How to Evil Properly?

[billd91]

Just because slavery was a thing 200+ years ago does not mean that everyone 200+ years ago condoned slavery. Lots of people understood it was wrong, even then.

Well, 200 years ago, sure. But 2000 years ago? Maybe not so much. I get the idea being talked about here - morality really is a social construct... in reality. There's no yardstick to use to measure morality and our understanding has changed over the centuries, even millennia. Even to the point where it's hard to identify with our own ancestors many generations in the past when the life and value of the individual was a lot less exalted than today.

But D&D really does offer a yardstick with which to measure alignment. One of the big issues with that, however, is that yardstick is strongly informed by modern ideas of good and evil that don't quite track with the concept of good/evil of centuries past - including times a bit more in tune with the fantasy, pseudo-medieval milieu that is D&D. So there's always been a bit of friction between the swords and sorcery world that D&D set out to emulate and the morality of a more modern world.

 

[MGibster]

I don't believe that every peasant, no matter how tough the era they grew up in was, ever thought that rape, torture, murder, and slavery were okay. Good people and Evil people have existed in every society, throughout history, regardless of the overall leanings of the politics of the day.

There's a part in the Iliad where Hector returns from battle and spends some time with his infant son. On one had Hector voices his fears that his city will be ransacked, his son killed, and his wife will be forced to work the loom of another man (i.e. became his slave). And then he goes on to wish for his son to grow up and be an even better warrior than him. He doesn't wish for a peaceful life for his son he wishes for him to grow up and sack other cities, kill other people's sons, and take other men's wives to work his looms.

I think quite a few people in the past were okay with rape, torture, murder, and slavery just so long as it was happening to other people.

 

[Eltab]

Just because slavery was a thing 200+ years ago does not mean that everyone 200+ years ago condoned slavery. Lots of people understood it was wrong, even then.

St. Patrick c.450AD wrote a heartfelt plea calling for a bandit / lord who had taken some of his (Patrick's) Irish converts as slaves to be ostracized by the other, nominally-Christian, lords / bandits. This is the oldest surviving Western condemnation of slavery as morally evil in and of itself.

 

[3catcircus]

St. Patrick c.450AD wrote a heartfelt plea calling for a bandit / lord who had taken some of his (Patrick's) Irish converts as slaves to be ostracized by the other, nominally-Christian, lords / bandits. This is the oldest surviving Western condemnation of slavery as morally evil in and of itself.

And what was the response to this plea?

 

[Fenris-77]

And what was the response to this plea?

Translated from the Gaelic: Go piss up a rope ya poncy girls blouse.

 

[3catcircus]

There's a part in the Iliad where Hector returns from battle and spends some time with his infant son. On one had Hector voices his fears that his city will be ransacked, his son killed, and his wife will be forced to work the loom of another man (i.e. became his slave). And then he goes on to wish for his son to grow up and be an even better warrior than him. He doesn't wish for a peaceful life for his son he wishes for him to grow up and sack other cities, kill other people's sons, and take other men's wives to work his looms.

I think quite a few people in the past were okay with rape, torture, murder, and slavery just so long as it was happening to other people.

Yep. People today fail to realize that the nuclear unit in ye oldey tymes extended only to family and friends and between warlords and their warriors. The notion of democracy and freedom may have come about in ancient Greece, but it pretty much only applied to male citizens, with foreign males even being higher in status than Greek females. Athens had around 80,000 slaves - an average of 4 per household except for the poor.

Ancient Rome considered legal testimony from slaves to be inadmissable unless obtained through torture, and the legions had brigades dedicated to torturing captured enemies to obtain information.

The average person held very little regard for human or animal life back then - when they could die from bad food or water, from an infected hang nail, because one was unlucky enough to be in a village put to the sword by a rampaging army, or at the whim of someone of higher social standing who you may have crossed.

 

[Darth Solo]

Yeah, but:

Slavery was, following the Capitalist logic, THE IDEAL (free labor). It only failed when the Abolitionists and slaves refused to be ignored.

But, if you were running a business and didn't have to pay your workers, would you? And if you fed, clothed and housed those unpaid, but, content workers at your expense, should you be categorized as an evil person?

"Evil" is as subjective as a society allows, maybe?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I would argue that there is evil and there is good, and one's failure to know which is which (or societal or historical differences) does not change the nature of good and evil.

 

[Darth Solo]

Fitz, does that say anything?

 

[hawkeyefan]

It would appear to say that good and evil are perhaps less subjective than some are claiming.