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<blockquote data-quote="willpax" data-source="post: 374691" data-attributes="member: 1602">To answer the original question, it seems that most of the posters on this thread see evil as an absolute; most see it as a particular force with particualr embodiments, and only a few like their game worlds to be colored in many shades of gray. The reason for this preference seems to be that they see the real world as a world with little that can be confidently described as unquestionably evil, and find the moral clarity to be enjoyable. I apologize if I have asserted something that people disagree with; this is simply my interpretation of the general lines of the discussion so far. I think Kamikaze Midget's question about why the powerful forces of good don't simply wipe out evil has a long history within the Christian tradition, where an all-powerful God has a history of allowing evil things to happen. To my knowledge, no one has given a good answer to that question except Job, who argues that all of our answers are totally inadequate. Moorcock does a lot with the idea of cosmic balance (in his books, between law and chaos). Either force taken to an extreme leads to emptiness and sterility. Some of our other definitions of evil (as the infliction of suffering, as the privileging of self over others) are a bit more situational in practice, but suffer from the same overall logic. If we had a world with no suffering, then the avoidance of suffering would not be an understandable goal; likewise, if everyone privileged others over self at all times, there would no longer be a self to privilege, making the moral imperative meaningless. Maybe Derrida and the deconstructionists are right: every concept carries its own negation within it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="willpax, post: 374691, member: 1602"] To answer the original question, it seems that most of the posters on this thread see evil as an absolute; most see it as a particular force with particualr embodiments, and only a few like their game worlds to be colored in many shades of gray. The reason for this preference seems to be that they see the real world as a world with little that can be confidently described as unquestionably evil, and find the moral clarity to be enjoyable. I apologize if I have asserted something that people disagree with; this is simply my interpretation of the general lines of the discussion so far. I think Kamikaze Midget's question about why the powerful forces of good don't simply wipe out evil has a long history within the Christian tradition, where an all-powerful God has a history of allowing evil things to happen. To my knowledge, no one has given a good answer to that question except Job, who argues that all of our answers are totally inadequate. Moorcock does a lot with the idea of cosmic balance (in his books, between law and chaos). Either force taken to an extreme leads to emptiness and sterility. Some of our other definitions of evil (as the infliction of suffering, as the privileging of self over others) are a bit more situational in practice, but suffer from the same overall logic. If we had a world with no suffering, then the avoidance of suffering would not be an understandable goal; likewise, if everyone privileged others over self at all times, there would no longer be a self to privilege, making the moral imperative meaningless. Maybe Derrida and the deconstructionists are right: every concept carries its own negation within it. [/QUOTE]

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