A Karma Question

Aug 13 18:04 UTC 1998

Why is it that I want to undo some of the evil I have done in the past, yet
still remain proud of some more recent evils?

response 2 of 47:

Aug 14 05:10 UTC 1998

Some of the "recent" evils aren't all that recent, really.  It's almost as
if I'm attempting fot balance with just a slice of evil to tip the scale.

response 4 of 47:

Aug 14 17:27 UTC 1998

That's because evil is a conept that is too hard to confine to a definition
since everyone has their own take on it - same with good, neutral, order, and
chaos.  I guess in my case I mean "negative" actions, thus adding to the "bad"
karma pile rather than the "good" karma pile.

response 6 of 47:

Aug 17 16:22 UTC 1998

So stealing medicine to care for your sick child because you can't afford it,
and your child will die before you *can* afford it, is evil, because you're
harming the owner of the medicine.
  
But not stealing medicine to care for your sick child, given the context
above, is evil, because you're harming your child.

Sorry, John, that definition doesn't work for me.

response 8 of 47:

Aug 17 16:49 UTC 1998

Brighn, you give a good example of the situational ethics juggling act, but
I would make a distinction there, between *evil* and breaking a law.  If we
hold individual lives to be sacred, or at least very important, then we might
be able to say that the owner of the medicine, if he/she willfully withholds
it (refuses a payment agreement or price break, is unwilling to even consider
acts of charity, etc.), is committing evil.  I don't know if I'd call it evil,
if the parent is caught in a bind between legality and care of the child, and
hesitates until life is lost. 
The situation of those who refuse medical intervention for their kids because
of religious beliefs is even tougher-Their religion says it would be wrong,
even evil, to tamper with "god's will" in accepting medicine.  But the kid
may not be old enough to make such a choice.  Can we impose our own values-
that killing a child through "neglect" is evil?  Whose values are more valid?
Bjorn, the categories you mention are useful for gaming, but in real life it's
not so black and white- You can't *have* order without chaos--which order?
There's no one total picture or pattern.  And more, order-form- without
chaos-motion/change/force- will not support life.  On the other hand, chaos
without order will not support life.  Even "anarchists" form groups,
organizations, use the rules of grammar to write treatises...There *is* no
neutrality, just balance or apathy <g>. And this current definition points
out that we cannot so neatly box up and lable good and evil.

response 10 of 47:

Aug 29 19:08 UTC 1998

BTW Kami, what you talk about as Balance is how gaming takes Neutrality.

Secondly, I think AD&D's Nine Alignment system does an accurate representation
of how *most* of the people in the world act, even if TSR does contradict its
own statements from the paragraph descriptions in their description of the
Nine Alignment party and why it isn't a good idea to play an evil character,
or the evil characters working with good and neutral aren't playing their
alignments well.  Heck, in AD&D, evil is defined as selfishness about
advancement in the world.  I think that it may suit an evil person's interests
to help a good and neutral aligned party, because the evil character is having
FUN.  Money isn't the only motivation there is, but I am once again digressing
too far.

response 12 of 47:

Aug 30 05:58 UTC 1998

Jazz, I would tend to agree with you, but don't forget that this argument is
still pretty active among philosophers.

response 14 of 47:

Sep 1 05:12 UTC 1998

Once again, I rely on gaming to use distinction here, o well.  I guess I can't
avoid it since most people in the world actually do act according to the
*paragraph* of description under each of AD&D's 9 alignments.  The denial that
a being's actions can be good are evil is an admission of one's True
Neutrality.

response 16 of 47:

Sep 2 01:14 UTC 1998

Would you call it sick if the idea came from any other source?

response 18 of 47:

Sep 2 12:22 UTC 1998

        Re #16:  

        I suppose I should clarify, since the statement (which was more of an
emotional one than a logical one) has caused so much controversy.  Cant'
unspeak a comment in cyberspace, or ON cyberspace.org.

        To some degree, a morality system adapted from fiction causes less
concern than a morality system adapted from role-playing, because fewer people
are likely to become wrapped up in a single work of fiction than years of
role-playing, though fiction can influence someone greatly (I'd like to credit
Neal Stephenson for really opening my eyes to the nature of words, for one,
and I can see an author's ideas about morality having a similar effect).  I've
known too many people who believed themselves to be vampires or red dragons,
based on their AD&D experiences ... it's almost as if there are people out
there who have trouble seperating guided fantasy from reality.  So I'm really
very wary of any ideas that come out of RPGing.

response 20 of 47:

Sep 2 18:09 UTC 1998

        I don't think I've seen anyone get so wrapped up in a novel that
they've lost the distinction between fantasy and reality, but then most of
my knowledge of that subset comes from gamers, not con-dom.  Maybe it's
intellectualism, but someone who was inspired by _Finnegan's Wake_, or _The
Stranger_, or a work of literature intdended as a carrier of the author's
beliefs, is less a cause for concern than someone being inspired by a game.
Almost all gamers are able to draw that distinction, but those who don't ...

response 22 of 47:

Sep 3 04:38 UTC 1998

        In a way, but there's nothing inherently wrong with having different
standards for different situations - the problem is having, say, a standard
for men and a standard for women in areas where the genders should be treated
equally.  It doesn't hold, even for genders or races, in other situations -
clearly you'd want more urinals in the men's room than in the women's.  

        The only err I can see in the above argument is you're assuming that
I generally make assumptions based on insufficient evidence;  I'm not going
to pass judgement on a person's sanity based on how much they read, or what,
I'm just stating that I've seen more gamers lose it than avid readers.

response 24 of 47:

Sep 3 06:37 UTC 1998

#22> but you HAVE passed judgment. the mature thing to do is to apologize.
true, you can't unspeak something, but you can overtly indicate that you
didn't intend harm, rather than simply trying to gloss over it