear.

The Bodhisattva concept is VERY related to this setting's conceit, as it gives you a reason to have Good heroes, evangelists who work to convince the Neutrals to give up existence for the sake of compassion. Who say "I see how much pain you're in, and I know how to fix it, how to fix everyone's pain, how to cease the suffering of all people. You just have to accept that it's going to mean losing everything. I know that's scary, but it's also the only way we're going to permanently heal your pain. Some folks (the neutrals) say that you have to accept pain to accept life, but you can also just...stop. If you want. If you're ready." That's building community and acting with compassion, and it's STILL going to end the world forever.

Like, it's definitely not 1:1, but Buddhism is dealing with reality at the end of the day, and this setting isn't reality. But it's also not "evil in disguise" just because it's apocalyptical. That's my main thrust here - that "Good" can mean an end to existence. That it's OK for a life well-lived to have an end to it. That, in aggregate this means that all life can end forever, and it can be a Good thing (in the context of this fantastical reality).

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.

Hahaha, yeah. Curious to imagine how this setting would treat plants and animals since there's no explicit samsara baked into it. D&D tends to treat such creatures as not having the capacity to MAKE a moral choice. The conceit does "end the world" if everyone is Good, though, so animals and plants would be impacted, despite not being able to make a choice themselves. Maybe Good in this setting views animals and plants as kind of like a version of rocks and rivers - biological machines. Part of "turning the lights out when you leave" is making sure each blade of grass lives out its life as content as you can make a blade of grass, but preventing it from making more. For it's own good.

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.

Right, that crusading angel isn't Good, so it doesn't actually reflect on what Good needs to be. Good doesn't need to be "secretly evil." It can still be Good, and wish for the end of all things. That angel can just be fallen, be wrong. It's an individual with an incorrect view of what Good is, which is why it's on the heroes to stop it, and thereby explore why Good in this setting is NOT that.

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.

This isn't paying attention to the set-up. An over-zealous paladin, an over-acetic monk, a priest who converts through coercion - these are just regular villains. They're not Good. They clarify what Good is by counter-example, by showing how individuals can get it wrong

That doesn't fail the experiment. Good can still desire the end of all things. It just shows that in this setting, method matters. You don't scour the countryside in a crusade. You instead persuade people to not have children. You encourage people to live lives of asceticism. You reduce suffering by accepting the soft, subtle end of existence.

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).

And if you want to maximize Good, it means the end of life, since to allow life means to also allow all of those forces.

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.

The conceit of gym bro neutrality is that the world ends if any one force dominates, so if Good eliminates the other forces, the world ends, no?

 

[squibbles]

Good lord did this thread grow quickly.

Reminder--it isn't meant to be a thread for arguing about alignment (though I am guilty of that myself on checks notes page 5 ). It's meant to take two apparently contradictory positions and come up with an interesting reason why they aren't contradictory.

So, for example, @TwoSix and @EzekielRaiden, your back and forth, I think, comes down to TwoSix having posited a solution to the contradiction, and EzekielRaiden objecting that it isn't a satisfying solution. Well... reasonable people may differ... let's come up with some more weird answers.

After some thought and review of the discussion, I think I have a decent one.

Let's conceive of Good and Evil as positions on a spectrum of tolerance for worldly suffering.

Ok, pretty straightforward.

So what can the position of muscular indifference be here?

It's NOT a view that suffering is necessary for there to be the contrast that allows people to experience Good. That might be a position on the axis but, if it is, I think it's pretty close to Good.

No, muscular neutrals like there to be suffering in the world as an aesthetic preference... because it's beautiful.

Let me give an example from a movie, Stranger than Fiction. In this movie, Will Ferrell "begins hearing a disembodied voice narrating his life as it happens – seemingly the text of a novel in which it is stated that he, the main character, will soon die – and he frantically seeks to somehow prevent his death." At one point, he asks for help from literary scholar Dustin Hoffman, who, having read the manuscript of the book, explains to him that the novel is sooooo good that, really, the right thing for him to do here is die. Sounds ridiculous, but watch Dustin Hoffman steel man it:



Ok, back to D&D. For starters, this is how druids feel about nature. Animals don't have full moral agency, neither do forest fires, but both of these things cause MASSIVE amounts of suffering (see the Problem of Evil vis a vis animal suffering). Druids aren't bothered by this. They think nature is magnificent and beautiful, in part because of the cyclical predation, death, fire, renewal, etc. They would kick, bite, scream, and pull hair if the solars and planetars came down to end animal suffering.

