The D&D Great Wheel of the Planes and Moral Ethical Relativism

[Brazeku]

Has 'rad' come back into fashion or are you using a time machine to post from 1987?

I.. I don't know. I just started saying it one day, and I can't stop.

_help

 

[Sundragon2012]

Sundragon, I think you have arrived at the idea that the Great Wheel is morally relativistic by perverting the definition of moral relativism.

Take a Good act. A moral absolutist will tell you that a Good act is a Good act is a Good act. There is a yardstick which applies to everyone at all times and they may be measured by that yardstick regardless of their circumstances or the environment they live in.

Take an Evil act. A moral relativist will tell you that this act will only be "Evil" based upon the perspective from which it is viewed. So for the actor who commits the act, it may even be a "Good" act; for the direct object of the action, it may be an "Evil" act. Moral Relativism allows that an act may be both "Good" and "Evil" simultaneously, and perspective is paramount in the judgment; therefore a knowledge of the perspective from which you view actions will help you understand why you think a particular action is "Good" or "Evil".

Sundragon, I, like you, am rather unsympathetic to a relativistic philosophy because terms lose their meaning: when an act can simultaneously be both "Good" and "Evil", what real meaning do those descriptors have?

But note that moral absolutism is more concerned with the existence of a concrete, unchaning, and universal yardstick to measure the morality of actions than it is with the idea of cosmic justice and "correctness". Evil may still be powerful and vie with Good while remaining pure and unrepentant Evil. The Great Wheel does this: there is a clearly defined TRUTH that Evil is Evil, Good is Good, and while it is possible to changes places by falling or by being redeemed, it is not possible to simultaneously be a Solar and a Pit Fiend.

I don't know what you mean by "correctness" when you refer to Good and Evil; moral absolutism doesn't tell you what is "correct": it tells you what is Good, Evil, Lawful or Chaotic. The individual will then be free to choose between then as their own personal morality dictates. A Good person will generally act Good; an Evil person will commit Evil; a Neutral person will have a smattering of both.

But nowhere does it say that because Good is Good that is should be able to eliminate Evil; there is nothing to say that because Evil is Evil, it shouldn't also be powerful. And "correctness" has no meaning in a moral context, even an absolute one. An act is not "correct", it is "Good", "Evil" etc.

What I am trying to say, perhaps not clearly enough is that the validity or "correctness" of any moral position imaginable is determined not by an absolute objective determination of right/wrong or good/evil but is relative to the point on the Great Wheel alignment compass upon which you stand.

The fact that if I stand on the compass point labeled abyss, I am moral validated to commit a Rwanda style genocide of my rivals and if I am inclined to show mercy to my enemy and simply hand him over to rightful authorities I am validated if I stand on the point entitled Mount Celestia.

All morality on the Great Wheel is relative to where you stand on the wheel. There is no final arbiter, not even the distant type Tolkienish Eru, the Krynnish High God or the Realmsian Ao to stand as the ultimately wise and correct source of moral "rightness" by which you can call a demon's point of view unequivocally wrong on all counts.

This is what I think of as a flaw and this is what I see as morally relativistic about the Great Wheel. That no one can actually call Orcus' plan t turn an entire world into undead slaves wrong outside of their own petty opinion is IMO ridiculous. Who is to say that he's wrong? Tyr, Torm, Pelor, Cuthbert, Paladine? Who cares what they think, they are only points on the philosophical compass as well not necessarily more morally right than he is.

It is this I refer to as moral relativisim because that term seems to fit best. I believe that this sucks the heart right out of heroic fantasy.



Sundragon

 

[Tarek]

What I am trying to say, perhaps not clearly enough is that the validity or "correctness" of any moral position imaginable is determined not by an absolute objective determination of right/wrong or good/evil but is relative to the point on the Great Wheel alignment compass upon which you stand.

The fact that if I stand on the compass point labeled abyss, I am moral validated to commit a Rwanda style genocide of my rivals and if I am inclined to show mercy to my enemy and simply hand him over to rightful authorities I am validated if I stand on the point entitled Mount Celestia.

All morality on the Great Wheel is relative to where you stand on the wheel. There is no final arbiter, not even the distant type Tolkienish Eru, the Krynnish High God or the Realmsian Ao to stand as the ultimately wise and correct source of moral "rightness" by which you can call a demon's point of view unequivocally wrong on all counts.

