A good society would never do any of these things because these things are evil. Charity is an integral part of good - it's called out as such - so letting people starve wouldn't happen in a good society.
People starve in every society! Being Good is no insurance against famine, crop destruction, angry druids, whatnot. Human misery happens in CG societies, and a CG society that gives and gives and gives until there's nothing left would still have those who are hungry and those who are excluded. A CG society defines its CG-itude by acting in accordance with those principles, which can mean that Charity only has value when it is the freely chosen action of an individual. Which means that, inevitably, some folks will not choose that Charity at all times. Which means some people will go hungry. Which is something, say, a Good tax structure could stop. But such a tax structure would be seen as less good for a CG society, since it would be a corruption of individual freedom which a CG society believes will lead to the greatest good. People dieing doesn't make the society not Good.
This is the kind of thing Planescape wants to explore. The PC's get to determine if this CG society is something they agree with ("The solution to people starving isn't taxes, it's such abundance that Charity is freely given by all! Don't worry about the grousing politician, there is a druid from Elysium who will help improve your fields once I get the MacGuffin for her."), or not ("I am not helping that jerk druid get her MacGuffin. No, you spoiled children will learn to share, and I'm here to make sure
you do it"), or if there's maybe a third way ("Maybe your society needs to embrace the truth of the Doomguard and learn to waste away happily!").
Hussar said:
Forced coercion in the form of brainwashing and re-conditioning are evil acts. Hardly acts of mercy or forgiveness or even justice if we get right down to it.
The point is there's room for reasonable debate. Coercion and brainwashing are just education, really. The right training can make people
happy to give up their independent rights to honor some greater social commitment. Is it an unacceptable infringement on human freedoms to make people do what is good for them? To make them happy doing it? To turn them into model citizens, though it will be hard and they will protest? I mean, do you
let your kid put their finger in the socket because you respect their autonomy or do you STOP them?
Planescape is also interested in questions like this. The PC's get to determine if the prisons that rehabilitate prisoners with psychological conditioning are instruments for Good ("They complain now, but they won't be complaining when their family comes to their aid. We are their family now. People who once had no cause to belong to, no reason not to stab and kill each other, are now part of the most righteous cause in the world: The Harmonium!"), instruments for Not-So-Good ("People make bad decisions, and they pay the price for it, but they get to
make those decisions, and it is wrong to take those choices from them!"), or perhaps a third option ("Crime? Punishment? For what purpose? Your great society will be washed away and replaced by another, and on and on until the infinite sands of time are exhausted. Do you really think you're building something of any lasting value here, or are you just massaging your ego?").
PS wants your characters to engage and confront those debates in play. What defines Good is your PCs, because your characters change the multiverse by their actions according to their convictions.
If there's no difference in the actions between opposite alignments, then what's the point of having opposite alignments? To me, this is incoherent. You can't have good societies that mind wipe people who disagree with you - that's evil. You can't have good societies that allow people to starve in the streets - that's evil.
What you're not appreciating is the subjectivity. You say "that's evil" like this is just accepted and universal and declared to be true. But Planescape doesn't have universal declarative truths. "That's evil" in PS is always a statement of subjective opinion from the characters, a conviction that they have that others might not have. It's evil for the character who is fighting to destroy it, but it's good for the character who is fighting to preserve it, and any of those characters are viable PS characters.
It's not incoherent, it's subjective. It can be both and neither depending upon the perspective of the viewer. What is "good" is rather explicitly just "what is generally agreed to be good," and PS characters
shape that general agreement by their actions.
And, the thing is, even if you do have a society that does do these things, it's fairly easy to check if they are good or evil. If the acts are good, then, it should always be good to mind wipe people to believe what you believe. Why wouldn't chaotic good societies start doing the same? After all, these are good acts so, why would a CG society not also do them?
Because "good" isn't just one thing. It's multi-faceted, multitudinous, and, again, subjective.
In Planescape, this concept is called "The Center of All." It's a geographical statement (in an infinite multiverse, there is no real "center," so where a person stands is the center of their own multiverse), which means in Planescape that it's also a philosophical statement about the setting (wherever you stand in an argument is the center of your own world, but other people have their own centers as well, and because the ideology is infinite, there's no true objective standpoint from which to measure all things).
