D&D General Muscular Neutrality (thought experiment)

[Steampunkette]

Why do people do good acts, though? Why be altruistic? They do it because it makes them feel good to do it. Ultimately, everything, including good, comes down to selfishness. We do it because it makes us feel good to do it. We do it because we don't want X to happen. It's all about us and what we want.

It's the same with evil acts.

Since good boils down at the core to selfishness and being about what we want, unfettered good often tries to force others to be good as well, though punishments, enticements, rules and more. A world where good has won will have too many who want to force others to be good for the sake of society, their immortal souls, or whatever other reason.

This is the "Good is actually secretly evil" argument.

What you're describing isn't -good-. It's more like LN trying to make society work better by "Fostering Good" while doing evil.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

If the afterlife for Evil-aligned people exists and is really an eternity of torment, I think a moral case can be made that converting people to Good by the sword and them killing them is a Good act. It ensures they get an eternity of maximum happiness, just losing a temporary state called life that is inconvenient and temporary. It would be like curing them from the illness called "being alive". What kind of parent would let their child suffer life and not snuff them out at birth instead (after doing the proper rites to ensure they are Good aligned), sending them to an eternity of happiness WITHOUT the temporary trials and difficulties of life (especially if their prospect is being a peasant living in squalor earning 1sp a day at best, being eatan by a wandering monster at worst)? And if killing deprives someone of the Good afterlife, then it would be truly altruistic to kill people for their own good at the price of their own afterlife. They'd drop to Neutral but sometimes people do Good for Good's sake, which in this case is killing people en masse.

The demonstrable existence that life is a temporary thing compared to the eternity later would change our approach on morality and life a lot.

 

[Zeromaru X]

Yes. Umbran was describing the Gygaxian view. Under the Gygaxian view, a paladin could convert an evil creature to good at sword point and then execute that creature for no other reason than to keep it from backsliding, sending it's soul to heaven. This would be a LG act.

That's Evil in my book. But, well, we are talking about Gygax. For him, genociding is an LG act because... What was what he said? Ah, yes, "nits makes lice".

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

That's Evil in my book.

Why? Isn't it a good thing to free other from an eternity of torture and suffering rather than letting them, through your inaction, be condemn to it? RPG worlds aren't the real life, they are build on different assumptions, which often includes the existence of alterlives (and people being resurrect to describe them accurately, or even planeshifting to them to visit), so one can verify if the Evil-God afterlife is really an eternity of sufffering and not an eternity of out-of-wedlock sex (poor souls, their moral suffering must be immense and permanent).

Life being defined as a temporary stage for sentient beings, like the catterpillar/butterfly state, changes greatly the consequences of the act of killing. You're not destroying people, you're making them evolve to their final form.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I am even pretty sure we wouldn't have a word for kill in a world with an afterlife of good. We'd have very little reason to feel sorrow.

Monday morning at the office...
Employee 1: How were the holidays?
Employee 2: Nice, but it's over... I was in Bali for 3 weeks and it was great, image how disappointed I am to be back at the desk.
Employee 3: Did you hear about John? He had a stroke this week-end and passed away!
Employee1 &2: Lucky him! He was only 40, that lucky bastard! IF YOU HEAR ME, ENJOY YOUR INFINITY OF MARGARITAS IN ETERNAL BALI.
Employee 3: well, enough jealousy, we have a meeting on brand empowerment strategies in room 3042 in ten minutes...

 

[Vaalingrade]

This is the "Good is actually secretly evil" argument.

Is it all that secret though?

 

[Staffan]

If the afterlife for Evil-aligned people exists and is really an eternity of torment, I think a moral case can be made that converting people to Good by the sword and them killing them is a Good act.

That assumes that alignment and/or your destination in the afterlife is merely a statement of intent, and not a result of actual actions. Let's say you spend your life as a bandit, using violence and the threat thereof to steal from innocent people. Then a paladin comes along, points a sword at you and tells you to repent. You tell him "sure" – would that really suffice to change your alignment? Or does your soul still carry the debt of all those years of evil, requiring you to do the actual work of reform, repentance, and restitution? If you spend a lifetime squeezing every penny out of people who owe you money and threaten them with foreclosure and ruin, not giving your employees any holidays and maintaining unsafe working conditions, and generally being an a-hole... would a single day of generosity following a night of nightmares caused by indigestion be enough to get you into the Good Place?

 

[Clint_L]

That assumes that alignment and/or your destination in the afterlife is merely a statement of intent, and not a result of actual actions. Let's say you spend your life as a bandit, using violence and the threat thereof to steal from innocent people. Then a paladin comes along, points a sword at you and tells you to repent. You tell him "sure" – would that really suffice to change your alignment? Or does your soul still carry the debt of all those years of evil, requiring you to do the actual work of reform, repentance, and restitution? If you spend a lifetime squeezing every penny out of people who owe you money and threaten them with foreclosure and ruin, not giving your employees any holidays and maintaining unsafe working conditions, and generally being an a-hole... would a single day of generosity following a night of nightmares caused by indigestion be enough to get you into the Good Place?

But would you do those things to begin with if afterlives were demonstrably real, and instead of being a murderous bandit you could go sacrifice yourself in the service of Bahamat or whatever in exchange for eternal bliss? In fact, there are enough afterlives in D&D that you can basically find the one that suits and act accordingly.

 

[Maxperson]

This is the "Good is actually secretly evil" argument.

What you're describing isn't -good-. It's more like LN trying to make society work better by "Fostering Good" while doing evil.

It's how humans work. Selfishness in some way is at the core of all we do.

Good and evil need to take that into account.

 

[lall]

It's how humans work. Selfishness in some way is at the core of all we do.

Good and evil need to take that into account.

That’s why altruism being part of good per OP doesn’t work as altruism is essentially unselfishness, which arguably doesn’t exist.