D&D General Muscular Neutrality (thought experiment)

The conceit I'm working with is, "The cosmos works like what Muscular Neutrality says it works like - that if Good or Evil get 'too much' power, the balance tips, and the setting ends somehow. The only way to preserve the setting is to keep the balance."

And then asking, "How can one still be actually Good in that setting? Is it possible to be Good, knowing it will end the world if too many people are Good?" Not evil-by-another-name, not abandoning the traits that make one Good (altruism, compassion, a respect for life, etc.), but being Good, fighting for Good, knowing that it could tip the scales too far.

And finding, yeah, there's definitely ways to embrace apocalyptic Good. Good is not incompatible with the idea of the end of the world. It's just very particular about how you'd have to achieve it. With consent.

And then playing with that very interesting idea about consenting to the end of the world.

In most D&D contexts, "everyone lived happily ever after" is a fine ending, one that Good strives for. However, it's a fantasy game, and the cosmos is our plaything. I'm not committed to a cosmos where "everyone lived happily ever after" is a possible ending. So if we remove that possibility, as the Muscular Neutrals have done, what happens to the setting and the characters in it? If everyone being happy means that nobody lives? Or if everyone lived, they couldn't be happy forever after? Very juicy fantasy topics to explore.
Okay. So you do actually think that Good would agree to curtail its activities--would accept not "ending the world"--if "muscular" Neutrals existed that did not give consent.

As long as we're on the same page with regard to that, I have no issue here. The issue is when something claiming the label "Good" purports to pursue this end-of-the-world thing without consent. Doing it because it is (allegedly) the "right" thing to do, even though doing so would hurt people (probably a lot of people). Your previous posts had red very much as "oh no, this [so-called] Good would 100% inflict this upon the rest of reality regardless of how those other people feel about it." Which, to my ears, is Evil with delusions of utopia. And to be clear, "Evil with delusions of utopia" is a common trope! But it isn't Good anymore. It's a person or a force or a group that either used to be Good or believes it has always been Good, but which has fallen from that.
 

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I imagine most CG individuals would balk, yes. CG as a force, I'm not so sure.
If you can come up with an example where "CG as a force" could do this when the individuals who make up CG (y'know, CG being all about the individual beliefs and actions thing) would not, I'm all ears. Until then, your "I'm not so sure" does not make a particularly meaningful rebuttal.

I'm pretty sure consequentialism and deontological ethics both continue to exist because they find each other problematic.
I think both continue to exist because people are overly enamored with the things they do well, to the point that they refuse to recognize the things they do extremely poorly. Consequentialism has the serious problem that if you can just make an argument, any argument, that on a sufficiently long time scale or a sufficiently large population, anything goes. That's....kind of a fatal flaw. Deontology quite rightly points out that if we can find even one moral duty, we've made enormous progress. The problem is that several quite straightforward applications of the alleged duty (the categorical imperative) lead to the very logical contradictions that deontology was supposed to avert in the first place. E.g., telling any lie = advocating that all people always tell lies all the time, but now we cannot lie to Gestapo agents hunting the Jews hiding in one's basement. Much as getting bogged down in analyses of time horizons, relative privation, and justifying short-term harm for long-term benefit causes consequentialism to fall short of its explicit aim of simplifying ethical reasoning by removing the thorny question of whether actions themselves are right or wrong, and instead looking at effects. Turns out, effects are at least as complicated as actions!

Personally, I'm a virtue ethics guy, and I see both of the above as useful tools for helping us determine where the correct balance point is on a case-by-case basis.

Not individual relationships, an individual's relationship with others. Others in this case being the circles of kin, clan, community, nation, world, and all sapients/all living beings. (And probably some other circles in a fantasy multiverse.) Basic Singer stuff.
Okay? That...doesn't seem to be making much of a point then. Yes, by definition, moral-ethical behavior is a relation an entity has with another entity (including the self, since it is possible, at least in principle, to do immoral things to yourself.) Where are you going with this, counselor?

Of course. The most interesting setting with cosmological factions isn't going to label them as "Good", "Evil", and "Neutral"; they'll be labeled as "Good", "Good", and "Good".
Oh, I don't agree with that at all. I think the most interesting setting with cosmological factions avoids having anything labelled "Good."
 

