When exactly did the "fictional characters shouldn't

>>54980106
From my guess, you start trying to round out the villains and give them a worldview based on being evil, and it eventually turns into people sympathizing with some elemetn and turning them into dindus

>>54980106
Around the time people started complaining about liberals/leftists demonizing every ideology under the sun.

>>54980469
But doesn't that imply that some ideologies are just evil by default according to them?

>>54980106
as awesome as having a super evil skeletor who is fueled by evil, and sees good as a singular thing to be destroyed, some people prefer a less obvious target

>>54980658
That doesn't answer my question

File: Kokuko Priestess.jpg (421KB, 1000x1129px) Image search: [Google]

421KB, 1000x1129px

It started when people wanted depth with their antagonists.

Then again, this is one of those "badwrongfun" threads, isn't it?

>>54980703
depth at the expense of archetypal character strength is lame

That's why more classical adventures have a deep, more relatable secondary bad guy, and a purely evil main bad guy

>>54980106
When people got bored of Black/White morality in their fiction.
Now people are getting bored of more Grey morality in their fiction, wanting a return to Black/White.
It'll cycle around again at some point.

File: (((skaven))).png (6KB, 252x243px) Image search: [Google]

6KB, 252x243px

>>54980106

Warcraft Orcs literally became what they are because a YA author decided to turn them into an oppressed minority who dindu nuffin wrong and was trying to get they life own track befo' cracka-ass Whitey and Dwarfy and Elfy started arresting him cuz dey rayciss n sheeit

>>54980106
>>54980757
Balance is important. Sure, you need to make players think about their decisions, but at some point you've gotta let them wail on some baddies.
Some people are just fucking dicks and deserve to have their shit shoved in until it comes out the other end.

File: 468px-Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Wanderer_above_the_sea_of_fog.jpg (54KB, 468x599px) Image search: [Google]

54KB, 468x599px

>>54980106
When people tried to put the same into fantasy the LToR was based on rejection of. Fully rounding out the 'why' of a villain only makes sense if you are having parts of the story from their point of view ( works in novel, not so much in TTRPGs) or if there is a discovery story arch. Most of the time when war happens only the leaders know the fine points of the 'why' with the rest just knowing 'what sounded good in a speech aimed at making the other side look bad' and bits of gossip. That goes double if you are fighting a pre-modern war.

For the first go around of it...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism

File: default.png (38KB, 810x407px) Image search: [Google]

38KB, 810x407px

>>54980106
>When exactly did the "fictional characters shouldn't just be evil by default" meme start?
Phrased like that?
Two days ago, apparently.
Care to phrase it in a way that makes more sense?
Are you referring to a whole race described as evil, like your pic would imply?
Or are you referring to some practice of not having any characters be "evil" that you believe to be a meme?
Please clarify.

>>54980106
Tolkien himself started down that path in some of his later letters. He wasn't fully comfortable with the implications of an always-evil race.

>>54980940
Damn Catholics

>>54982729
Sounds like you're the evil one that deserves to die.

>>54980106
when people looked at stories as actual art and not just what your group DM puts together in a weekend

File: 292.jpg (23KB, 436x432px) Image search: [Google]

23KB, 436x432px

>>54980106
Because evil races tend to be very prone to proactive extermination from other races that are concerned with their own survival. Then again being an explosive reproducer can make up for being a universally despised menace.

<<54982729
I'm glad to have experts on human races on a Martian nut-threading board. I want to know more about how Muslims are a race and how every single Jew and black person is morally bankrupt.

>>54982706
I get the reference you're making. I don't like it, I don't like you for making it, but I will acknowledge that I get it.

>everything must be the same forever
>but if anyone rips off tolkien I will lambaste them

why is /tg/ so outwardly retarded lately?

File: james_holmes.jpg (58KB, 992x558px) Image search: [Google]

58KB, 992x558px

>>54982826
I'm sure you're a fine specimen of the master race and not projecting your insecurities/latent homosexuality at all.

>>54982933
Well, I'd be inclined to assume the people who hate things not being standard pseudo-tolkienian fantasy and the people who hate standard pseudo-tolkienian fantasy are separate people who just happen to both be posting anonymously on the same board, but I could be wrong.

File: sleeping-beauty-disneyscreencaps.com-7929.jpg (234KB, 1920x752px) Image search: [Google]

234KB, 1920x752px

>>54980106
I don't know, but I hate it. I want my villains to just be bad guys again.

What's weird is that I'm saying this even as I hate the "all orcs are evil" meme. I like the idea of good or "average" orcs or hobgoblins or whatever who are just trying to get by the only way they know how.

But I want VILLAINS again. Not bad guys, not antagonists, not opponents. VILLAINS.

>>54983045
It's not lazy it's pure and inspiring.

If anything it forces the writer to be as imaginative as possible in order to explore the ramifications of such an unrealistic character motivation. It forces you as a writer to question the absolute nature of evil beyond subjective interpretations. It makes the character alien to human concerns, and therefore more impressive as an antagonist.

Rationalizing evil by subordinating it to relatable motivations only weakens it. It makes the villain too rational to be properly villainous and brings him back down to the rank of mere threat. It sabotages any attempt to explore metaphysical notions in a poetic way.

"How do I write a character who is unquestionably, unarguably, objectively evil" is a far more challenging and thought-provoking question than "Why is the antagonist being a dick?"

>>54983088
Choice. 9001 orcs pillaging because they live in shitholistan where nothing grows is fine. An orc warlord deciding his enemies don't need faces or eyes is fine. 9001 orcs simultaneously deciding their enemies don't need faces or eyes smacks of either oversimplification, fetish, or latent racism.

>>54983174
Or maybe I just want an entire country populated by Black Metal stereotypes because it's cool.

>>54983130
>is a far more challenging and thought-provoking question
It really isn't. The answer is often the same and it's often boring.

It might not be lazy, since you can put a lot of effort into pretty much anything, but it's most definitely boring.

>>54983209
What is the answer then?

I mean the correct answer, not the lazy answer.

Nothing is as entertaining as imagining displays of evil intent. Trying to come up with character motivations for an antagonist is both piss-easy and dull.

>>54983233
Nah, having an unquestionably evil antagonist leads to basically the same story every time. Nobody needs to think, heroes get up to beat people up without feeling bad about it, bad guy dies, good guy wins, everybody goes home happy. No buildup, no tension, no pay-off.

It's incredibly dull, after you've seen one you've seen them all.

And the best part is that it doesn't even matter. Nobody cares how an evil character like that is written, it's just another obstacle to overcome on the road to a "happy ending." All the edgy displays of torture, all the massacres and madness and all the evil monologues can't make up for a shallow premise.

>>54983290
a premise is only as good as its execution, and a purely evil villain allows for WAY more creative stuff to happen than a villain who's constrained by realistic motivations.

It's so obvious.


You're thinking purely in terms of "but how am I going to shoehorn muh moral dilemmas into the story if I can't guilt-trip the heroes into sparing the bad guy?" well it's easy; make it so that the heroes have to hurt good guys in order to defeat the bad guy. it's exactly what a really evil bad guy would force the heroes to do anyway.

>>54983290
You can't really pretend that antagonists with pathos don't all have fundamentally the same story as well:

>"Something something bad childhood, something something needs of my people, something something missed opportunities, something something the lesser of two evils, something something and that's why I need to kill all the Jews."

Every damn time. I'm sick of rants and justifications. I want to hear a villain pleasantly talk about how great it is to be evil again.

>>54983130
By your definition, a mass murderer secretly tanking economies to justify ethnic cleansing to attain godhood isn't good enough because they have a motivation.

By your definition, the best villain would be a giant rock floating in space, covered with giant magical space snakes which happens to head toward a planet simply because for some reason it's attracted to planets with large amount sentient life.

Either that or the Joker.

Actually, those both things that could be pretty interesting antagonists in a story. Hmmm, I'll concede that to you.

I dunno, personally, the moment something becomes so hell bent in causing destruction and suffering for it's own sake that it has no motivation, not even simple sadistic pleasure in causing harm, in my eyes it stops being a force that can be categorized as evil and more of an event that is happening.

>>54983367
Precisely

that's why there's a challenge in writing an evil character who doesn't merely seek self-gratification

>>54980106

Irrelevant. All we know is that shit needs to get dialed back a bit.

>>54983334
>constrained by realistic motivations.

Who said anything about the motivations having to be realistic? A delusional person with autism performing seemingly random acts of terror simply because it fits within some complex mathematical pattern they perceive in society would just be as cool.

A narcissist serial killer who murders simply to achieve some perverted sense of immortality in the media is a motivation.

>>54983335
I don't need to pretend because it's true.

Not my fault that the only stories you read and play are boring carbon copies.

File: Neckbeards.png (127KB, 345x337px) Image search: [Google]

127KB, 345x337px

>>54980106
The archetypical evil by default concept is the demon.

The mythological concept of demonic entities originates in the ideas of natural forces such as disease or famine which must be placated by ritual means to ward them off.

In that perspective then the meme is obvious. The developed world has become divorced from and insulated from mass disease and death. They no longer fear the natural world and so a story of a struggle versus natural forces is no longer appealing to them.

If we want to tell a story about natural forces that scare people in the developed world then we should use symbols that reflect modern fears and problems. I identify as chief among these: obesity, drug addiction, depression, child abduction and loneliness.

So making a modern monster that is scarier to modern audiences:

- They are fat.
- They are addicted to magic.
- They live in hovels and rarely venture outside.
- They rape little children.

File: the_tower.png (255KB, 454x801px) Image search: [Google]

255KB, 454x801px

>>54983388
Fair enough, interesting concept you got there. Can't say I can grasp the whole of it with my feeble mind but it does intrigue me.

Well, if it's any help to your writing endeavors, personally I've always found unfinished towers under construction to be interesting symbol of evil so vast and absolute as to be almost unknowable.

The final goal or outcome being something so horrific, that even being unfinished it remains an icon of fear.

>>54983335
Isn't committing an evil act for the sole pleasure of it technically a motivation or justification?

>>54980106
Maybe, there is a problem with protagonists of the story? If the "good guys" are just weak, amorph slime of a character and don't even take anything seriously, how can you hope of a villain with strong character and pure evil ideology behind him.

>>54980106
I don't know how many times I've explained this on this board by now. It's a cycle. It didn't start anywhere. One generation grows up with black-and-white stories about heroic heroes fighting villanous villains, and when it becomes time for them to tell their own stories they decide that it would be more refreshing if the heroes weren't entirely in the right and if the villains were a little more relateable and sympathetic. And so we get a new generation that grows up with grey-and-grey stories about anti-heroes and misunderstood villains, and when it becomes time for them to tell their own stories they decide that it would be more refreshing to tell simpler adventure stories about dashing heroes and monstrous villains. And so the cycle continues.

