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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9566916" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Yeah. I referenced above a short story--which I still cannot remember the name nor author of, much to my chagrin--where an alien species with a trinary view of life had Love, Valor, and Evil. Love+Valor would be more or less what we call "Good", but results in Evil being kind of insipid. Valor and Evil would be something sort of in the space between anti-villains and "powerful" regimented evil (e.g. fascism), depending on which aspect is more prominent. Love and Evil would be what's referred to by the whole "a man convinced of his rightness can be the greatest villain"--and what Galadriel would have become, had she given in to her desire for the One Ring, or what Gandalf would have become, as he said:More or less, by these lights, Valor kinda-sorta acts as kingmaker of the trio. Love+Evil can hold sway, especially if it is able to prey upon things like common moral sentiment to keep people in line, but that partnership tends to break down over time because it lacks for...vigor, of a sort.You can also see shades of this in the subtext behind Nineteen Eighty-Four, where Orwell plants the notion that revolt against Oceania is still possible, because the Party doesn't bother controlling the Proles, mostly because doing so is largely beyond the Party's resources. Just controlling the Outer Party takes pretty much all of the Inner Party's resources, so Winston rightly identifies the Proles as the last reservoir of Valor (albeit by other terms) outside of the Inner Party. Whether it is two Valor+Evil factions fighting one another or something more heroic, any disruption would be an extreme problem for Oceania (especially if it happened to coincide with Eurasia and Eastasia deciding to team up against Oceania.)</blockquote>

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