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Ghyslain Xaroit wrote:So, this guy considers oppression

This guy doesn't think period. Obviously spends too much time staring vacantly out into the mall. Chaos is essentially Hell and its followers are Devil worshippers. If anyone wants to pretend that these are the good guys go right ahead, but you're wrong.

In 40k, the Imperium seems evil by our current-day democratic standards. But with how many people in the Imperium there are and how they are barraged by anything and everything from everywhere....

You try to run a government better. I dare you.

cadbren wrote:

Ghyslain Xaroit wrote:So, this guy considers oppression

This guy doesn't think period. Obviously spends too much time staring vacantly out into the mall. Chaos is essentially Hell and its followers are Devil worshippers. If anyone wants to pretend that these are the good guys go right ahead, but you're wrong.

To a guy who lives on a world where rain goes upwards and is made of eyeballs and the sea of acid screams continuously, an Imperial world might seem like hell. It's about whats normal to you.

Not all Chaos Worshipers seem necessarily evil. You have cultures of the Laer, Nurth, Davin even Colchis that all appeared to live normal lives in Chaos Worship. All before the Imperium of Man came along and tried to make them believe in something else.

Chaos gets a bad reputation because of the way it's depicted in the novels and stuff, but there are cultures out there that get on just fine and aren't murdering and raping all the time.

In the 40k universe no race is a good guy. They are all bad just have different degrees of it. Some could argue that for each race is evil could also say each race is good.

40k Universe doesn't have good guys, its just who is less evil.

And I still think the IoM is definitely less evil than a good number of the W40K races, especially Chaos, who is the worst of all the W40K factions. Maybe even worse than DE.

Right, torturing and raping an entire world and its population in countless ways for eternity, many of which are unfathomable to the human mind, is "good".


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Pilau Rice wrote:Chaos gets a bad reputation because of the way it's depicted in the novels and stuff, but there are cultures out there that get on just fine and aren't murdering and raping all the time.

Yeah, and there's also people who think Hitler was right and that the Holocaust didn't happen.

Just because most worshippers of Chaos are ignorant of the true nature of Chaos doesn't mean Chaos itself isn't evil.




It is, and it revels in it.

Melissia wrote:Right, torturing and raping an entire world and its population in countless ways for eternity, many of which are unfathomable to the human mind, is "good".

Err, no that clearly isn't good, unless you like that sort of thing ... Not all Chaos worshiping planets are like this though.

Melissia wrote:Just because most worshippers of Chaos are ignorant of the true nature of Chaos doesn't mean Chaos itself isn't evil.

It is, and it revels in it.

Yeah because the Laer and Nurthene all had such terrible lives until the Imperium of Man came along. You could say the same for the Istvaanians. Sure, we don't know much about what it was like, but the descriptions of the cities and inhabitants we do have don't show them as living lives of utter woe or torture. If Chaos is utter evil, why were these civilizations relatively normal.

I know the Chaos Gods are the big bad, that's why I play them on Tabletop. But there are no good and bad in 40k, that's what I am saying and that's my stance. They are all as bad as each other just with different intentions and methods. The only exceptions might be the Orks and the Tyranids.

Right, torturing and raping an entire world and its population in countless ways for eternity, many of which are unfathomable to the human mind, is "good

It's bad to you. But what if that's normal to a chaos cultist. What makes your vision of good better than his? His morals will be entirely different to you, there is nothing apart from your opinion saying that your view is better than his.

Anything you can say that makes that view look bad he can say something that from the perspective of a chaos cultist will make your ideas look bad. Chaos is bad from our perspective but our morals aren't neccessarily right.

Pilau Rice wrote:

Melissia wrote:Right, torturing and raping an entire world and its population in countless ways for eternity, many of which are unfathomable to the human mind, is "good".

Err, no that clearly isn't good, unless you like that sort of thing ... Not all Chaos worshiping planets are like this though.

That's because they are ignorant to the truth of Chaos. The overwhelming majority of Chaos worshippers, even Chaos Marines, know very little about Chaos, and usually what they do know is a lie.

That planet is one enveloped in Chaos, it is a Daemonworld. In the end, Chaos collectively wants every world to become a Daemonworld.


