D&D alignment via perspective

[redwizard007]

So I was inspired by several of the alignment based threads running at the moment, but didn't want to derail them any further.

It seems to me, very generally, that people who I would consider evil under the D&D alignment rules see themselves more as neutral. That those I see as neutral see themselves as good. No one seems to seriously consider themselves evil. This applies to real world personas as well as those posting online.

WITHOUT CALLING OUT ANYONE ON GiTP, is it just me, or is anyone else seeing this?

Should something like this affect world building?

Do those of you with formal training in philosophy have a specific take?

I'm genuinely curious.

[Koo Rehtorb]

In a universe where evil is a measurable metaphysical fact and worshiping evil gods is a legitimate lifestyle choice I don't see any particular reason to avoid thinking of yourself as evil. One could consider evil to correspond to being someone who does what's necessary, or someone with a healthy and natural degree of self-interest.

[FaerieGodfather]

From my perspective, a lot of the problem with the Alignment Discourse-- and hence, the Alignment Mechanic as it appears in play-- is that more than 90% of humanity is morally Neutral, and more than 90% of humanity considers itself morally Good.

With an added touch of very few people-- least of all the designers-- being capable of differentiating between Lawful and Good, hence the execrable state of the Book of Exalted Deeds.

For the record, I self-identify as Chaotic Evil with my friends trying to convince me I'm merely Chaotic Neutral. My worldview is something akin to the offspring of a CN Druid and an NE Druid... trying to be a Paladin.

[Lord Raziere]

Well personally to me, perspectives are coins: if you only have one, your in trouble. but if your rich, you probably have more than you can ever need or use.

As for considering oneself evil.....hm. generally I would consider self-analysis to be worst possible way of identifying whether your a good person or not, there is too much bias. whether your a good person or not is something determined by what other people think of you, not of what you think of yourself. you can call yourself good or evil, but what really matters is whether the people you know and society agree with the assessment.

thus I cannot rightly say I'm any alignment, there is one I'd like to think I am, but that just my opinion, and it cannot be accurately said whether I'm any of them, for any assessment could potentially contain biases coming from one perspective or another.

I mean I can think of a couple people who self-proclaim themselves to be "evil" but I'm not going to name any names and I half think they're roleplaying a persona more than anything else, even if they deny it, but even they see the label they gave themselves as something they can feel powerful from, but again, self-analysis and such is bad at identifying whether your a good person, as your inherently biased to reassuring yourself that you are, and even these "evil" identifying people do it with a certain confidence, as a way of feeling better about themselves, maybe in a less conventional way than others, but nevertheless they do so.

so thinking of yourself in a positive light is arguably just....healthy psychological behavior, think too negatively of yourself and you start spiraling into depression and that is never good. thus any label applied to oneself has a bias of reassurance of some kind, and they are not always the same kind of self-reassurance. this is because people are different, and require different ways to be healthy. and if someone identifies as "evil" but does a bunch of acts that contradict this, are at least a decent person when you know them, and they do not seem to psychologically unhealthy or doing anything bad to others, what does it matter if they do ascribe to the label if it helps them be a healthy person, if they are not going to actually be evil? aside from of course questions of accuracy and clarity that could arise from someone appropriating a term that is meant to be negative and using it positively, but I think that might be a different issue altogether.

problem is, you can't really judge morality free of perspective, because morality is born from perspective. thus you first have to determine whether a perspective is useful and sound before determining morality. and to do that, you must get specific, really specific to determine whether that perspective will fit the specific situation. some rules of morality fit some situations better than others, and some perspectives are better at applying them than others. you don't ask an artists perspective on how to fix a car so that its safe do you? conversely, you don't ask a car mechanic on how to best portray something in art so that its accurate and meaningful rather than offensive and wrong.

thus before any serious discussion of morality can be had, the situation has to become so specific, the people and perspectives involved so specific, that general labels of self-identification probably become irrelevant to discussing the actual details of the situation in question, and thus the general labels of self-identification as "good" "neutral" or "evil" are more for what helps you sleep at night, and what you actually are is for the world to decide based on your actions. so...whatever you are, don't DO anything bad.

