Posted by Pico(IMM) on December 13, 1999 at 23:32:12:

In Reply to: Re: THE LIGHT posted by Bookrat on December 13, 1999 at 13:31:47:

> Twist wrote:

I think it rather apparent that I wrote these
comments, not Twist. I'll try not to assume
that the rest of what you wrote is based on
similar misobservations.

> > You seem to be one who thinks that law & order
> > is inherently a morally good institution and
> > that all evil must be anarchic. In fact you
> > can reason with evil people. If someone is
> > mugging a helpless old lady for her $50 and
> > I offer the hoodlum $500, in most cases he'll
> > stop.

> I beg to differ, but perhaps we're coming at it from
> different perspectives.

> If a mugger is robbing an old lady, he feels
> confident doing so because he has little fear
> of the (immediate) consequences. She can't hurt
> him, he gets her $50. If I walk up to the mugger
> and offer him $500 to stop, then unless I'm
> willing to fight, there is nothing to prevent
> him from just taking her $50 and my $500. There
> must be an unspoken 'or else' to my offer of $500;
> if not, it's meaningless.

> This is the state that I think is being decried;
> there is no "or else" for the lightwalkers. They
> can talk until they're blue in the face; if they're
> pacifists, what are their other options? How does
> it benefit me to change my ways? Why not just burn
> that orphanage in Balator, then kill you and take your
> stuff too?

If you're dumb enough not to recognize the
mugger's motivations and methods and don't
take this into account when making your offer,
you're the one who is being irrational, not
the mugger. For if you leave you're $500
unguarded (i.e., not willing to fight to
protect it as your counter-example supposes)
it's quite reasonable to expect the evil person
to try and take it from you as well as the
original $50. Yes, the mugger takes into
consideration what his rewards will be and
the chance and magnitude of punishment for
taking these rewards, but doing so is an act
of a rational person. My point is that there
is nothing inherently irrational about evil.
Goods do not have a monopoly on reason.

As for the pros and cons of pacifism vs. violence
in the face of moral enemies, I will not get
into a philosophical debate about this. Ghandi
believed in peaceful methods to achieve goals,
Roosevelt acted and often spoke about the
necessity of war. This isn't to say anything
about what conflicts they employed their beliefs
in and if it was the correct path, My
point of the previous post was not to favor
one over the other, it was to say both are
viable alternatives to the good-aligned role.

About writing that pacifists are screwed because
they have no "or else" and that there are no
options for them, I'd simply say that this is
the same dilemma pacifists in real life face.
Since I personally don't adhere to beliefs of
total pacifism, I can't give you the answer
you want. If you can't think of any, maybe
you should talk to a live pacifist; if you
don't think it's possible to be a pacifist,
then don't be one. There's no obligation in
Thera that if you're good-aligned that you
must be pacifist in any way.
is the

> > One just needs to reason with
> > an evil person differently since they have
> > different goals and priorities.

> A: Mister evil fighter, please come help me kill this dragon. I know you won't do it out of the goodness of your heart, but I'll pay you 5000 gold.
> B: (kills A, takes his gold and his stuff, and doesn't have to fight a dragon.)

> Yeah, okay, A is stupid... but the point is that you
> can't reason with someone whose word means little or
> nothing when there's immediate personal gain to be had.

>
> > As for evil only obeying laws due to fear of
> > punishment (you mystify my about adhering to
> > moral codes due to fear since, by definition
> > evils do not follow moral codes),

> The Law is the Moral code. It is
> a codification of the morals of the society in
> which the Evil (and good and neutral) people live.
> For a good person to abide by it should not be (as)
> difficult, because it puts down in writing how honest,
> decent, just people *should* act.

You differed with me above when I wrote that
the original poster was confusing law & order
with good morality and I see it again here.
If a morally good body creates such
laws, then yes, those laws put "down in writing
how honest, decent, just people *should* act,"
but there's no requirement that a morally good
body create laws. If an evil body (person or
group) established law, there's no reason to
establish how good, honest, decent, just, (insert
whatever morally good adjective you want here)
should act in those laws. Most likely those laws
will codify how subjects *should* act in order
that those in power benefit.

>
> > they follow
> > laws for almost the same reason goods do. The

> Again, I differ - note the above point. Evil and good will
> follow meaningless laws (speeding, jaywalking, littering)
> for the same reasons -- fear of punishment. They will follow
> 'greater' laws (rape, burglary, murder) because the good person
> was brought up to know that those things are wrong, and because
> the good person has empathy for the other. Evil people have
> little or no empathy, and do whatever they can to push themselves
> ahead, even at the expense of others.

Each alignment (assuming rationality) does or
does not follow the laws based on whether or
not they believe it furthers their goals. In
the misdemeanor case, neither breaks the law
because being punished does not further their
goals. In the felony case, the good does not
break the morally good-defined law because not
doing so furthers their good beliefs, whereas
the evil would break the law because (I'm
assuming) rape and murder would somehow
further their goals.

>
> > > For a RL example, look at the appeasement strategy that the Allies employed with Germany prior to WW2. By giving the Nazis what they wanted, this just encouraged them to seek more and take advantage of the Allies generosity. Eventually, when WW2 started, the Allies, though they were morally in the right, had to resort to brutal, total, unrestrained warfare to defeat the evil, genocidal empires of Germany and Japan.

> > Do you mean to say that evils live more by the
> > code of the Iron Fist than goods? Maybe you're
> > right, maybe you're wrong. I guess it depends
> > if you are out of the mold of Theodore Roosevelt
> > or Mohandas Ghandi.

> The point of Mohandas Ghandi was to make *non-evil* people see
> how what they had been doing was oppressing another populace of
> *non-evil* people. (Unless you think that Imperial Britain was
> by definition Evil, in which case that's a different argument.)
> His actions also brought the attention of the world to the situation,
> who then put political pressure on England to change. In Thera, there
> *is* no outside force that can cause the Empire to change, and even
> if there were, would they care? They are convinced that they are right,
> and that running the world their way is the best results. There is no
> arguing with the boot of a dictator. Ther is compliance, or there is
> resistance.

> > > Respectfully, the Imms have over-emphasized the pacifistic nature of good. While compassion and generosity are all well and good, hardcore evil needs to be fought, not pampered and cuddled. This is why Knights failed, since their Honor allowed themselves to be taken advantage of, and this is why Dawn is considered to be such a non-factor as a force against evil. Not only does it have pacifistic leanings but its powers are laughably poor, some would say the worse of any cabal next to troupe. How can they aid the light if they can’t even stay alive?

> > > Evil flourishes in Thera because it has absolutely nothing to fear. You’re not going to stop that Necro from ranking on balator orphans by asking him nicely, you have to put the fear of retribution and judgement into him. Dawn can take all the moral high ground it wants, but that won’t stop those 6 Imperial Heroes or that Scarabite Lich from raping Thera at will.

> > Evil has almost always flourished in Thera.
> > Why? I think the answer is fairly simple --
> > it's easier to play an evil character (or
> > especially a neutral-aligned character that
> > tends toward evil) than it is to play a good
> > aligned character. No PK restrictions, no
> > need to worry about going all-out for the
> > best set of eq you can get, can kill any mob
> > for exp, don't have to go out of your way
> > to help people, etc., etc.

> I can't argue with this point, so I won't. In my opinion,
> it strikes at the heart of the matter, and is the greatest
> single reason for the 'tilted scales' -- people are
> intrinsically lazy, and it's too much effort to make a
> Lightwalker than a neutral/evil Imperial.

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