This is what I think of as a flaw and this is what I see as morally relativistic about the Great Wheel. That no one can actually call Orcus' plan t turn an entire world into undead slaves wrong outside of their own petty opinion is IMO ridiculous. Who is to say that he's wrong? Tyr, Torm, Pelor, Cuthbert, Paladine? Who cares what they think, they are only points on the philosophical compass as well not necessarily more morally right than he is.

It is this I refer to as moral relativisim because that term seems to fit best. I believe that this sucks the heart right out of heroic fantasy.

Sundragon

Excellent! You have the demonic tempter's mindset down perfectly!

No thought of consequence, live for the moment, squeeze everyone for all they're worth, and who cares what happens to your soul after you're dead! Help Orcus with his plans, and you'll be at the head of his undead armies forever!

... and ever.... trapped in a rotting shell... forced to do someone else's bidding... tormented.... forever....



Moral relativism, in D&D, is a demon's argument. I'm not joking here. It is an argument designed to make people think their choices don't matter, and therefore they should do what they want to do, rather than what is GOOD.

Good people are rewarded in the afterlife, by going to the outer planes of good which are based on real world notions of heaven.

Evil people are punished in the afterlife, by going to the outer planes of evil which are based on real world notions of hell and damnation.

These are places that objectively exist in D&D, because a character can visit them while still alive. In D&D, these places have been PROVED to exist.


Ultimately, you are making the assumption that because the great wheel exists, alignment does not matter and good and evil are equal. They're not.

There is a final arbiter of what is "correct" and what is "incorrect"... what is "Good" and what is "Evil".

It is the universe itself.

A good person, in D&D, will never be sucked into the Abyss after death. Ever. An evil person, even if they thought they were good, will never find themselves in the Seven Heavens after death.


Demons and Devils know they have been corrupted. They know that they were once good and are now evil. They are filled with jealousy of the mortal races that can still make the choice between good and evil, and they do their best to corrupt mortals. But they are still aware of what is good and evil (they have to be, by their very natures, just as the deva, solars, etc are) and use arguments of moral relativity as a weapon to decieve mortals and justify evil acts as being "good".

 

[Doug McCrae]

The alignment system is what prevents D&D from being morally relativistic. Orcus's 'chaotic evil' alignment means that he is objectively morally wrong. Alignment is an objective truth in the D&D universe.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

What I am trying to say, perhaps not clearly enough is that the validity or "correctness" of any moral position imaginable is determined not by an absolute objective determination of right/wrong or good/evil but is relative to the point on the Great Wheel alignment compass upon which you stand.

The fact that if I stand on the compass point labeled abyss, I am moral validated to commit a Rwanda style genocide of my rivals and if I am inclined to show mercy to my enemy and simply hand him over to rightful authorities I am validated if I stand on the point entitled Mount Celestia.

All morality on the Great Wheel is relative to where you stand on the wheel. There is no final arbiter, not even the distant type Tolkienish Eru, the Krynnish High God or the Realmsian Ao to stand as the ultimately wise and correct source of moral "rightness" by which you can call a demon's point of view unequivocally wrong on all counts.

This is what I think of as a flaw and this is what I see as morally relativistic about the Great Wheel. That no one can actually call Orcus' plan t turn an entire world into undead slaves wrong outside of their own petty opinion is IMO ridiculous. Who is to say that he's wrong? Tyr, Torm, Pelor, Cuthbert, Paladine? Who cares what they think, they are only points on the philosophical compass as well not necessarily more morally right than he is.

It is this I refer to as moral relativisim because that term seems to fit best. I believe that this sucks the heart right out of heroic fantasy.



Sundragon

Huh, don't get me wrong now...and I HATE to drag real-world concepts into this, but I can simply switch "heaven" with Mount Celestia and "Hell" with Abyss in your argument, and arrive at the same conclusion, namely that the duality concept of Heaven and Hell in Judeo-Christian mythology supports moral relativism.