[hamishspence]

From my perspective, a lot of the problem with the Alignment Discourse-- and hence, the Alignment Mechanic as it appears in play-- is that more than 90% of humanity is morally Neutral, and more than 90% of humanity considers itself morally Good.

I prefer Eberron's take - that about a third of humanity is morally Neutral - but that's me. Maybe boost it a little to 40% or so - but not 90%+.

[Pleh]

So I was inspired by several of the alignment based threads running at the moment, but didn't want to derail them any further.

It seems to me, very generally, that people who I would consider evil under the D&D alignment rules see themselves more as neutral. That those I see as neutral see themselves as good. No one seems to seriously consider themselves evil. This applies to real world personas as well as those posting online.

WITHOUT CALLING OUT ANYONE ON GiTP, is it just me, or is anyone else seeing this?

Should something like this affect world building?

Do those of you with formal training in philosophy have a specific take?

I'm genuinely curious.

I assume we're talking about how RPG characters view themselves? It seems a little pointless to try to apply RPG morality mechanics to real world people. It's just a bad model for people, but it wasn't made for people. It was made to describe game characters (and to some extent, play style).

To that end, yeah, there are a lot of D&D villains who wouldn't describe themselves as evil. There are many more who couldn't deny the fact, since a simple Detect spell will reveal their Aura.

But even characters who make deals with devils to sacrifice the souls of their entire civilization probably aren't cackling and twirling their mustaches. They probably have some pragmatic justification for their evil deeds. In D&D, these justifications just have little to no bearing on their alignment.

So yeah, most characters are somewhat blind to their own alignment. Most people intend to pursue what they consider an optimal course of action. If they feel there are moral compunctions about it, they rationalize and/or justify it. That's just how people (and characters that replicate people) work.

[Zhorn]

I assume we're talking about how RPG characters view themselves?

I think redwizard007 was meaning how players are viewing their character's alignments. I could be wrong, but that's how I was reading their post to mean.

The gist of it being players are choosing actions and are justifying it as within their alignment, and there is a disagreement of perspective from an outside view of what is considered good/neutral/evil between first person and third person.

[OldTrees1]

No one seems to seriously consider themselves evil.

Do those of you with formal training in philosophy have a specific take?

I'm genuinely curious.

I do have a formal training in philosophy and here is my take despite it not being universally held:

At its root the subject of morality is the question "What ought one do?" rather than "What should one do in order to X?". This difference is one that people can grasp intuitively over time but has also lead to criticism of the former question. That discussion is for another thread, so let's assume the question "What ought one do?".

How do people relate to that question in practice? When you are faced with a choice, you need to make a decision even if that decision is being indecisive about options. Once you have decided what you will do, then you do what you will do (again even if your decision is to delay the decision for a moment).

As a result I believe we can say that nobody ever did other than what they chose to do. They might not have predicted the outcomes and might change their mind afterwards, but at the moment of decision & action they did what they chose to do.

So how does that tie back into morality? When someone make a decision about a choice they see pertaining to the question "What ought one do?", they are choosing what they think they ought to do (even if it differs from what they have been told they ought to do).

Therefore everyone only makes choices they felt, at the time of the decision, were moral or amoral. If all of your decisions were moral or amoral, how could you possibly be evil? There still are ways to think oneself is evil but it takes some extra steps and mental hurdles.

That is why almost nobody realistically thinks of themselves as evil in their own morality.

[Inchhighguy]

It seems to me, very generally, that people who I would consider evil under the D&D alignment rules see themselves more as neutral. That those I see as neutral see themselves as good. No one seems to seriously consider themselves evil. This applies to real world personas as well as those posting online.

Not really, you are more seeing social peer pressure.

In the Beyond D&D world evil is very much considered wrong, bad and vile. So, naturally, no one admits to being evil. Evil folks will say they are something else.

And nearly everyone in the beyond society will shun an evil person. So you have no choice but to say you are not evil.

The beyond D&D society says you MUST act and think this way....acting any other way is bad/wrong and evil.