>>54980628
conservatives in the bible belt literally believe this though

>>54980106
It didn't start, you just grew older and outgrew the stories where such villains belong - tales for children.

>>54983871
Care to share examples of this cycle? Because I couldn't think of examples for this. When there was a time of grey villans en masse, tortured by society, nature and so on?

>When you make your main villian a real God of Evil without any real justification.

>>54980106
Well, look, here's how it goes:
If the antagonist represents some aspect of human life, one that brings suffering, such as natural disasters, or unrestricted violence, they can have no redeeming qualities. There's no good side to everybody in your village drowning in a flash flood.

However, as our societies become insulated from most natural threats, you know, people can still die in a hurricane, but cities aren't wiped out, tribes don't disappear because of a few bad harvests, etc, we look elsewhere to see the source of our suffering.
And, naturally, we look to each other.
In our stories, the villain is overrun by his dark side, his primal urges and he doesn't check them. The hero, meanwhile, is the man in a state of balance, someone who could fuck your shit up, but doesn't, and who rises against tyrants and madmen.
The wise hero overthrows the tyrant king and takes his place, becoming a good king under which his people flourish, that kind of deal.
Now, not all stories are about this, especially not religious stories.
Our stories have always divided the line between good and evil pretty clearly in how one uses their power.

I think the cultural turning point for this is in the aftermath of WW2. We saw that people, regular people, are capable of monumental evil. Moreover, we saw that we can work with our mortal enemies against other mortal enemies who present a greater threat.
There's also the case to be made that some of our ambivalence towards moral absolutes comes from sympathizers of that evil, or those who would claim moral relativism, which is a fairly new phenomenon.

So...just a number? It begins in the '60s, subtly, but only takes off in the 70s and the 80s and 90s are the most obvious results.

File: 50013520_p0.jpg (1001KB, 800x935px) Image search: [Google]

1001KB, 800x935px

Blatantly evil cultists that just want to destroy the world or something like that are fun.

Mostly evil but have a logical or relatable reason for doing what they do is also good. Like Teyrn Loghain.

It's important to mix them up from time to time, and to remember that variety is the spice of life.

>>54983555
Monsters have to cause suffering, like in your point №4, and not suffer themselves like in others. Better luck with baits next time.

>>54984122

I'm lovin the Hunter entering the Hunter's Dream just to have the Doll land a DDT on his ass.

>>54984078
Byronic (anti)heroes and gothic genre in XIX century, then black and white of golden age/pulp era fiction for working masses.

People who view fiction as black vs white morality plays are incredibly boring, sheltered people who have fallen so hard for the "just world" fallacy they're bordering on proposing. Having different cultures have different, alien values is interesting, but every culture has a core of "good" that they try to propegate. Leaving a deformed baby to die in the woods is horrific to a human, but orcs would find it unthinkable to let a child grow up deformed, knowing they may never be able to contribute to the tribe.

Morality isn't an objective thing. It's not even a real thing, it's a collective social construct.

>>54984170

Aren't Byronic heroes are pretty much just charismatic villains?
The whole shtick is that they know they're bad guys and don't care.

I mean, I assume OP wanted an antagonist who did evil things for what he believed to be good reason. Not shitty things just because he could and thought the world should fuck off.

>>54984205

10/10 this triggered me hard

>>54980106
I never liked moral grays. I think even villains should have some depth, but I think they should be evil, I don't need relateable but it's good if they're understandable. Wanna know the man I'm killing, but I still want to kill him y'know?

File: 1501605137726.jpg (83KB, 400x800px) Image search: [Google]

83KB, 400x800px

>>54980751
say what

>>54982729
>but tyrone and schlomo brought all the snacks today

>>54983982
And they're right.

File: watch_out_for_the_edge.png (220KB, 373x327px) Image search: [Google]

220KB, 373x327px

>>54984205

>>54982729
>Hi! I'm an asshole
Jump off bridge plz

>>54984238

I'm a firm believer in a time and place for everything. However I do agree the most garbage villains are the "DID NOTHING WRONG" ones.

I've been loving Fist of the North Star for just that reason. You get to know some of the villains but at the end of the day they are still shitbags who don't even know they are dead.

>>54984286
>>54984308
>t. liberacucks

>>54984208
Well I think there is more characters beside protagonist, antagonist and their immediate supporters. Unlike main characters, this extras usually have no story arc to explain their behavior beside it being "factory default", thus problem lies in "always evil" descriptions of sentient beings and thoughtless murderhobo behavior of so called good guys.

>>54984329

I'm an Aries thank you very much.

>>54984355

>characters beside protagonist, antagonist and their immediate supporters

There is literally not.

Well, technically you would change "immediate supporters" to "supporting characters" and that is all the characters in a story.

>>54980106
What is evil anyway? You kill others not for being evil, but for being hostile combatants resisting your agenda.

File: necrons_ooooo.gif (404KB, 550x600px) Image search: [Google]

404KB, 550x600px

>>54984401

>>54984363
>Well, technically you would change "immediate supporters" to "supporting characters" and that is all the characters in a story.
But that changes the whole meaning of the statement. "Immediate supporters" means characters who offer support to the protagonist or the antagonist in their endeavors to achieve their respective goals. "Supporting characters" by your definition refers to any character who doesn't fall into the first two categories in the list, which means it tautologically covers everything.

>>54980667
The answer is: it's boring. Oh the walking exp dispensers are doing their cliche March for world domination again. I wonder what thrilling character stories we can enjoy when our characters meet them? Maybe we will attack them with our weapons, or maybe they will attack us with their weapons. Such depth.

>>54984418

Yeah, I thought your statement was pointless.

So I changed it to something remotely useful.

>>54984441

> March for world domination again

Again? No wonder this adventure sounds boring, several factions have already marched for world domination.

>>54984455

Honestly it's kind of interesting. Especially if the GM has good world building skills or at least a cool story why none of them succeed.

>>54984468

>It's actually not boring if I put in a bunch of stuff personally to make it sound more interesting

>>54982803
IF YOU KILL HIM YOU WILL BE JUST LIKE HIM

>>54984494

If you kill your enemies, they win.

>>54984494
>>54984499

omg this logic is the most triggering thing I have ever seen.

Like, when I first saw it the story put in character reasons talking about it and exploring it. The concept had weight and made sense for the character.

Now it's like I see it and people just assume it's a big deal cuz "lul he iz gud guy"

>>54984329
>when you are against liberty
how about you have a democratic vote for a dictatorship?

>>54984504
It's always been a vacuous statement.
It assumes good and heroism come from innocence or naivete.
It does not.
Sheepdogs are descended from wolves, they have the same capacity for violence. Shit, I've seen two sheepdogs run off a bear.
Point is, a hero is someone who could be a villain, but chooses not to be. By doing the right thing.
Which, incidentally, means killing the bad guys in societies where incarceration isn't possible.
Sometimes killing them even then, if they're too dangerous to live.

>>54984559

Yeah, like I do think that we need to have thought about how actually hard it is to get a person to kill anther person, but at the same time saying "lul no killiez" is dumb as fuck.

>>54980106
Do you mean individual characters or whole races?

I think the latter happens mostly when writers expand the fluff of a fantasy setting and try to answer questions like "how do those orcs/gnolls/whatever live when they're not fighting?", "how do they procure food and tools?", "how do they manage to not kill each other off even though they're bloodthirsty and evil?". So the writers give them some form of social organization with a language, a crude economy or barter system, females and child-rearing practices, laws and customs, etc. After a while they look less and less like a swarm of vermin to be exterminated and more like sentient beings who fight and raid because it's in their culture rather than because they're innately evil.

Not saying that it happens every time but it's quite common. Orcs seem particularly susceptible to it (muh noble savage, muh shaman).

>>54984291
Well they wouldn't be left if they're conservatives.

>>54984614
> writers expand the fluff of a fantasy setting and fuck up answering questions like

ftfy

File: lame.jpg (213KB, 600x707px) Image search: [Google]

213KB, 600x707px

>>54980751
>depth at the expense of archetypal character strength is lame
This is particularly amusing when read as:
>depth at the expense of archetypal character strength is lamé

File: carlos.png (138KB, 350x350px) Image search: [Google]

138KB, 350x350px

>>54984626

>>54983174
>latent racism
You're one of those people who think that zombie fiction is all an excuse for people to fantasize about genociding minorities, I'll bet.

>>54980106
Welp, since we can't decide, I'll address both questions.

The idea that a specific fictional character shouldn't just be evil by default is dumb.
Sometimes, people are just evil for no clear, apparent reason and whether that's because there is no reason or because the reason is too subtle for us to discern is effectively the same.
Plus, evil robots are a thing.

The idea that a specific fictional character shouldn't just be evil by default is understandable, but not necessarily true.
Like another anon pointed out, demons are a thing.
But they would be necessarily foreign and alien to human life.
Describing more human-like races like orcs as "just evil" is often lazy and shallow.
Personally, I describe my race of not!orcs as having their own perspective, morality, culture, and beliefs, all of which include eating your face.
The PCs are not free to kill them on sight because they are Evil, but because they will likely eat their faces.

>>54984779

>but because they likely eat faces
Which makes them evil.

It's not even a point of view thing.
They actively flay and consume human flesh.
They're not just inhuman, which often means they're incompatible, they actively hurt humans.
What did you think Evil meant?

>>54984819
>What did you think Evil meant?
Apparently you think it means "they actively hurt humans", which makes humans evil.

If a dragon eats a human, does that make it evil, or hungry?
What if it was a starving lion?

It boils down to whether or not "killing humans for food" is an Evil act for any race that does it.
Which depends.

>>54984871

A lion is not evil, a lion has no conception of anything other than eating for food and fighting for territory.
A sated lion is pretty chill.

A dragon, however, *does* have a conception of self and others. It understands it has the capacity to cause suffering.
If it does so anyway, it is evil, like a human.
If it doesn't, then it simply has the capacity for evil, like a human.

If your not!orcs just act in ways that cause suffering, and understand that other beings exist and feel pain, they're evil. It doesn't much matter why they do it.

>>54984447
That's the exact opposite of what you did. You changed a statement that references specific types of characters into a useless statement that includes all possible character types through "X or not-X" logic.

>>54984871
If a lord feasts while the peasants who till his land and produce his food starve, is he evil?


