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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wyrmshadows" data-source="post: 3969683" data-attributes="member: 56166">Allow me to add, in response to a prevalent idea in D&D "morality" that good must be balanced out against evil or it becomes a dangerous force.Nonsense.There is nothing destructive to life about good, there is nothing inherently dangerous about good, their is nothing needlessly cruel about good, there is nothing that is needlessly hurtful about good, there is nothing that is inherently selfish about good. And so on and so on.There is nothing immoral about good because as soon as it becomes so it is no longer good.Every time I see someone write about how good becomes too rigid, controlling, domineering when it gets the upper hand, and yet still be referred to as good, I have to laugh at the complete misunderstanding of the term good inherent in that argument. Saying that good, when overdone would lead to a fascist state of some kind with Inquisitors imprisoning people for thought crimes is like saying that if fire was to grow too overwhelming it would become wet.I cannot fathom the concept of too much good.....basically turning into evil!?!?!Again I reiterate:There is nothing immoral about good because as soon as it becomes so it is no longer good.Sorry if I appear pedantic, but I cannot help but be surprised that this simple truth would be so easily missed.No, again a misapplication of concepts. Individual mortal people, flawed people (or elves, dwarves, etc.) in the pursuit of good can go too far becoming themselves evil in their efforts to eradicate evil. The real life Inquisition is an example of individuals who really and truly believed that they were fighting evil. They believed they were doing good and according to the dominant belief system in the Western world at that time they were doing great good by eradicating a clear and present danger. However, the zeal by which these inquisitors did their duties transformed what may have been a sincerely good intention into something terrible and ultimately evil for all the loss of innocent life that was a result.I am not arguing that the Inquisition was good, not at all, just that those who participated in it very likely believed themselves to be doing a very good thing. It is the perfect example of human failings turning the desire to do good into a source of evil.In D&D there are safeguards that can prevent abuses such as clerics losing their spells or a cleric being struck down by a pissed off deity who is tired of evil being done in his or her name. Unfortunately outside of RPing games and fantasy novels no such safeguards exist.A hero who starts out good, but looses everything because of a villian, can become so consumed with vengeance that he becomes as cruel and ultimately as evil as that which he is seeking to destroy. Jung was right about us looking into the abyss.Cosmic good, pure good as exists in fantasy millieus and at the highest levels of some real-life spiritual traditions cannot be turned to evil. Evil arises from the misuse of what was initially good and through mortal (or even divine in the case of D&D's fallable gods) excess and weakness that what was once good becomes evil.Ponder this grasshopper:If "excess" good in D&D can become evil and still be called good in a bizarro-world loop of some kind it would rationally follow that excessive evil would loop around on itself thereby becoming good while still being referred to as evil. I like to call this the Ouroboros Principle of Nonsensical Alignment.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Wyrmshadows</blockquote>

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