Good people think druids are messed up. That's why they live in cities, employ fire fighters, and have strong norms against killing and eating each other.

There is a druid-like position on a variety of topics--one which is clearly not Good, but which you can kind-of see the aesthetic argument for and can appreciate that some people feel passionate about.

Love:
In the Good afterlives, existence is filled with loving kindness and empathy for fellow beings; loss and heartbreak are sad and preventable. Muscular neutrals think heartbreak is magnificent and beautiful and cherish a world where the extremes of emotion can widely be felt.

War:
Good would prefer if there were no wars because they destroy life and subvert dignity. Muscular neutrals think that without war there would be no ennobling heroic sacrifice or tragedy of brother against brother, no Illiad, no Star Wars. (I suspect I may get pushback on this one.)

Well, not perfect, I think I subverted my argument with the captions a bit.

Feel free to criticize!

But also, try and come up with your own.

 

[Clint_L]

Evil is not trying to be good, it is just toxcily hurting people.

Good is trying to be good.

What if you are toxically hurting people while trying to be good? For example, by forcibly converting the local goblin tribe to the Church of Bahamat so you can save their eternal souls? What if Bahamat directly tells you to do that, through his clerics?

 

[squibbles]

Misc. thoughts and responses after 18 pages

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

Assuming that Muscular Neutrality is -right- in a setting...
That Good and Evil are the forces being balanced and Neutrality is a valid choice between the two... [...]

I now think "metaphysically valid" was not good phrasing.

Really, I meant "reasonable"; not foolish or misguided on its face. Also not explicitly correct, but a position that you could see a thoughtful, intelligent, decent person taking as an alternative to Good.

[...] There's something the Neutrals want, which would be disrupted if either Good or Evil "won"--so the conflict must endure. This is probably the first one that doesn't paint at least one side in pretty bad terms...but it still leaves the Neutrals looking Very Not Great, since they're actively prolonging and encouraging suffering in order to further their own goals, which looks like a pretty classic Evil motive. However, if their efforts tend to be measured and precise, rather than wanton flip-flopping without explanation, then there could be some goal or goals that aren't horrible. (Consider, for example, Q from Star Trek; he could be a "muscular" Neutral force seeking entertainment, and thus preventing any side from winning because that would bore him, but heroic last stands that succeed or dramatic falls that ruin empires would be popcorn-worthy.)
That's about all I can come up with off the top of my head. [...]

My answer above is a species of this, I think. Muscular neutrals wanting something that would be lost by Good winning is probably the direction with the most interesting ideas to mine. Incidentally, I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of your whole comment there.

I would probably play "muscular neutrality" as neo-Darwinian, with a goal of allowing for continual struggle in order to strengthen the group (defining group as all living things within the ecosystem, where that ecosystem could be as broad as the entire multiverse) as a whole. It's one of the main reasons that "muscular neutrality" is often associated with druids.

It's anti-Good since it's perfectly happy to let the innocent and weak die to strengthen the group. It's anti-Evil because it has no desire for dominance or destruction. It believes that cultivating strength is ultimately more beneficial for the group, and opposes one particular individual or group becoming strong enough to prevent the rise of others.

It's non-chaotic as it prioritizes the needs of the group over individuals, and it's non-lawful as it sees no need for hierarchy outside of the strong triumphing over the weak.

Fitness doesn't really serve any purpose, in itself. But, seeing as we're conceiving a fantasy world, maybe there's an out of context threat (far realm, Azathoth, whatever) which the group needs to be strong enough to overcome (which could make sense locally OR cosmically). This would then cast the muscular neutrals as ends-justify-the means consequentialists--but it would make more sense for them to take that tack since they don't have to meet the criteria of Good.

It's muscular if the neutral intervenes to help quell the aggressor between countries, whichever that aggressor is. In that sense, it's muscular in a classic realpolitik way (which is how Great Britain's shifting alliances was described by Hans Morgenthau, if I remember my International Relations class correctly). But again, it would be geopolitical, not philosophical.

