D&D General Muscular Neutrality (thought experiment)

[CreamCloud0]

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.

good and evil are subjective concepts...in our world, in DnD world they are very real tangible forces, as real as gravity or magnetism, there are planes made of and afterlives for good/evil, that you can actually go to(at least i assume it's still so in 5e, you could in previous editions).

 

[Steampunkette]

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.

So neutrality should never allow Good to defeat Evil because eventually evil will rise again is the thrust.

Even if it's "A Minority" or a "Generational Movement" or whatever, defeating the evil that exists is still a worthwhile endeavor to stop the suffering that is already happening. Why would Muscular Neutrality be justified in opposing even a temporary cessation of cruelty?

That's not a justification of committing evil acts to protect evil. It's just self-defeating. "We can't let you stop evil because evil will eventually return!"

 

[Shardstone]

So neutrality should never allow Good to defeat Evil because eventually evil will rise again is the thrust.

Even if it's "A Minority" or a "Generational Movement" or whatever, defeating the evil that exists is still a worthwhile endeavor to stop the suffering that is already happening. Why would Muscular Neutrality be justified in opposing even a temporary cessation of cruelty?

That's not a justification of committing evil acts to protect evil. It's just self-defeating. "We can't let you stop evil because evil will eventually return!"

You are misconstruing my point a bit. It's, if we let you stop evil, we have foreseen that in the future you will lose the safeguards necessary to prevent Evil from returning and winning.

But while I slept last night, I had a more fun idea, which was Muscular Neutrality in pursuit of conflict and progression. The idea here is that progress happens in leaps and bounds, and usually as a result of conflicts. Muscular Neutrality keeps two teams going at it, perpetuating an arcane arms race that benefits the rest of the multiverse via harvesting the esoteric techniques and technologies that rise out of such. In this form, Muscular Neutrality is more like a bunch of conspiratorial academics maintaining a project that produces interesting, world-changing items.

Obviously you can poke holes in this. "But why not just work with good?" because this group doesn't think Good will make anything worthwhile unless it's trying to survive evil. But I have to remind you Steam, this is a discussion about how characters in a fantasy world would act. We shouldn't just assume that everyone is perfectly rational all the time, and have to act within the bounds of how people -- be they human or not -- might act, which means factoring in a certain amount of irrationality to any of these factions.

 

[Shardstone]

good and evil are subjective concepts...in our world, in DnD world they are very real tangible forces, as real as gravity or magnetism, there are planes made of and afterlives for good/evil, that you can actually go to(at least i assume it's still so in 5e, you could in previous editions).

Not necessarily. We know that gods are real, but not that good is real. Good is never described as empowering people or being a force, but things do act in the name of a greater good, or try to do good by others.

But who determines good? The gods do. What prevents a god of slaughter from slaughtering in the name of good? Not much. We can't really hold up your premise in this discussion then because all it does it end the discussion. If everything is Magically Good and all on the same page and if Good is a real, fundamental force, then the existence of Neutrality is inherently Evil. The premise of the thread only works if we assume that Good is NOT absolute.

 

[Professor Murder]

Some psychotic posts here.
Muscular Neutrality is the "Some good people on both sides" of DnD. It's a relic of some really wrong thinking navel gazing nonsense from people achingly entrenched in privilege. "Oh oh. Too much joy in the world. Need to up the suffering index." "I mean, there is some acceptable level of child slavery in the world surely." How I wish I was allowed to use proper language in this venue to express my utter disgust with any of this.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

You are misconstruing my point a bit. It's, if we let you stop evil, we have foreseen that in the future you will lose the safeguards necessary to prevent Evil from returning and winning.

I'd say that even without foreseeing ability, the Muscular Neutral could be justified by anticipating or fearing this outcome. Some people are acting against nuclear weapons even they can't be sure they'll be used ever again. I don't think their uncertainty diminish the justification they have for their actions in their eyes.

But while I slept last night, I had a more fun idea, which was Muscular Neutrality in pursuit of conflict and progression. The idea here is that progress happens in leaps and bounds, and usually as a result of conflicts. Muscular Neutrality keeps two teams going at it, perpetuating an arcane arms race that benefits the rest of the multiverse via harvesting the esoteric techniques and technologies that rise out of such. In this form, Muscular Neutrality is more like a bunch of conspiratorial academics maintaining a project that produces interesting, world-changing items.