>>54984559
Heroism requires self-sacrifice. If a hero goes against the laws and customs to kill a villain, he should then surrender himself and face the penalty for murder. Otherwise he's just an opportunist murderer. Ends do not justify the means, if you don't believe that you are no hero.

>>54984900
>Having a conception of self and others, understanding it has the capacity to cause suffering, and choosing to do so anyway is Evil.
Fair enough.
By this definition, my not!orcs have an Evil culture.
Technically, they could change their way of life so they do not need to eat other races for food, but change is hard, faces taste good, and why fix what isn't broken when it's easier to justify eating those outside your tribe as being fine?

But they are still not Evil as a racial trait.
Any one individual not!orc is perfectly capable of not being Evil, but is not very likely to be.

>>54984924
>If a lord feasts while the peasants who till his land and produce his food starve, is he evil?
Well, that's an evil act anyway.
Committing evil acts doesn't necessarily make you automatically evil.

>>54984924

This really depends on the law of the place in question.
I mean, where I'm from, defending yourself "with excessive means" is illegal. This means that if a dude breaks into my house, I gotta fisticuffs him unless he pulls a knife, and then I can't use too big of a stick or I go to prison.
In the US, you can shoot a burglar.

We're departing from the moral dilemma to one of legalism.
Let me ask you this:
Is the Joker not clearly guilty beyond redemption?
In any semi-realistic world, would he not be executed?
The cops in Gotham surely shoot live bullets, right? They're empowered to kill, because they're accountable.
Batman *isn't* accountable, which is why he doesn't kill.
It's not about self-sacrifice, it's about not enforcing personal judgements in a society that has sophisticated means of judging others.
Although, really, a couple of Arkham guards should just bite the bullet and execute 90% of the population.

>>54984989
Capeshit has very little to do with moral dilemmas. Most of the characters and plots barely have any internal logic and you should just take them at face value - man children like to look at their favorite men-in-tights get into "like totally cool fights bro" and the creators of the comics provide.

>>54984988
Why is it an evil act? The lord is a proper owner of the land and all its splendor, the peasants just occupy it.

If a prince ends up in a succession war with another contender, is it an evil act for him to send men to die in his name?

>>54985041
>Why is it an evil act?
He has a conception of himself and others, he understands that he has the capacity to cause suffering, and chooses to do so anyway.
It is Evil.

>If a prince ends up in a succession war with another contender, is it an evil act for him to send men to die in his name?
War is so full of evil acts that war itself might be considered an evil act.
War is also sometimes a necessary act.
Such is life.

>>54985041

As I pointed out in the self defense example, the law isn't the arbiter of good. It's the arbiter of order.

Robin Hood was the good guy because he fought against a tyrannical ruler.
30 years ago, it was a crime to own Jeans in my country.
Before '89, you could go to prison for saying the wrong thing.
40 years ago, you could be sent away and nobody would hear from you ever again.
A prince with a legal claim pursues it using the accepted tools of his time. Which is usually violence.
The Lord of a land is also responsible for his serfs. If he's got a surplus, he's expected to help alleviate the famine.
Unless you mean he's just wealthy and the peasants are poor. That's kind of the way things were. We could say it was a less just society than ours, but it was the best one at the time.

>>54985085

Yo, don't forget son, unless he's actively causing the famine by taking their food, then yes, absolutely evil.
If he just has a lot of food in a famine, he's not evil for having, or even wasting it. He's just a dick.

>>54980106
Everyone reaches that point. It starts with you loving your cartoon heroes defending the world. Then your teenage years hit and you're all up for the edgy bad guys because you believe your new contrarian worldview somehow makes you more mature.
And then you actually mature and realise that, although there are people whose behaviour truly is malicious, it is rarely because they are arbitrarily "evil", but because of an deeper goal that they pursue with reckless disregard for others, or they are disturbed on a psychological level that compels them to be aggressive and harmful to others. There is always a reason.
So making characters unapolegtically evil just doesn't cut it for you, anymore.
Mind you, you're not obligated to explain to your players those reasons, and neither are you obligated to show that grey morality. But you should always be aware of it, and you should never assume otherwise.
Demons are excluded from this. You can still whack it to your succubus waifu, though.

>>54985087
If the law, something created by many to service many, isn't the arbiter of good, what makes you think your personal opinion is any more qualified?

>>54985140

I just gave you some examples of unjust law.

Law, in the modern, democratic times, is generally just, or at least as impartial as people can make it.

Not so in the Soviet Union.
Not so in Nazi Germany.
Not so in any other time before the modern age.
The law was, more or less, what people thought was moral, not the other way around.

>>54984205
Good on you anon.

>>54984170
Then back to anti-heroes and noir crime dramas in the 50's and 60's, and then Star Wars came around and made heroic fiction cool again.

>>54980106
Because "evil" is just a word describign things we don't like. Nobody, under any reason, would ever consider themselves to be evil, because what they do is always what they think is the right thing to do (unless you're lazy and don't do shit, but that's still not evil, just lazy).
A liche who feels like taking over the world saying "I do this because it's the evil thing to do" is absolutely ridiculous. There is always a reason why the bad guys do what they do, and even if the entire world finds it evil, it's not inherently evil in the their minds.
A dark sorceror who wants to destroy humanity more often than not does it because he finds the entire humanity evil. A guy who makes deals with demons to get power does it because he thinks he deserves to be above everybody else, and needs that power to achieve such position.
At the end of the day, even literal biblical demons did the things they did becuase they liked it, and thus found it a nice thing to do, not because it was evil.
In fact, the cases of "it's evil ebcause that's how it is" in media are a huge minority, and usually used exclusively on tales for kids, to teach them about what they should not do or they'd be just like thatbad, evil guy.

>>54985318

I hope you're trying to be edgy and non-sensical.

Let's take the following example:
X flies to Pakistan.
X purchases 6 year old child slave.
X fucks the child to death.
X partially consumes the body.
X returns to his nice Western country.

Y does none of these things. Y lives like most people do, sometimes he's a dick, sometimes he's nice.

You would argue X and Y are morally equivalent?
Or would you say X has certain behaviors that set him apart from others?
That these behaviors, and by necessity, views, make him stand out?

And, if you had to generalize a word to describe these behaviors, what would that word be?

>>54980106
>>54980658
>>54980667
>>54984441
>>54984455

The reason for it is also because, logically, no such race should be capable of surviving for terribly long.

It's the Slytherin House question, namely "if everyone associated with it turns evil, why don't they just start genociding?"

the idea of a 'not all orcs' stance, while a bit contrived, does mean you have reasons to not just burn down every orc stronghold you see and feel no guilt about it.

>>54985101
>If he just has a lot of food in a famine, he's not evil for having, or even wasting it. He's just a dick.
See:
>>54985087
>The Lord of a land is also responsible for his serfs. If he's got a surplus, he's expected to help alleviate the famine.

>>54985409
Is X rich and part of the higher social class?

>>54985409
>You would argue X and Y are morally equivalent?
There's no such thing as a moral equivalent

That aside, you're missing the whole point. I'm not arguing who is more or less evil than who, I'm saying that when somebody takes an action, there's always a reason, and that reason is never "I'll do it because that's evil and I like being evil". Nobody is evil in their own minds.

>>54985463
Creating a weird thought experiment that exists in a vacuum is entirely pointless, anyhow.

People who do things like X don't generally function in society; they're a misfit and a burden. A well-adjusted member of society doesn't just go out and murder or rape someone, trying to apply the same moral standards to these completely different classes of people is pointless and the reason why we have a legal code that in theory applies fair punishments for well-defined breaches of accepted social conduct.

You could absolutely find someone who kills children because a dog told them to. They are malfunctioning and not a member of society, not "evil".

>>54985528
Okay? How does any of what you said relate to the matter at hands? This is not about being a functioning member on society, it's about the concept of creatures born inherently evil or villains being evil without any proper reason for it, just for the pleasure of evilness itself.

>>54985528

You're using different words to describe the same thing.
Someone who can't live with others, and causes suffering.
They're not just bunglers, it's on purpose.

You're creating these different categorizations without delineating what they're supposed to represent.

So, X, is malfunctioning.
What is evil?

Fun aside:
"mal" : latin root "mala" = "bad".
Bad functioning.

>>54985449

Those are both me, btw.
In feudal conceptions of obligation and Christian traditions, the Lord has a duty to alleviate their famines, if it's a result of war or bad weather. His right to rule is morally guaranteed by the Grace of God, after all.
If they decided to fight each other and raze their fields, he doesn't have to do squat.

In modern terms, he doesn't owe them anything beyond protection from outside threats, since those are more strictly the terms of the contract.

Our moral judgements tend to change depending on what's at stake.

>>54980763
But Garrosh did everything wrong.

File: 1498071661827.jpg (184KB, 920x673px) Image search: [Google]

184KB, 920x673px

>>54980106
When people started to question how cultures with villages, forts and such could ever build or maintain those things if they were constantly at each others throats.

>>54983088
>I like the idea of good or "average" orcs or hobgoblins
That's how I see it. I still have "truly evil" in my fantasy campaigns by using madmen worshipping evil gods, thralls, undead and demons.

>>54980703
Balloon tits were a mistake

>>54985463
In real life that's true but we're talking fantasy

>>54984819
>>54984900
t. radical vegan internet commando

>>54986178
Sure, but it simply doens't make sense from any perspective.
As has already pointed out before, a society composed on inherently evil guys would crumble upon itself because they'd be killing each other all the time, effectively destroying their own civilization.
An inherently evil individual who always chooses the most evil option available instead of, say, taking the one that gives him an advantage over others, would quickly find himself getting killed because the most evil options available are, more foten than not, also the worst choices you can make.

>but he doesn't HAVE to always take the most evil choice
If his decisions are actually based on anything else that's not just evilness itself, then he is not inherently evil and therefore doesn't fall in the "evil because why not" trope.

>>54986186

I'm not a vegan, son.
It's possible to raise healthy, happy animals for food.
And humans need to eat animals.
It's no more evil than the lion doing it.

Animals can't understand the future. They don't understand they're going to die.
They just know they're safe and not hungry and we let them breed.
So long as we don't keep them confined to tiny cages stacked on top of one another and actually let them move around, they don't suffer needlessly.

Factory farms are fucked up and illegal pretty much everywhere outside the US.

>>54986356
Question, are they also illegal in China and India?

>>54985528
>They are malfunctioning and not a member of society, not "evil".
You can be both malfunctioning and not a member of society and still be Evil.

>>54980106
Warcraft orcs act like Chad Uruks half the time, then swing about pretending to be honorable and shamanistic when it suits them to look good.