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4M2A wrote:

Right, torturing and raping an entire world and its population in countless ways for eternity, many of which are unfathomable to the human mind, is "good

It's bad to you. But what if that's normal to a chaos cultist.

Moral relativism is, and always has been, bs.

On daemonworlds, there are no chaos worshippers. There's only daemons and victims.

Melissia wrote:
That's because they are ignorant to the truth of Chaos. The overwhelming majority of Chaos worshippers, even Chaos Marines, know very little about Chaos, and usually what they do know is a lie.

That planet is one enveloped in Chaos, it is a Daemonworld. In the end, Chaos collectively wants every world to become a Daemonworld.

But then if Chaos is evil why are their followers leading normal lives and not being smited and having their flesh seared off with hot spoons? I get what you are saying but I think you're wrong. I don't deny that Chaos wants Daemonworlds but if you are doing your job of worshiping, appeasing and supplicating the Chaos Gods you're doing ok in their book.

Melissia wrote:On daemonworlds, there are no chaos worshippers. There's only daemons and victims.

In the Novel Daemonworld you have Chaos Worshipers, wait for it ... worshiping Chaos. Same as the Dark Creed series. Blimey, the Whole of the Word Bearers are Chaos Worshipers and they, strangely enough, also live on Daemonworlds.

There's a lot of moral relativism being thrown around in here. The IoM isn't good because Chaos is evil, nor is Chaos good because the IoM is evil.

Both Chaos and the IoM are ruled by murderous tortuing thugs who will kill an entire planet's worth of civilians in order to acquire more power. They are both evil, but maybe the Imperium is less evil because they torture-kill rather than rape-torture-kill.

This is like trying to decide if the Nazis or Soviets were the 'good guys' in Eastern Europe. Both killed millions, but the Nazis are more universaslly recognized as evil because the anti-Nazi propaganda is stronger/more widespread than anti-Soviet propaganda.

Chaos aren't good...or evil. It's just raw human emotion, the people sacrifcing/killing/ whatever in the name of the gods are human, so by definition are all humans evil?

Oh and pot kettle black for Imperials, do you recall something like "The Immortal god-Emperor...to whom a million souls are sacrificed every day".

You can define chaos by defining humanity as a species

Moral relativism only breaks down when you introduce the essential nature of Chaos. It taints, warps, and obliterates everything it touches, and is populated by insane, often mindless, lesser beings. Incoherent insanity is not a moral system, and its pointlessly detrimental effect cannot be rationally debated as such.


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biccat wrote:This is like trying to decide if the Nazis or Soviets were the 'good guys' in Eastern Europe. Both killed millions, but the Nazis are more universaslly recognized as evil because the anti-Nazi propaganda is stronger/more widespread than anti-Soviet propaganda.

It is more like trying to decide if the Axis powers or the Allies were the "good guys." That's actually a pretty good comparison: the Allies carpet bombed civilian populations, there were doubtlessly a number of smaller abuses by their soldiers inflicted upon the local peoples, and ultimately ended it all through the use of one of the most effective terror weapons ever created, obliterating tens of thousands in the blink of an eye. The Axis powers did all that too (except for the ending things with a superweapon), only in a more pointlessly insane way, with a whole lot more needless, counterproductive brutality to boot, all done for the most insane and frivolous of reasons. Both sides did things any rational person in this day and age would see as horrific and inexcusable, the Axis powers just did more of it, and all for much more insane reasons.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Moral relativism only breaks down when you introduce the essential nature of Chaos.

I'm fairly certain that Moral Relativism breaks down far more often than that. As an ethical system is is one of the most flawed and useless systems.

Insane to you, they probabily made perfect sense to hitler and other Nazi's.

I can't understand why lots of people do things, but it probably makes perfect sense to them.

Moral relativism is, and always has been, bs.

No, it isn't. You may be confident in your beliefs but give me solid, unbiased proof that isn't based on opinions and I'll believe you.

If we were to be taken over by a culture that had directly opposite morals to us our society would change. Would it be fair for them to punish people who followed the old society's rules, and praise those who fought against it? From our perspective we followed the rules and now we are being punished, because we were bought up in a different society. However we have done the same thing to others. Does that mean our culture is right above all others? Seems a bit arrogant to thing that doesn't it?

