writing things from nwalme's pov is fun sometimes can say he got it in a book or something of it's an interesting idea and ur playing a philosopickle character
It has been my steadfast belief for all of my life that when someone dies, they go to where they are meant to in accordance with their ethics. When I was younger and still proselytized on behalf of the gods, I imagined that if I died in the line of duty, The Grey Lady would appear to judge my faith, and Sallana would guide me from wherever meaningless souls go into a paradise unlike any other I have known.
But this leaves the question of where those meaningless souls go, those who doggedly refused to take a side in any crisis of ethics in their life. I would call these people evil, but not by the way evil is normally called. Their evilness stems not from the breakage of taboo, for as cruel as infanticide may be, few would call the starving animal forced to eat its young to preserve the rest of its litter evil. This is because it is in the animal’s nature, and they are lesser than our superior moral reasoning, yes; but, it is also because it is expected of them. Someone in the capitals of the ancient world, such as Knight’s Haven, would be seen as absolutely mad and morally despicable for speaking ill of the duke-turned-emperor. But someone doing the same in Scourge or the Engem domains would be applauded for their good sense and conforming to the commonality of man. And so it stands to reason, we must not look at acts themselves, but the reasoning behind them.
I present to you a moral dilemna. A group of travelers have been put together by a band of mercenaries, and are soon to be executed for a crime, one by one. They are looking for one man who has stolen bread from their encampment, and if no one presents themselves as the culprit, the mercenaries will kill them all. But no one is standing up for the crime. You have not either, but you have bread in your satchel, and could reasonably save the lives of over a dozen people who may or may not be innocent with your own. Are you in the right to pass them by? There is no good counsel to be had on this matter, for everyone will have a slightly different opinion. Two knights of the same order of Rahas may very well have differing answers; it would be a show of comradery for all of them to die together as equals, every man, woman, and child. Another would say it is the duty of the most morally righteous of them to sacrifice themselves for the common cause.
In continuing on the nature of the afterlife, I posit that there is no god of true, utter, complete neutrality. Even the gods most distant from our mortal affairs draw hard lines in the sand that if anyone crosses they are now barred from their heaven. Hard, ethical lines that are the foundation for how others should act. So if someone has no ethics, no sense of the hard lines of right and wrong, what should be done, what shouldn’t be done, then I posit they are the only evil that walks the land. Their intentions matter not, if they never draw a hard line and stick with it, then what are they doing with their lives? What greater purpose do they have other than living? Where do they go when they fade away?
To that end, I must pin the location as the manifestation of all of neutrality, of a void, of nothingness. As everything we do in this world, there is a manifestation on other worlds. The Great Beyond where our souls go upon our death, of where elementals walk in their purest forms, of where gods and spirit stake claims upon nations of nothing but immaterial energies. This I know, and will not be challenged in this belief, for I have been there and spoken to beings native to this land of the immaterial, and I know it to be true that everything there is but a reflection of here. Somewhere in there, the combined emptiness of this purest evil, this plain and unassuming sort of unethical neutrality that seems so harmless, there must be the mouth of evil.
I imagine it as all-consuming. A mouth the span of our entire universe hidden away in that infinite plain without a stomach. For when something passes the threshold of its mouth, it does not waste away for eternity in its gullet, it does not feel the cold and intangible nothingness of nonexistance, it merely ceases to be. Never to return, never to be reclaimed, gone and forever no more. That is what evil must truly be. When we sit idly by and let something that impacts us deeply go unpunished; when we break the rules not because they conflict with others that we hold higher, but merely to break them at all; when we turn against our true nature, or true purpose in life, to fulfill desires that are nothing but empty. That empty feeling inside of us, that gnawing unease, that must be what evil feels like. That must be that empty void, the gaping maw of nothingness on the other plane, that must be us feeding it with our indecision.
