D&D and Racial Essentialism

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Self-defense is generally considered justified under most ethical codes, so not particularly disturbing unless you are a pacifist whose thought has never extended this far before.

Well that's why I said "possibly". But I do think a hypothetical someone unprepared for having to compromise their ideal of "respect sentient life" would find the idea disturbing.

And yes, you can argue that the 'Aliens' are just engaging in a form of self-defense when they implant eggs in other sentient species

I actually think there's some room to say that full self-defense can be argued against: in the third movie an alien implants into a dog, suggesting that they could survive on non-sentient hosts. Of course that also suggests one could come to a non-destructive end to the conflict.

From the perspective of every other sentient species, regardless of the moral grounds that they justify it in, the 'Aliens' still have to go and you are justified in wiping them out where you find them.

You mean you can't imagine a species that has evolved to have a psychology where they wouldn't consider their own survival more important that moral ideals?

You can respect it, and still nuke it from orbit, when the survival of your own species is at stake.

I know. But you never know how far someone has taken "respect".

 

[Merkuri]

But are you going to create a slew of cultures for humans? Because if you are why not just add the races to those culture rather than assuming culture and race always have to be separate and thus each race needs an entirely different slew than the others?

That's an entirely valid idea, but it seems to assume that the races in question must have "grown up" (or evolved, if you will) in very close quarters and leaned heavily on each other.

Most fantasy settings with multiple races I'm familiar with assume that the races started in separate areas, or are otherwise not coming in contact with each other every day. You'll get "melting pot" cities where a lot of races come together, but each race still keeps its own unique cultural identifiers.

This could raise the question of why those races aren't trying to kill humans off. Or why they didn't try back when there were too many to kill.

Perhaps they didn't realize the problem until they were grossly outnumbered, and now they don't want to risk getting squashed by the hoards of humans surrounding them. I'm imagining this idea would go with settings where the races have tense relationships and war could break out at any moment.

 

[WayneLigon]

I find it philosophically troubling, because if you're comfortable with the notion (even in a work of fiction) that whole hypothetical groups of sentient beings with more or less the same thinking/feeling capacity as humans could be completely evil and worthy of extermination, it is only a small step from being comfortable with the notion that whole groups of humans can be completely evil and worthy of extermination. Personally I would find even a work of fiction based on this notion deplorable.

Whole huge works of fiction, including every edition of D&D, ARE based on that very principal.

 

[S'mon]

You mean you can't imagine a species that has evolved to have a psychology where they wouldn't consider their own survival more important that moral ideals?

Evolution through natural selection predicates against evolving to not value survival where it conflicts with other ideals. If such a trait did appear as a by product of another trait, such as high intelligence, then it could result in the species going extinct - most likely where the species faced a competitor species. More likely, members of the species with a less developed altruistic moral sense would out-reproduce their competitors and the species would over time become less altruistic.

Or to put it another way: See my sig.

No, not eriktheguy's quote.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

It was something of a comment on how it was suggested that maybe people who are insisting on seeing aliens as human-like should instead see aliens as alien.

 

[Hussar]

I think this is the most troubling aspect of racial essentialism in many RPGs: all races, besides humans, are conflated one-to-one with a single culture, and many races are conflated with some notion of absolute evil. This is troubling to my mind, in that it suggests that, despite having the capacity for free and rational thought, a whole 'people', 'race', 'species', or whatever you want to call it, can nonetheless be evil by design/nature. It suggests that individuals of that type, despite having a more-or-less equal conciousness to that of humans, are unable to reason their way to a sound moral position, and are therefore (in the case of many 'monstrous' races) deserving of extermination wherever they take up residence./snip

Of course, there is still the in game realism to take into account. Orcs are evil because they are made that way. In a sense, when you have provable Creators, then racial essentialism becomes truth. X is that way because it was MADE that way. The Gawds put a lump of putty in their hairy armpit and out squished the races.

Scarred Lands, for example (one of my favorite settings) posited that most beings are created by these massive elemental beings known as titans. There are a few created by gods, but, they're almost always servitor races with little or no free will.

But, it does make sense, at least from a setting standpoint that you would have races with pre-determined behavior, simply because they didn't evolve, but were made that way.

That's because they are aliens.

They also would appear to be "hypothetical groups of sentient beings with more or less the same thinking/feeling capacity as humans".

I have a problem with this. Other than the Queens, there is no evidence in the movies that the Aliens are anything more than particularly smart animals. Even the Queens are not portrayed as particularly intelligent. They use no tools, they don't appear to communicate in any way other than basic concepts common to most animals. They travel through space on a hijacked ship they didn't build.

They aren't really moral beings at all, any more than a shark is a moral being. At least, IMO.

That's an entirely valid idea, but it seems to assume that the races in question must have "grown up" (or evolved, if you will) in very close quarters and leaned heavily on each other.