Good being good even if it forces the end of the world doesn't necessarily Good is disguised Evil. If a person is altruist and won't kill a baby, because killing babies is evil in his book, I don't think it would necessarily be Evil by refusing to kill baby Hitler. So, if the end of the world is something that happens overnight poof when the scales are tipped by the disappearance of Evil, having everyone being individually Good doesn't mean they are less Good, even if their collective behaviour ends the world.

Who's to say that world ending is necessarily bad, BTW? Sure, it kills everyone, but if there is an afterlife in the settings and all the Good persons are going to super-Good places, and their death are'nt particularly gruesome, the prospect of an apocalypse brought by everyone being Good is certainly something one could morally defend (and a solution Muscular Neutral woud oppose, if they like the world to exist).
 
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If you can come up with an example where "CG as a force" could do this when the individuals who make up CG (y'know, CG being all about the individual beliefs and actions thing) would not, I'm all ears. Until then, your "I'm not so sure" does not make a particularly meaningful rebuttal.
I'm not trying to rebut you, though. I'm just presenting options.

I think both continue to exist because people are overly enamored with the things they do well, to the point that they refuse to recognize the things they do extremely poorly. Consequentialism has the serious problem that if you can just make an argument, any argument, that on a sufficiently long time scale or a sufficiently large population, anything goes. That's....kind of a fatal flaw. Deontology quite rightly points out that if we can find even one moral duty, we've made enormous progress. The problem is that several quite straightforward applications of the alleged duty (the categorical imperative) lead to the very logical contradictions that deontology was supposed to avert in the first place. E.g., telling any lie = advocating that all people always tell lies all the time, but now we cannot lie to Gestapo agents hunting the Jews hiding in one's basement. Much as getting bogged down in analyses of time horizons, relative privation, and justifying short-term harm for long-term benefit causes consequentialism to fall short of its explicit aim of simplifying ethical reasoning by removing the thorny question of whether actions themselves are right or wrong, and instead looking at effects. Turns out, effects are at least as complicated as actions!
All very true.

Okay? That...doesn't seem to be making much of a point then. Yes, by definition, moral-ethical behavior is a relation an entity has with another entity (including the self, since it is possible, at least in principle, to do immoral things to yourself.) Where are you going with this, counselor?
I'm not going anywhere. I think you think I'm trying to lead to a conclusion. I'm not. I'm just spinning out ideas to see what sticks.

Oh, I don't agree with that at all. I think the most interesting setting with cosmological factions avoids having anything labelled "Good."
De gustibus non est disputandum.
 

To make this work requires one of two things:

1) Redefining what is "Good" to be more in line with what we know to be evil.
2) An external reason to goodness for why "Good" can't be allowed to win.

We all understand why evil can't be allowed to win, because everything would suck. But good winning would be, categorically, a -good- thing. Full stop. No, being "Too Good" would not be bad or conquest or some other thing, those require evil or badness or wrongness to make happen. A world that is wholly good is good. There is no evil, there.

"But what if the world is LG and there's too much law??" Not the question. The question is about -good-. And also irrelevant because in an LG society the L supports and enforces the G so the laws wouldn't/couldn't be so overbearing as to create E through magical alignment alchemy.

If you redefine good to be more in line with evil then you need some kind of balance and likely to put some Goodness over in the evil. It's nonsensical but whatever.

The only way this thing works without trying to define good as "Secretly Evil" is to have some reason, external to the definitions of good and evil, to stop good from just outright winning.

Some greater evil in the universe that will be triggered when good crosses the finish line and wins.

Maybe if Good wins in the universe the whole planar axis will collapse in on itself when Hell and the Abyss are destroyed, causing massive destruction.

Maybe if Good wins then the gods shrug their shoulders, pay their bet, and move on to the next universe.

Maybe if Good wins the "Final Seal" unlocks on some ancient trapped evil that gets triggered to unleash evil into the world, again, and the balance is gonna be long-term screwed by the massive influx of evil that destroys an inordinate amount of good.

But it's gotta be external.

Otherwise "Muscular Neutrals" are just being evil as they seek to maintain the existence of all the ills of evil in the world.
 

This thread now has me thinking more about the implications of a setting where everyone knows that not only are gods unequivocally real, but so are afterlives. Like, you can visit them and come back. Player characters often do.