-
As I sit and try to write, I realize it is not philosophy I wish to confer to my pages, but neither are they practical lessons. Pragmatism is as important to survival as water, and like water, civilization has given us a means to exist beyond the mere need for it. Just as aquaducts and wells bring forth water to parch our thirst, civilization acts as a mother and father, allowing us to be as helpless as babes so we can afford to not be as ruthless as we would be if left to our own devices. In this way, like children without parents, we are helpless without civilization.
Mothers give us rules to live by, and enforce them with a callous hand when we misbehave. And if mother does not do that, then no one respects her rule, and mother will be forgotten as soon as it is convenient. If mother neither protects us nor gives us rules to live by, then that is like having no mother to live by at all, and as if she were a government, she may as well have fallen long ago to let things unravel so much. Father is only as useful as mother. An army may be strong, but when away fighting wars, can do nothing to quell internal unrest. And if the army must stay home to quiet the riots, then the civilization’s frontiers and rural places are as vulnerable as a household’s finances would be.
When the sudden collapse of a civilization comes, it comes with the deaths of many who are unable to live without it. Do not think of them as women and children, the old and sickly, think of them as unprepared and too reliant on the structures they would have died without even in the prime of their lives. Whether someone is a cripple, or whether someone is as fit as a disciplined knight, makes absolutely no matter. Pragmatism, independance, the mind is what keeps people alive. The ability to distinguish between the laws of man and the laws of civilization. The ability to acquire what you want within the rules, but when the need arises, the ability to make do when there are no rules to decry that you must have your bread and circuses delivered on a platter - whether the platter is wooden or silver.
Civilization is a tool, a service, a gentle help in times of need. But if we grow reliant on it, then when it vanishes from the face of our world - as it has time and time again - then we are but lambs to be fed upon by whatever wolf catches us first. Even in civilization, if we grow too reliant on laws to protect us and keep is around and relevant, then even in the most zealous and lawful lands we are vulnerable welps. There is a reason that birds give no gentler a transition into real life than nosing their young out of their nests, to fly or break upon the ground.
nwalme's pseudonym is "the grander poobah"
It has been my steadfast belief for all of my life that when someone dies, they go to where they are meant to in accordance with their ethics. When I was younger and still proselytized on behalf of the gods, I imagined that if I died in the line of duty, The Grey Lady would appear to judge my faith, and Sallana would guide me from wherever meaningless souls go into a paradise unlike any other I have known.
But this leaves the question of where those meaningless souls go, those who doggedly refused to take a side in any crisis of ethics in their life. I would call these people evil, but not by the way evil is normally called. Their evilness stems not from the breakage of taboo, for as cruel as infanticide may be, few would call the starving animal forced to eat its young to preserve the rest of its litter evil. This is because it is in the animal’s nature, and they are lesser than our superior moral reasoning, yes; but, it is also because it is expected of them. Someone in the capitals of the ancient world, such as Knight’s Haven, would be seen as absolutely mad and morally despicable for speaking ill of the duke-turned-emperor. But someone doing the same in Scourge or the Engem domains would be applauded for their good sense and conforming to the commonality of man. And so it stands to reason, we must not look at acts themselves, but the reasoning behind them.
I present to you a moral dilemna. A group of travelers have been put together by a band of mercenaries, and are soon to be executed for a crime, one by one. They are looking for one man who has stolen bread from their encampment, and if no one presents themselves as the culprit, the mercenaries will kill them all. But no one is standing up for the crime. You have not either, but you have bread in your satchel, and could reasonably save the lives of over a dozen people who may or may not be innocent with your own. Are you in the right to pass them by? There is no good counsel to be had on this matter, for everyone will have a slightly different opinion. Two knights of the same order of Rahas may very well have differing answers; it would be a show of comradery for all of them to die together as equals, every man, woman, and child. Another would say it is the duty of the most morally righteous of them to sacrifice themselves for the common cause.
