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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31957 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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I think there's a lot to be learned here about how organizations like twitter act as central authorities to prevent or abet purity spirals, allowing incredibly "diverse" groups to avoid infighting as they torture a common victim, while keeping the moderate wing sufficiently in fear of the radicals to make them obedient.

That's a very interesting theory.

Back when I was but a wee lad, I read some amount of Forgotten Realms books. There was this one following the adventures of some Drow priestess, which delved into the details of how their society was run. It was a long time ago, and I don't remember that much, but the TL;DR is that there was a lot of rat-racing, ladder-climbing, and backstabbing, all to get the favor of their goddess so she would grant you superpowers and status.

At the time I found it a bit ridiculous, how could a society like that be stable enough to create a marvelous city-state like the one being described? I remembered that a few months ago when someone or another was getting cancelled, and thought "huh, actually maybe a society of backstabbers is more stable than I thought", but I think you zeroed in on exactly what makes it stable. If it's a backstabber free-for-all, it's probably just a question of time before it collapses, but if there's, say, an evil spider-goddess of chaos, who's favor you can fall into and out of, the system might be more stable than you'd expect at first glance.

Funny how a silly fantasy book for teens ends up having so much insight.

We probably read the same book and if I remember it correctly, the goddess never showed up. If you didn't know it took place in a world which had real deities, it could have just as well have been a society where people can use magic but the goddess herself was completely invented.

The thing about most D&D settings is that actual priests run around, casting spells that can’t be replicated by sufficiently advanced magic. This includes Commune.

But yeah, if no one ever mentions that over the book, the rest is compatible.

You are allowed one such question per caster level.

WHAT IS THIS MORTAL, A GAME OF 20 QUESTIONS?!

Max level power gamer: "yes"

Assuming this is the Liriel Baenrae trilogy, I think I only read the first one, and she was a wizard, not a priestess. But in the rest of the dozens of realms books about drow priestesses, mostly by Salvatore, Llolth is fairly active in the form of empowering/depowering priestesses she favors/disfavors. As one element, they all have multi-snake-headed whips, where the number of heads indicates favor.

Like I said it was ages ago, so I might be misremembering or mixing up a bunch of things. But isn't the whole idea that priests' powers in FR come directly from their gods, so if you lose their favor you're not going to be casting any spells?

Yeah. Priests don't have inherent magic powers in Forgotten Realms. They are channeling the divine powers of their patron. If they get cut off by their god then they lose all their magic.

I always think about that regarding the Ferengi in Star Trek too. They're supposed to have stolen all their tech, but still, how could a civilization who glorifies treachery ever create and maintain a space program at all? Or even a power plant? Two brothers can't even cooperate long enough to hold a poker game.

there is nothing that prevents lawful evil and neutral evil societies from flourishing. it's the chaotic evil or lawful good alignment that leads to circular firing squads.

You're confusing lawful neutral with lawful evil, I believe.

Why does lawful good lead to firing squads?

Righteousness and ideological rigidity. It's much easier to do atrocities when you believe you are the good guys.

It's been done to death because it's so damn applicable to so many scenarios. Truly one of my favorite quotes, from anyone about anything.

Also, cupidity is a great word.

I would not define a Good society as a competition in being virtuous. Pretty much by definition.

Why you think that lawful evil would not result in this? We have plenty of examples of exactly this problem happening.

Lawful evil is pragmatic

Pragmatism can be applied to different goals. For example, it would be quite pragmatic to backstab all your rivals and send the region into a downward spiral if you decided that what you want is to rule the ashes in a perfectly orderly manner.

But would it be lawful? Generally no.

It would be lawful if it's my rules.

Why you think so?

German Third Reich was very lawful evil. Technically they ended with vertical firing squad rather than circular firing squads, but problems in the end were very similar.

(maybe there could be treated as pragmatic with "Jews are evil" axiom, still society they created was far from flourishing due to their own actions)

And yet in that very time USA were also lawfully evil and they built the greatest superpower the world has ever seen in the aftermath.

If you insist on dumb binary ethical categorizations (which are dump) then USA at that time was closer to lawfully good than lawfully evil.

(not claiming that it was ideal but on evil to not evil range populated by governments in human history it was quite far on "not evil" side)

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