Elder-Basilisk
First Post
Kahuna Burger said:
It seems to me, however, that, in order to get a large number of people to fight and die--not simply philosophers who evaluate the greater and the lesser evil and choose one so that as few as possible may die for such individuals will rarely if ever (I'd say never if I weren't trying to be careful) compose a majority of any society--you need people to believe the sentiment that it is good and heroic--not merely acceptable--to fight to defend your country, your people, and your way of life.
It also seems to me that there is an important difference between mourning enemy dead, mourning them with your own, and mourning them as your own. (I realize that you used the middle terminology but I'm not certain you were making this distinction). Good men on one side would mourn the death of good men on the other--I don't think that is in question. To mourn a foe with your own suggests a very strong emotional attachment to them. To mourn a foe as your own suggests an even stronger attachment--and one that would likely be the undoing of a society that held it. If you consider the death of an enemy to be as great a loss as the death of a friend, it is likely that you will allow your friends to die rather than slay a greater number of enemies. And the courses likely to result in the fewest total deaths are seldom likely to be the courses most likely to result in victory save when one side completely overmatches the other.
To tell the truth, even mourning enemy dead with your own seems likely to lead to defeat. There is a good reason that no German, Japanese, or Iraqi soldiers are interned in Arlington. And, if they were--even without military ceremonies, I doubt it would be very good for morale. Many soldiers and their families would probably see it as an insult to their sacrifice.
A truly unprovoked invasion by the fundamentally evil, is the strongest test case for the theory that no war will ever be good but will rather, at best, be a necessary evil. While this may be a rare event--and perhaps unheard of IRL--as you point out, it is a staple of fantasy literature. It is also the extent of the logical claim made in the "necessary evil" assertion. A society that considers most wars to be necessary evils is very different from one that considers all wars to be, at best, necessary evils. (Especially since, even IRL, the myth that a particular war IS a completely justified response to the fundamentally evil is a common piece of propaganda. (It is clearly the message of most WWI and WWII propaganda posters). The lack of any belief in good war would make such propaganda ineffective--and while that might be good, it might also sap the will of a nation to the point that it is incapable of resisting; I suspect that such myths and simplifications are necessary to engage the resolve and emotions necessary for victory in a war between closely (or something like closely) matched powers).
And the idea that any society could behave in ways that prevents invasion in the first place seems to me to give short shrift to the aggression and evil inherent in humanity (which I take to be inherent at least in neutral D&D races and possibly in some good ones). The assumption that even neutral nations and people will always behave reasonably and rationally seems somewhat naieve in a world where pride, honor, precedent, and the need to maintain the appearance of strength, resolve, and independence are as much a factor in the affairs of nations as economic advantage and justice.
This idea seems to me to underestimate the influence of greed, envy, pride, and stubborness in world affairs. If the ways of the "nasty" barbarians indicate that goods won by conquest are more honorable than goods won by trading (not exactly an unheard of idea in the history of human cultures) and they wish to remain in their desert until changing climate and expanding populations drive them out, in what meaningful sense have you "chosen" to "allow" them to become trapped there? And what course of action by the neighboring nations would be likely to avert war?
And in the case of the river port, in what sense is creating prosperity possible without "allowing" the port to become key to how well off both you and your neighbor are? (It is quite likely that, even should the port be entirely cut off from the neighbor's economic system and have nothing to do with how well off they are, they might well see making war and capturing it as a means to becoming better off. In fact, it is probably more likely to occur than if you were to "allow" it to become important to your neighbors well-being by trading with them. Many wars have started because a prosperous area refused to trade or interact with a militarily strong neighbor while trade and economic ties are often seen as a disincentive to war).
Both of these examples seem more like spin to justify aggression (the spin from WWII (Lebensraum) and the invasion of China by western powers (important to economic well-being)) than any real insight. There is almost no possible aggression that could not be justified upon such grounds.
Only if you suppose that the world also strives to avoid evil and cleave to good. Among the ancients, it was often thought more advantageous to possess the appearance of virtue without its actual substance than true virtue--more important to possess an unblemished reputation than an unblemished soul. That, at least, is Thrasymachus's argument in the Republic and it bears more than a slight resemblance to some passages of Machiavelli's Prince.
A world which believed that war was, at best, a necessary evil but also believed that it was better to inflict evil than to suffer it might well have an even bloodier history than our own. At least a large portion of our philosophers and divines have taught that it is admirable to suffer evil rather than to inflict it.
Also, considering the number of wars that have been sold to their participants (on both sides) as just actions, it is not inconcievable to think that a similar number could also be sold as necessary evils. Indeed, a populace universally used to the idea that evil can be necessary might be even more receptive to the idea that any particular evil is necessary than our historical populations have been to the idea that injustice is just.
Not that I think such a state of affairs could last very long; I think that engaging in necessary evils would either soon come to be seen as admirable--and therefore good in the same less precise sense that the PHB description of neutrality uses when it says that neutrality, rather than Good, is the best alignment--or that the evil would be so emphasized that the conditions of necessity would be more an more stringent to the point of impossibility. (Or at least stringent enough that, in acting to fulfill them, the nations that held them would fall to others who were less scrupulous and were willing to use their hesitancy to engage in war to their own advantage).
You'd have to give up on the idea of widely variable (human, etc) and inherently neutral races as well. I would certainly miss those and I suspect you would also.