4M2A wrote:

Moral relativism is, and always has been, bs.

No, it isn't. You may be confident in your beliefs but give me solid, unbiased proof that isn't based on opinions and I'll believe you.

Others have already done far better jobs explaining the many critical flaws of moral relativism than I would. Moral relativism is one of the most despised positions in the ethical field of study, for good reason. It is a weak and pathetic position, and is nothing more than a disguise for moral nihilism.

Here's a quick link to one of said explanations of the flaws of moral relativism:

http://westtnliving.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/allowing-ones-self-the-luxury-of-moral-relativism-in-life-is-unhealthy-and-ultimately-self-destructive/

I'm on the third Horus Heresy novel, and.. I do think that Horus is a sympathetic character (and pretty sure he was meant to be). Anyone else think so? Does that count for something as far as morality goes for chaos?

That article is stupid. Basically says "It isn't nice that there is no good and bad therefore good and bad exists".

+1 to moral relativism being dumb.

4M2A wrote:That article is stupid. Basically says "It isn't nice that there is no good and bad therefore good and bad exists".

No, the article says the position is weak, stupid, and useless, three things which are true about moral relativism. It's nothing more than a thin disguise for nihilism.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:It is more like trying to decide if the Axis powers or the Allies were the "good guys." That's actually a pretty good comparison: the Allies carpet bombed civilian populations, there were doubtlessly a number of smaller abuses by their soldiers inflicted upon the local peoples, and ultimately ended it all through the use of one of the most effective terror weapons ever created, obliterating tens of thousands in the blink of an eye. The Axis powers did all that too (except for the ending things with a superweapon), only in a more pointlessly insane way, with a whole lot more needless, counterproductive brutality to boot, all done for the most insane and frivolous of reasons. Both sides did things any rational person in this day and age would see as horrific and inexcusable, the Axis powers just did more of it, and all for much more insane reasons.

I don't think it warrants a huge discussion, but I think the Soviet/Nazi comparison is better for the following:

- Both were indiscriminate mass murdering regimes.
- Both were militant dictatorships
- Both believed that the world was better under their control
- Overarching military-based economy
- Willingness to sacrifice millions towards their own ends.

The western axis powers just didn't have the same "conquor the world" mindset that existed in both the USSR and Germany, and is prevalent throughout the 40k universe. Finally, I'm not sure how individual soldiers' abuses or superweapons play into anything. One is prevalent regardless of the nation and the other is nonexistent in 40k (at least, no superweapon exists that can be so effective in 40k).

So I think the Nazi/Soviet comparison is the best, because while they're totally opposed to one another, they're two sides of the same coin - dictatorships.

Melissia wrote:

4M2A wrote:

Moral relativism is, and always has been, bs.

No, it isn't. You may be confident in your beliefs but give me solid, unbiased proof that isn't based on opinions and I'll believe you.

Others have already done far better jobs explaining the many critical flaws of moral relativism than I would. Moral relativism is one of the most despised positions in the ethical field of study, for good reason. It is a weak and pathetic position, and is nothing more than a disguise for moral nihilism.

Here's a quick link to one of said explanations of the flaws of moral relativism:

http://westtnliving.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/allowing-ones-self-the-luxury-of-moral-relativism-in-life-is-unhealthy-and-ultimately-self-destructive/

The problem is Moral Relativism is ultimately right. What is moral and acceptable varies depending on who you are. It doesn't, however, function as a practical worldview. One must draw lines somewhere, even if they are not truly "right", simply because one cannot function without a metric of what is to be desired and what is to be avoided.

The problem here is that ignoring the well-being of certain others in favor of your own advancement (and/or entertainment) is a perfectly functional system, when not taken to Stupid Evil levels and combined with gibbering insanity. We see this accepted time and again throughout human history, in almost every society. A good 40K example of this would be DE: their lives revolve around sadistic hedonism, and their society is a brutal, social-darwinist meritocracy. And it works, having taken them from scattered refugees with nothing to the largest combat trained sapient (to exclude Orks, Tyranids, and Necrons) force in the galaxy, considering that every last one of them is to some extent or another trained as a scheming fighter and Commoragh dwarfs the largest of Imperial Hives, which house hundreds of billions to trillions of people (in comparison, the Imperial Guard apparently numbers in the low trillions, and Space Marines of course number less a million at any given time (odd when you think about it: they are probably more Space Marine models than there are Space Marines in the fluff...), while Craftworlders number much less in all, and have significant non-military populations). Chaos, however, falls into the "taken to Stupid Evil levels and combined with gibbering insanity" category.

