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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Starfox" data-source="post: 9581031" data-attributes="member: 2303">Not read all the 45 pages of this thread.I generally see Neutral as the inert force in a society, all the people that would rather be left alone and decide for themselves who they want to care for and how. This makes Muscular Neutrality rather silly, in that it has Neutrality actually going out of its way to change how others act - which is against my definition of Neutrality.The next form of Neutrality is the expert. You are a smith. You do metalwork you are paid to do. Someone pays you well for making arms. You do it without regard for what these arms are to be used for. This can be borderline good or evil depending on how you work for.Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?That's not my department, says Werner von Braun.Tom Lehrer, 1965. Another form of Neutrality is the special interest. I worship the god of the sea, I care about the sea, its creatures, and currents. I don't give a fig about what humanoids do to each other, but if you sail across the equator without honoring the God of the Sea and baptizing those who never did it before, I go ballistic.A third type is the conformist. I once played a lawful neutral dwarf rogue who decidedly wasn't Good, but decided that he was on "team good". That is he used dubious methods to make his team win and he choose to work with a generally good-aligned party  because that's how he grew up, he felt it was beneficial for himself to not be oppressed by evil, and it allowed his roguish ways without becoming a criminal. What would he do if Evil was defeated? He would shut himself up in a workshop and make traps and locks, which was his passion. I can see this kind of Neutral joining team evil instead.Often what matters to people is less if their neighbor is Good or Evil, what matters is if they are a bad neighbor. A Good person that is preachy and goes door to door demanding good works is a bad neighbor. An Evil person who oppresses their family and pushes drugs but never intrudes into your life unless you ask them to is not a bad neighbor. I see this as a Neutral attitude.None of these kinds of Neutrality is inherently interventionistic, tough they may join in a crusade for their own reason.On to the question if Good can be authoritarian and repressive, and I'd say yes. It makes sense for Good to demand high taxes and time investment in charity. Those who do not step up are censored, potentially even punished. Combine Good with a society with D&D classes, and you have a hierarchy of goodness with Good clerics and paladins at the top and everyone else in a layered society beneath. Neutrals can rebel against such a social order. I'd expect this would only happen once the overt threat of Evil is gone. Then again, a political philosopher of Neutrality could create a structure of thought warning Neutrals against the potential dangers of Goodness, creating a Neutral policy of preventing Good from coming to power. With this line of reasoning Muscular Neutrality kind of makes sense, but it would take a history of Good domination to get to this point.</blockquote>

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