(this is also true of a lot of things....say the ''wrong thing" and watch how fast people turn against you)

D&D, however, presents a world where both Good and Evil are perfectly valid choices. And everyone accepts that.


So in D&D, you have view A and view B....and both are accepted by each other as simply diffrent views.

In philiospy, do evil people consider themselves evil?

Well....yes and no. Yes, they do consider themselves ''evil", or more accuterly they have a view point that is not the default good society viewpoint. But, no, they don't think they are ''bad or wrong" in any way.

[Max_Killjoy]

From my perspective, a lot of the problem with the Alignment Discourse-- and hence, the Alignment Mechanic as it appears in play-- is that more than 90% of humanity is morally Neutral, and more than 90% of humanity considers itself morally Good.

With an added touch of very few people-- least of all the designers-- being capable of differentiating between Lawful and Good, hence the execrable state of the Book of Exalted Deeds.

My perspective is that if we're really going to try to shoe-horn real people into Alignment's contrivance... then many people are Neutral, and like to think of themselves as Good, and are trying to be Good but not always succeeding. Sometimes they don't go out of their way to do the right thing because of fear, fatigue, confusion, hesitation, etc, but on the balance they're more likely to go out of their way to be Good than to be Evil. And, they'll go out of their way to be Good in some of the most surprising ways, just see how people respond during disasters when they might have the most "excuse" to be self-centered.

The sad thing, though, is that for whatever reasons, a lot of people mistake "following the rules" for "doing the right thing"... they don't see themselves as ever stuck between the rules and the right thing, they literally believe that the rules tell them the right thing to do, they talk about the rules as if they define the moral course of action, or they act as if following the rules absolves them of any possible moral culpability -- thus, the observation in your second paragraph. Maybe it's just that rules and checklists are easy, actually thinking is hard, IDK.

I do have a formal training in philosophy and here is my take despite it not being universally held:

At its root the subject of morality is the question "What ought one do?" rather than "What should one do in order to X?". This difference is one that people can grasp intuitively over time but has also lead to criticism of the former question. That discussion is for another thread, so let's assume the question "What ought one do?".

How do people relate to that question in practice? When you are faced with a choice, you need to make a decision even if that decision is being indecisive about options. Once you have decided what you will do, then you do what you will do (again even if your decision is to delay the decision for a moment).

As a result I believe we can say that nobody ever did other than what they chose to do. They might not have predicted the outcomes and might change their mind afterwards, but at the moment of decision & action they did what they chose to do.

So how does that tie back into morality? When someone make a decision about a choice they see pertaining to the question "What ought one do?", they are choosing what they think they ought to do (even if it differs from what they have been told they ought to do).

Therefore everyone only makes choices they felt, at the time of the decision, were moral or amoral. If all of your decisions were moral or amoral, how could you possibly be evil? There still are ways to think oneself is evil but it takes some extra steps and mental hurdles.

That is why almost nobody realistically thinks of themselves as evil in their own morality.

Which gets into why the whole idea of "cosmic forces of good and evil" is so mixed up, IMO.

If "good" and "evil" are real tangible forces inside the reality of the setting, do the people (and their languages) perceive synchronicity between "evil" and "evil"? Do people who are "evil" know that the universe itself is saying "those people are 'evil'"? How do they react to this? Unlike real life, they can't just tell themselves they're "good", can they?

"Are we the baddies?"

[Themrys]

D&D, however, presents a world where both Good and Evil are perfectly valid choices. And everyone accepts that.

I don't regularly play D&D and haven't read many rulebooks, but ... I highly doubt that.

There's a lot of politic opinions in the real world that are considered perfectly valid by those who hold them.

They are not accepted as perfectly valid choices by those who oppose them.


And the fact that, in D&D, Evil with a capital E seems to mean, among other things "egoistic above all else" ... would mean that there will still be no capital E evil communities where everyone admits to being like that.

Evil groups tend to choose a group of people they will oppress in order to satisfy their egoism. That group of people can be "everyone but us", but still, a choice needs to be made.

