Why is everything always good vs evil? Why do we always get presented with a so-called perfectly good hero, and he always just so happens to have a perfectly evil double? What is with people's obsessions with polar opposites? Why do so many people think in black and white?
What does it even mean to be good? Its obviously a matter of perspective.
Okay, I know this is a really weird example, but I assume you all have heard of AdventureQuest. In it, there is this paladin known as Artix. He's a 'good guy', that also has some evil double somewhere apparently. Evil? Why? I'm pretty sure the 'good' Artix is the evil one. He goes around and kills all undead creatures without a second thought, no matter if they are doing anyone harm or if they plead for their life or anything. He's completely blinded by prejudice - he's the evil one!
This happens in so many games and movies and stories. It's always "ooh lets create this really heroic good guy", then "ooh now lets create his polar opposite and give him horns and scales!" It's such an overused, romanticised fantasy, I'm so sick of it.
There is no such thing as good vs evil, the world is so much more complicated than that. What you think is right, isn't necessarily what everyone else thinks is right. Therefore 'good' and 'evil' are purely forms of perspective, not to mention the fact that noone is purely one or the other.
Of course, Diablo doesn't do this. Diablo supports neutrality
Battlestar Galactica
Dollhouse
Hard Candy
Cloverfield
Terminator 1 & 2
Dog Day Afternoon
Jurassic Park 1 & 2
King Kong
Hannibal
All movies and tv shows I can think of off the top of my head that have this similar idea.
See, I'm a sticler for realism in art (be it theatrical, film, writing, etc) so when I find something that stands out as particularly real - be it as a literal documentary or something that speaks realistically to my emotions, I try to remember and treasure it. Such is the nature of this whole good and evil thing. While I can enjoy films with such a motif for other reasons, that has always bugged me.
Why is everything always good vs evil? Why do we always get presented with a so-called perfectly good hero, and he always just so happens to have a perfectly evil double? What is with people's obsessions with polar opposites? Why do so many people think in black and white?
There is something very appealing to it. Personally I think it's partly because we never see these people in real life, even though we'd like to, so the only other option is to create them as fictional chracters.
Of course, they're quite rare in more serious fiction, as it gets really hard to write an interesting story around a perfect character. You might of course encounter such perfect characters briefly in usch books, but that doesn't really qualify. I mean, it's the same with our own stories and legends about heroes.
In movies however it's more of a matter of priority. You have approximately two hours of screentime. What are you going to fill those hours with? Is it going to be action and humour, at the expense of character development, or will it be flawed characters and deep plot at the expense of viewer interest? In the end we get both kinds of course, but not all movies can, or should, be entirely realistic in that sense.
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Ah yeah, I suppose people like the clear cut black and white imagery because it makes it easy for them to make decisions. No complicated moral thinking involved.
Haha, thanks Jet, I'll look into those movies. And yeah, Battlestar is definitely a complicated one.
Xmen is another movie like that too. Magneto isn't necessisarily evil, he just has different values and beliefs. Though I guess he is really prejudice against non mutants.
Another reason is because in many cases people feel there truly is a clear cut line that divides good versus evil. It comes down to human interpretation of morals and ethics and how people have this perception of what is good and what is bad.
And it comes out in that art form. You know what they say "art imitates life".
Some say otherwise..but thats for a different thread.:cute:
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"I want to say something but I'll keep it to myself I guess and leave this useless post behind to make you aware that there WAS something... "
-Equinox
"We're like the downtown of the Diablo related internet lol"
-Winged
Completely agree with you, the concept of good and evil is seriously overused, and like you said, it's hard to define good and evil.
Seems most people define evil as things that they are afraid of, or as things that want to kill them. For example, most people would classify terrorists as evil.
But on the flip side, I'm sure terrorists would classify American's as evil, since they are occupying their homeland, and basically telling them how to run their country.
It's really just a matter of perspective, I'm sure the goatmen we slaughtered back in D2 were all trying to defend their homeland, while we were coming in and shit-ruining all over their land.
I agree with you on Diablo though, it's refreshingly neutral. I especially like how neither heaven nor hell are actually defending humanity, both seem rather indifferent to it's survival, with a select few exceptions.
Ah, Jetrall you basically just posted some of my faovite movies :D.
I'd also add the matrix to that list.
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Why is everything always good vs evil? Why do we always get presented with a so-called perfectly good hero, and he always just so happens to have a perfectly evil double? What is with people's obsessions with polar opposites? Why do so many people think in black and white?