Yes, this means D&D alignment isn't being used how D&D alignment is usually used. You can
detect evil on that every one of those re-educators and you know they will ping based on general public opinion, not on any intrinsic trait of their action. That belief shapes the planes is foundational to the setting, so it can't really be the other way around.
Hussar said:
Since I don't know that much about Planescape canon, do they actually do this in the setting? Do they actually have CG forces wiping out groups of paladins because they don't agree with the paladin's version of good? Do forces from Olympus invade Elysium and slaughter the people they find there in order to create a "More perfect good"?
I mean, that's what demons and devils do in the Blood War, right? Either side invades the other side and tries to kill everything so that the "More perfect evil" triumphs. At least, that's my pretty unnuanced understanding. But, I've never seen the Good side of Planescape start doing the same thing. Do LG forces team up with LE forces to forcibly convert CG forces?
I mean, you're setting an impossible standard, ignoring the "good tends to value life" thing, so slaughter isn't something good is interested in (evil, of course, DELIGHTS in slaughter -- that's why the Blood War is an actual war, while the rivalries amongst the good are "cold war" status, with maneuvering and posturing).
But good fights good pretty frequently in PS. It plays out more on a human level (as most things in PS do -- even the Blood War is just background noise and a framing device, there's no canonical cause or reason or trigger or stopping point), and not with "slaughter," but here's three bits canon for ya, since I know how much you love it.
1 -
The Harmonium is a faction presented in a fairly rough light in most of the PS materials -- as authoritarian town guards looking for an excuse to toss folks who don't agree with them in the slammer for the crime of thinking differently. They are jerks who are well presented as antagonists. Their entire basis for existing is to convert others to their organization by the sword, as their belief holds that those who aren't part of their plan are enemies of it. They are the ones responsible for the canonical shift of a layer of a plane from Lawful Goodish to Lawful Neutral -- the setting itself condemns their actions as Definitely Not Good.
The leader, Factol Sarin? He's a Lawful Good Paladin by RAW. Because he wants universal peace and harmony. He is dedicated to this cause so rigidly that he cannot be swayed. The setting even mentions that outright evil is rare in his faction -- some are good, and most are just very Lawful. And yet he views not only order, but specific membership in his faction as a prerequisite for universal peace and harmony to be realized.
Good opposes Good here: Sarin is unwilling to brook those Lawful Good Paladins who are not part of his faction, and will gladly lead an organization that oppresses and controls Chaotic Good folks who are just ignorant of the glory of the Harmonium.
2-
The Faction War is an instance of colossal violence and devastation in the city of Sigil, and the person who caused all this, and who is absolutely presented as an antagonist for it, is Chaotic Good. A ranger/cleric, even. (In 2e, Rangers had to be Good, and clerics had to have an alignment "acceptable to their order", and Heimdall is a CG deity). See, he runs the "might makes right" faction. Which means that, following his beliefs, he tried to take control of the City of Doors, believing himself to be powerful enough to do so. That's right, he runs a faction whose foundational beliefs are basically indistinguishable from that of goblins, he perpetrated a great loss of life, and tried to take control of a city, and he's still a Chaotic Good Ranger/Cleric.
Good opposes Good here. The Chaotic Good orchestrator of the Faction War came up against every lover of peace and cooperation and charity and kindness in his bid to rule the City of Doors, and didn't fall from Ranger Grace because of it as far as canon is concerned.
3-
Mount Celestia is canonically described as a place with high standards. The Lawful Good spirits of the dead, The Lantern Archons, aren't always good enough to make it. Many will never be anything more than lantern archons -- they just aren't Lawful Good
enough. So what do they do? They become martyrs. They fling themselves against invaders, hoping to die and become a martyr for the cause. The highest principle of Lawful Good slaughters millions of its own Lawful Good allies to
create martyrs for those that can achieve more.
Good slaughters Good here. Lawful Good archons sacrifice themselves to give greater glory to others. Perfect good kills itself, rather than represent itself as less than perfect.