The Great Wheel is nothing but a outerplanar geographic map that shows how planes are aligned towards each other based on the alignments they support. It's a specific shape because the creator of the concept liked the analogy. Of course standing in the Abyss, commiting genocide on a large scale (on what, by the way? Demons? Does that make me Good or Evil? ) will get me cheered by the local population. It will also mark my alignment as EVIL! Celestials will still frown on me, which translates into shafts of angelic lasers being thrown my way if I'm too much of a threat. And equally, if I'm standing on Mount Celestia, doing deeds of mercy, compassion and love, the local jokels will nod happily and tally me up as a GOOD person.

The Great Wheel could be replaced by a chain of planes, a 20-sided die of infinite size with each side a plane, or whatever else whacky concept you like, and it'll still just be a landscape descriptor.

(Next bit blacked out...contains some real-world religious content, please don't read if you're easy to be caught on the wrong foot with that kind of stuff )

Spoiler

And by the way...the "only" reason why us Judeo-Christians assume that "Good" is correct and "Evil" is wrong is because we got told so by the "good" side, you know. There IS no "objective arbiter", simply because the Creator IS the source of all that is good and right, and so his opposite must per definition be evil. If you look at the natural world, it is full of deeds that, if commited by human beings against each other, would be called deeply evil (and often, they ARE commited by humans, and ARE called evil or sinful). If I look at it all from your point of view, there's a very simple situation. God says he's right, and Lucifer is wrong. Lucifer says HE is right, and God is wrong...but God had more troops and more power, so he won the argument, and the winner writes the history. In the D&D cosmology, Good and Evil are more equal in terms of troops and power, so the decision who's "correct" hasn't been reached yet.

The only real arbiters of what is the "correct" choice, morally, are the DM and the players...and depending on the choices, the player characters will be labeled good or evil, and suffer the consequences. And in general, the consequence for being good is being rewarded after your death, while the consequence for being evil is being tortured, abused and treated as currency or food. Players know that...and the characters actually know that, too, since there are enough "objective" ways to ascertain that truth after you reach a certain level.

 

[ST]

I like that way of looking at it. No, the setting doesn't prejudge that good is destined to win over evil. The moral choices are in the players' hands. If they want good to win out, they'll have to struggle for it. If they're content to "get along" and let evil have its way, their characters will struggle less.

Is it worth the struggle? Are there ever times when it's not worth it, that you must accept a lesser evil along with a greater good? Sounds like compelling roleplaying to me. I'd rather play it out than have the setting tell me the answer.

 

[Sundragon2012]

Excellent! You have the demonic tempter's mindset down perfectly!

No thought of consequence, live for the moment, squeeze everyone for all they're worth, and who cares what happens to your soul after you're dead! Help Orcus with his plans, and you'll be at the head of his undead armies forever!

... and ever.... trapped in a rotting shell... forced to do someone else's bidding... tormented.... forever....

What are you talking about?

I am not saying I buy into the moral relativism the Great Wheel espouses, I see it as flawed and damaging to the genre myself. What you write above seems to be the propoganda line Orcus' cronies will tell potential converts.

I am not commenting on the whether or not demons lie about the benefits of going along with them. I am saying that ultimately there is no punishment for evil. Oh there is suffering, there is pain, but it is a suffering that weeds out the weak and garnishes a promotion for the strong in the form of transformation into a demon or devil themselves.

Ultimately, though it is a hate filled, painful, tormented, fearful existance the soul of those cast into hell or the abyss become aligned to it and become one with it. It isn't a punishment to be sent to the abyss when one is chaotic evil. No angry deity casts a chaotic evil soul into the abyss, the soul is drawn there by its own nature.

Fundamentally, a soul in the abyss is there because it can be nowhere else. This isn't a punishment, it is merely the spiritual lifecycle of a soul aligned to chaotic evil.

Moral relativism, in D&D, is a demon's argument. I'm not joking here. It is an argument designed to make people think their choices don't matter, and therefore they should do what they want to do, rather than what is GOOD.

True, but I am not making the demon's argument, I am making an argument based on the cosmological underpinnings of the Great Wheel. On the Great Wheel all alignments have equal validity and weight in the cosmic scheme of things because their is no ultimate truth, no ultimate reality.

Good people are rewarded in the afterlife, by going to the outer planes of good which are based on real world notions of heaven.