Because, if we turn to Jung, people have a common innate idea of good, evil, heroes, mothers, etc. Simple concepts, everyone understands.
All less obvious, more gray areas are not innate, and need to be acquired. Not everyone is capable of that.
Jung's psychology had that funny quality of not placing people in neither good or bad category...
Star Wars, supposedly, was directly based off Jung's archetypes, you can really see that there.
I kind of like the alignments presented in DND games.
You can have Lawful Evil, which in the eyes of many may actually be a good person. A person who constantly follows the law but if he can use the law to reach his means he doesn't mind hurting people in the process.
Lawful good is a constant conflict between law and conscience...
Well, I'm going to assume AdventureQuest is like a kid's kind of fantasy thing? In that case, polarized concepts like "good vs. evil", "light vs. darkness", et cetera, are used because they are easiest to digest. It's easier to say there is "true and false" than it is to say "sometimes false is actually correct, but it depends on the circumstances" and then explain that to children. While it's totally possible and I'm not lumping all children in to this category, for the general public, which is what marketing aims for, this is the simplest solution.
A lot of stories start off, consequently, that are in series, with the predisposition of "good vs. evil" (indeed, this notion is what often leads the hero archetype out of the perfect world he or she lives in and off through the first threshold of the story). This is usually then complicated and blurred as the story or series of books or movies progress to allow for more varied and diverse entertainment and/or thought.
Now, my personal opinion is that the idea of "good and evil" as polarized concepts is really just a hold-off from years past, when simplified ideas were needed like that because of people coming out of war devastation or something universally horrible (when people sociologically need something "solid and unchanging" to cling to). The concepts always wither away after such things happen and then hop back in to people's minds when the wheel comes 'round again.
Good and evil are, naturally, opinion-based, no matter what the root source is. If someone stole a bike from me, I would say it was wrong. If I followed them to see why and found that they were stealing it because they were orphaned or their family couldn't afford it, I would still say with absolute certainty that it was wrong. If they stole it to sell for money to meet a mobster's demands to set their sibling free or something, I would still say it was completely wrong. However, more things come in to the equation with the latter two. I would still say the initial act was evil, but the effects, thereof, could very well be good. It also has a great deal, however, to do with what happens with the future if such an event takes place. What if the kid that steals the bike starts stealing a bunch of stuff from everyone to pay the ransom? What if he steals a lump of money another kid was saving to buy expensive medicine for his dirt-poor family?
I don't tend to just take a whole series of events and say "wow, that was evil". I usually take the single events, themselves, and categorize them independently. Why? I don't know, that's how I think. But it allows for every action considered to have a fair judgment put on it (well, as fair as any human can be- we're unfortunately all subject to bias). Now, if we're talking about things I don't know about the circumstances, then that is out of my hands.
Anyway, back to a story standpoint. Polarized concepts are often used to build the starting blocks of lore or background story so that more advanced concepts can develop later on. It's a lot like a typical child- they grow mentally from believing in singular, polarized ideals, and then expand their minds (hopefully) to realize that there's more grey in the world than black and white.
It's a huge step in developing logic, I think. As far as I know, it helps many good writers to think that way- not just for creative ideas, but also because it helps them to realize that language is amorphous and yet universal (to those who understand it). Like, for instance, although it's not a word, I could say "liquidine" to describe something fluid or with fluid characteristics. That's something I consider logical writing- although it isn't a real word, it makes logical sense to someone who is intelligent enough to understand that words are made of prefixes and suffixes (among other things) and that when put together they are still speaking perfect English, just not perfect conforming English.
Why is everything always good vs evil? Why do we always get presented with a so-called perfectly good hero, and he always just so happens to have a perfectly evil double? What is with people's obsessions with polar opposites? Why do so many people think in black and white?
What does it even mean to be good? Its obviously a matter of perspective.
congrats, you're on step 1 of waking up from illuminati propaganda - i mean... what?
in all seriousness though, good and evil are both perspective and "black and white."
on the perspective side is order and chaos. think of order like a dictatorship - theres an absolute authority that controls everything, usually giving no freedoms to the people, but keeps them safe with laws and a domestic force for protection - keeps everything in order (duh). the people don't have many social freedoms but live comfortable.
chaos is like a world without laws. you can live peacefully if you choose with your freedoms, but that doesn't mean everyoneelse will, and they will probably hurt you to benefit themselves. that's true chaos anyways, though even hell is able to have some order to keep armies together and the prime evils at the top.