ImperialTard wrote:I'm on the third Horus Heresy novel, and.. I do think that Horus is a sympathetic character (and pretty sure he was meant to be). Anyone else think so? Does that count for something as far as morality goes for chaos?

Of course Horus is sympathetic. The whole point is that he was tricked by the ruinous powers into creating the very thing he tried to prevent, and was eventually corrupted by their taint.

since it seems that the only way to destroy chaos would be to destory the Imperium, ultimately siding with Chaos so it may destroy itself would be the right thing to do.

or at least thats how i read the fluff.

biccat wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:It is more like trying to decide if the Axis powers or the Allies were the "good guys." That's actually a pretty good comparison: the Allies carpet bombed civilian populations, there were doubtlessly a number of smaller abuses by their soldiers inflicted upon the local peoples, and ultimately ended it all through the use of one of the most effective terror weapons ever created, obliterating tens of thousands in the blink of an eye. The Axis powers did all that too (except for the ending things with a superweapon), only in a more pointlessly insane way, with a whole lot more needless, counterproductive brutality to boot, all done for the most insane and frivolous of reasons. Both sides did things any rational person in this day and age would see as horrific and inexcusable, the Axis powers just did more of it, and all for much more insane reasons.

I don't think it warrants a huge discussion, but I think the Soviet/Nazi comparison is better for the following:

- Both were indiscriminate mass murdering regimes.
- Both were militant dictatorships
- Both believed that the world was better under their control
- Overarching military-based economy
- Willingness to sacrifice millions towards their own ends.

The western axis powers just didn't have the same "conquor the world" mindset that existed in both the USSR and Germany, and is prevalent throughout the 40k universe. Finally, I'm not sure how individual soldiers' abuses or superweapons play into anything. One is prevalent regardless of the nation and the other is nonexistent in 40k (at least, no superweapon exists that can be so effective in 40k).

So I think the Nazi/Soviet comparison is the best, because while they're totally opposed to one another, they're two sides of the same coin - dictatorships.

But it is better for preserving the scale of the comparison. You're just taking two things which resemble the Imperium, and trying to imply that one of them is Chaos and the other is the Imperium. While the Imperium may end up looking not unlike the Soviets or Nazis in the end, Chaos is to the Imperium what the Axis powers were to the Allies. The Allies were willing to slaughter civilians by the tens of thousands to further their objectives. The Axis powers (possibly excluding Italy to an extent, the worst acts were under the Nazis and Japanese, specifically) went out of their way to butcher civilians just because they felt like it, wasting massive amounts of resources to do so. Scaled up to 40K levels, in a galaxy with quadrillions of humans, and existential threats coming from every direction, what the Imperium does is less brutal than what the Allies did (as in, hurts a smaller percentage of the population, to accomplish more), while what Chaos does is every bit as self-defeating, insane, and utterly pointless as what the Axis did.


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mrsmith wrote:since it seems that the only way to destroy chaos would be to destory the Imperium, ultimately siding with Chaos so it may destroy itself would be the right thing to do.

or at least thats how i read the fluff.

Destroying all life, everywhere, would theoretically end Chaos. Chaos far predates humanity, and its gods don't care the slightest for what goes within this Galaxy, though lesser daemons might. Even wiping out all life in the Milky Way probably wouldn't end Chaos, as it would also be fed by the life in other galaxies. Painting it as "it's all humanity's fault for existing" is just MOAR GRIMDARKS someone threw in for some reason or another.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The problem is Moral Relativism is ultimately right.

Pretty much the entire philosophical field of study known as Ethics disagrees.

Melissia wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The problem is Moral Relativism is ultimately right.

Pretty much the entire philosophical field of study known as Ethics disagrees.

They're as a much a joke as the rest of formal philosophy is. No one has the authority of Universal Arbiter of Morality; there is no universal law of right and wrong. Every single moral judgment comes down to the personal views of the one making it. Yes, Moral Relativism is nihilistic. It is also the closest thing to objective truth there is when talking about ethics.

