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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wyrmshadows" data-source="post: 3968953" data-attributes="member: 56166">Stupidity? I think not. Sometimes placing things in terms of real-world characters puts a real perspective on things. The same way a great show like Battlestar Galactica uses themes from real-world conflicts, using real world characters paints a more vivid picture.Sorry if Hitler is THE modern archetype of a massively (lawful) evil individual. If it works it works and in this case it does.Are you seriously telling me that too much love, trust, cooperation, joy, health, happiness, prosperity, generosity and enlightenment is something a sane person would fight against? Are you telling me that someone other than a complete lunatic would work to bring hate, cruelty, ignorance, depravity, suffering, sorrow, pain, greed, etc. to this situation?What fantasy or mythic archetype exists who is this righteous servant of balance? I would argue that none exist. Even in D&D novels, there are no such Heroes of Moral Ambiguity. They don't exist because no one can relate to such a hero(?). Such thinking is comepletly outside the human experience as reflected in the world's religions and myths which are where man's understanding of morality and ethics are housed.Your conception is wildly afield from any mythical, religious, fairytale archetype found anywhere and because of this found nowhere I am aware of in fantasy fiction. Even generally amoral sword and sorcery tales acknowledge that there is nothing ecological about supernatural evil. I say supernatural evil because sword and sorcery often accepts mankind's various evils but even one of REH's blood drenched buccaneers would have nothing in common with evil that exists beyond mortal ken ie that of demons and devils in D&D terms.This is certainly found nowhere in high fantasy. In High Fantasy evil is always seen as aberration, as utterly unnatural a corruption of the natural order that is permitted by te powers that be as a natual consequence of free will. Sword and Sorcery tales don't go into such things for the most part and often don't even acknowledge the existance of cosmic good or evil.Your argument stands only upon the shaky foundation of the D&D alignment system. Order and Entropy are both needed for continued existance. In D&D good and evil are not analogous to these forces unless one is using the IMO deeply flawed (both philosophically and mythologically) Great Wheel. Your argument is a D&Dism that can be found in no other context and is supported by nothing more than Gary Gygax's misapplication of both Michael Moorcock's law and chaos cosmic alignment system and the traditional good vs. evil alignment axis found in high fantasy.This is nothing more than a simplistic dualism rooted in a misunderstanding of the dualism at the root of much of Western Religious thought. The first great dualistic faith Zoroastrianism had two great gods Ahriman (evil) and Ahura Mazda (good). These two were in constant conflict but in the end the good god would triumph according to their prophecies.In Christianity there is always used an oft spoken statement "You cannot believe in God without believing in the devil." Nonsense. To say this is to make them equivalent cosmic forces when one (Satan/evil) is infinitely inferior to the other (God/good). Somehow the duality of equivalency crept into Christianity (and thereby Western consciousness) via the mistaken idea that God and Satan are two sides of the same coin when this is one of the most nonsensical and unsupported yet popularly believed concepts in the faith. No denomination believes this, though many people do rahter unconsciously hold this belief.The natural forces ofLife vs. deathlaw vs. chaosorder vs. entropyThese things are organic, amoral and necessary for continued existance. It is only a D&Dism rooted in misapplied dualism that can imagine that cosmic evil has some essential validity. Only in D&D and only as a rationale for the Great Wheel and its outdated alignment system.Wyrmshadows</blockquote>

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