conclusion: too much order = bad, too much chaos = bad. middle ground? probably good, but it depends on how much order you think is good/bad and how much chaos you consider good/bad
now on to the black and white! good is obviously peace, loving, joy, happiness - any word associated with positive emotions and actions. why? because it makes you feel good and is good for others! if you are a person who lives closer along these lines, you're probably going to be a good guy
and evil is anyone who inflicts pain, suffering, yadda yadda.... so on so forth. but TRUE evil would disguise itself as a benevolent being and mislead everyone until a sudden moment where they are in full control - order?
christianity - you have jesus. a good guy who is peaceful, loving, compassionate. then you have the guys that made his church which basically said "look, jesus was a good guy - if you don't like him then you dont like good, ergo you are evil. oh and by the way we are the only ones who can speak to him so you must do as we say"
and THAT'S how you get your paladins who kill without question!
game worlds use archetypes like your cliche paladin and his nemesis because they are the most simple to explain. otherwise you get a crazy complex world like the explanation i just gave you.
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----------------------- "What man, anywhere under Heaven's high arch, has fought in such darkness, endured more misery or been harder pressed?" -Beowulf
Well, if I start reading a book or watching a movie and I start noticing all the archetypes springing up, I give up on the movie pretty much straight away.
That's why I have such a weird choice of favorite books and movies (and games), I guess...
In terms of philosophy...We speak with opposites. When we describe things the only reason we are able to distinguish what the definition of a descriptive word is because of their opposite. It's how we think.
If this isn't making sense then I'll give an example that is fairly simple.
Take the word "hot". If we did not have an idea of what cold was, nor was there such a thing as cold. We would not have hot. Opposites are forever bound to each other and it's how we tend to think.
(this philosophical info is from my philosophy class and specifically coming from the ideas of Anaximander)
What does that have to do with good and evil? If the game is about combat in one way or another with an ultimate goal the easiest thing to do is put it in terms of good and evil because it is what most people understand, and are able to comprehend because of past experience.
So what I'm saying in a simplified way is that we think with opposites, we (as in human kind) don't like grey areas. We want a distinct goal. Pair that with common knowledge of history. What do you get?
Good vs. Evil
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"I want to say something but I'll keep it to myself I guess and leave this useless post behind to make you aware that there WAS something... "
-Equinox
"We're like the downtown of the Diablo related internet lol"
-Winged
Quite simply, it's because its fiction. They won't give you a game or a movie that has all shades of gray, that just won't work. People play games and watch movies to escape the set standards of reality, and to shake loose of the shackles the norm imposes on us. You're sick of it? Big deal. They don't care. As long as they're making money, they're gonna be making Good Vs Evil movies. It's never strictly that simple though..quite often, there's so much more detail than that. There exists such a thing in movies and games because they're fiction. People have superpowers..some harness them to rescue people (good), and others to benefit from them, even if it means harming other people (bad). Making a movie or a game where everything is like life, has life's problems, has life's everything, is quite fucking annoying, dontcha think?
good and evil are only through the eyes of one man.
Example: War
side 1 thinks what side 2 is doing is evil...
side 2 thinks what side 1 is doing is evil...
and both think that they are doing good.
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My life is like a dragon, first praised, then hated, now lost.
Wonder where Planetscape Torment fits in all of this.
Same with V for Vendetta. Mostly the book, as in the book it's a little harder to tell if V is a good guy or a bad guy, because he does some seriously messed up stuff in the book.
Kinda the same with Watchmen. And even John Constantine in Hellblazer. Quite a few of the characters found in the forementioned graphic novels (more than their film counterparts) blur the line between good and evil.
It a bit more etnertaining if a protagonist or one of the protagonists is more of an anti hero than a straight hero.
Hellblazer, V for vendetta, watchmen. All had Alan Moore work on them. hmm. Maybe half the people who do this good vs. evil stuff yshould talk to him. He seems to put an interesting twist on it, most of the time.
Diablo does a good job with the whole concept though I find.
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-Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's First Law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only, truth.
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What does it even mean to be good? Its obviously a matter of perspective.
Okay, I know this is a really weird example, but I assume you all have heard of AdventureQuest. In it, there is this paladin known as Artix. He's a 'good guy', that also has some evil double somewhere apparently. Evil? Why? I'm pretty sure the 'good' Artix is the evil one. He goes around and kills all undead creatures without a second thought, no matter if they are doing anyone harm or if they plead for their life or anything. He's completely blinded by prejudice - he's the evil one!
This happens in so many games and movies and stories. It's always "ooh lets create this really heroic good guy", then "ooh now lets create his polar opposite and give him horns and scales!" It's such an overused, romanticised fantasy, I'm so sick of it.
