I havent participated in this thread, though Ive been reading it
carefully and with much interest. Kudos to all, BTW, on the tone in which
most of the posts have been made. Often these are the kinds of discussions
that degenerate into name calling and snide remarks, so it`s good to see
folks in the community discussing things with such maturity, especially
since everyone has also managed to remain pretty much on topic. Keep it up!
When it comes to medieval morality I would like to throw out one
thing. Often what gets defined as “medieval morality” employs a heavy dose
of modern context to the situations being discussed. That is, it assumes
more modern circumstances in what is an entirely medieval conflict. We
should try to avoid “armchair morality” that assumes the people involved
are not engaged in a much more desperate struggle than was really the
case. That is not to say that the good/evil of an action is determined by
the predominant morality of the culture at large–which I think is
untrue–but that the situational issues are often broader than they are
presented. The kinds of situations that are often being discussed would be
evil in a more modern context because many modern wars are “wars of choice”
to use a recently coined term. In earlier times, however, competition for
resources was a much more proximate thing than it is now. When discussing
the genocidal acts of European settlers to the New World, for instance, one
should bear in mind that life expectancy amongst European settlers was a
good ten to fifteen years higher than it was for those who remained at
home. If life expectancy in the first place is in the mid- to late 30`s
that`s a pretty significant jump. The same diseases that wiped out native
Americans by the millions were often in full force in Europe and though the
population had built up a level of immunity they still killed thousands of
Europeans every year. Earlier European colonists, of course, had a
substantial rate of death, but after footholds in the New World were
established one could live there longer and with a lower rate of infant
mortality than one could in most European cities. In that context,
European migrants to the New World are fleeing a force more deadly than the
Mongol invasion, and we should bear in mind that their migration is not
entirely willful in the first place.
While there are a lot of factors involved, it is safe to say that when
population density reaches a certain point average life expectancy starts
to go down, and a population can either improve their technology to support
the higher density, diminish or expand. Technical progress, unfortunately,
is a generally slow process, so the choice is more often life (by
expansion) or death (which is what diminishing represents.) If one defines
the primary concern of “good” as having reverence for life, then one is in
a situation in which one must face the unpleasant reality of choosing life
for the largest number of people possible, which leads to other people
losing out. As unpleasant a reality as this is, certain lifestyles and the
cultures they support must end for what is essentially the greater
good. People often pile an amazing amount of rationalizations upon that
situation in order to justify choosing one group over the other, but in the
final analysis the morality of the conflict is based on the total numbers
of people who will survive. The reality, of course, is that there is a
broad overlap of all these issues, but what is so often debated in modern
times is (in simplistic terms) that we can employ technological solutions
to resolve the issue rather than resort of expansion or diminished
populations. That option was not as readily available in pre-Modern times.
In such a situation certain overt acts are unequivocally evil. Handing out
smallpox infested blankets to native peoples is definitely an evil act. I
don`t think anybody could contest that with much credibility. However,
most of what gets lumped into that same category–the mere presence of
Europeans in the New World which spread disease because such people were
carriers, for instance–is really not an evil thing by definition. These
are, after all, people in competition with other people not simply for the
sake of competition, but for the resources to survive. “Ownership” of land
or claiming land is not in and of itself an evil thing to do for all that
it is in conflict with the latter-day reinterpretation of the culture of
many native Americans in that 20th century New Age kind of way. Native
peoples competed with other native peoples before Europeans arrived and
many elements of that native/native conflict were at least as horrific as
things done by the settlers. That`s not to cast native Americans as evil,
it`s merely to point out that in conflict people do unpleasant things in
order to survive, and we should try to employ the same standard when
examining one as the other in as objective a manner as possible.
To put all this in a D&D/alignment context, I`d suggest a couple of
things. Alignment is a very blunt tool. Good/neutral/evil and
law/neutral/chaos. There`s not a lot of room for variation there. In the
past I`ve suggested a point value like that presented by Monte Cook in
order to express alignment (or some other system of “allegiance”) because
it not only works better but allows for more articulation of a character`s
morality. If using strictly the alignment system, however, one can still
use a bit of that kind of thinking without going all out with points and
ratings. Id suggest that what determines a characters (or a realm`s)
alignment isn`t single actions, but the sum total of their actions. A
character (or realm) that committed an overtly evil act is not necessarily
evil any more than a devoutly evil character who has a lapse of conscience
and rescues a toddler from a burning house becomes good. They may not be
“pure of alignment” in a way that might be demanded of a paladin, but they
can still be one or the other. With that in mind, a war would not
necessarily change the alignment of a realm–even if one considers war an
absolute evil–especially if the circumstances of that war were morally
ambiguous. As long as the nation on the whole is more good than evil (or
more good than neutral, really) the alignment need not change.
Gary
and its fawn for baby deer.