When I was a teenager and started playin D&D (1st ed), there was only Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic. No Good/Evil.
At the time, I tended to see the world primarily as Good vs Evil, so AD&D (2nd ed) seemed like an improvement.
As I got older, I came to realize that what people consider "Evil" is mostly used for people we're in some partisan conflict with.
Like in Israel/Palestine: Each side see the other side as "Evil" and themselves as the "Good Guys".
If anything, the main purpose of allowing ourselves to see some groups or individuals as "Evil" is to dehumanize them in ways that allow us to do "Evil" things to them.
Lawful vs Chaotic makes a lot more sense to me than back then, though. It's the yin/yang dualism that when in balance gives rise to most of the interesting dynamical phenomena.
The lead prosecutor at Nuremberg described evil as “lack of empathy” which I think is just about the best possible definition available to human beings.
When I was a teenager and started playin D&D (1st ed), there was only Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic. No Good/Evil.
At the time, I tended to see the world primarily as Good vs Evil, so AD&D (2nd ed) seemed like an improvement.
As I got older, I came to realize that what people consider "Evil" is mostly used for people we're in some partisan conflict with.
Like in Israel/Palestine: Each side see the other side as "Evil" and themselves as the "Good Guys".
If anything, the main purpose of allowing ourselves to see some groups or individuals as "Evil" is to dehumanize them in ways that allow us to do "Evil" things to them.
Lawful vs Chaotic makes a lot more sense to me than back then, though. It's the yin/yang dualism that when in balance gives rise to most of the interesting dynamical phenomena.