There is no such thing as good vs evil, the world is so much more complicated than that. What you think is right, isn't necessarily what everyone else thinks is right. Therefore 'good' and 'evil' are purely forms of perspective, not to mention the fact that noone is purely one or the other.
Of course, Diablo doesn't do this. Diablo supports neutrality
Battlestar Galactica
Dollhouse
Hard Candy
Cloverfield
Terminator 1 & 2
Dog Day Afternoon
Jurassic Park 1 & 2
King Kong
Hannibal
All movies and tv shows I can think of off the top of my head that have this similar idea.
See, I'm a sticler for realism in art (be it theatrical, film, writing, etc) so when I find something that stands out as particularly real - be it as a literal documentary or something that speaks realistically to my emotions, I try to remember and treasure it. Such is the nature of this whole good and evil thing. While I can enjoy films with such a motif for other reasons, that has always bugged me.
I recommend all the above.
Of course, they're quite rare in more serious fiction, as it gets really hard to write an interesting story around a perfect character. You might of course encounter such perfect characters briefly in usch books, but that doesn't really qualify. I mean, it's the same with our own stories and legends about heroes.
In movies however it's more of a matter of priority. You have approximately two hours of screentime. What are you going to fill those hours with? Is it going to be action and humour, at the expense of character development, or will it be flawed characters and deep plot at the expense of viewer interest? In the end we get both kinds of course, but not all movies can, or should, be entirely realistic in that sense.
Haha, thanks Jet, I'll look into those movies. And yeah, Battlestar is definitely a complicated one.
Xmen is another movie like that too. Magneto isn't necessisarily evil, he just has different values and beliefs. Though I guess he is really prejudice against non mutants.
And it comes out in that art form. You know what they say "art imitates life".
Some say otherwise..but thats for a different thread.:cute:
-Equinox
"We're like the downtown of the Diablo related internet lol"
-Winged
Seems most people define evil as things that they are afraid of, or as things that want to kill them. For example, most people would classify terrorists as evil.
But on the flip side, I'm sure terrorists would classify American's as evil, since they are occupying their homeland, and basically telling them how to run their country.
It's really just a matter of perspective, I'm sure the goatmen we slaughtered back in D2 were all trying to defend their homeland, while we were coming in and shit-ruining all over their land.
I agree with you on Diablo though, it's refreshingly neutral. I especially like how neither heaven nor hell are actually defending humanity, both seem rather indifferent to it's survival, with a select few exceptions.
Ah, Jetrall you basically just posted some of my faovite movies :D.
I'd also add the matrix to that list.
All less obvious, more gray areas are not innate, and need to be acquired. Not everyone is capable of that.
Jung's psychology had that funny quality of not placing people in neither good or bad category...
Star Wars, supposedly, was directly based off Jung's archetypes, you can really see that there.
I kind of like the alignments presented in DND games.
You can have Lawful Evil, which in the eyes of many may actually be a good person. A person who constantly follows the law but if he can use the law to reach his means he doesn't mind hurting people in the process.
Lawful good is a constant conflict between law and conscience...
I prefer Chaotic Good.
A lot of stories start off, consequently, that are in series, with the predisposition of "good vs. evil" (indeed, this notion is what often leads the hero archetype out of the perfect world he or she lives in and off through the first threshold of the story). This is usually then complicated and blurred as the story or series of books or movies progress to allow for more varied and diverse entertainment and/or thought.
Now, my personal opinion is that the idea of "good and evil" as polarized concepts is really just a hold-off from years past, when simplified ideas were needed like that because of people coming out of war devastation or something universally horrible (when people sociologically need something "solid and unchanging" to cling to). The concepts always wither away after such things happen and then hop back in to people's minds when the wheel comes 'round again.
Good and evil are, naturally, opinion-based, no matter what the root source is. If someone stole a bike from me, I would say it was wrong. If I followed them to see why and found that they were stealing it because they were orphaned or their family couldn't afford it, I would still say with absolute certainty that it was wrong. If they stole it to sell for money to meet a mobster's demands to set their sibling free or something, I would still say it was completely wrong. However, more things come in to the equation with the latter two. I would still say the initial act was evil, but the effects, thereof, could very well be good. It also has a great deal, however, to do with what happens with the future if such an event takes place. What if the kid that steals the bike starts stealing a bunch of stuff from everyone to pay the ransom? What if he steals a lump of money another kid was saving to buy expensive medicine for his dirt-poor family?