Hans Morgenthau was waaaaaaay back. Realist scholars read Kenneth Waltz now or, god forbid, John Mearsheimer--who likes to breathlessly assert that the US and Russia should forget about Ukraine and team up on China.

...not to dump on your comment, realpolitik can make for good characters and settings.

Ok, I have an idea on how, but it’s specific to the way I prefer alignment to work in D&D, which is going to require some explanation, and some folks probably won’t like this take.

In my preferred approach to alignment in D&D, alignment is prescriptive for immortal beings like gods and devils, and descriptive for mortals. An Angel is lawful good by nature, and cannot act against its nature. A mortal is not any alignment by nature, but becomes an alignment by their deeds. Behaving altruistically makes a mortal good, and acting egoistically makes one evil. Acting in support of social order makes a mortal lawful, and acting in opposition to social order makes a mortal chaotic. Passivity is neutral, so a mortal who does not actively behave in accordance with good or evil, law or chaos, will gradually trend towards neutrality.

In a recent conversation in another thread, @abirdcall disagreed with this approach, and in expressing that disagreement quite rightly pointed out that this model would make it impossible for mortals to maintain lawful good alignment within a lawful evil society. When evil is enshrined within law, to oppose that evil would be chaotic, and to not oppose it would be neutral with regard to good and evil. So, how does one resolve this paradox? Well, a mortal who is ideologically committed to law and good would have to temporarily suspend their commitment to one axis or the other for the sake of long-term preservation of those ideals, either allying with agents of chaos to put an end to the evil social order, or working within the evil legal framework to change the system from within. But, immortal beings don’t have that luxury. A lawful good god would be unable to exert any influence within a lawful evil society at all. And as for their immortal agents? This is where fallen angels come from.

Notably, this vulnerability is pretty specific to lawful good. Law and good are by nature more restrictive than evil and chaos, so it’s much easier for evil to exploit a lawful good society’s rules to its own ends, and there’s no internal conflict in a lawful agent opppsing a chaotic society. But this vulnerability ends up making mortal agents essential for lawful good gods. If infiltration by evil forces can end up locking them out of lawful society, they need mortal servants who have the unique power of moral agency, and can make the decision to prioritize good over law or vice versa when those things come into conflict.

So, here is where I think there is room for muscular neutrality. Mortal actors who are ideologically in favor of law and good, but recognize this critical flaw in the cosmic system, and actively work to prevent it from being exploited. They oppose evil and chaos due to their ideological convictions, but recognize that the total victory of good over evil or law over chaos would make the world more vulnerable on the perpendicular axis. Muscular neutrality then is a purely pragmatic position, maintaining balance not because it is ideal, but because “good enough” is easier to defend against chaos than ultimate good, and “lawful enough” is easier to defend against evil than ultimate law.

I love this. It's so odd and quintessentially D&D, "[Mortal actors] oppose evil and chaos due to their ideological convictions, but recognize that the total victory of good over evil or law over chaos would make the world more vulnerable on the perpendicular axis." Gold. You did not disappoint.

However, I'm not sure it works on the Evil/Good axis. If Evil is categorically defeated, and the Good alignments become vulnerable to dominance by chaos, doesn't that just get us to chaotic good? That's maybe better than endless cosmic struggle from the perspective of rational thinking creatures. Or does perfect chaotic goodness turn creation into chaos soup?

"Law and good are by nature more restrictive than evil and chaos, so it’s much easier for evil to exploit a lawful good society’s rules to its own ends" Yikes... that's uncomfortably timely.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Isn't the fundamental problem here that you are not just asserting that "muscular" Neutrality is reasonable, but that it is in fact true?

Because that very much seems to be the problem here. You've eliminated moral quandary, by way of making morality a solved question. There is a right answer, and that answer is "muscular" Neutrality.

That is incompatible with Good as I understand the term.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes, but what we would call it personally is irrelevant. It makes sense to allow it to be defined that way within a fictional setting for the purposes of setting up multiversal conflict.

I mean, people can use whatever label they want, but it's a bit disingenuous to call something "Good" when it flagrantly, blatantly is not.

I would call that a "recognizable trope", which is generally a good thing in an RPG setting.