Camps were too good for them, none of them should have been allowed to survive past the second war.

>>54986447

Let me rephrase that then:
In the Western world.
You know, the actually civilized places.

>>54986587
You mean the places that don't have to feed in excess of 320 million people, and in many cases have less than 10% of that?

>>54986568
But anon, Doomhammer did nothing wrong.

>>54980796
Which Warcraft (which OP is attempting to make fun) is doing perfectly well. The main playable factions have a grey morality, but there's also the Burning Legion that's just a legion of baddies to fuck up.

>>54986625

You know Europe has over seven hundred million people, right?
Turkey is excluded from that.

What's your point, anyway?
I've previously said that we are as kind as we can afford to be, according to our circumstances.

Having secure, prosperous societies allows us to extend our consideration of suffering beyond ourselves and our immediate community.

If we lived 5000 years ago, we'd think it's perfectly normal to enslave the people from the next valley over.

>>54980106
Pure evil race or villain is a logical impossibility.
Forget your childish dualistic philosophies evil couldn't exist without good, good on the other hand can exist without evil. Evil is merely perverted imperfect from of good.
For example stealing is evil, right? But if you steal something you want you feel good and feeling good is good therefore this evil action of stealing stems from goodness not from evil."Pure" evil characters literally cannot exist and any attempt to create them is retarded if they could exist they would kill themselves instantly. Sympathetic villains are natural evolution from illogical "pure" evil villains. Only a contrarian would disagree

>>54984205
How's 8th grade? You enjoying Rick and Morty I take it?

>>54984205
>morality not objective
Stopped reading right there

>>54984441
>The answer is: it's boring.
the question in the OP was "WHEN" not "WHY" dumbass

>>54984205
Very few things are not on some level objective. Almost everything can be put to numbers.

>>54986674
>Which Warcraft (which OP is attempting to make fun) is doing perfectly well.
retconning all the previous antagonists to be dindus and using "muh corruption" as an excuse is not "doing perfectly well". It would be fine to introduce NEW antagonists that were gray but retconning previous antagonists to "actually they were being manipulated all along, the genocide was totally not their fault" is shitty writing.

>>54986740

Jesus Christ.
Is this a pasta?
Where you trying to sound as retarded as possible?

You've made me decide to petition for the Internet to be written solely in Classical Latin.
Only then can we be free of this evil.

>>54984989
>If a dude breaks into my house I gotta fisticuffs him
What kind of piece of shit country are you from? In the US we can stab, shoot, and do just about anything else to an unlawful home invader. I wouldn't want to live in a country where someone who breaks into my house is protected from me by the law.

>>54986806

In Communist countries, property rights do not matter as much as you potentially damaging one of the state's assets(people).
We haven't been officially Communist for over two decades, but a lot of the legislation hasn't caught up.

>>54983174
>latent racism.
you can't be racist against fictional creatures.

>>54986801
Not an argument cupcake :)

>>54983555
>So making a modern monster that is scarier to modern audiences:
all you need is
>- They vote for a political party the target audience disagrees with

>>54985463
That's bullshit though. Watch interviews with serial killers and you'll see some show no remorse at all. No justification. They just liked it. They liked harming others. Some even say they're evil, and say it proudly.
You obnoxious little twerp, I genuinely feel bad for your naive way of thinking.

>>54986806
We can't even do that. You just gotta call the police and lock yourself In The bathroom.

File: man-who-thought-hed-lost-all-hope-loses-last-additional-3189126.png (185KB, 500x649px) Image search: [Google]

185KB, 500x649px

>>54986818

The only thing that post argues for is a thorough eugenics program.
I have less faith in the human race than I did previously.
You sir, you truly deserve your Reddit Gold.

File: 18033890_1841370406186929_691897357980172586_n.jpg (15KB, 460x276px) Image search: [Google]

15KB, 460x276px

>>54986740

>>54986852 #
>>54986878 #
So can you faggots tell that is wrong with my post or are you going to keep posting reaction images?

>>54986852
>having faith in the human race
>having faith in any race
>not realizing that the material realm was a mistake

>>54987009
>feeling good is good therefore this evil action stems from goodness
That's your justification. Dribbling sophists like you that excuse evil should remove your stain from the world. It's that simple.

Damn, that brings me back to those days of young IB when trolls were crude and desperate.

>>54986991

It sounds like something a 14 year old wrote after binge watching all of Naruto.

1.
a) >childish dualistic philosphies
Don't insult people if you want to make a point.

b) every philosophical school has a notion of good and bad. Except postmodern thought.

2. >Evil is merely perverted imperfect from of good.
I presume the example will explain what you mean....Oh, wait, no. It's gibberish.

Let's break it down.
>Stealing is evil
From pretty much every facet of consideration, unless you believe the notion of property itself is immoral, but then you'd be making the case for theft from the species.
> But if you steal something you want you feel good
Go on.
>and feeling good is good
It might be your limited vocabulary working against you.
Obtaining what you want gives you *pleasure*.
Feeling pleasure is not inherently good, that is to say, good just because it exists.
Hedonists might say pleasure is the only good, but then they would claim suffering is evil. Pain and suffering are not the same either.

>therefore this evil action of stealing stems from goodness not from evil
Nope. Again, confusing pleasure with good.
Doing good things does not necessarily cause pleasure. Similarly, doing evil does not have to cause *you* suffering.
The rest of the post is pretty much incoherent, unless I try to torture myself just to explain why it's wrong.
But, since it's based on your earlier premises, which are clearly faulty, I don't have to.

>>54987100
You misunderstand
I am not excusing evil I am simply pointing out that evil is imperfect form of good and It can't exist without goodness also I told that dualism is retarded

>>54987143
Fucked up linking to you, somehow.
>>54987142

Also: Jesus Christ. It's like watching a man eating shit and laughing.

>>54983626
Yes, but the point is that a true villain doesn't dress up that motivation or try and provide any justification for what he's doing other than evil itself, or the simple fact that they find it fun. I miss the villains that just OWN the fact that they're evil and instead try and come up with a million justifications for why they're not or why it's "necessary".

There was a surprisingly great bit in a Transformers comic, I think one of the Dreamwave ones, that touched on this. The comic itself was otherwise bad, but Megatron got at least one great scene in it. Basically some human had previously been trying to remote-control Megatron and he'd since broken out of the remote-control, freed the other Decepticons, and was now enacting some plan while he dragged the human around like an abusive pet owner drags around a retarded puppy. And while he did he pointed out that humans live such short, fleeting lives that we have no proper understanding of "good" or "evil" in the universe, no time to properly figure out where we as individuals lie on the moral and ethical compass. Which is why humans can argue back and forth about whether or not person X was evil or whether or not person Y's actions were good - we lack the perspective of time that the millions-years-old Cybertronians have.

Then Megatron wanders off with the human, and meanwhile one of the other Decepticons asks Starscream what Megatron's plan is. And Starscream - himself millions of years old - responds with "Who cares? With Megatron, you know it's going to be evil - and evil is always so much *fun*."

>>54984694
It's funny when the zombie fiction has the one of the highest rates of survival for black characters in the horror genre.

>>54987158
To be fair to the guy, he is probably attempting to make a somewhat legitimate point about inherently normative charater of human nature, which is fundamental to quite a few contemporary meta-ethical theories of realist persuasion, as well as to pretty much every single virtue-based normative system ever since the old man Aristotle himself.

>>54980106
Middle school for most people, college for Americans.

>>54987340
Yeah something like that.

>>54986790
Sure, but those numbers and the math done on them will be shaped by the people who use and interpret those numbers.
Utilitarianism, the "numbers ethic" model, demands some absolutely silly things if "maximize happiness" is taken literally. We don't want a drugged-up slaveland, but that's one possible endgame for utilitarianism.

And most other ethical models are dependent on the culture they're placed in. SCT is completely dependent on the society, Divine Law is dependent on the religion, etc.
A 30 year old man marrying and functionally owning a 14 year old woman is abhorrent by modern western ethics, but go back two and a half millennia and it was normal. In fact, it would be the woman who refused to marry or obey who would be held to be acting unethically.
About the only ethical model that's invariant is Kant's, but it's so far removed from "common sense" morality as to be useless.

You absolutely cannot distance ethics from the people who are talking about them because ethics are shaped by people.

>>54987344
Hey, we're the ones who grow up with Superman plugged into our brains. Deprogramming(?) takes longer.

>>54984122
God, now whenever I see that image I think of that guy who fed a vegan pancakes because he only uses that image.

File: Make It Big (Phone).jpg (165KB, 707x936px) Image search: [Google]

165KB, 707x936px

>>54985970
How about a balloon butt?
Balloon Butt Evil Girl?

>>54992299
Ballon were a mistake

>>54988337
"Drugged up slaveland" is the only form of utopia that is actually possible. Brave New World did nothing wrong.

>>54992499
It may be the only realistic means of total happiness, but it sure as hell isn't one most people would opt into.

>>54986846
100% of the time those guys suffered some serious traumas as children and act on revenge or their mind was twisted like that, which implies that there's a reason for their actions and they weren't born inherently evil.
I like how you call me naive but then believe the words of a serial killer to be 100% true and totally not something their minds has made them believe as truth.

>>54985429

>It's the Slytherin House question, namely "if everyone associated with it turns evil, why don't they just start genociding?"


NOT ALL PEOPLE IN SLYTHERIN ARE FUCKING EVIL

AND YES SUCH RACES CAN SURVIVE FOR TERRIBLY LONG

Our own history shows evil societies that collapse only when the people within realize they don't want to be in an evil society and/or outside forces causes it to collapse.

>does mean you have reasons to not just burn down every orc stronghold you see and feel no guilt about it.
>every other kingdom is hunky-dory love each other and won't take advantage of people sending armies to take care of orc strongholds

The whole argument of "hurr durr evil races cant exist cuz bluh bluh bluh" always ignores the rest of the setting to create a strawman argument.

>>54986328

>As has already pointed out before, a society composed on inherently evil guys would crumble upon itself because they'd be killing each other all the time

Hey! Good realization why orcs are always depicted as a more tribal culture. Aren't you the smartest kid in the class?

File: 49d.jpg (47KB, 600x549px) Image search: [Google]

47KB, 600x549px

>>54992526
>>54992499

>>54992526
That's an argument against people. There's a lot of free information and cultural memes floating around, and most of them have a sinister purpose.

File: darkness 1.gif (801KB, 245x175px) Image search: [Google]

801KB, 245x175px

>>54992751
>having hope

>>54992767
Well no shit. Every single argument against utopias boil down to human failings.
If you didn't have to deal with humans being human, even a third grader could govern a utopia.