A character who is really just egoistic and sadistic and cooperates with no one ... in short, old Belkar, would be dead in mere moments if he were surrounded by evil characters more powerful than him. Belkar offends Vaarsuvius to the point that Vaarsuvius seeks to cause him extreme pain. Vaarsuvius is neutral-ish at this point, and definitely a teamplayer, so V doesn't kill Belkar. If Vaarsuvius was evil, Belkar would have been dead the moment after the sexual harassment incident, as he is not useful enough to the team to justify keeping him around.


That's why many DMs ban "evil characters" - because a character who is just "evil" doesn't fit into any group and will get very annoying very fast.

[Inchhighguy]

I don't regularly play D&D and haven't read many rulebooks, but ... I highly doubt that.

There's a lot of politic opinions in the real world that are considered perfectly valid by those who hold them.

They are not accepted as perfectly valid choices by those who oppose them.

That is a good example, though:

Way one: Anything, and yes I do mean ANYTHING, a person thinks is just fine and they will not be treated diffrent in any way for thinking that.

Way two: You MUST agree with my way as my way is the only way and is right.

Most people will lie and say they are way one.....but show their true colors soon enough. Just take any social group of people....you KNOW there are things you can say/options you can have that will have them immediatly dismiss you, refuse to talk to you and even force you to go away. They won't be ''ok" with you thinking X, they will go all crazy opposed to you.

A good Game example is Railroading. Most in the social group will say it is ''bad, evil, always wrong", and won't even want to talk about it, as it's ''so obvious".

That's why many DMs ban "evil characters" - because a character who is just "evil" doesn't fit into any group and will get very annoying very fast.

Well, this is a bit more as people see evil as ''I can be a jerk".

[redwizard007]

That is a good example, though:

Way one: Anything, and yes I do mean ANYTHING, a person thinks is just fine and they will not be treated diffrent in any way for thinking that.

Way two: You MUST agree with my way as my way is the only way and is right.

Most people will lie and say they are way one.....but show their true colors soon enough. Just take any social group of people....you KNOW there are things you can say/options you can have that will have them immediatly dismiss you, refuse to talk to you and even force you to go away. They won't be ''ok" with you thinking X, they will go all crazy opposed to you.

I'm not sure I agree with you on this. At least not in reducing it to 2 simple options. Right off the top of my head I get, "do whatever you want as long as it doesn't affect me." Some would probably expand it to "... doesn't affect anyone but you." Even that is really bare bones here.

[Inchhighguy]

I'm not sure I agree with you on this. At least not in reducing it to 2 simple options. Right off the top of my head I get, "do whatever you want as long as it doesn't affect me." Some would probably expand it to "... doesn't affect anyone but you." Even that is really bare bones here.

Right, but just look at that ''effect me" bit....it sounds good to say....but it's hard to stay there.

I say: "I can own any weapon I want, carry it where every I want and use it as I see fit"

You say: "Ok, fine....does not effect me"

But....well....then it does ''effect" you. You might see me some day on the street, in a store or at a school.....and *suddenly* it does ''effect" you, right?

Just like I might say ''I will do X in my own home"

You start to say ''ok", but then quickly snap to.."oh wait I don't want that done anywhere anytime by anyone".

[Lord Raziere]

D&D, however, presents a world where both Good and Evil are perfectly valid choices. And everyone accepts that.

you think world of eternal war and conflict, where people are constantly killing each other over these things because one side constantly creates things like demons, undead weapons, and so on to wipe out the other side to the point where adventurers killing monsters is considered a normal everyday thing, to be a world where people are "accepting" of that?

No. Thats the opposite of acceptance. people killing other people over something is the farthest possible state from accepting that. if both were considered valid choices, no one would be killing each other in the first place, because those choices are why people are killing each other. people don't kill people they don't like but think made a valid choice, they kill people who they have no reason to think is ever valid. the foes that respect one another then kill each other in fair combat is a romantic fiction.

[Inchhighguy]

you think world of eternal war and conflict, where people are constantly killing each other over these things because one side constantly creates things like demons, undead weapons, and so on to wipe out the other side to the point where adventurers killing monsters is considered a normal everyday thing, to be a world where people are "accepting" of that?

Yes.

It's the two big viewpoints:

Not D&D: Good is the ONLY RIGHT way of LIFE, evil is always bad and wrong. Everything must be good and light always!

