[BoVD]Well, since I can't seem to post this on Wizards forums...

[SemperJase]

Given that at many points in our history, it was seen as a virtuous action, I fail to see how you come to the conclusion that it is universally evil. In ancient Greece, slavery was not only viewed as a good thing, but those who practiced it were seen as being virtuous. Are the ancient Greeks the moral equivalent of orcs?

Is a draft of soldiers evil? It is removing people from their preferred living area and making them do a job they didn't want to do. Is this morally different from slavery? How?[/b]

Yes, it is different. Soldiers get paid for their service. They still have rights (like voting).

What if: ...Are your actions still justified? Are they still good? Did you bother to find out?

You've gone to a lot of trouble to set up a complex what if. I find the scenario irrelevant. They were not imprisoning an evil god. If they were the actions still would have been good.

Actions are not defined as good or evil because of their outcomes. A correllary is the end does not justify the means.

Did you try to ransom the prisoners from theorcs before you slaughtered them? Did you try to negotiate?

This assumes that extortion is not evil.

Did you try stealth without bloodshed? Did you use a sleep spell to knock any of the orcs out? If you did, did you kill them while they were helpless?

Respectively: yes, not available for all combatants, and we did not kill any helpless orcs.

You didn't bother to think about it first, showing that your moral code is just a facile way to get what you want (lots of orc killin' in this case).

It is clear that no matter what I say (from the fact that you make conclusions without the answers), you have determined our motivations were to kill orcs and revel in slaughter. In fact our motivations were to free the people that were wrongfully kidnapped, not free for all slaugther. We did not kill anyone that did not raise a weapon against us. In addition to not killing women and children and non-combatant males, we freed other enslaved orcs rather than killing them as evil creatures.

It amazes me that people are trying to define the rescuers as evil and the orcs who kidnapped, enslaved and tortured people as good.

 

[Henry]

Is a draft of soldiers evil? It is removing people from their preferred living area and making them do a job they didn't want to do. Is this morally different from slavery? How?

In my opinion, yes. Prior to the advent of Selective Service in the U.S., Some considered conscription a "necessary evil," Just as Slavery was considered by the founding fathers of the U.S. People like Thomas Jefferson disliked the idea of slavery, but to preserve the Union at the time, it was dealt with in as best a manner as they knew how. When theories such as social darwinism began to rear their ugly heads in the early 19th century, slavery was once again considered a "good thing", and "helping those poor slaves to know what's best." Now, slavery has been exposed as wrong, unnecessary, and one of the viler things one human can do to another.

Should the U.S. revert to conscription again, there would have to be a compelling need for such that overrode all systems we currently have in place, because the general populace considers it "wrong."

What if: The orcs actually were imprisoning an evil deity who could not be otherwise contained by feeding it a hundred human souls to lock its prison for another hundred years. This divine beast, if allowed to be free will kill all living creatures in the world within days. The orcs don't want anyone to know about this for fear that some insane non-orc will release the beast either intentionally or by accident. Your actions in interfering with this ritual, has ensured the death of every individual in the world.

And I say THAT would make for one HECK of an adventure seed. If you don't mind, I am filing that away for future use. In some ways, it's reminiscent to what Piratecat's players did when they killed off the Skaven in the Defenders of Daybreak campaign.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

After all this discussion, I can see that this very civil thread will be going for a while yet.

And SemperJase, so far as I can see, people aren't trying to make out that the orcs were good, they are just trying to make the point that creatures are not all good, or all evil, but that they can be various stages in between.

This may be moral relativism, which you don't hold to, but it seems to me to be more accurate to the real world. There are always shades of grey. These are what cause arguments and debate. It is easy to say "Killing someone is wrong," and stick to that no matter what. It's much more true to real life, however, to say "Killing someone is wrong, but it happens. And in war, killing someone is heroic, so long as they are on the other side."

I could further my argument by using other issues outside of gaming, but I would upset Eric's Grandma (and the other moderators!).

Anyway, I shall continue to read this thread with interest, but I don't intend to contribute to it again.