>>54992719
Dude, the tribalism does not solve that fucking problem. The tribalism is associated with Orks because tribalism is associated with primitive or unrefined, crude societies: with barbarism.

It is not an answer to "society composed of evil beings would not survive", because that applies to tribes as much as it applies to any higher and more refined forms of social organization.

>>54992821
>implying human failings are human alone
>implying Life itself isn't the root of the problem

A virus is the purest form of Life. It reproduces and expands, considering nothing else, and destroys all it touches.

>>54992821
All you have to do is excise humanity and you're good. Sin is weighting down the human race and the only way out is either by drugging your balls off, transcending via Childhood Ends or inventing an AI god and handing it the reins.

>>54992879
Excising humanity only removes one symptom of the disease that afflicts this universe. The chimpanzees, the dolphins, the octopodes, the corvids - all of them are just as dangerous, left unchecked.

Even the plants despoil everything they touch.

>>54986815
>you can't be racist against fictional creatures.
You lack imagination.

>>54992893
Berserker pls go, there's no goodlife sympathizers here.

>>54992863
>A virus is the purest form of Life. It reproduces and expands, considering nothing else, and destroys all it touches.
They're making you re-do Bio 1 before you graduate, aren't they?

>>54992821
>Well no shit. Every single argument against utopias boil down to human failings.
Actually, no.
Most arguments against utopias boil down to the fact that it's an inherent impossibility. It's literally IN THE NAME. As "utopia" means "not-a-place", or "impossible place". It's not about failings of humanity, it's about fundamental misunderstanding of the WHOLE WORLD as it is, on every level possible.
So not, it's not that people are failing, it's that it's an absurd, self-contradictory goal.

>>54992863
A virus is about as much alive as a computer script that copies itself over and over.

It's simply not.

>>54992841

>I have no idea how orc tribes are structured

>>54980106
Aren't orcs super rapey in tons of settings while uruk hai are born from mud?

>>54992969
That's just cynical bullshit. There can be utopia and peace on Earth if you first remove the human failings. Just nerve staple the drones.

>>54992992
You are right. Because ork tribes are not a real thing. That is absolutely besides the point.

>>54992879
>>54992893

I need more EDGY reaction pictures.

>>54992969

>I perfectly understand the world

>>54993024

>orcs in settings never have their tribal structure described

>>54993027
Edgy is teleporting behind a totally evil guy and eviscerating them with your hanzo steel while quipping.

Accepting that humanity is sinful and flawed is the core foundation of most spiritual and religious movements and the opposite of edgy.

Nirvana, Heaven, Technological Singularity are what happens when you remove the flawed nature of mankind.

>>54993013

>humans are incapable of controlling their actions

>>54992941
Came here to say this

Makes >>54992863 way funnier

>>54992989
Well, it's really semantics on how we define what "alive" is. Being comprised of cells currently excludes viruses (and self-propagating scripts), but that's a fairly arbitrary distinction.

>>54993067

> the core foundation of most spiritual and religious movements

Literal lie.

>>54993067
Do you truly believe you are special, even in the evils you commit?

>>54993013
>That's just cynical bullshit.
That is not cynical, nor bullshit. It's actually self-preservation. NOTHING has caused as much harm in human society than the delusion of utopia, the incredibly arrogant rejection of reality as it is, and the hope that human reason can lead to ideas better than reality. I'm not shitting about this at all.

Also, it's basic etymology.
>There can be utopia and peace on Earth if you first remove the human failings.
Utopia is a state of theoretical stability that the very existence of entropy and all subsequent effects it has, namely evolution and it's by-product, LIFE ITSELF does not permit. The moment you start ignoring or trying to circumvent the absolution of reality is the moment you are committing a very painful suicide. The flaws of humanity are flaws of reality that forms us. They exist for a reason.

>>54993047
Not perfectly, but better than you for sure.

>>54983555

Hmmm...

A modern world where some kinds of magic cause physical and mental corruption, forcing the practitioners to isolate themselves is hidden, filthy locations. The best way to fuel these magics is with the suffering and death of human sacrifices, turning these people into modern-day boogeymen.

This also means that more reputable wizards are obsessed with appearances, using magic to fund extravagant lifestyles and keep themselves immaculate. This feeds into society's obsession with beauty, sharply dividing people into the beautiful elite and everyone else, where ugliness or slovenliness means having people wonder if you worship demons.

Too much?

>>54993125

>admits he doesn't perfectly understand the world
>makes sweeping generalizations as though they are absolute fact

>>54993067
>Nirvana
You do realize that when Buddha described nirvana, he described DEATH, not heaven, right? It's an escape from existence (very attractive to people who sincerely believe in reincarnation, which is actually really fucking terrifying prospect). So it's not exactly the same as "heaven".

Maybe you meant Samadhi instead, which is at least somewhat closer to that idea.

>>54993130
And these evil magi are headquartered in the Holy Woods.

>>54993125

>NOTHING has caused as much harm in human society than the delusion of utopia

Literal lie.

>>54993150
What you think of as christian heaven is a product of materialistic capitalism that swept through the west and nothing else.

At the core it's transcendence and acceptance of your place in the divine plan. You cease to be you.

>>54993125
Surely a supervolcanic eruption and subsequent genetic bottleneck has caused more harm.

>>54992863
A virus isn't alive though, it's basically just an organelle fragment with mRNA in it, you know, the stuff your ribosomes use to manufacture protein?

>>54993148
Unless you admit that your knowledge is at least equally as imperfect and thus that you have absolutely no right (according to your own judgement) to make justified assumptions - and therefor no right to fucking post your inane bullshit, you can just shut up.

>>54993159
Except for religious and ideological wars being predicated almost exclusively on utopistic thinking. 20th century alone saw somewhere between 50-100 million dead people and perhaps some of the most intense and wide-spread suffering ever happening on this planet and it was exclusively because people got caught up in utopian ideas. Now add religioun-motivated purges and wars and you'll find out that really, nothing causes as much needless suffering as this shit.

>>54993184
>What you think of as christian heaven is a product of materialistic capitalism that swept through the west and nothing else.
What a fucking joke and delusion. No. That is really not the case. Just fucking open, I don't know Swedeborg to see what actual christians long before capitalism fucking thought of heaven and we'll talk again.

>>54993190
In human society. That is of the things people can have control over. Sorry for not being clear on that.

>>54993184
I believe the conventional catholic explanation is that you sit in the presence of God in a state of absolute contentment.

Frankly I find the concept horrifying.

Not that guy.

>>54986740
I was with you up until the part that you equated feeling good with the concept of 'Good'.

I could rape a woman and I would feel good, in that I derived pleasure, but it wasn't a good thing I did, since I not only harmed another human being, but I perverted my body in doing so.

Now, there is an argument to be made about the intent behind certain actions, for example stealing to survive or to help someone else survive rather than stealing to simply enrich myself. But that, in and of itself does not mean the stealing isn't normally evil. As the cliche goes, it is the exception the proves the rule.

>>54983982
And so do liberals on the coast

When people wanted there to be actual meaningful interaction with those fictional races.

The two you're comparing in that image would be a good example, since the former is meant to be playable and have actual diplomacy with other races, while the latter is not.

>>54980469
No. It came from the leftist need to have nurture reign supreme while nature is completely unimportant. Hell, there is a book called Sociobiology from the 70s that goes in depth as to why the left shitcalled it and its author, because they (the left) believed societies and social behavior are entirely uninvolved with biology
You're young, and stupid, but stop spouting shit.
Plus, biological and ideological divergence have little in common. So please, don't even try to pull this shit.

>>54993247
Most afterlives tend to be horrifying. You either lose your sapience and stop being meaningfully yourself as your soul is not really you, or you grow terribly bored.

How many time can you kill dudes and get drunk in Valhalla before you get so sick of it that you become a straight edge pacifist?

>>54993184
You need some more Orthodox theosis juju, anon.
>You cease to be you
This is always called out as crypto-TULIPism, and therefore heresy.

>>54993308
>How many time can you kill dudes and get drunk in Valhalla before you get so sick of it that you become a straight edge pacifist?

Up until Ragnarok, in which you're doomed to die and be utterly obliterated.

>>54986740
There is a pretty good definition of absolute evil that one Canadian philosopher offered, and that does not even require existence of absolute good.

The idea is that absolute evil is an act purposefully harm knowing that such harm will not benefit you in any other case. It's a harm that is done without justification: harm that is commited needlessly.
And that shit happens. A LOT more than you'd think. People sometimes go and do harm for the purpose of doing harm, and no other reason - they even sacrifice their own advantages, or even existence solely to dedicate themselves to cause harm. And that, as far as I'm concerned, can be defined as absolute evil.

It's a behavior that cannot, in any way, be justified as beneficial to the society in which it takes place.

>>54993231
What about plague? Illnesses have historically claimed more lives and caused more loss of human productivity than all wars combined.

>>54993231
>Unless you admit that your knowledge is at least equally as imperfect and thus that you have absolutely no right to make justified assumptions

Back at yah, bucko.

>>54993326
On what basis is benefit to society the basis for absolute good or evil? How can the pleasure of the act not be considered an advantage in this case?

I don't think this definition has gotten past the is-ought problem.

>>54993337
See his response here >>54993231, to >>54993190 .

>>54993308
>lose your sapience
Your timebound "sapience" is part of the punishment for the original sin, and any sense of attachment one may feel for it is born of vicious vanity, This is why gnostics always get BTFO for good.

>>54993231

>20th century alone saw somewhere between 50-100 million dead people and perhaps some of the most intense and wide-spread suffering ever happening on this planet and it was exclusively because people got caught up in utopian ideas.

Kid, you can't show up with half-baked ideas. Go do your research and compare this to other events in human history of mass-death. Also don't limit yourself to the 20th century. There are 20 more centuries you have to go through to prove your point.

>>54993337
Not really any different from volcanos, as far as I'm concerned.

>>54993341
Except I don't have this problem, retard. I don't think perfection of knowledge is necessary to make justified claims. That is your problem, not mine.

>>54993344
>How can the pleasure of the act not be considered an advantage in this case?
Uh... seriously? You are asking how immediate pleasure would not qualify as advantage? Well... tell me if a junkie getting high on crocodile is enjoying his great advantage of the high rush...

>>54993356
That's stupid. Adam and Eve totally had timebound sapience, if they didn't they wouldn't have had the agency to choose to disobey God.