D&D: Both Good and Evil are part of the balance. You can not have Good without Evil and can not have Evil without Good. Both are an equal part of life.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes.

It's the two big viewpoints:

Not D&D: Good is the ONLY RIGHT way of LIFE, evil is always bad and wrong. Everything must be good and light always!

D&D: Both Good and Evil are part of the balance. You can not have Good without Evil and can not have Evil without Good. Both are an equal part of life.

Not sure that's actually the default D&D implied-setting viewpoint. It might be true in a few specific instances, such as the goofy mage orders in Dragonlance.

[Inchhighguy]

Not sure that's actually the default D&D implied-setting viewpoint. It might be true in a few specific instances, such as the goofy mage orders in Dragonlance.

Well....you have in default D&D:

Elves vs Drow
Dwarves vs Dugear
Demons vs Angels (Celestials)
Paladins vs Anti Paladains (BlackGuards)
Clerics vs Undead
Rangers vs Humanoids..and "everything"

And the nice, near perfect split of Good and Evil dragons.

A lot of Balance...

[Lord Raziere]

Yes.

It's the two big viewpoints:

Not D&D: Good is the ONLY RIGHT way of LIFE, evil is always bad and wrong. Everything must be good and light always!

D&D: Both Good and Evil are part of the balance. You can not have Good without Evil and can not have Evil without Good. Both are an equal part of life.

Pretty sure a setting where your entire goal is go out and kill evil things, where every book tells you that evil is negative, and you get nothing but rewards for killing evil things, is anything but a balance. in fact is actively encouraging people to think the first viewpoint, because an adventurer is rewarded and celebrated if they slay something evil, and thus they go kill more.

in fact lets change your statements to work with different words:

Not D&D: Health is the ONLY RIGHT way of LIFE, Unhealth is always bad and wrong. Everything must be Healthy and light always!

D&D: Both Health and Unhealth are part of the balance. You can not have Health without Unhealth and can not have Unhealth without Health. Both are an equal part of life.

See how little sense your idea makes? Good is just healthiness and Evil is just unhealthiness, and it doesn't make sense for healthiness to be "in balance" with unhealthiness. healthiness IS balance, and evil is not healthy. because really Evil is just Ungood. its why good is often depicted as healthy and happy. really Healthiness and Unhealthiness are probably better terms for this in general.

also narrowing it down to two viewpoints is overly simplistic by itself. pretty sure there are both more viewpoints in both DnD and not DnD than that.

[Kaptin Keen]

So I was inspired by several of the alignment based threads running at the moment, but didn't want to derail them any further.

It seems to me, very generally, that people who I would consider evil under the D&D alignment rules see themselves more as neutral. That those I see as neutral see themselves as good. No one seems to seriously consider themselves evil. This applies to real world personas as well as those posting online.

WITHOUT CALLING OUT ANYONE ON GiTP, is it just me, or is anyone else seeing this?

Should something like this affect world building?

Do those of you with formal training in philosophy have a specific take?

I'm genuinely curious.

I think you're fundamentally wrong.

EVERYONE sees themselves as good! Basically, with the exception of the mentally disturbed, sees themselves as anything but. So whether saintly old priest or murderous dictator, everyone sees themselves as good.

The difference lies elsewhere. Remember A Few Good Men? The whole 'you can't handle the truth!' -thing? That's how evil men think. They'll convince themselves that those guys on the other side of town, or of the border, or those other-party-politicals - they cannot be reasoned with, if we ever show them any trust, they'll betray us, they understand only a show of force.

They'll also convince themselves that 'I am the only one who can get this job done!' Essentially, they think no one else is willing and able to make the hard decisions needed to keep this boat afloat. 'It takes a firm hand to keep all these factions from killing each other - and only I can do it!'

Oh - addendum: Only actions count. You cannot think yourself good, or evil. Only when you actually do something, does it count. And charity doesn't.

[Inchhighguy]

Pretty sure a setting where your entire goal is go out and kill evil things, where every book tells you that evil is negative, and you get nothing but rewards for killing evil things, is anything but a balance. in fact is actively encouraging people to think the first viewpoint, because an adventurer is rewarded and celebrated if they slay something evil, and thus they go kill more.

