D&D General Muscular Neutrality (thought experiment)

[Jfdlsjfd]

I don't see how a Good society would prevent need. Sure, maximum altruist could imply that there is absolutely no inequality, everyone gets the same share, irrespective of them contributing as a doctor, a peasant, or not contributing at all. But that doesn't mean that the pie would be enough to satisfy everyone's desire or to meet every need. There is a strong chance the overall amount of resources is too small for that (the basic medieval-like setting) so equal share for all isn't enough for everyone to be satisfied.

Also, while all the doctors agree to heal people for nothing above their equal share of the resources, because they are infinetely altruist, what would stop the next generation of doctors (not brainwashed, that would be evil as the OP stipulated) to just rationally deduct that people would rather give a share of their equal allowance to not die, and invent the not very much difficult to imagine concept of overcharging?

 

[Shardstone]

There is a problem in saying "People who have experienced bad things are in danger of becoming evil."

Only perfect in that it is perfectly good. Because there is no evil. In a society where there is only good and neutrality there would be abundant kindess and support.

Also our cultural obsession with punishment is evil, but that's a different argument.

In a world where good people, truly good and kind, strive toward a better future a utopic society is the most reasonable outcome.

The only stumbling block would be "Neutral" people saying "I don't really care about whether or not we have a good society so long as my needs are met"

And in a good society, those needs would be met.

Sooo...

Anyway. Yeah. In a world where everyone is good, or at worst not bad, things would be markedly better than they are. And as much as we complain, they're not nearly as bad as they -could- be... they're just not as good as they could be, either. And in a society without evil, nothing would oppose us from making it better.

People who experienced bad things ARE in danger of becoming evil, that's why therapy is very important. How much domestic violence would be cut down if we all accepted this and tried to heal the people that were hurt in our society instead of pretending like nothing was wrong?

Things would be better, but they wouldn't be perfect, and that gives opportunity for random tragedy to create evil. Nothing you have said has really refuted this, so I guess we have to agree to disagree because I remain convinced my view is more sound.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

You don't even need man-made tragedies (to refute the idea that the abolition of Evil at one time would make any man-made tragedy impossible).

Let's image that in our infinitely altruist society, there is a very bad draught and harvest is ruined. Half the population will die, and the Good society will devise a way to altruistically determine who lives -- I don't know which one, but it is a Good one, because everyone is Good.

Wouldn't a few of the remaining survivors' descendant conceive the idea that they would be better off storing their excess crop instead of contributing all of them to the various charities to ensure everyone's need is met? Their parents may have been good enough to approve of the system, but why would they approve of it and not say "No matter what, I'll always keep my harvest for me and my family, too bad if they die from hunger in the city"?

Being Good doesn't mean everyone is Good to the point of losing any instinct for self-preservation...

 

[Steampunkette]

People who experienced bad things ARE in danger of becoming evil, that's why therapy is very important. How much domestic violence would be cut down if we all accepted this and tried to heal the people that were hurt in our society instead of pretending like nothing was wrong?

People who -haven't- experienced bad things are in danger of becoming evil. Bigotry doesn't require someone from a minority group doing something bad to become a part of a person, for example.

Making a special note about people with trauma and neurodivergences like manic depression is problematic.

And being traumatized or neurodivergent doesn't make someone a higher risk of doing bad things. Studies have shown we're more likely to have bad things done to us.

As far as domestic violence: That's just a matter of learned behavior. Same as bigotry. A kid doesn't have to be traumatized by getting spankings as a kid and internalizing that's how you "Correct" bad behavior when they have a kid of their own. The whole "I turned out fine" canard and everything.

Things would be better, but they wouldn't be perfect, and that gives opportunity for random tragedy to create evil. Nothing you have said has really refuted this, so I guess we have to agree to disagree because I remain convinced my view is more sound.

Okay. Let's, for the sake of argument, say you're right.

Some guy loses half his family and decides out of trauma response to abandon the other half to go take up some evil actions. His entire community, and the rest of his family, abandons him and refuses to try and help their own flesh and blood and friend and neighbor and he goes dark.

Then what happens?

He gets stopped by the MUCH LARGER QUANTITY OF GOOD PEOPLE WHO JUST CONQUERED EVIL.

