: I'm not committed to a definition of 'justification,' so
: I'll go with whatever you want to pack into it. I
: submit you can STILL be justified (i.e., have reasons
: and be not harmful to the overall whole) and be evil.
: As I played the Myth games, I wasn't thinking--boy, the
: Dark is evil because they're acting without reason!
: And they're harming the overall whole! And they're not
: evil simply because they oppose me. They're evil
: because they make evil choices and act in evil ways.
Besides slaughtering thousands if not millions of your friends and allies, how have they acted in evil ways? If that's all they're guilty of, then they're "evil" in your book simply because they oppose you. Not that, to the best of your knowledge as a leader of the Light, you wouldn't be justified to the best of your knowledge in killing them off to save your life, because as far as the Light can tell they ARE evil. But if you take a more "elevated" view on it, you might find that the Light is wrong. Or you might not. But in my story, I decided that the Light is misinformed (or rather uninformed), and thus they are as wrong as the Dark (which is also uninformed).
If you knew, somehow, that they weren't just an evil destructive force but were trying to correct a wrong done unto them, and there was something you could do to stop the fighting besides killing them off, but you decided to kill them anyway... then you would not be justified, and would be harming half of the whole for the sake of the other, and thus be evil.
: Evilness is not a matter of (simply) lacking
: justification.
I'm not saying it is. I'm saying evil is trying to harm the known whole. Note the "trying to". If you're some scientist and you are working on some sort of kick-assed vaccum energy machine that could fabricate food and shelter out of thin air and solve the world's economic problems, but you accidentally start some sort of reaction that irradiates half a continent before you can destroy the thing at the cost of your life... well, you did something really harmful, but you certainly tried your best not to, so that means you weren't evil, you just made a horrible mistake.
Here, let me more clearly lay out all my definitions in one place for you here. I realize that some of this will contradict the specific wording I've been using, but I'm more clearly wording it here for future reference, and you should be able to figure out what I meant to say by context in previous posts and above.
Reason:
The purpose for a deed. Every deed has a reason, even if the doer doesn't know what it is.
Justification:
A reason that, to the best of your knowledge, is good, meaning that you intend the deed to be right. (See below).
Deeds-
Right: That which is overall beneficial to the known whole.
Wrong: That which is overall harmful to the known whole.
Intentions-
Good: Meaning to do right deeds.
Evil: Meaning to do wrong deeds.
From this you can see that justification and right/wrong deeds are subjective, based on the doer's available knowledge, and thus there could be established "levels" of right and wrong. Someone can be "more right" or "more justified" if they know a greater whole to consider.
For example, a primitive, uncivilized protohuman might consider stealing from his neighbor the right thing to do, because it increases his family's chances of survival. A more "enlightened" person would instead realize that the prosperity of the entire tribe is not only more important than that of one family, but ultimately beneficial to the individuals within it too.
Therefore, while the primative would consider the enlightened one taking the stolen food and giving it back to the equally deserving other family "wrong", because the primative is only considering the good of his family, the enlightened one would see that it is actually right.
But the fact that the enlightened one is more right than the primative one doesn't make the primative one evil. He was just trying to help his family. He was trying to do good. But he was wrong. He might perceive the enlightened one as being "evil" for taking the excess, stolen food away from his family, and the enlightened one might perceive him as "evil" for stealing it to begin with. But neither of them actually IS evil.
Good and evil are absolutes. If you are trying to do the right thing, you are good, even if it turns out to be the wrong thing. If you are trying to do something that you know is wrong from a higher level, but you decide to think on a lower level so you can justify it as "right", then you are evil.
Ultimately, only someone omniscient and omnipitent can even stand a chance of doing the right thing all the time. But anyone can be good if they keep an open mind and try to do what's best for everyone - even if it turns out they were wrong.