>>54993308
Well, the phenomena of being bored is a product of brain functions. You lack a brain in the afterlife, therefore you can't be bored. How you can be self-ware while being incorporeal raises other questions, but however that's resolved could hypothetically involve a setup which does not allow for boredom. Whether this is a desirable state is debatable.

>>54993376
>Uh... seriously? You are asking how immediate pleasure would not qualify as advantage? Well... tell me if a junkie getting high on crocodile is enjoying his great advantage of the high rush...

Because that pleasure is accompanied with a bunch of personal disadvantages that are immediately obvious, but in the example brought up, there isn't necessarily an immediate disadvantage. Say a tyrant with absolute control of his society took pleasure in terrorizing people, with no threat to himself, in what way is his pleasure not to his advantage?

>>54993326
How do you define "doing harm"?

>>54993308
Well the main thing is that most of them aren't really "lives" as we understand them. The heaven described there for instance is basically just another form of oblivion.

>>54993293

>not play an evil race
>not have diplomacy with an evil race

lul wut?

>>54993326
How do you classify something as "benefiting you"? You don't have absolute knowledge.

You know how sometimes people get offended at something minor, or nothing at all, and throw a shitfit? That can range from someone smashing their keyboard because they are bad at videogames, to punching a guy in the face, straight up to unpremeditated murder.

To an outside observer, those things appear harmful and not benefiting the perpetrator. But from the point of view of the perpetrator, their sense of ego might drive them to do these things. They see it as a benefit, perhaps from a not entirely rational perspective, but still a benefit. It's an ego boost. A show of force. A warning.

You throw a plate at the wall to assert yourself and show that you're angry. You kill a man who slept with your wife. And so on.

>>54993350
>>54993376
Sorry, this is what I get for not reading the replies to all the posts. Thank you!

>>54993423
They can't diplomacy with non-evil races, because non-evil races could never trust them.

>>54993350

Oh, you mean his non-responses that don't actually address the counterpoint?

>>54993437
You can be evil and trustworthy, anon.

>>54993376

>I don't think perfection of knowledge is necessary to make justified claims.

Ahhh, so the dumb fuck is clever!

So you think barely-functioning knowledge is enough to make justified claims?

>>54984694
Everyone knows zombie fiction is for people who think they're special and everyone else is a mindless sheep.

The interesting thing about this thread is that the people trying to back up the OP troll/view are trying to present this air of elite contrarian intellectualism, yet they are noticeably quite stupid.

It's like watching a bunch of high class bourgeoisie with brain damage trying to have an angry argument about art and culture with a bunch of NASCAR types that happen to be doctors.

>>54993380
The phenomena of identity and you-ness is a product of brain functions. A soul, if you believe in such a thing, is just animating force given by a god.

If your identity is just a bug in the system, afterlife isn't so great.

>>54993462
Not by the description given of the uruks in that image.

Also, no you really can't. You need at least some scruples to be worthy of trust. Even a consistently egoistic position requires some scruples (egoism is still rooted in empathy, just empathy for future versions of your self).

>>54993380
>Well, the phenomena of being bored is a product of brain functions.
Yeah, that's a fair point. Boredom is basically a survival instinct... really the whole discontentment thing in general. "Grass is always greener" and all that. Real Happiness is basically an illusory carrot that your brain dangles in front of you, to keep you perpetually moving, seeking, hunting, stockpiling, etc. In the wild, contented humans are out-competed humans.

>>54993437

Dude, that just limits what you talk about in diplomacy.

Also knowing someone is going to betray you doesn't mean you can't negotiate with them.

>>54993377
The agency to disobey causes it's own sinful origin, as well as the punishment that includes establishment of the intertemporal causal relation between the two,

>>54993493
The initial sin was the disobedience of God. To disobey, they need agency. Agency has to precede sin, elsewise they couldn't have disobeyed.

>>54993512
>disobedience to God

>>54993437
>They can't diplomacy with non-evil races, because non-evil races could never trust them.
By that argument, diplomacy in the RL would be impossible. If you translated the behavior of most nation states to an individual scale, most people would consider them amoral, psychopathic monsters. Their decisions are guided 100% by self-interest and self-preservation. But diplomacy is still possible, because it's possible to construct treaties and power-balances such that betrayal is not beneficial to any party.

>>54993371
So, first of all: I'd really like to hear YOU tell me what do you think was worse than the death toll of upwards to a 100 million people over the span of fifty years and also the situation that people aptly called "MAD", in which some people deemed it actual valid to rather EXTINGUISH LIFE ON PLANET - all of it including their own - than to admit that their idea of utopia might have not been a good one. Which has lead us the closest to a mass a complete mass extinction event (and the only one human-made so far) we had ever been to.

I'd like want you to tell me what you think is worse.
Second, I'd also argue that I also pointed out that utopia has manifested itself in many other terrifying acts of humanity, including the insane massacres motivated by religious supremacy etc...

Third, this is what we call a desperation idea. I argued about the danger of utopic thinking. Your entire counterargument to that so far boils down to "heh, hundred million dead over the span of half a century and near destruction of life on plannet isn't THAT bad!"

OK, even if you are completely fucking crazy to not think that what happened in 20th century was the worst thing that humans have ever done, it's still fucking plenty terrifying, and enough to give a clear lesson that this might have been a very, very bad line of thinking from the start.

>>54993493
>>54993512
>>54993530
Additionally, God explicitly gave man free will before sin. To have free will, you have to have sapience.

>>54993535
Every nation on earth has clear scruples and is demonstrable capable of empathy. A truly evil creature wouldn't have either, and lacking empathy, they wouldn't even be capable of consistent egoism (lacking any sense of empathy for their future selves). You wouldn't be able to prevent betrayal, because they would eventually betray you even if it was to their own detriment.

>>54993404
>Because that pleasure is accompanied with a bunch of personal disadvantages that are immediately obvious
Well, the evil as I have defined brings disadvantages too. Usually self-destruction in the process. Or at least massive harm caused to the system that keeps you alive.
Pleasure, is not beneficial. Harming others for pleasure does not bring you an advantage. It actually always brings disadvantage, because "harm" is actually defined as "act that brings general disadvantage".

>in what way is his pleasure not to his advantage?
In which way is it an advantage again? How does it makes his odds better?

>>54993544
>I'd really like to hear YOU tell me what do you think was worse than the death toll of upwards to a 100 million people over the span of fifty years

Kid, that's not how the burden of proof works. If you don't even have half-baked understanding of this topic then just admit that you are pulling shit out of your ass.

>>54985810
> WoWfags really believe this.

At the time of writing 90% of the shit-tier lore wasn't there.

>>54993544
If everyone dies tomorrow, no more harm can be committed.

If the population continues to grow, and industrial growth allows doing evil on a greater scale, the only logical to minimize evil is detonate all the nukes right now.

Dead men can do no evil.

>>54993544

>"heh, hundred million dead over the span of half a century and near destruction of life on plannet isn't THAT bad!"

Straaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan~~~~~~~~~

My entire argument is that you haven't done the legwork to back up your claims and your entire argument relies on half-assed evidence.

>>54993593
Couldn't you argue wiping out all of humanity would involve doing evil to all potential future generations?

>>54993544

>enough to give a clear lesson that this might have been a very, very bad line of thinking from the start.

Circular logic.

Prove that utopian thinking is what has caused all the problems before you start using it to justify other claims.

>>54993572
>Pleasure, is not beneficial.

In what way? It's a psychological necessity.

>Harming others for pleasure does not bring you an advantage.

In what way?

>It actually always brings disadvantage, because "harm" is actually defined as "act that brings general disadvantage".

Tyrants have harmed people to their advantage since the dawn of time. Hitler used Jews for easy slave labor, an act that was to his regime's advantage and definitely brought these Jews considerable harm.

>In which way is it an advantage again?

Pleasure typically brings psychological ease to the individual.

>How does it makes his odds better?

By bringing him a sense of psychological ease.

>>54993431
>You don't have absolute knowledge.
You are still the same retard going on about absolution. Fuck off. It's a completely unproductive, completely dead-end line of thoughts.
There are plenty of solid ways to define benefit. For example, not leading to your death is a benefit. Generally evolution has a very good set of criteria of benefit. Most societies do too. Likelihood of your survival, likelyhood of you avoiding excess or needless suffering, the likelyhood of those that are related to you, or that you might like, surviving, improving their odds, avoiding excess or undue suffering, that kind of shit. It's not nearly hard to understand as you make it look.

>You kill a man who slept with your wife. And so on.
Those have a rationality, actually. And therefor, I would not consider those as absolute evil. They are not harm for harm sake: they are harm for sake of say, restoring social equilibrium, or preventing repetition of the same act. Or restoring family honor, which is an actual social resource that you might really need.

The kind of evil I describe is the kind of evil that drove Olga Hepnarová or Eric Harris to their actions. The kind of evil that drove Japanese soldiers to commit the unspeakable attrocities they had done on chinese population. Or the absolutely needless, pointless torture of jewish prisoners in german extermination camps.

Ironically enough, not the motivation that drove Brevik, even though you could argue that what he did was worse than what Harris has done.

>>54993659
As humanity's timeline approaches infinity, so does their evil. You want to stop evil, don't you?

>>54985970
You're a mistake.

>>54993708
You fucking idiot. You criticize him for talking about absolution while trying to define absolute evil? If you're trying to define an absolute, you had better have some absolute knowledge to back it you fucking slouching dipshit.

>>54993708
>Rapes and kills chinese civilians because they're inferior parasites on glorious Nippon

Clearly this is not harm for harm's sake, it's harm for the sake of restoring social equilibrium and national honor.

>>54993708
>charges into a burning fire to save a priceless painting.

Evil, dies for nothing and prevents all potential future good deeds.

>>54993789
By this utterly vacuous definition, not harm is harm for harm's sake. Even a sadistic tyrant is harming for pleasure, and thus isn't doing it just for harm's sake.

>>54993573
>Kid, that's not how the burden of proof works.
God dammit you are fucking awful at this. You can't make your own point, so your opinion is worthless. If you have a proof that my claims are flawed, then present it. Otherwise, FUCK. OFF.

>>54993641
That is not what a strawman means, kid.
>My entire argument is that you haven't done the legwork to back up your claims and your entire argument relies on half-assed evidence.
My core argument, you drooling mongoloid, is that utopic thinking leads to terrible results. And yes, I regret saying it's the worst thing ever - although the evidence I've presented is solid and you had not presented ANY counter-evidence at all.
But the core point and this something that you don't want to acknowledge despite me explicitly spelling it out for you, is that utopic thinking is bad. Relative comparisons of if 100 million dead and near destruction of humanity does or does not qualify as the ABSOLUTE WORST are meaningless, partially because we will ultimately not find an agreeable measure for that (and which is why I now regret using that phrase) to beging with.