In continuing on the nature of the afterlife, I posit that there is no god of true, utter, complete neutrality. Even the gods most distant from our mortal affairs draw hard lines in the sand that if anyone crosses they are now barred from their heaven. Hard, ethical lines that are the foundation for how others should act. So if someone has no ethics, no sense of the hard lines of right and wrong, what should be done, what shouldn’t be done, then I posit they are the only evil that walks the land. Their intentions matter not, if they never draw a hard line and stick with it, then what are they doing with their lives? What greater purpose do they have other than living? Where do they go when they fade away?
To that end, I must pin the location as the manifestation of all of neutrality, of a void, of nothingness. As everything we do in this world, there is a manifestation on other worlds. The Great Beyond where our souls go upon our death, of where elementals walk in their purest forms, of where gods and spirit stake claims upon nations of nothing but immaterial energies. This I know, and will not be challenged in this belief, for I have been there and spoken to beings native to this land of the immaterial, and I know it to be true that everything there is but a reflection of here. Somewhere in there, the combined emptiness of this purest evil, this plain and unassuming sort of unethical neutrality that seems so harmless, there must be the mouth of evil.
I imagine it as all-consuming. A mouth the span of our entire universe hidden away in that infinite plain without a stomach. For when something passes the threshold of its mouth, it does not waste away for eternity in its gullet, it does not feel the cold and intangible nothingness of nonexistance, it merely ceases to be. Never to return, never to be reclaimed, gone and forever no more. That is what evil must truly be. When we sit idly by and let something that impacts us deeply go unpunished; when we break the rules not because they conflict with others that we hold higher, but merely to break them at all; when we turn against our true nature, or true purpose in life, to fulfill desires that are nothing but empty. That empty feeling inside of us, that gnawing unease, that must be what evil feels like. That must be that empty void, the gaping maw of nothingness on the other plane, that must be us feeding it with our indecision.
-
As I sit and try to write, I realize it is not philosophy I wish to confer to my pages, but neither are they practical lessons. Pragmatism is as important to survival as water, and like water, civilization has given us a means to exist beyond the mere need for it. Just as aquaducts and wells bring forth water to parch our thirst, civilization acts as a mother and father, allowing us to be as helpless as babes so we can afford to not be as ruthless as we would be if left to our own devices. In this way, like children without parents, we are helpless without civilization.
Mothers give us rules to live by, and enforce them with a callous hand when we misbehave. And if mother does not do that, then no one respects her rule, and mother will be forgotten as soon as it is convenient. If mother neither protects us nor gives us rules to live by, then that is like having no mother to live by at all, and as if she were a government, she may as well have fallen long ago to let things unravel so much. Father is only as useful as mother. An army may be strong, but when away fighting wars, can do nothing to quell internal unrest. And if the army must stay home to quiet the riots, then the civilization’s frontiers and rural places are as vulnerable as a household’s finances would be.
When the sudden collapse of a civilization comes, it comes with the deaths of many who are unable to live without it. Do not think of them as women and children, the old and sickly, think of them as unprepared and too reliant on the structures they would have died without even in the prime of their lives. Whether someone is a cripple, or whether someone is as fit as a disciplined knight, makes absolutely no matter. Pragmatism, independance, the mind is what keeps people alive. The ability to distinguish between the laws of man and the laws of civilization. The ability to acquire what you want within the rules, but when the need arises, the ability to make do when there are no rules to decry that you must have your bread and circuses delivered on a platter - whether the platter is wooden or silver.
Civilization is a tool, a service, a gentle help in times of need. But if we grow reliant on it, then when it vanishes from the face of our world - as it has time and time again - then we are but lambs to be fed upon by whatever wolf catches us first. Even in civilization, if we grow too reliant on laws to protect us and keep is around and relevant, then even in the most zealous and lawful lands we are vulnerable welps. There is a reason that birds give no gentler a transition into real life than nosing their young out of their nests, to fly or break upon the ground.
nwalme's pseudonym is "the grander poobah"
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