Racism, Reality, and Alignment

[Steerpike]

Heh, exactly!

Man that's convoluted...

[Superfluous Crow]

Couldn't the Mayans (or Aztecs, since they really did this much more often) just argue that their sacrifices were not of the right "quality"? That would be hard to disprove if no one really knows what qualifies as quality for the God... (I think)

[LordVreeg]

Couldn't the Mayans (or Aztecs, since they really did this much more often) just argue that their sacrifices were not of the right "quality"? That would be hard to disprove if no one really knows what qualifies as quality for the God... (I think)

Of course they would. Leasders of religions say anything to stay in power.

But the point was good vs evil in terms of a race or a culture in a setting. In many settings, npcs and pcs acting in a way they believe is helping people is a good act, even if in actuality, it is not helping people.  Our Aztecs aer a very good example.
Other setting have absolutes, where a PC or NPC can truly believe they are promoting weal, but are evil becaue their belief DOES NOT MATTER.

[Steerpike]

So good and evil then, Vreeg, would be tied principally to intention.  But what if someone has good intentions, but lacks the wisdom and the knowledge to make a proper decision?  And what if, from a more enlightened perspective, the decisions this well-intentioend but misguided person makes are the wrong decisions?  Do good intentions utterly absolve a person of all responsability?  Sometimes someone with all the best intentions can realize their own ignorance; if they still act, they might be culpable.  Of course, if inaction would do as much (or, they might believe, more) damage, then that would go a long way to mitigating their potential culpability.  And if as a species we never made decisions aboutn which we weren't adequately informed, we'd probably never progress or develop the very scientific/epistemological frameworks that we can use to make informde decisions.  Necessary evils, or all part of a greater good?

Maybe it's because I've been rereading Salacious Angel's Concordance, but this almost seems to slip into a Law/Chaos debate as much as a Good/Evil one (or as he would put it, ethics versus morality): stasis versus potential, inaction versus action, restraint versus liberation (though not necessarily "freedom").

[LordVreeg]

Yeah, but I am trying to avoid the Law/Chaos side, as I actually find it more interesting but less applicable, racially and culturally.  

Good and Evil can be tied to intention in a non-absolute morality system setting.  And potential has a weight all it's own, but this is rarely made at the cultural level.

Though I suppose it would be interesting to create a patient race that beleived acting out of ignorance was immature and bad, or a race that believed in the potential weight of inaction would be counted against them in the afterlife.  Where they can see all the consequences of moral inertia...