Sure 1E was like that, but D&D 2E and on have put much more focus on story and doing set goals.

Not D&D: Health is the ONLY RIGHT way of LIFE, Unhealth is always bad and wrong. Everything must be Healthy and light always!

D&D: Both Health and Unhealth are part of the balance. You can not have Health without Unhealth and can not have Unhealth without Health. Both are an equal part of life.

It does make perfect sense: You can not be healthy, without unhealthyness also existing in the world. You need the dark to the light.

In middle school I did a Scared Stright program, and part of it was going to a hospital to visit all the people there with all types of aliments from smoking. Seeing people on machines to breathe and having to use voice boxes to talk had a HUGE impact: To make all of us kids think really, really hard that we'd never want that to happen to us.

Seeing the pain and suffering of an unhealthy life stlye is the best hands down way to convince people to be healthy. You can just ''tell people'' things or show them ''facts".....they NEED to see the unhealthy people and what their life is like.

EVERYONE sees themselves as good! Basically, with the exception of the mentally disturbed, sees themselves as anything but. So whether saintly old priest or murderous dictator, everyone sees themselves as good.

Well, not exactly: Everyone sees themselvs has ''Right" or "Postivie" or ''picking the best choice". But hold on, it gets a bit complcated....

If you give the choice between good: Right, Postive, Best Choice and Evil: Wrong, Negative, Worst Choice; then of course EVERYONE will say they are Good.

It's like a lot of things. Ask a person if they are decient or honest or charatible or kind or helpful and nearly EVERYONE will say they are. Very few people will say "I'm a dishonest scum bag", for example. This is even more true if the question is asked in public and goes on a perment record. People will Always, ALWAYS say they are the ''postive" one.

Ask a person if they are at least ''average intelligence", and they will say they ARE: very few people will say "Nope, i'm dumb".

A person my lie, cheat and deceve dozens of times a day, but they will STILL say they are Honest. Of course, in thier weird mind all the ''dishonest" stuff they do ''does not count".

So, if you have a neutral third party observing, you will see the Real Person soon enough....no matter what they say. And that Is what Alignment is: a cosmic force that does not care what you think or say, only what you DO.

(For fun you can find tons of examples of ''everybody lies" on such shows like Dateline, 20/20 and other such programs. They will ask people ''what would you do if you found a wallet full of cash?", and nearly everyone will say they are a good person and they would just return it. Want to guess what happens when they find such a wallet on a hidden camera?)

[Max_Killjoy]

It does make perfect sense: You can not be healthy, without unhealthyness also existing in the world. You need the dark to the light.)

This whole "a thing can not exist without its opposite" is an artifact of naval-gazing philosophy, and nothing more.

Think about it -- you're claiming that unless there's at least one sick person, no one can ever be healthy.

[Pleh]

This whole "a thing can not exist without its opposite" is an artifact of naval-gazing philosophy, and nothing more.

Think about it -- you're claiming that unless there's at least one sick person, no one can ever be healthy.

This is a mistranslation between descriptive and prescriptive labeling.

If a certain population had never experienced anything besides perfect health, they wouldn't have much of a concept of health. Physically, outside of their understanding, it is still an attribute they possess. But health is inherently a comparative term and it lacks half its meaning without its opposite to be compared to. It may still accurately describe the hypothetical people (their bodies do not suffer sickness or dysfunction), but they would be perplexed at the description. How else should they be expected to be?

The fact that this culture has no concept of health (beyond taking its benefits for granted as a part of being alive) doesn't mean they can't be healthy. It means they wouldn't understand what that means until you could somehow convey the concept.

[Lord Raziere]

This is a mistranslation between descriptive and prescriptive labeling.

If a certain population had never experienced anything besides perfect health, they wouldn't have much of a concept of health. Physically, outside of their understanding, it is still an attribute they possess. But health is inherently a comparative term and it lacks half its meaning without its opposite to be compared to. It may still accurately describe the hypothetical people (their bodies do not suffer sickness or dysfunction), but they would be perplexed at the description. How else should they be expected to be?