For example, given that you know that there is an eternal afterlife, wouldn't you expect everyone virtually everyone, aside from a few incorrigible sociopaths, to be doing whatever they can, all the time, to get into one of the good ones?

Like, Karl Marx argued that religion is the opiate of the masses, and that was just based on the promise of an afterlife that he didn't believe in and, let's face it, most people have to have at least some doubts about. But if an afterlife is 100% guaranteed, then that completely changes the equation.

Sacrificing yourself for a noble cause should be a no-brainer. Grief would be completely different. And are you really going to commit terrible deeds when an eternity of torture is a veritable certainty, as is an eternity of joy as a reward for showing some restraint?

And, per my example above, is forcibly converting people really wrong when it does, in fact, guarantee them eternal bliss?
 

To make this work requires one of two things:

1) Redefining what is "Good" to be more in line with what we know to be evil.
2) An external reason to goodness for why "Good" can't be allowed to win.
I don't believe those are the only two things that make this work.

Muscular Neutral also works if Neutral believes the Balance represents the minimal amount of Evil that can exist in the world. Muscular Good must be opposed because Hell is paved with Good intentions. Any attempt to eliminate Evil in the world inevitably disturbs the Balance, unintentionally creating an opening for more Evil to exist until the Balance is restored.

Edit: In other words, Neutral believes we exist in the best possible world, so any attempt to make the entire world better will inevitably make it worse, not matter how well-intentioned the effort.
 
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This thread now has me thinking more about the implications of a setting where everyone knows that not only are gods unequivocally real, but so are afterlives. Like, you can visit them and come back. Player characters often do.

For example, given that you know that there is an eternal afterlife, wouldn't you expect everyone virtually everyone, aside from a few incorrigible sociopaths, to be doing whatever they can, all the time, to get into one of the good ones?

Like, Karl Marx argued that religion is the opiate of the masses, and that was just based on the promise of an afterlife that he didn't believe in and, let's face it, most people have to have at least some doubts about. But if an afterlife is 100% guaranteed, then that completely changes the equation.

Sacrificing yourself for a noble cause should be a no-brainer. Grief would be completely different. And are you really going to commit terrible deeds when an eternity of torture is a veritable certainty, as is an eternity of joy as a reward for showing some restraint?

And, per my example above, is forcibly converting people really wrong when it does, in fact, guarantee them eternal bliss?
D&D afterlives are weird.

4e is a big unknown and my favorite model.

Planescape has petitioners with specific gods and weird afterlives of lives depending on the deity.

Most of them are not really paradises but odd.
 

I could see a muscular neutral organization whose goal is to enforce a sort of neutral zone between the warring forces of good and evil.

Kind of like peacekeepers who exert their influence when a conflict is boiling to the point of devastation of people and/or nature.

So then if this is a 'good' thing why not just side with good against evil? This gives evil forces incentive to reduce hostilities rather than just destroying everything they can as they lose. And evil is incentivized to not take on the muscular neutral force as well as they will be overpowered.

They don't necessarily need to have an overarching philosophy of and end goal. They could just be a pragmatic force. They could take the form of an information network to alert them to possible expectations of devastation. Or manipulators who steer leaders and powerful entities away from courses of action that would escalate damage needlessly.

They could also just be a literal powerful force which thwarts some confrontations. Magic being what it is, they might derive great power from their neutrality. They might draw power from the neutral planes. Also, good and evil forces tend to be prepared for each other but less prepared for a lesser known 3rd party.
 

I don't believe those are the only two things that make this work.

Muscular Neutral also works if Neutral believes the Balance represents the minimal amount of Evil that can exist in the world. Muscular Good must be opposed because Hell is paved with Good intentions. Any attempt to eliminate Evil in the world inevitably disturbs the Balance, unintentionally creating an opening for more Evil to exist until the Balance is restored.

Edit: In other words, Neutral believes we exist in the best possible world, so any attempt to make the entire world better will inevitably make it worse, not matter how well-intentioned the effort.
In which case they engage in evil. Both in knowingly letting evil exist, and actively -protecting- evil from being destroyed by good.

In which case "Muscular Neutral" is evil, but not 'as' evil as other evils.
 

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