Evil people are punished in the afterlife, by going to the outer planes of evil which are based on real world notions of hell and damnation.

Good people are rewarded yes, very directly so by a wonderful afterlife. I agree. However, as I said before, evil people are not punished, they are drawn into the plane most aligned to themselves at the time of death. This is not punishment per se, because the chaotic evil soul feels it belongs, it would have it no other way. A chaotic evil soul would go mad in any other plane except the abyss because it wants to be where it is.

Ultimately, you are making the assumption that because the great wheel exists, alignment does not matter and good and evil are equal. They're not.
There is a final arbiter of what is "correct" and what is "incorrect"... what is "Good" and what is "Evil". It is the universe itself.

You say this, but it is not evidenced by the structure of the Great Wheel. Who is to say that the demons are incorrect in their moral assumptions when there is ultimately no higher arbiter of morality in the D&D core Great Wheel cosmology.

The universe according to the Great Wheel is merely one of balance in which there is no moral judgement whatsoever. All along the Great Wheel have their rightful and natural place. To remove even one would be to cast the whole thing into disarray. The universe of the Great Wheel doesn't frown on the morality of Yugoloths and Devils and more than it smiles on the morality of Archons and Eladrin.

I think you are mistaken.

A good person, in D&D, will never be sucked into the Abyss after death. Ever. An evil person, even if they thought they were good, will never find themselves in the Seven Heavens after death.

I never claimed otherwise.

My argument regarding moral relativism on the Great Wheel is not something that can be known necessarily by mortals but is instead a discussion about the underpinnings and assumptions about morality and the planes as presented by D&D core.

Demons and Devils know they have been corrupted. They know that they were once good and are now evil. They are filled with jealousy of the mortal races that can still make the choice between good and evil, and they do their best to corrupt mortals. But they are still aware of what is good and evil (they have to be, by their very natures, just as the deva, solars, etc are) and use arguments of moral relativity as a weapon to decieve mortals and justify evil acts as being "good".

Not necessarily true by any reading of the canon texts regarding the nature of fiends. According to canon they do what they do merely to increase their overall power, not out of jealousy or envy. I like the idea, but it isn't the way it is by way of Great Wheel canon.



Sundragon

 

[Sundragon2012]

The alignment system is what prevents D&D from being morally relativistic. Orcus's 'chaotic evil' alignment means that he is objectively morally wrong. Alignment is an objective truth in the D&D universe.

There is no "wrong" implied by the fact that Orcus and his kin are evil. Chaotic evil is merely another ethical position on the Great Wheel without which the entire Great Wheel would collapse. Chaotic evil isn't merely "not wrong" it is a g*d damned necessity upon which the entirety of the cosmonology rests (along with all 8 other alignments).



Sundragon

 

[RedShirtNo5]

There is no "wrong" implied by the fact that Orcus and his kin are evil. Chaotic evil is merely another ethical position on the Great Wheel without which the entire Great Wheel would collapse. Chaotic evil isn't merely "not wrong" it is a g*d damned necessity upon which the entirety of the cosmonology rests (along with all 8 other alignments).Sundragon

Supposing this is true, why shouldn't the Great Wheel be collapsed?

 

[Klaus]

There is no "wrong" implied by the fact that Orcus and his kin are evil. Chaotic evil is merely another ethical position on the Great Wheel without which the entire Great Wheel would collapse. Chaotic evil isn't merely "not wrong" it is a g*d damned necessity upon which the entirety of the cosmonology rests (along with all 8 other alignments).



Sundragon

Yes, there is a "wrong" implied.

The Lower Planes are called Lower Planes because, as you venture further into them, you get the feeling of descending into the bowels of existence. OTOH, on the Upper Planes you feel like you're climbing, or ascending.

Moral Relativism would mean that for Orcus, the Abyss is Mount Celestia, and everyone is in their own Mount Celestia. And that simply isn't true.

Take the utmost Good plane, Elysium. The plane itself hinders a traveler, unless the traveler perform good deeds along the way. Performing good deeds speed up the traveler's journey.

OTOH, the utmost Evil plane, the Gray Waste, eats at your very soul, siphoning off all emotion, colour, energy, leaving you an empty husk.

So no. In the Great Wheel, Good rewards and Evil punishes.