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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tzor" data-source="post: 2829566" data-attributes="member: 12826">Being opposites does not imply symetry or interchangeability.  A good example is up and down.  Up is the "opposite" of down, but the two are not interchangeable.  It takes more work to go "up" than it does to go "down."  In the case of good and evil, there is a force similiar to gravity that tends to make it easier to do evil (selfish) things than good (selfless).  Note that harder does not mean impossible.It is especially important to have a firm grasp of what good and evil are so that one cannot be fooled by the veneer of goodnes.  Doing what appears to be good for a completely selfish reason is not good, it's neutural at best and often might be evil.  Politicians kiss babies all the time, but they do it for completely selfish reasons (getting themselves reelected).  If an evil creature does seemingly "good" acts for the selfish motivation of going undercover to gain ultimate power over the forces of good.Now I hope I haven't implied that motvation (a relative notion) must be considered along with acts (a concrete motion) in order to determine good from evil.  (Don't worry I haven't.)  But good and evil acts must be based upon the person doing the act.  Good is placing others at the expense of self, so for an act to be judged good (or evil) one has to look at the impact on both the others and on the self.  Helping both others and self at the same time to an equal extent is a neutral act.  Evil likewise places self at the expense of others.  Killing others at the expense of killing oneself is, for example, not an evil act.  It's just dumb.  (Note that saving others at the expense of killing oneself is a good act, and that might require killing another set of others.  I never said morality was always easy.)"Another example- if a celestial infiltrated a fiendish organization, and performed evil acts to maintain his cover, would he still be considered good?"  Maintaining your "cover" is a selfish act.  (That's another thing about good and evil, you need to concentrate on the here and now.)  The acts are clearly evil."But if a fiend infiltrated a celestial organization, and performed good acts to maintain his cover, would he still be considered evil?"  Once again maintaining your "cover" is a selfish act, but because you are helping others it blances as a neutral act.In order to get a good fiend example you need an example where the fiend helps others at the expense of its own.  This isn't all that easy to do.  In those cases the fiend would be pulled toward the side of good.  Even if just a little.</blockquote>

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