But, day to day life doesn't require objective truth. Morality may be subjective, but as I said, you must draw lines somewhere to have a functioning society. So society collectively sets its own metric, and tries to instill and enforce this metric amongst both its existing and new members, and the world keeps on turning completely oblivious to it all.

davij wrote:Insane to you, they probabily made perfect sense to hitler and other Nazi's.

I can't understand why lots of people do things, but it probably makes perfect sense to them.

Fair enough for the "nazi morality" example, but it does not apply to the situation of (most) chaos worshippers and daemons. They definitely do evil things because even them would agree that their actions are only driven by madness and an insane desire to inflict pain. They don't think they are doing something right, they think they are doing something evil, selfish and unjustified, and that's why they are doing it.
If a daemon thought killing imperials might be bettering the galaxy, he would immediately stop doing it, because daemons find much relish in doing evil! It makes them feel powerful and beyond the reach of humanity's "justice".

You cannot even apply moral relativism to Chaotic reasoning.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

mrsmith wrote:since it seems that the only way to destroy chaos would be to destory the Imperium, ultimately siding with Chaos so it may destroy itself would be the right thing to do.

or at least thats how i read the fluff.

Destroying all life, everywhere, would theoretically end Chaos. Chaos far predates humanity, and its gods don't care the slightest for what goes within this Galaxy, though lesser daemons might. Even wiping out all life in the Milky Way probably wouldn't end Chaos, as it would also be fed by the life in other galaxies. Painting it as "it's all humanity's fault for existing" is just MOAR GRIMDARKS someone threw in for some reason or another.

many races, maybe even most, don't have a presence in the warp though, so those could thrive. Plus Humans have an unusually high affect on the warp for some reason.

how do the gods not care? it seems the only way they can grow in power is to cause as much disorder as they can in the real world.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:But it is better for preserving the scale of the comparison.

But it isn't scale we're talking about, it is morality of the relative positions.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:You're just taking two things which resemble the Imperium, and trying to imply that one of them is Chaos and the other is the Imperium.

I'm not sure why you see this as wrong. I'm making an analogy between two opposing yet morally dubious governments to illustrate that neither is "good".

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:While the Imperium may end up looking not unlike the Soviets or Nazis in the end, Chaos is to the Imperium what the Axis powers were to the Allies.

But they aren't. The Allies were fighting to restore self-government to the invaded nations while the Axis were trying to expand their hold. It is in Eastern Europe where we see two expansionist powers vying for domination.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The Allies were willing to slaughter civilians by the tens of thousands to further their objectives.
No, they were willing to 'slaughter civilians' to defeat an enemy. Again, it is in Eastern Europe where we see domestic murder, not in Western Europe. It was the USSR who used mass infantry WWI tactics, the Western powers used military technology where possible to avoid deaths. Further, when the Western powers conquered a city, they didn't purge it of dissidents and institute a puppet government, that was the Eastern ally.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The Axis powers (possibly excluding Italy to an extent, the worst acts were under the Nazis and Japanese, specifically) went out of their way to butcher civilians just because they felt like it, wasting massive amounts of resources to do so.

But the Western allies didn't do that to their own people, nor did they do it to captured territories. You have to look to the Eastern front to see that happening. There were no great purges in the US or UK, but there certainly were in the USSR.

And the purges by the Soviets did serve a purpose, eliminate opposition and control the populasce - exactly as in the Imperium.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Scaled up to 40K levels, in a galaxy with quadrillions of humans, and existential threats coming from every direction, what the Imperium does is less brutal than what the Allies did (as in, hurts a smaller percentage of the population, to accomplish more), while what Chaos does is every bit as self-defeating, insane, and utterly pointless as what the Axis did.

I draw a line between casualties of war and self-imposed purging, and I think most people would as well. The deaths caused by attacks on population centers were done for the purpose of defeating an enemy, in the Imperium it is done for purposes of control (and blood sacrifice to a dead god).

You may think I'm drawing a clear moral line between democracy and the tyranny of socialism, and that's because I am. People in the Soviet Union and IoM are/were no more free than those in Nazi Germany or the Chaos Worlds. All live(d) under evil.