Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Deathbane]

From what i have seen, it seems to me that goblins have no concern for their fellow goblins. They lie, steal, cheat and destroy whatever is around them, and inflict unnecessary cruelty on captives. They love fighting, and impaling anything that moves. They are also extremely power hungry.

Without any other influence, the goblins would fragment into small family clans, and suffer from not only fighting outsiders, and other goblin clans, but their own allies. This would result in complete destruction of the goblin race. They are simply solitary creatures, that without a ruling power over them would seen degenerate back into solitary hunters.

From this, we can therefore draw a conclusion. The only reason goblins do not die out by fighting each other is that their lord and master, the demon, uses its powers to galvinate the goblins against a common enemy - mainly everybody else. It is only through this leaders will that the goblins can do ANYTHING collectively. When the demon dies, its influence still spreads throughout the religious memory of goblin culture, keeping them following its orders. And since Goblins are creatures that mirror aspects of the demons character, being motivated by hate and destruction, common enemies give the goblins something to focus their energy on, rather than each other.

When we see this, we realise goblins themselves are the perfect tools. Probably the demons created the goblin race in order to have an army of cheap cannon fodder,and programmed in these defects to make them easier to control.

It is my belief that goblins are therefore inherently evil, as they are the arm of darker forces at work within the dwarf fortress world.

[/ramble]

If you can work that braindump out ill be impressed

[Andir]

It is my belief that goblins are therefore inherently evil, as they are the arm of darker forces at work within the dwarf fortress world.

Evil to you... but not to them.  That's their way of life and to them, some stupid evil dwarfs invading their land and killing their baby snatchers is evil.

[JoshuaFH]

How hard is it to believe that goblins are simply naturally selfish and poor at surviving in groups because of it, so much so that it requires the strength (both in physical strength and strength of personality) of a demon to overcome this selfishness and force them to band together?

It is quite evident that goblins are the piss poor version of every other race, seeing as how they start losing the MOMENT they lose their Demon. If the demon is no longer around to band them together, they revert to their selfish ways and the demonistic goblin society collapses. simple.

if their were more demons at the start of world gen, goblins might actually band together long enough to actually be a major force in the world, but seeing as how the demon is usually killed within the first hundred years or so, the gobbos are fated to fall apart and languish in impotence forever.

simple.

[James Sunderland]

INTERESTING! VERY MUCH SO!
Now we all know it's dubious that all human beings IRL follow the exact same moral code. We all pretty much know what is considered bad though (rape, murder, theft, et cetera). What's different about DF and the real world though is that members of the same race in DF do all follow the exact same moral code. They are simply programmed to. Look in the raw files...or maybe the init files, I don't know I'm not good with modding or coding or whatever. Anyway, in those files you'll see under each race that they have ethics like (ELF_CUTDOWNATREE_FORBIDDEN) or (GOLBLIN_KIDNAP_ACCEPTABLE). So it's really not a matter of good and bad because good and bad in DF is viewed in different ways by each race.

[Fishersalwaysdie]

Quite possibly, goblins are created from some of the other races around thanks to demons who shaped them through tyranny into the shape most useful to them.

Now all of this boils down to the question of demon morality.

[Neonivek]

Quite possibly, goblins are created from some of the other races around thanks to demons who shaped them through tyranny into the shape most useful to them.

Now all of this boils down to the question of demon morality.

I find this hillarious especially since Demons are pretty much a mystery, an unknown, Threetoe written more on demons then the actual game tells us.

Yet we are trying to find the morality of the demons

[Hectonkhyres]

Not to get too off topic, but you guys know that it is logically impossible for there not to be objective ethical truths, right?

The premise that "there are no objective ethical truths" is logically self-refuting, therefore inherently false, therefore there must be such a thing as an objective ethical truth.  Therefore good and evil are more than just social constructs dependent on culture.

Or to quote Socrates more broadly on the subject of relativism as a whole:

"If the way things appear to me, in that way they exist for me, and the way things appears to you, in that way they exist for you, then it appears to me that your whole doctrine is false."