And then put into rehabilitation. Or Jail+Therapy. Or whatever. That -one guy- is contained and dealt with.

It still doesn't result in "Society becomes evil because they don't have evil as a comparison of how not to be"

 

[Shardstone]

People who -haven't- experienced bad things are in danger of becoming evil. Bigotry doesn't require someone from a minority group doing something bad to become a part of a person, for example.

Making a special note about people with trauma and neurodivergences like manic depression is problematic.

And being traumatized or neurodivergent doesn't make someone a higher risk of doing bad things. Studies have shown we're more likely to have bad things done to us.

As far as domestic violence: That's just a matter of learned behavior. Same as bigotry. A kid doesn't have to be traumatized by getting spankings as a kid and internalizing that's how you "Correct" bad behavior when they have a kid of their own. The whole "I turned out fine" canard and everything.

Okay. Let's, for the sake of argument, say you're right.

Some guy loses half his family and decides out of trauma response to abandon the other half to go take up some evil actions. His entire community, and the rest of his family, abandons him and refuses to try and help their own flesh and blood and friend and neighbor and he goes dark.

Then what happens?

He gets stopped by the MUCH LARGER QUANTITY OF GOOD PEOPLE WHO JUST CONQUERED EVIL.

And then put into rehabilitation. Or Jail+Therapy. Or whatever. That -one guy- is contained and dealt with.

It still doesn't result in "Society becomes evil because they don't have evil as a comparison of how not to be"

The story's more interesting if he doesn't get stopped, and somehow succeeds and continues to succeed. These are stories we are telling after all, not simulations of probability.

 

[Steampunkette]

The story's more interesting if he doesn't get stopped, and somehow succeeds and continues to succeed. These are stories we are telling after all, not simulations of probability.

For telling a story, sure. And that -particular- story has been told in a lot of ways.

But this is a thread about generating a scenario in which Muscular Neutrality (I.E. Neutrality that fights to maintain Good and Evil rather than letting one win) is morally justified, even if what they're often doing (protecting evil from good) is a wicked act.

I don't think your scenario works for that.

 

[Shardstone]

For telling a story, sure. And that -particular- story has been told in a lot of ways.

But this is a thread about generating a scenario in which Muscular Neutrality (I.E. Neutrality that fights to maintain Good and Evil rather than letting one win) is morally justified, even if what they're often doing (protecting evil from good) is a wicked act.

I don't think your scenario works for that.

How does it not? You haven't really proven a way my scenario doesn't work, you've instead invented your own scenarios. You're latest point was how does that one person rise up against everyone. Well, why does it have to be one person when it could be a minority? And why do they have to do it so obviously that everyone is against them immediately? Can't it be a generational plan (which we see IRL), or perhaps something like building a cadre of high powered people warped in the same way? There's lots of ways the scenario can be flexed realistically, so long as you have the imagination to see it through.

 

[Clint_L]

The problem that folks keep running into is that good and evil are subjective concepts, yet the alignment system treats them as if they are objective...while defining them in such vague terms that they are, in fact, still subjective.

You could make good and evil fully objective in D&D Land by using virtues ethics and prescribing a very specific list of do's and don'ts for each of the nine segments and then stating that, as a matter of the rules of this game, these specific acts, and only these specific acts, are consistent with Lawful Good, or whatever. Gary Gygax sort of hinted in that direction, but it turns out that, because good and evil are in actuality subjective concepts, nobody can ever entirely agree on such lists.

Which is exactly what is playing out in this thread: people are stuck arguing about what really constitutes good and evil. It's not a solvable problem, so if you want to use the alignment wheel you have to accept a fair degree of hand-waving and let every table come to their own consensus. Or you could just do away with the alignment wheel because the game plays just as well (better, IMO) without it, and you get to avoid endless debates about whether a particular action is Good or Evil.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

The story's more interesting if he doesn't get stopped, and somehow succeeds and continues to succeed. These are stories we are telling after all, not simulations of probability.