Obviously you can poke holes in this. "But why not just work with good?" because this group doesn't think Good will make anything worthwhile unless it's trying to survive evil. But I have to remind you Steam, this is a discussion about how characters in a fantasy world would act. We shouldn't just assume that everyone is perfectly rational all the time, and have to act within the bounds of how people -- be they human or not -- might act, which means factoring in a certain amount of irrationality to any of these factions.

The question wouldn't be "why not work with Good" but "why bother work with Good?" Why would your group even try to work with Good? They would be unaligned on the Good/Evil axis, because they don't value Good-as-defined-by-OP as necessary better or worse than Evil-as-defined-by-OP, because they don't actively want to harm people (that would be Evil), but have no qualm doing it in pursuit of the greater good-in-their-value-set. In their definition, knowledge is above all and they think progresses better under duress, which is something that happened in real life, so it's doesn't break suspension of disbelief to have a group thinking it is the case in their world. An absolute victory of either side would diminish the arm race, so they are perfectly happy with a MAD statu quo, and don't want to work only with one side, because they'd be giving this side the opportunity to eradicate the other side, which would be contrary to their core value to maintain the statu quo.

"Yeah, dear hero, we have given the Evil side a recipe for a plague that will wipe approximately 10% of the Good Faction's population. We know you'll call us Mad Scientists, but you're totally wrong. We aknowledge that losing so many people is a tragedy. I am really sorry for them. But if we don't unleash this plague, think of the consequences: the resulting war will bring us the spells to create continual light spells, and mending closet that will allow everyone to repair anything they own, forever, bringing our society one step forward toward the end of scarcity. It will also remove the need for a lot of industralization, saving the natural world of contamination, pollutants, and a lot of destruction since we won't need to mine areas for rare earths... It will suck for the 10% -- who will have a shortened lifetime, but we don't worry for them to much because they'll just get quicker to their Good afterlife -- but every generation after will get much improved lives, and the need of the many outweigh the need of the few. So our act, despite your short-sighted views, aren't bad. They are enlightened. Now, you die, because sorry but we can't afford to let you live, and there is no possibility I'll just ask my daughter to execute the handsome hero, I'll just do it myself, right now. presses button. Sheesh, Good heroes, it's always a pain in the ass because they are always whining "why are you so eviiiil"..."

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Not necessarily. We know that gods are real, but not that good is real. Good is never described as empowering people or being a force, but things do act in the name of a greater good, or try to do good by others.

But who determines good? The gods do. What prevents a god of slaughter from slaughtering in the name of good? Not much. We can't really hold up your premise in this discussion then because all it does it end the discussion. If everything is Magically Good and all on the same page and if Good is a real, fundamental force, then the existence of Neutrality is inherently Evil. The premise of the thread only works if we assume that Good is NOT absolute.

I am not convinced that Neutral would be inherently evil with an objective Good, because the OP didn't define Evil as "not-Good". He specifically stated that Good is "altruism, respect for life, and concern for dignity of sentient being" and added "no brainwashing and no detrimental consequence for people if Good becomes an absolute victor". He then defined Evil as "harming, oppressing and killing others." They do not interesect.

(Venn diagram made by chat-gpt).

There is a lot of position outside the EVIL and GOOD objectively defined states. Including the white area (people who are neither against or for any of those conceptions and just don't care).

So, you can be Not Good (ie, you have absolutely no altruism as you think that each on his own is a better outlook, or you respect life but don't ban removing it self-defense, or you think altruism and no-killing should be mandatory and ready to violate the dignity of other being by enforcing them (which is specifically outside the purview of Good, yet doesn't entail killing or harming people). You aren't evil because you don't support harming, oppressing and killing other in a general case, just for specific situations, and you don't necessarily support all three evil necessary beliefs. You're part of the mass of Neutrals, who don't check all the boxes to be either objectively Good or objectively Evil.

We could even have Neutrals that would claim to be Good-er than the Good side, by pointing out the flaws of the Good side that will refuse to force the rich to share their wealth in time of need and avoid putting them into altruism-rehab to teach them against the concept of altruism because it would be oppressive to them. They'd be Neutral (can't be Good because Good doesn't brainwash people, can't be Evil because they don't kill nor harm, just oppress) and they would pretend to be the Good side while calling the Good mellow and tolerant toward Evil.