But again, you fucking COWARD. Tell me what you think is worse. Because if you can't produce that: well, then you still know less than I do.

>>54993689
>Prove that utopian thinking is what has caused all the problems before you start using it to justify other claims.
Read Marx, read Nazi philosophy. It's that simple. It's just there. Very explicit. The very explicitly identify historical issues of human kind and propose clear set of necessary actions which will ensure utopia. Fuck me you people are dumb as fuck.

>>54993834
Marx was very explicitly against utopian thinking. He didn't think communism would be sunshine and roses, he just thought it would be without class distinctions or private property.

>>54993834

> If you have a proof that my claims are flawed, then present it

BURDEN OF PROOF MOTHERFUCKER

You gotta prove that you are right before inviting other people to prove you wrong.

>>54993690
>In what way? It's a psychological necessity.
So is pain. And depression.
How it being a necessary part of our psychological make up does make it inherently beneficial.

>In what way?
Look you fucking retard, you actually have to present your own point. HOW DO YOU SUPPOSE IT IS BENEFICIAL.
How is pleasure inherently beneficial you god damn fucking retard?! Why the FUCKING FUCK would you ever fucking assume that is a thing?

>Tyrants have harmed people to their advantage since the dawn of time.
So what? what the fuck is wrong with you? What the fuck are you talking about?
Can you make a single, actual fucking coherent point relative to what I said?
Did I fucking say that every Tyrant is absolutely evil? Did I fucking say what Hitler did qualifies as absolute fucking evil you fucking mongolid?

Stop fucking projecting your bullshit, read what say and ONLY WHAT I SAY, not what you want to see, and make an actual point of your own.

>>54993834

>completely making up an argument for someone isn't a strawman

>>54993890
>Hitler is not absolute fucking evil
But a gaggle of orcs murdering a couple of villagers for their livestock and iron are totally evil, dude.

>>54993890
>How it being a necessary part of our psychological make up does make it inherently beneficial.

It's not inherently beneficial in the way the foundation of the house isn't to its benefit.

>HOW DO YOU SUPPOSE IT IS BENEFICIAL.

Because it's necessary to our psychology. Trying to forgo pleasure is a surefire way to psychological distress and disfunction.

>Can you make a single, actual fucking coherent point relative to what I said?

You infantile dipshit. You tried to state that harm is inherently to the general disadvantage, I brought up an example of harm that was to the advantage of the regime inflicting it. How are you this fucking thick?

>>54993834

> I regret saying it's the worst thing ever

Ah! The dumb fuck changes his argument and admits he was wrong! That's a good boy.

>>54993834

You realize none of these people have probably read anything even remotely philosophical, right?
I mean, at best, they got a class on Marxism in high school or something.

>>54993862
Sure, brah. It's not like Marx had this idea you could create a society where humans don't compete with one another, or try to organize into hierarchies or that they'd have individual ideas about self worth or the value of things.
Nah, he wasn't utopian at all.

>>54993879
Are you illiterate?
Do your words only *seem* to be in response to anything?
Fucking nobody denies the deaths under Communism and virtually everyone accepts the millions of deaths in fascism. This is, you know, leaving aside the people who died in the war.

>>54993862
>Marx was very explicitly against utopian thinking.
AHAHAHAHAHA OK, I'm done with you shitheads.
I'm done right fucking here. There is a point where no rationality or education can fucking help anything. So just to enjoy the last post here...

>>54993879
>BURDEN OF PROOF MOTHERFUCKER
THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS YOU RETARD.
I PROVIDED AN ARGUMENT.
NOW YOU HAVE TO PROVIDE COUNTER-EVIDENCE.

And the best one:
>>54993911
Who said anything about any villagers and orks?

And this is the real problem. You fucks aren't thinking or reading anything. You are projecting and screaming because you feel your self-esteem being threatened. And that is why I'm done with you retards.

>>54993817
Anon, doesn't everyone die for nothing?

>>54993834

>the evidence I've presented is solid
>I pulled a random number out of my ass and randomly associated it with "utopian thinking"

>>54993945
>Nah, he wasn't utopian at all.

He wasn't. Do you consider class and property the full extent of human problems?

>>54993955
>AHAHAHAHAHA OK, I'm done with you shitheads.

Read more Marx after he published the German ideology. He detested utopian thinking.

It's not my fault you fucking idiots haven't read anything by the guy you're criticizing. For that matter, neither was Lenin a utopian.

>>54980106
Cann anyone make Virgin - Chad as mordor uruk and isengard uruk hai?

>neither side posts sources
>neither side refrains from name-calling
>neither side is capable of giving up the last word

Oh look, another pointless internet non-debate.

>>54993945
>>54993955

Why do you think that your half-assed evidence and argument even warrants a counter-argument? You haven't even proven your point. You threw out some numbers and said they are connected to utopian shit.

>>54993991
I will use small words.
Big words make you not sure what you say.

IF the society you want
CANNOT BE due to inherent human traits
THEN it is Utopia.

Is this better?

>>54994017
But there's literally no basis to think that it can't be? Further, Marx said very little about communism, advocating only that workers consider their interests as a class and take action accordingly.

File: remove salad.png (176KB, 1311x748px) Image search: [Google]

176KB, 1311x748px

fascists are subhuman

we should put them into camps.

>>54994017
But that's not the definition of a utopia. A utopia is a society free of hardship and suffering, which Marx never considered a communist society to be.

I dunno. I think it's just important to have a good reason for something being evil. They don't necessarily need to have some kind of justifiable cause, like "good intentions" or whatever. Just an explaination for why they're evil.

Orcs and the uruk-hai (in LotR) don't have good intentions at all, but we're given good reason for their evil existence; they were twisted into what they are by a greater malevolent force and are most likely incapable of being any other way. They find pleasure in slaughtering people, pillaging villages, lording over those they see as inferior - there's no great reason for them to be this way, it's in their nature.

>>54994015

1. Communism is utopian.
2. In trying to create a utopia, they killed lots of people.
3. This has happened every time someone has tried to instill a utopia. People cannot conform to the perfect society some neckbeard designed, so they're killed.
This is the only way to ensure such a society isn't immediately overthrown.

Therefore, utopian thinking has caused more human deaths in their own populace. than anything else.

>>54994040
If you think Communism is possible, I don't even know what to tell you.
Consider this: every communist country has failed and murdered lots and lots of people to perpetuate itself. This doesn't seem like a winning strategy to me, but then again I have this terrible habit of drawing conclusions from results.

>>54994088
I'm sorry, I didn't realize we devolved to debating semantics.
Here:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/utopia
You're using some other definition of utopia, not from any common dictionary.

Every country of note has murdered lots and lots of people to perpetuate itself. It's a normal function of a large organization.

>>54993295
t. KKKfag who thinks blacks are 'naturally' violent

>>54980106
Evil is only ever defined according to a subjective moral paradigm. Antagonists oppose the protagonists, and always have a reason.

'Lel evil just becuzz' is not possible. In the first place, they cannot do evil, they can only be described as having done evil according to a single framework. In the second, there is necessarily a reason for their conduct, 100% of the time, because everything is purposeful.

>>54994108
I'm using the definition from Thomas More's book, utopia, which is the origin of its use in modern contexts. Dictionaries are pretty worthless for political terminology. Marx was not a utopian by the only meaningful definition of the term, and in fact was highly critical utopian thinking.

>>54994189
>random guy does random orphanage burning and wanton innocent slaughtering for no reason whatsoever
>morally subjective to a single framework
>is purposeful

There's a reason certain evils are considered so by the overwhelming majority of religions and civilizations and cultures.

>>54994135

The majority of deaths caused by nations have been in:
- armed rebellions
- wars with other nations
- improper management

The aforementioned socialist systems just had to exterminate large parts of their populations for being undesirables and then restricted freedom of speech, action and thought in such a way as to make sure nobody ever did wrong-think again. As cliche as it is to reference 1984 perfectly explains a 'functional' Communist society.
Which failed, because are a really inventive, creative bunch that don't like to starve and work for it's own sake with absolutely no reward, or worse, punished for their success.
Their goal was to exterminate people and they did it well.
Read about Mao's Great Leap Forward and the fantastic success that was.

>>54994223
It's almost like words evolve as the concept they express matures.

>>54994108
>Consider this: every communist country has failed and murdered lots and lots of people to perpetuate itself. This doesn't seem like a winning strategy to me, but then again I have this terrible habit of drawing conclusions from results.

Most nations have killed plenty to perpetuate themselves. The USSR also made sweeping improvements over Tsarist Russia in areas of lifespan, general health, infant mortality, literacy, social mobility, etc. Thomas Sankara's Burkina Faso made sweeping reforms that dismantled tribal privilege, increased gender equality, and improved the conditions of the workers, being only stopped by a foreign sponsored counter-coup.

Further, Marxists (socialists in general actually) in the west made massive strides for worker conditions and social safety nets.

>>54994270
It's almost like every piece of philosophical terminology is bastardized by people outside of the field. Epicurus wasn't "epicurean" by the modern usage of the term.

>>54994259
Shithole backwards agrarian country becomes one of the greatest world powers that will likely own the 21st century?

>>54980106
>evil is absolute

>the absolute state of /tg/
Go read a book. No, trash fantasy doesn't count.

>>54994322

Nigga, I said "read", not "give me your clearly uniformed opinion based on obvious lapses in your understanding of history, politics, philosophy and world events".
It's an easy mistake to make.
Here's the starter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

Now, seriously, stop being stupid and read. You're well aware you have no idea what the Great Leap Forward was.

>>54994259
>As cliche as it is to reference 1984 perfectly explains a 'functional' Communist society.
There is arguably even better reflection of this sentiment: it's in the original source material that Orwell merely adopted and updated (or modernized).

If you have not, read Zamyatin's Us. It's a terrifying read, and not only because Orwell actually kinda ripped it off to a POINT, but more because it is actually written by citizen in Soviet Union, reflecting his very, very immediate feelings on the system. And even worse: he was a firm communist himself.

The story is about doubt of the utopic idea. And it's not - like in Orwell, who simplifies the story somewhat - in a one-sided "this is evil" image. It's a true, deep confession of a person who believed the system is good. And still kinda believes. It's fantastic read (really odd and outdated in many ways, the technology it speaks about sounds very naive but hell, it was written in 1920's.
And in many ways, when it comes to characterising the problem of utopia and Marxism, it's more honest and more interesting than Orwells take on it.