I'll reiterate an earlier question I had. How exactly would he be stopped? He's now the single Evil member of a community who knows about Evil, but is 100% unaldutered Good. He can't be reformed by force, because Good in the OP are forbidden to oppress, maim, and kill. So he goes around, teaching people that instead of accepting to die from hunger, they should take up arms and go plunder the rich orcish tribe who had a surplus this year (but they are Neutral, so they didn't care about their Good neighbour enough to help them from the famine, they preferred to stockpile for their own future use). After all, they are orcs, not the same species as them, so it's not as if they shouuld care. People recognize it's an Evil teaching. Many of them, having just lost lots of family members and being told by the authorities that their death was the optimal result since the one that weren't fed were selected according to Good principles, adhere to his political party who professes to keep everything as is, except that in time of dire need, it's OK to attack the orcs. He spends his time convincing people that the famine was caused by the orcs, convincing them progressively that the orcs are a threat. At first, only 0.1% of people accept his teachings, but he slowly gathers more and more as people are struck by various natural disaster that the orcs should be forced to be Good and share their wealth in time of need instead of being allowed to be Neutral, saying that Neutrality is the gateway to Evil, in order to make his teachings more acceptable to a majority. Then he converts 1%. How exactly does Good stop him? By shooting him in the head? By putting him in jail? By sending him into reeducation camp? Those methods doesn't reeks of Goodness to me. Good is simply impotent to prevent his rise. Also, he can't be fined because he has nothing (and why would anyone accumulate capital when society provides for his needs anyway?)

At some point, two or three generations later, he or one his scions gets elected president and the Good country creates an army to wage war on the orcs. Evil has won because in the scenario posited by the OP (Good doesn't force people), a total victory of Good of the magnitude you're discussing mean society would recognize the problem of a resurgence of Evil, but not be able to stop it.

If people in the settings are free to follow whatever ideology they want, because Good isn't brainwashing into being Good, it's I think convincing that such a scenario could happen. In real life, it happened with parties openly calling for the extermination, on principles, of other humans. Here in this scenario, the proposal the Evil Guy makes is much milder: he proposes to attack another species (in real life, we're making species extinct because they taste good, or just because they don't look nice for a majority of us to care -- like the species of insects that get extinct because we destroy their biome but aren't protected because they aren't as cute as baby seals), and he proposes that "only in time of extreme need, when our brothers and sisters, who are Good, are in a dire situation -- and I remind you all that the orcs are Neutrals, not Good! Can we stand doing nothing and see them feasting while our children are dying from hunger?".

A Muscular Neutral group would naturally oppose Good in that they wouldn't want a total victory of Good that would lead a society to renounce coercitive measures, including Evil measures, because after that they would be very susceptible to any kind of resurgence of Evil. There is no need for the resurgence of Evil to be a high probability. It only needs to be realistic enough so the Muscular Neutral group feel justified into action to prevent Good from losing its teeth by excessive Goodness.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

The problem that folks keep running into is that good and evil are subjective concepts, yet the alignment system treats them as if they are objective...while defining them in such vague terms that they are, in fact, still subjective.

You could make good and evil fully objective in D&D Land by using virtues ethics and prescribing a very specific list of do's and don'ts for each of the nine segments and then stating that, as a matter of the rules of this game, these specific acts, and only these specific acts, are consistent with Lawful Good, or whatever. Gary Gygax sort of hinted in that direction, but it turns out that, because good and evil are in actuality subjective concepts, nobody can ever entirely agree on such lists.

I don't think people have to agree on the list. It's the GM's task to create and run the world, and there is no reason that Good should be objectively defined the same way in several worlds. First, because there is no necessary relationship between Alignment-Good and real life Good (like we discussed in the conquistador situation), so in-universe consequences are much different, leading to a more alien morality being sustainable, second because it's a Good god mandate, so noone in universe has to agree. It's either do as the Good gods say, or you aren't Good. If you don't like Corellon cursing the dark elves, too bad. He's Good, and if you want to be objectively Good, you must accept that it's the most LG move possible. You can't discuss it, it would make you a CG heretic. God-enforced morality would be closer to a set of laws than a morality system. You don't agree that Zeus was Good for killing his dad? Go to metaphysical Antarctica.

Which is exactly what is playing out in this thread: people are stuck arguing about what really constitutes good and evil.

The OP gave the exact definition. I don't see people arguing against them. The goal of the thread, as I see it, is to find reasons for a group to be Muscular Neutral (ie, oppose both the utmost victories of Good and Evil, as he defined) within the framework of the definition he gave (and which applies only to his campaign world).