The fact that this culture has no concept of health (beyond taking its benefits for granted as a part of being alive) doesn't mean they can't be healthy. It means they wouldn't understand what that means until you could somehow convey the concept.

And alignment is a physical thing in DnD, the them being physically healthy despite them being ignorant of healthiness is the logic that applies. ignorance of a concept means nothing.

[Themrys]

EVERYONE sees themselves as good!

Not really. I'm more neutral-ish. I don't really measure up to my own high standards.

It is probably true, though, that no one sees themselves as evil. Not achieving one's own standards of goodness is one thing, but evilness can hardly be achieved through inaction.

@Inchhighguy: I never participated in such a program and don't smoke. Sometimes, just telling people is enough. People in Europe didn't smoke at all until tobacco was introduced. There needed to be no smoking for there to be non-smoking. Things can perfectly well exist without their opposite - it is just unlikely there would be a word for it.

[Inchhighguy]

@Inchhighguy: I never participated in such a program and don't smoke. Sometimes, just telling people is enough. People in Europe didn't smoke at all until tobacco was introduced. There needed to be no smoking for there to be non-smoking. Things can perfectly well exist without their opposite - it is just unlikely there would be a word for it.

Right that is ''Way 1": Stuff just exists or it does not exist. Anything can be whatever you want it to be, on a whim, until you decide to change it.

Way 2 is the balance way, the way D&D does it. Things are balanced between each other: light and dark, good and evil and so forth.

[Max_Killjoy]

This is a mistranslation between descriptive and prescriptive labeling.

If a certain population had never experienced anything besides perfect health, they wouldn't have much of a concept of health. Physically, outside of their understanding, it is still an attribute they possess. But health is inherently a comparative term and it lacks half its meaning without its opposite to be compared to. It may still accurately describe the hypothetical people (their bodies do not suffer sickness or dysfunction), but they would be perplexed at the description. How else should they be expected to be?

The fact that this culture has no concept of health (beyond taking its benefits for granted as a part of being alive) doesn't mean they can't be healthy. It means they wouldn't understand what that means until you could somehow convey the concept.

As far as I'm concerned, the part I bolded is the only part that matters.

Right that is ''Way 1": Stuff just exists or it does not exist. Anything can be whatever you want it to be, on a whim, until you decide to change it.

Way 2 is the balance way, the way D&D does it. Things are balanced between each other: light and dark, good and evil and so forth.

"Way 1" is not a whim, it's reality -- a thing exists, or it does not, a thing is true or it is not, a thing is real or it is not.

"Way 2" is a philosophical contrivance, and an authorial contrivance.

[Inchhighguy]

"Way 1" is not a whim, it's reality -- a thing exists, or it does not, a thing is true or it is not, a thing is real or it is not.

"Way 2" is a philosophical contrivance, and an authorial contrivance.

Note: The D&D game world is not Reality.

[Max_Killjoy]

Note: The D&D game world is not Reality.

See signature.

Plus consider that your post described the way the real world works, and any setting that seeks to work that way and not under your Rule of Opposites, as "a whim" and "whatever until you change it whenever" (paraphrasing).

[Themrys]

Right that is ''Way 1": Stuff just exists or it does not exist. Anything can be whatever you want it to be, on a whim, until you decide to change it.

Way 2 is the balance way, the way D&D does it. Things are balanced between each other: light and dark, good and evil and so forth.

No, D&D is Way 1 - everything can be whatever you want it to be. That's generally the case with games. Any rule can be changed.

The real world is, well, real. Things are not whatever you want them to be. If you have a lot of power you may be able to force others to pretend that things are what you want them to be, but you cannot really change them.
If you are human, you are not a squirrel, and no matter how much you want to be a squirrel, you will not turn into one. You may be able to make others pretend that you are a squirrel, and perhaps even change the meaning of the word over time, but the observable reality will remain the same no matter what you name it.

And if you don't smoke, you don't smoke, even if the idea of smoking never ever entered your mind and you don't even make a conscious decision to not smoke. You still do not smoke.