Also, of course, if you haven't but are interested... Solzhenitsyn is your man.

Also, you were right, these people are almost dangerously clueless... I gave up and for the sake of your sanity, I'd recommend considering doing the same...

>>54994108
Finally, the dumb fuck presents his dumbfuck argument.

>This is the only way to ensure such a society isn't immediately overthrown.

Specifically this part here.

>Therefore, utopian thinking has caused more human deaths in their own populace. than anything else.

You should really stop saying this unless you have evidence.

>>54994259
>>54994371
I forgot to add: If you are interested, look up how Zamyatin ended, it just paints a complete picture.

And you seem to be now dealing with people who are basically saying "what, the horror of soviet and chinese revoutionary period weren't that bad, and also brought a lot of improvements". Consider that.

>>54985409
Fucking mouthbreather, knowing people like this write on this site kills all the will to post anything but ironic shitposting.

>>54994371

Solzhenitsyn is, indeed, my man.
I grew up for about 10 years under Communism, the rest in the so called "Post-Communist" period.
It's fun to yell at kids, especially the ones who think they've got a wrap on this whole "ethics and morality" thing.
These, are, after all, only the questions mankind has been grappling with since we could formulate ideas.

Also:
Read this:http://www.sobrave.net/post/78663081000/darqwolff
It's amazing.

>>54994108

>every communist country has failed and murdered lots and lots of people to perpetuate itself
>I can only look at things superficially

>>54994259

>- armed rebellions
>- wars with other nations
>- improper management

Hey! Look at you! You accurately described what caused communist countries to kill everyone.

>>54986846
>Some even say they're evil, and say it proudly.
No, retard, while a sociopath could, a psychopath doesn't even understand why you would consider his behaviour "evil".

>>54994429
>>54994446

This is a super famous one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak

Guys, I realize you like the idea of Socialism, because you can't comprehend what it means.
But, seriously, read a book not written by a Socialist.

>>54994162
>implying that's an argument
>implying he's not right

>>54994224
>most people think a certain thing
Sure, but they aren't objectively in the right. Just because you are unwilling to see or agree with the purpose does not mean it isn't there.

>>54993125
>they exist for a reason
What - the flaws in reality or the flaws in people which mimic the flaws in reality? I don't think there are any flaws in reality - it works pretty well and it is predictable.

>>54994162
What the fuck are you on about?
To begin with, I'm not white.
To finish it off: you're fucking retarded and you should look up the nature vs. nurture argument, possibly read some books and look up things like Lysenkoism and why the CCCP decided that Darwin was a faggot among other things.
This is much older than your shitty "alt rightards vs anarcofags" bullshit, and you should get off your high horse.
Also, this site is 18+ so maybe just leave.

>>54994426
>It's fun to yell at kids, especially the ones who think they've got a wrap on this whole "ethics and morality" thing.
I used to think it's fun too, but eventually I started realizing how much it is draining my faith in humanity and will to live.

Now, if it's in real life I just generally hand people links to Peterson's lectures and tell them: "If you honestly come up with argument why he is wrong, please let me know" and around here, I just quit before my sanity is completely drained.

The sad thing is - how very, very unecessary all of this is. And how much of it could be avoided. Seriously. I saw a nearly perfect argumentation against Marxism in Karel Chapek's essay from 1920's. I don't doubt other people made similar arguments even decades before that.

Yet somehow, 100 million people shorter, after every single attempt to follow the logic being a complete disasster (when people reject China and SSSR as an example, I also like to mention the history of the Israely Kibbutz organizations...) we are still basically where we started.

Because... utopism. "The idea is not bad, we just weren't trying hard enough."

>>54994484
>But, seriously, read a book not written by a Socialist.

Likewise, read a book not written by an ideological crank who made his career telling the west what it wanted to hear about their primary competition.

>>54984219
>>54984303
>>54986745
>>54986759
>>54986790
What the actual fuck?

You people really think morality is objective? Who educated you, the local priest?

>>54994568
Moral absolutism is very popular among autistic early 20 somethings. It basically requires no empathy and uncertainty.

>>54994544
>Because... utopism. "The idea is not bad, we just weren't trying hard enough."

The only person claiming a utopia here is yourself. Literally nobody claimed that these societies were free of suffering.

Also I love how anti-socialist cranks overlook the massive strides in worker's rights and conditions made by predominantly socialist worker's unions in the 20th century.

>>54994544
>Chapek's
Čapek. I don't know why I spelled it out that way.

>>54994528
>I don't think there are any flaws in reality - it works pretty well and it is predictable.
Well... that alone is a bit questionable, but we are doing some really amazing steps in learning to predict it.
That said: the "flaw" here (it's not really a flaw of reality because "flaw" a human notion, and of course, reality is just... what is. Unless we presume teleological universe, at least) is that human existence is torn between suffering and joy (or at least not-suffering), which results in a situation where at least part of human existence is going to be unpleasant.

Which again is for a "reason" (not really a teleological one, just causal) that really goes most likely all the way to entropy.
To assume that we can transcend it is just royally stupid.

>>54994544
>Now, if it's in real life I just generally hand people links to Peterson's lectures and tell them: "If you honestly come up with argument why he is wrong, please let me know" and around here, I just quit before my sanity is completely drained.

http://alexanderofford.com/the-intellectual-fraudulence-of-jordan-peterson-apropos-of-daniel-karasik/

>>54994589

Here's a moral dilemma for you:

A 40 year old man comes from abroad into your country.
He is married to a 10 year old girl.

He insists the wedding is legal and should be recognized as such.
Do you think this is ok?

How about this:
Some place in S-E Asia, I forget where, but it doesn't matter, there are tribes of people who believe young boys have to ingest semen in order to become men. They have to get it from the source.
Is this ok?

There are cannibal cults and religious practices of human sacrifice.
Are those ok?

>>54994610
Yeah but worker unions are evil and the virtuous job providers were right to shoot machine guns at protesters in US.

>>54994544
>the USSR and PRC were dystopian
No, they weren't even that bad compared to most societies in human history. Dystopianism is such a faggoty form of political critique, and, frankly, what's actually childish is pretending that life in the West is so much better and more 'normal'. The real dystopia isn't people marching in lock-step for a grand ideological mission, it's people retreating from society to live, self-absorbed, in alienated bubbles of consumer capitalism.

>>54994631
>emotional appeals

Provoking my sense of empathy and flouting my cultural values is not the same as a moral absolute. Moron.

I don't like any of those things, and the last one is definitely not in my interests to condone, but that doesn't mean they're etched into the universe as absolutely wrong.

>>54994698
How will you life have any meaning if you don't have a bigger house than the Johnsons down the street?

Feeling empty? You need <new product> that will absolutely fulfill you!

>>54994631
>Do you think this is ok?
>what is the law

I don't even feel like insulting you.

>>54994631
The correct answer is: >>>I believe<<< these things are bad.

>>54980106
>"fictional characters shouldn't just be evil by default" meme
>and the garbage that is virtually this entire thread
I'm pretty sure simple literary criticism predates whatever supposed 'meme' you chucklefucks think you're talking about.

>all this off-topic /pol/ shit
This thread is proof that you aren't qualified to so much as hold any opinions, much less critique anybody else's.

>>54994721
>>54994710

So you don't like these things.
Why don't you like them?
It's how these people live.
What's wrong with it?
Why should you not do them?

>>54994719
Why shouldn't the law change to allow people the freedom to do those things?

>Objective morality has not been disproven.

>All utopia are inherently coercive utopia.

>/tg/ threads about good and evil devolve into shitshows.

>>54994733
I recognize my morality is subjective, that does not mean I abandon it. Deport the man and the girl, they don't belong in my country.

>>54994733
>Why don't you like them?

Because my sense of empathy elevates human suffering as something to be avoided.

>What's wrong with it?

I don't like it.

>Why should you not do them?

I don't want to.

There's no other justifications needed.

>Why shouldn't the law change to allow people the freedom to do those things?

Because we don't want to, and have the strength to prevent it.

Mechanical evil is a holdover from the days of evil-as-skub, where it had fuck-all to do with the moral calculus of an individual's actions. The days when good/lawful and evil/chaotic were synonymous, and when above-average hearing or climbing ability made you non-good by default. There are cities in England that still have unenforced laws on the books defining the Welsh as effectively "always evil".

Carrying it over into the alignment cosmology is historical revisionism done by people who need to be told that their characters are special snowflakes who don't suffer consequences.

Gamewise, it also makes for miserably dull villains (if every orc burns every orphanage, they're no more engaging that a wildfire or a shipment of faulty extension cords) and clashes with the appeal of TRPGs in general (Come play! You can do anything, see any fantastic sight! Talking beasts, ships which sail on air, reality-warping magic! Oh, except that. You'll never, ever see an orc living peacefully, even Wish can't supply it.)

>>54994752
>Deport the man and the girl, they don't belong in my country.
And who are you to determine that as opposed to the law?

>>54994624
There is quite a lot of amazing irony about this article, starting with the title, which attacks Peterson, but then immediately goes and formulates 90% of his arguments towards person who merely interpreted Peterson, using the words of the Daniel, rather than Petersons.

>>54994698
>No, they weren't even that bad compared to most societies in human history.
You see... this is precisely why I withdrew from the discussion, and why I should have really closed the thread. It's shit like this that to a person who actually bothered to study the history of those countries, get my blood absolutely boiling. There is no excuse, in the world, for this kind of ignorance.
Literally: no human excuse.

Yes. Eminent thread of death, torture, existential threat, brain washing, absolute lack of freedom of expression, control over your life at just about every step... literally dead people pilling on the streets because the system failed because it never allowed itself to be double-questioned... that is not so bad. We have it so much worse... Having problems putting our values together and feeling a sense of togetherness in hatered of shared fictional enemy is much worse than lack of agency over your own existence.

Dear god I got sucked into this again.
But you do make a good case for totalitarity. People like you might be a good evidence that shooting people based on their beliefs might not be as bad idea as I always believed.

>>54994749
>it has to first be proven

>all societies are coercive, we're basically in prison with each other

>everything on /tg/ is a shitshow

Yes that last one applies to everything, even the OSR threads, which spend most of their time jerking off to the same three games and breaking out into arguments about what is or is not OSR.

>>54994733
>you

>Why shouldn't the law change to allow people the freedom to do those things?
Societal perception. Where he comes from it's legal.

I don't think you're very intelligent, I'm sorry.

>>54994765
>>54994752

>I recognize, on some personal level that these things are not good.
You could even say "bad"
But you don't want to just say it.
Because then you'd have to say some things are always bad.
And...that's bad?