Or they could just have exactly the same value sets as Good, except they have a king who rules fairly and justly like all his ancestors did. They don't depose him out of charity and tolerate his antics of saying that supreme executive power does indeed derive from a farcical aquatic ceremony instead of the mandate of the masses. It doesn't make them necessarily Evil, yet the king's oppressive act of imposing his will on his subjects without ensuring their constant approval is enough to remove him from Good-as-objectively-defined-by-the-OP.

 

[Staffan]

Some psychotic posts here.
Muscular Neutrality is the "Some good people on both sides" of DnD. It's a relic of some really wrong thinking navel gazing nonsense from people achingly entrenched in privilege. "Oh oh. Too much joy in the world. Need to up the suffering index." "I mean, there is some acceptable level of child slavery in the world surely." How I wish I was allowed to use proper language in this venue to express my utter disgust with any of this.

Active neutrality works in the context of Moorcockian Law vs Chaos, where neither end state is desirable, and I think it's likely that that's the context in which Gygax made it a thing in Greyhawk. But adding a good/evil aspect to it makes it nonsensical.

It also works well in the context of actual mortal shades-of-grey factions or nations: you don't want Cormyr to grow too strong at the expense of Amn because that might interfere with your own power base in Waterdeep (or whatever the Greyhawk equivalents are). Cormyr might be a "good" nation while Amn is "evil", but for you it's better if they are competitive with one another so you can play them off against each other. You're not being oppressive to your own population, but you don't really mind if someone else is as long as the trade keeps flowing. This is quite a few tiers below the cosmological good vs evil though.

A third option is that of recognizing your own limits, and how you might not have all the context of a situation and therefore stay out of it. We don't have to go that far back in history to find foreign policy actions that were well intended (for some values of well intended) but didn't work out quite as planned (and that's probably about as far as "no politics" will allow me to go). This probably applies more to staying out of a situation rather than intervening in favor of "evil" though.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Active neutrality works in the context of Moorcockian Law vs Chaos, where neither end state is desirable, and I think it's likely that that's the context in which Gygax made it a thing in Greyhawk. But adding a good/evil aspect to it makes it nonsensical.

I don't think so. It can be very rational if you clearly define good and evil in setting as the OP did, or if there is some kind of metaphysical need for equilibrium. If the absolute victory of Good means the disappearance of the Evil God, and the disappearance of a God causes the upheaval of the universe, including the afterlives, because they are necessary building blocks of reality, then it would make sense to actively fight good, even when you're personnaly good, in order to promote the minimum amount evil necessary to be present to avert the collapse of the universe. "I am helping this serial killer escape because if he were to be caught, then everyone would die, and everyone currently enjoying eternal afterife happiness under their god's supervision would be destroyed to, because the Overgod would remake the world anew if Evil was totally suppressed". It makes sense in this case to objectively help the killer, in the same classical moral conundrum of do you switch the rail so the train runs over 1 innocent in order to save the 3 innocents he's about to run over if left to its own device?"

 

[Maxperson]

THIS is the one that always gets me when it comes to evil characters in fantasy settings: They KNOW they're going to hell. Outright. There's no question about where they're going to and they actively make their choice every day of the week.

Can such a person be "Redeemed" and go to heaven instead? Or because it's an active choice rather than disbelief or making mistakes are they ultimately irredeemable by choice?

If they -are- irredeemable by choice, -why- are they doing it? What possible benefit do you gain by choosing to go to the worst pit in the universe for eternal torture?

And the only answer that really works, because of how evil is defined, is: They're getting something out of it.

They're ABSOLUTELY ranking up past "Lemure" for their hellscape journey. They're making the willful decision to be the worst people possible in the hopes of committing enough sins before they die to become a Pit Fiend or Balor or whatever. And by killing them before they reach their goal, you're condemning them to be Bone devils or Ice devils or some other lesser level of demon or devil or whatever, to reduce the maximum amount of potential evil in the universe...

But not actually removing any evil that already exists.

Also really helps to make evil characters proactively evil! It's a race to kick as many puppies as possible before some paladin beheads you and sends you down to the pit into a lower demon form where you're not in a place to be the eternal bully to everyone beneath you.

Is it by choice for all of them, though? Sociopaths and psychopaths, as well as some other mental disorders can also contribute to being evil in D&D.