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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 2182384" data-attributes="member: 3400">There is more than one way to view neutrality. There's the somewhat contrived view of neutrality as actively seeking balance. This requires a philosophy that holds that there should be a balance between extremes like good and evil. I think this philosophy also has to assume that there is a benefit to evil at a conceptual level, something I think is kind of bizarre. Now, if we take this conception of neutrality to the more pragmatic level, then I think it starts to make sense. While there may be no positive value in evil as a concept, there is positive value in people that happen to be evil much of the time. The evil king may be bad, but he has a right to his throne if he ascended the normal way, and he may be a competent, if authoritarian ruler. Stuff like that. This sort of neutrality is probably more concerned that the trains run on time so that we can all benefit from normality rather than niceties like life, liberty, and sapient rights. This sort of philosophical pragmatic neutrality shows up in Greyhawk (and is one reason many people like the setting, the forces of neutrality actually exist). The Circle of Eight, powerful wizards who pull levers behind the scenes, tend to promote a certain pragmatic neutral balance to keep things predictable and prosperous.The second major view of neutrality is not really philosophical at all. It's more of a rejection of the other alignments as meaningless. This is the neutrality of nature, and I would argue, druids. Good and evil don't really matter much. At least, they're not compelling enough to force the neutral character to take a side. Closely related to this is the general neutrality of the average village of peasants. They aren't evil in the sense that they actively want to hurt someone (even if they might take advantage of an outsider with deep pockets by raising their prices or bartering harder). They aren't good in that they won't really risk their necks for just anybody (though they'll do what they can for their kin and neighbors whom they know well). In this case, the sides in the moral alignment war just aren't important enough to embrace in the face of getting the work of the day done. They don't actively seek balance, it's just that the extremes are irrelevant to them. And though they care capable of making the moral choices that nature cannot, they don't really need to.</blockquote>

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