 

[SemperJase]

How you act effects how you act.

So I'm listening to the radio and the speaker's premise is that you are how you act. If you are mean in practice, you will be mean in real life.

His example was that Ralph Fiennes said that he was glad to complete the role of Amon Goeth (a sadistic commandant) in Schindler's List after he realized that while playing the role, he found it was effecting his behavior off camera. He was being mean to people.

Interesting.

 

[takyris]

Wait, SJ, I was also listening to the radio, and I heard this OTHER actor talk about how playing the evil character was refreshing because it got the evil impulses out of his system and made him a better person because of it!

So, which of our bits of anecdotal evidence is superior?

No offense. I think you're asking good questions and raising concerns that need to be thought about -- but you're not gonna sell me on anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is garbage. Anecdotal evidence is how infomercials try to part fools from their money.

-Tacky

 

[Tiefling]

SJ, I have a question for you: Do you believe that slave-owners in the American South were all evil? Note that I'm not asking whether the act of slavery is evil, but whether the people who participated in it were necessarily evil.

 

[SemperJase]

There were some good men involved in slavery. Some of them made lasting contributions to our society and the world -
Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington for instance.

I will say that their participation in slavery certainly did them harm. Booker T. Washington (himself a former slave) saw as great a harm to whites as there was for blacks:
http://www.bartleby.com/1004/1.html (paragraph 18)

The slave system on our place, in a large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and self-help out of the white people. My old master had many boys and girls, but not one, so far as I know, ever mastered a single trade or special line of productive industry. The girls were not taught to cook, sew, or to take care of the house.All of this was left to the slaves. The slaves, of course, had little personal interest in the life of the plantation, and their ignorance prevented them from learning how to do things in the most improved and thorough manner. As a result of the system, fences were out of repair, gates were hanging half off the hinges, doors creaked, window-panes were out, plastering had fallen but was not replaced, weeds grew in the yard.

I have also previously said that good people may fail and commit evil. I believe this is the case with our Founding Fathers who were involved in slavery.

Does that answer your question?

 

[Tiefling]

Pretty much. Although previously I'd thought that by "failing and doing evil" you meant succumbing to strong emotion and doing something that they otherwise wouldn't have done rather than doing something over the course of their whole lives and simply never questioning its moral value because it was accepted at the time.

Incidentally, I find that kinda scary. Suppose we're all doing something that generations later will be recognized as evil, and we don't realize it because it's commonly accepted behavior.

What it leads to is this: If the orcs had never stopped to consider the morality of enslaving others, had simply grown up in a culture where it's common and OK, would they be evil?

 

[SemperJase]

Although previously I'd thought that by "failing and doing evil" you meant succumbing to strong emotion and doing something that they otherwise wouldn't have done rather than doing something over the course of their whole lives and simply never questioning its moral value because it was accepted at the time.

Actually both Jefferson and Washington did question it. They did come to the conclusion that slavery was wrong. Yet they still did not have the courage of their convictions as both men freed their slaves only after their deaths. Basically, they took the easy way out.

What it leads to is this: If the orcs had never stopped to consider the morality of enslaving others, had simply grown up in a culture where it's common and OK, would they be evil?

Yes. At least they were still committing evil actions. Unless of course, you are a moral relativist. In that case, Hitler was not evil because he did not think that exterminating 10 million civilians was evil.

 

[Tiefling]

Actually both Jefferson and Washington did question it. They did come to the conclusion that slavery was wrong. Yet they still did not have the courage of their convictions as both men freed their slaves only after their deaths. Basically, they took the easy way out.

I was originally talking about people who didn't question it, who were not Founding Fathers. Normal slave-owners who were arguably nice people. People who didn't question the morality of slavery because society had ingrained on there minds that it was normal and OK.

Yes. At least they were still committing evil actions. Unless of course, you are a moral relativist. In that case, Hitler was not evil because he did not think that exterminating 10 million civilians was evil.

Actually I think Hitler was extremely mentally ill.