I don't tend to just take a whole series of events and say "wow, that was evil". I usually take the single events, themselves, and categorize them independently. Why? I don't know, that's how I think. But it allows for every action considered to have a fair judgment put on it (well, as fair as any human can be- we're unfortunately all subject to bias). Now, if we're talking about things I don't know about the circumstances, then that is out of my hands.
Anyway, back to a story standpoint. Polarized concepts are often used to build the starting blocks of lore or background story so that more advanced concepts can develop later on. It's a lot like a typical child- they grow mentally from believing in singular, polarized ideals, and then expand their minds (hopefully) to realize that there's more grey in the world than black and white.
It's a huge step in developing logic, I think. As far as I know, it helps many good writers to think that way- not just for creative ideas, but also because it helps them to realize that language is amorphous and yet universal (to those who understand it). Like, for instance, although it's not a word, I could say "liquidine" to describe something fluid or with fluid characteristics. That's something I consider logical writing- although it isn't a real word, it makes logical sense to someone who is intelligent enough to understand that words are made of prefixes and suffixes (among other things) and that when put together they are still speaking perfect English, just not perfect conforming English.
congrats, you're on step 1 of waking up from illuminati propaganda - i mean... what?
in all seriousness though, good and evil are both perspective and "black and white."
on the perspective side is order and chaos. think of order like a dictatorship - theres an absolute authority that controls everything, usually giving no freedoms to the people, but keeps them safe with laws and a domestic force for protection - keeps everything in order (duh). the people don't have many social freedoms but live comfortable.
chaos is like a world without laws. you can live peacefully if you choose with your freedoms, but that doesn't mean everyone else will, and they will probably hurt you to benefit themselves. that's true chaos anyways, though even hell is able to have some order to keep armies together and the prime evils at the top.
conclusion: too much order = bad, too much chaos = bad. middle ground? probably good, but it depends on how much order you think is good/bad and how much chaos you consider good/bad
now on to the black and white! good is obviously peace, loving, joy, happiness - any word associated with positive emotions and actions. why? because it makes you feel good and is good for others! if you are a person who lives closer along these lines, you're probably going to be a good guy
and evil is anyone who inflicts pain, suffering, yadda yadda.... so on so forth. but TRUE evil would disguise itself as a benevolent being and mislead everyone until a sudden moment where they are in full control - order?
christianity - you have jesus. a good guy who is peaceful, loving, compassionate. then you have the guys that made his church which basically said "look, jesus was a good guy - if you don't like him then you dont like good, ergo you are evil. oh and by the way we are the only ones who can speak to him so you must do as we say"
and THAT'S how you get your paladins who kill without question!
game worlds use archetypes like your cliche paladin and his nemesis because they are the most simple to explain. otherwise you get a crazy complex world like the explanation i just gave you.
"What man, anywhere under Heaven's high arch, has fought in such darkness, endured more misery or been harder pressed?"
-Beowulf
That's why I have such a weird choice of favorite books and movies (and games), I guess...
I do like how Diablo did it.
If this isn't making sense then I'll give an example that is fairly simple.
Take the word "hot". If we did not have an idea of what cold was, nor was there such a thing as cold. We would not have hot. Opposites are forever bound to each other and it's how we tend to think.
(this philosophical info is from my philosophy class and specifically coming from the ideas of Anaximander)
What does that have to do with good and evil? If the game is about combat in one way or another with an ultimate goal the easiest thing to do is put it in terms of good and evil because it is what most people understand, and are able to comprehend because of past experience.
So what I'm saying in a simplified way is that we think with opposites, we (as in human kind) don't like grey areas. We want a distinct goal. Pair that with common knowledge of history. What do you get?
Good vs. Evil
-Equinox
"We're like the downtown of the Diablo related internet lol"
-Winged
Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions
Example: War
side 1 thinks what side 2 is doing is evil...
side 2 thinks what side 1 is doing is evil...
and both think that they are doing good.
Same with V for Vendetta. Mostly the book, as in the book it's a little harder to tell if V is a good guy or a bad guy, because he does some seriously messed up stuff in the book.
Kinda the same with Watchmen. And even John Constantine in Hellblazer. Quite a few of the characters found in the forementioned graphic novels (more than their film counterparts) blur the line between good and evil.
It a bit more etnertaining if a protagonist or one of the protagonists is more of an anti hero than a straight hero.
Hellblazer, V for vendetta, watchmen. All had Alan Moore work on them. hmm. Maybe half the people who do this good vs. evil stuff yshould talk to him. He seems to put an interesting twist on it, most of the time.
Diablo does a good job with the whole concept though I find.