Tropes are tools. Some are more useful than others. This is a flagrantly over-used tool, and one almost always used insanely ham-fistedly. Just because it might theoretically be possible to do it well does not mean it is a wise choice to try.

And nothing in those statements requires the supposition that agency is the most important factor in terms of defining "Good".

I explicitly dealt with that already.

It's fairly simple to come to a logical conclusion that the universe would be better off destroyed. A person may not agree with some of the assertions required to get there, but the logic is sound.

A position being reasonable does not necessarily make it Good.

And yes, whatever the author/setting developer labels as "Good" for their setting is what's "Good" for that setting. If you think what the author says is "Good" is actually "Evil", even better! You'll be more engaged with proving the faction wrong in the game.

Nnnnnope. I don't let authors turn off my brain. If something is simply a bald-faced contradiction, I'm going to call it out as such.

I would have real trouble arguing that a path towards eternal life of the soul is evil.

You didn't say anything about an afterlife, which is a continuation of existence. You said ending existence. That means nothing. Zip, zero, nada. Absolute and total annihilation. Not even the ineffable, inexpressible whatever that is compatible with the state of Nirvana (since the Buddha explicitly rejected both any assertion of an identifiable "self" and any denial of a "self" as equally leading to wrong results.) Nothing whatsoever. Total zeroing of the scale.

Defining a set of actions as "always wrong", regardless of the downstream benefits, seems like a natural division between LG and CG factions.

Nah. CG has plenty of actions it wouldn't ever do either, no matter what. They're just a different (but in many ways overlapping) set. I would give examples but, well, they're necessarily going to be some of the most horrible things human beings can do to one another, so I think you'll understand why I am choosing not to make a list thereof.

And that's exactly the attitude I would expect a heroic PC to have. That's a recognizable trope. I just don't think it makes for a compelling cosmological faction.

I don't see why not. You just scale up the power and the awareness. A D&D deity, say Bahamut, thus has many more irons in the fire, many more things they're aware of and needing to deal with. It's a hell of a lot more complicated, and the deity in question knows there are costs and barriers that smaller beings cannot see. They can still be quite compelling.

 

[TwoSix]

Isn't the fundamental problem here that you are not just asserting that "muscular" Neutrality is reasonable, but that it is in fact true?

Because that very much seems to be the problem here. You've eliminated moral quandary, by way of making morality a solved question. There is a right answer, and that answer is "muscular" Neutrality.

That is incompatible with Good as I understand the term.

I would assume that in a setting based on cosmological moral conflict, Good, Evil, and Neutrality are all “true”.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No, muscular neutrals like there to be suffering in the world as an aesthetic preference... because it's beautiful.

How is this not, precisely as the diagram describes, "pro-suffering"? They're just picky about what kinds and amounts of suffering they wish the world to experience, and want it to be more a general vibe, a background radiation of specific flavors of suffering.

Good people think druids are messed up. That's why they live in cities, employ fire fighters, and have strong norms against killing and eating each other.

This is conflating Good with Law, as has so often been noted. The thing you are referring to as "good people" are simply lawful people, who live in organized, civic communities rather than dispersed wilderness populations.

Love:
In the Good afterlives, existence is filled with loving kindness and empathy for fellow beings; loss and heartbreak are sad and preventable. Muscular neutrals think heartbreak is magnificent and beautiful and cherish a world where the extremes of emotion can widely be felt.

Again, this sounds very much like "I want to create more suffering, but only up to my limit." It's still pro-suffering. It's just not "always pro-suffering all the time." It's pro-suffering with a data limit.

Good would prefer if there were no wars because they destroy life and subvert dignity. Muscular neutrals think that without war there would be no ennobling heroic sacrifice or tragedy of brother against brother, no Illiad, no Star Wars. (I suspect I may get pushback on this one.)

Well, the "muscular" Neutrals are mistaken if they think war (or even violence in general) is the only place where ennobling heroic sacrifice occurs. As for the rest, it very much reads as exactly the same as the previous: "I want just enough suffering so I can get my aesthetic fix, but no more." It's also noteworthy that most of your examples don't actually feature the "muscular" Neutrals doing the suffering. They want suffering to happen so they can savor it, but they don't seem to be interested in personally facing that suffering. That, too, strikes me as pretty Evil.