Most fantasy settings with multiple races I'm familiar with assume that the races started in separate areas, or are otherwise not coming in contact with each other every day. You'll get "melting pot" cities where a lot of races come together, but each race still keeps its own unique cultural identifiers.
/snip

I'm not really sure how realistic that is honestly. Given the technological levels of fantasy settings, you're probably looking at thousands of years of coexistence and migration of populations. More than enough for populations to mix. Sure, there would be isolated populations, that's a given, but, most races are not that remote - certainly not the base PHB races anyway.

Dwarves maybe because they live in the mountains. But Halflings or elves? They're cheek to jowl with humans.

But, even that's not really my issue. It's that every race other than humans has only one culture. If you reduce humans to mono-culture, that would be one solution, although perhaps not a very satsifying one. I would just like to see a setting where you have a number of different, and significantly different, cultures for each race.

To use a 4e thing, look at the Eladrin/Elf split. Eladrin and Elves are the same race, but have significantly different cultures due to their baseline assumptions. Fantastic. Now, I want the same sort of splitting for halflings, tieflings, dragonborn, and dwarves. The Eladrin/Elf split is not enough IMO, but its a good step in the right direction.

 

[Ariosto]

Whole huge works of fiction, including every edition of D&D, ARE based on that very principal.

I disagree as to the bolded part. First, the original set defines, as far as I recall, only humans -- Anti-Clerics, specifically -- as evil (implied in level titles such as the Evil High Priest, infamous for the Finger of Death). Good? No such thing, that I recall, until Supplement I (see Paladins).

The alignments are Law, Neutrality and Chaos. Among the potentially Neutral in OD&D are Ogres and Orcs.

Second, it is absolutely not necessary to consider anything "worthy of extermination" in TSR-D&D. At least prior to 2E AD&D, it is more advantageous -- in terms of pursuing XP -- not to adopt anything of the sort as a goal. The objective in game terms is to get treasures.

Now, there are some ideologies (including some that figured in medieval Europe, as well as 20th-century ones) that have made such demands. If anyone chooses to lay anything like those on the game -- even 3E or 4E, as far as I can see -- then that is his or her own choice.

As a practical matter, it should suffice for the most sanguine campaign that there are creatures that make themselves enemies by standing violently between adventurers and their goals.

It appears to me that most wars in our thousands of years of history have been fought for the sake of material wealth. There are other reasons as well that involve no concept of the foe as "evil" or "worthy of extermination".

I would say that we are going through a period in which ideological wars are in vogue, often with such "Good vs. Evil" (and sometimes even "Death to them all!") rhetoric, so it may be hard to remember that there are other kinds of conflict.

 

[pemerton]

Well, if you're not using the letter, where he refers to orcs as a caricature of the Hun archetype from Germanic and Roman historical (and other) literature, I'm even more confused as to where you developed this bizarre interpretation of Tolkien. At least the letter provides a link, even if it's a tenuous one that only really holds true if that one phrase is taken out of context.

As I said in my earlier post, from combining a general knowledge of Tolkien's social and religious views with a general knowledge of English cultural and literary history for the past 200 years.

As to whether or not my interpretation is bizarre, I don't have a slew of references ready to hand, but I know that I'm not the only person to have made it. I've certainly read it in published works of literary criticism.

 

[pemerton]

I find it philosophically troubling, because if you're comfortable with the notion (even in a work of fiction) that whole hypothetical groups of sentient beings with more or less the same thinking/feeling capacity as humans could be completely evil and worthy of extermination, it is only a small step from being comfortable with the notion that whole groups of humans can be completely evil and worthy of extermination. Personally I would find even a work of fiction based on this notion deplorable.

To your last comment, yes and no. As I said upthread, I think aesthetics and political morality can come apart.

For example, in the film Das Boot, I feel sympathy for the German submariners even though, from the political point of view, I should be hoping that their boat is sunk by the British.

Or a slightly different example: in the film Hero I am highly moved by the conclusion, even though the values it expresses, both political (nationalistic) and personal (particular notions of loyalty and service) are very different from my own.

Or, as I said earlier, LoTR.

Did you mind the movie 'Alien' much?

If I've seen Alien I don't remember it, but one observation concerning Aliens that I found insightful is that it's a type of wish-fulfillment fantasy of the war in IndoChina.

Again, it doesn't mean I find the movie unwatchable or repulsive - see above remarks on the separation of aesthetics from politics.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

If I've seen Alien I don't remember it, but one observation concerning Aliens that I found insightful is that it's a type of wish-fulfillment fantasy of the war in IndoChina.

Again, it doesn't mean I find the movie unwatchable or repulsive - see above remarks on the separation of aesthetics from politics.

Buh? Ok, that one needs some 'splainin'. Aliens feature fairly mindless killer aliens wiping out a colony and the marines come in and wipe out the aliens. It's pretty much stock milfic. I'm all for seeing allegory, but, really?