Good and Evil

Some earlier posts in a thread got me thinking about the meaning of good and evil. I couldn't define it in any real sense and I was wondering what you guys think good means and what evil means.

In games they define it pretty much if you help people your good, if your a selfish jerk your evil. That is just a basic look at it though.

I think it comes down to perception. Over here in Asia there isn't a great focus on what is evil and what is good. It just is.

Anyways, I would really like to hear what you guys think on this matter.

It depends to a great deal on your intentions.

A German saying goes like this (it's seldom used because of its bitterness) :

"The opposite of 'good' is 'good meant' ."

This just means that your intentions might be good, but the resuklt might be bad.

Which makes all this stuff even more complex.


I once learned that asian (Japanese ?) demons often have a "good" part in them as well ... dues to the belief-systems here in europe, which have been greatly influenced by the christian church, of course, there is no "good" part anymore in demons - and so they are depicted in games.

For example.

A few disjointed 7am observations:

One person's good is another person's evil, it's all about perception for the most part. There are certainly standards which I think most people will agree defines an evil person and which define a good person, and those aren't really sticking points of contention. But it's all the in-between stuff that holds the grey areas which are hard to define.
As Alrik said, it's all about intentions. A person may do good things but with "evil" intent, and in terms of our RPGs, that's where the good/evil system utterly breaks down.

Now, not many people would consider themselves to be evil, while many would consider themselves to be good, even if they are not all that good. I think most people are in the in-between area, we all have our virtues and vices and that "sliding scale" can change rather capriciously.

Evil is often a label applied to another person or group as a slander or de-humanization. Governments refer to enemy or rival states as evil in an attempt to make the foe less human.

I don't see good and evil as inherently very problematic concepts. A nominalist approach to them will yield pretty useful definitions that can be further refined and discussed in different contexts.

Good and evil only make sense in a larger ethical framework, however. There are many such frameworks, and they have evolved over time a great deal -- for example, genocide is "good" in tribal ethics, while genocide is necessarily "evil" in any ethical system that claims universality.

So, if we want to discuss good and evil, we have to (1) understand the ethical frameworks that give context and meaning to them, and (2) discuss the ethical frameworks themselves. Furthermore, in my ethical system, there is an imperative to (3) find solutions that allow multiple different ethical systems to coexist in a way that is least "evil" to all parties concerned.

Incidentally, it's a very interesting if somewhat laborious exercise to read through the Bible from the viewpoint of watching the ethics in it evolve. We go from purely tribalist ethics in the older bits of the OT (yeah, which includes genocide as "good"), to eventually the universalist ethics in bits of the NT ("love your enemy," "do unto others" and so on).

(Another option is to do the same exercise with Talmudic commentary -- the same evolution is equally or sometimes even more apparent. You go from the slaughter of the Amalekites to Rabbi Hillel's "Do not do to others what you would not have done to yourself.")

(To go off on a bit of a tangent, IMO Hillel's version is a much better formulation of the Golden Rule than the Christian variant, because it acknowledges that preferences are individual, and therefore doing to others what you would like others to do to you carries a significant risk of doing harm, whereas not doing to others what you would not have done to you is a fairly good way of *not* doing harm.)

That was my thinking as well because the more I thought about it the more depended on the perception of the person and/or culture. I really started wondering about this years ago when I was asking about the Tao religion. I kept bugging my girlfriend to tell me about the different gods, which ones were "evil" and which were "good". There wasn't any "good" or "evil" ones, it was just my western thinking that tried to define them in those terms.

Religion aside, I thought about how RPG defined good and evil and I kept coming up with a common theme. The be the goody two shoes or the complete bastard theme.

Just recently however I was a bit stumped when one of the children I tutor on the weekends wanted to learn about Oliver Twist (not the original, a kids version). We were discussing what was life like back in the 18th-century and how some people had to steal to just survive. After we finished the book I asked them who they thought were the "bad guys" in the novel. He said the Artful Dodger. I asked why and he told me because he stole from people. Now mind you, he is only 11 years old but I asked him to remember what we learned about life in the 18th-century and how the Artful Dodger helped Oliver in the end. Then after careful consideration he changed his mind and said Sikes.

After that I started thinking about what defines good and evil. Then I noticed how almost all the games seem to break down the essence of good and evil to their most basic elements. Of course then The Witcher comes out and tries to show that there are more grey areas than pure white or black.

Anyways guys thanks a lot. I appreciated your views on the subject and listening to my ramblings.

skavenhorde said:

That was my thinking as well because the more I thought about it the more depended on the perception of the person and/or culture. I really started wondering about this years ago when I was asking about the Tao religion. I kept bugging my girlfriend to tell me about the different gods, which ones were "evil" and which were "good". There wasn't any "good" or "evil" ones, it was just my western thinking that tried to define them in those terms.

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Probably, most familiar culture to the West would be traced back to ancient Greek culture. Strictly speaking, the culture is considered as pantheism. Under monotheist standard, Greek gods are considered amoral. However, anthropologically, monotheist culture rather belongs to the minority. Also, the ancient Greek culture played a great role in modern democracy, where different opinions and views are exchanged in political process. As for monotheism, Christian church probably is one of the most important basis for the models of modern constitutions and modern international laws.

skavenhorde said:

Just recently however I was a bit stumped when one of the children I tutor on the weekends wanted to learn about Oliver Twist (not the original, a kids version). We were discussing what was life like back in the 18th-century and how some people had to steal to just survive. After we finished the book I asked them who they thought were the "bad guys" in the novel. He said the Artful Dodger. I asked why and he told me because he stole from people. Now mind you, he is only 11 years old but I asked him to remember what we learned about life in the 18th-century and how the Artful Dodger helped Oliver in the end. Then after careful consideration he changed his mind and said Sikes.

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Foucault argues that the punishment for stealing became strict due to the development of capitalism. In any case, Dickens is an interesting source when we are interested in the British society during the industrialization.

skavenhorde said:

After that I started thinking about what defines good and evil. Then I noticed how almost all the games seem to break down the essence of good and evil to their most basic elements. Of course then The Witcher comes out and tries to show that there are more grey areas than pure white or black.

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There are some other examples such as PnP RPG Rune Quest Glorantha, which has a lot of experiments in ideological diversities. And I agree with you at the point that how the most CRPG misses one of the most interesting parts of the joy of role-playing.