Feel free to criticize!

But also, try and come up with your own.

Well, I don't really know that I can, because as noted, every one of the examples you gave pretty much just makes "muscular" Neutrality a form of picky Evil-Lite. Evil-with-standards-and-limits.

Instead, I'll give you something drawn from one of my favorite games, KotOR 2.

In that game, Kreia actually manages to articulate a philosophy of the Dark side that isn't horrifically awful and reveling in being horrifically awful. It's still not kind, but one would not expect kindness from the Dark side. It also paints the Light side as being kind of parasitic, consumptive, even abusive, using people and then abandoning them when they have nothing left to offer.

This version of Dark side philosophy centers on conflict, but not in the sense of fomenting conflict. Rather, it's the idea that conflict is what permits someone to grow. A person has only so many things that can possibly trouble them, and they use up those conflicts in the process of overcoming them. By overcoming those conflicts, the person necessarily had to develop new skills or abilities, acquire new knowledge or tools, and otherwise make themselves better than they were before.

By this notion, the Light side steals the conflicts from others to enrich itself. It smooths away every difficulty, every fault, so that the people it "protects" never need to grow or change or think or do anything other than continuing their lives exactly as they are. As soon as their "protected" people no longer have any meaningful conflicts to resolve, the Light side moves on, abandoning them to listless mediocrity, an empty and meaningless existence of unchanging grey nothing that rolls on until an uneventful and un-noteworthy death.

This then allows us to construct, not quite so much an "axis" as three different, mutually-conflicting attitudes regarding conflict. I'll call them Light, Dark, and Evil.

Spoiler: Aside about Kreia's philosophy

It's noteworthy that Kreia is very vocal about crapping on both unthinking Light-side options and unthinking, wanton-violence Dark-side options, which causes some people to think she's just an unpleasable bitch. The truth is that she wants you to listen to her lecture and respond with thought rather than with knee-jerk annoyance. If you do that, you actually get more rep with her than you lose from the initial action--so she's not unpleasable, but she is didactic, which suits her character and makes her not very likable as a person, exactly as she should be.

But it does really show how Kreia dislikes the excesses of what I'm calling "Evil" here. She herself is probably still Evil overall, but I think her philosophy is worthy of being iterated upon.

The Light side says that conflict is tragic, and should be resolved by whatever reasonable means are available. It is laudable, indeed highly desirable, that everyone desire to help everyone else ameliorate any conflicts as quickly and effectively as possible, so that each can get on with the business of enjoying existence and finding personal fulfillment.

The Dark side says that conflict is useful, and should be carefully leveraged for maximum gain--usually personal gain, but it isn't against collective gain. It is laudable, indeed highly desirable, that everyone desire to tackle their own challenges, and only take on others' conflicts that are fairly paid for or which are truly impossible for those others to solve, so that each can get on with the business of improving themselves by resolving their own conflicts.

The Evil side says that conflict is beautiful, and should be spread as far and as thick as possible. It is laudable, indeed highly desirable, to create conflict anywhere one can, for any reason or no reason at all. Anyone who cannot survive the conflicts thus created is simply more fuel for the conflict-fire, so that others can get on with the business of creating or participating in more conflict.

It is possible for Dark and Light to team up against Evil, because both of them oppose needless conflict. They just have different standards of what counts as "needless", and disagree about whether it is laudable to pursue maximum smoothness of existence or to precisely target and tailor conflict. It is also possible (though quite unlikely) for Dark and Evil to team up, if Light has so thoroughly smoothed over existence that even Dark finds it difficult to sharpen itself against anything. (I say "quite unlikely" because I think it much more likely that Dark would use Evil or its minions, a mere tool in the toolbox, without seeing it as any kind of "ally" because of Evil's inherently wanton nature.)

In most cases, however, Dark would be thwarting Light's attempts to pacify existence, and also Evil's attempts to corrupt existence. They want neither pacification nor corruption, but rather a finely-tailored degree of dynamism. Too much pacification requires a little bit of corruption to restore enough flexibility to allow dynamic motion. Too much corruption requires a little (or, often, a lot) of pacification to restore enough equilibrium for dynamic motion to occur.