Hence the self-contradiction of a relativist position.

Indeed... but, as I said, Relativism is not the only game in town. Relativism says there are no objective moral facts: there are only subjective moral facts. You are right simply by virtue of having an ethical belief. It is indeed provable to be false.

But then there are the irrealist theories of Error-Theory and Expressivism. Both of which claim that there are no moral facts at all, either subjective or objective. With irrealism, your believing in something doesn't mean jack when it comes to moral facts. Because there are none. These have not been clearly disproven.

Ethical Naturalism is not yet the clear winner.

[Neonivek]

How do you even know Goblins have a subjective morality?

On a sidenote: I always loved the theory that Goblins snatch baby because they are the ultimate comodity, like a pet (or like a baby)!

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

everyone has an opinion. from a point of view relative to you only somethings are evil. thus a dwarf thinks gobs are evil but overall goblins are chaotic leaning towards destructive thus they are chaoticly destructive which will be veiwed by many as evil.

[Neonivek]

everyone has an opinion. from a point of view relative to you only somethings are evil. thus a dwarf thinks gobs are evil but overall goblins are chaotic leaning towards destructive thus they are chaoticly destructive which will be veiwed by many as evil.

It really depends on by what definition they mean evil.

Frankly people consider Lions evil.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Before I totally sidetrack this argument by stating that morality is a social construct rather than a definitive and objective "good vs evil" or being completely subjective "doesn't really exist"...
Because I doubt many people here are social constructivists and the objectivists and subjectivists are already arguing full steam (this is what I get for being a sociology major having studied this shit)

Have you guys looked at the RAWs?

The entity civs ethics tags and personality creature raw tags give us a decent idea of what goblin "morality" is. IT IS DETERMINED BY THE CIVS - I.E. A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT.

DF is in certain ways deterministic. That's because being a certain race naturally gives someone certain personality traits they are stuck with. From the  CREATURE_STANDARD RAW. Goblins are naturally angry, immoderate beings. Does this come across as racist? Yes, it does but that's of no fault of their own, it's our fault - their (GOD)creators who made them that way by generating them a world with their flaws for our amusement. They cannot escape their own traits unless that is changed, and they become "Not-Goblins".

However - look at ENTITY_DEFAULT and babysnatching - These show us that when you raise the races into goblin society, at least by DF standards, if they are there long enough they adopt the morality of the goblins and start murdering each other.

This shows that DF morality exists and is a social construct, as it changes among different social groups. Create a new civ and you can give it predetermined morality constructs through entity_default edits- unlike the real world where they are shaped over time.

It used to be that the tags were simply [GOOD] and [EVIL] but that doesn't work anymore when applied to elves and goblins. Elves eat the body of sapient beings in accordance to mother nature. This is abhorred by humans and dwarves. Goblins "save children" and raise them as their own, but they may get murdered in the process.

Remember that DF is a GAME. A game where the denizens ultimately are created and destroyed to amuse us. If things in DF go too well, we get bored because there's no conflict, no reason to play. So we build and destroy. We command our dwarves to do the ridiculous, impossible, struggle against all odds and die. We exist above the other gods and demons in the game because we actively control and influence the world, even though we don't have omnipotent power over everything; (unless you have DF companion) we are listed as "Forces Unknown" in the Legends Screen - that "guide" our followers to glorious victory, or ignoble death.

When studying DF morality - the most important thing is the morality of the player.

Just look at Kobold Camp and the response it got from hardened DF players.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Let's go further - to define whether something is moral, or good or evil - one has to define GOOD, EVIL, morality, and TRUTH.

The last one is the most important and influences everything. How we approach this problem we depend on what scientific approach we take.
As a sociologist, or "social engineer", I am a firm believer in social constructivism.

There are objectivists and subjectivists as well.

Here's the problem though - ontologically and epistemologically each group will approach the idea of "morality" with their own constructed (teeheehee) paradigm of viewing the world.

Hardly anything any one else says will change it as it is the idea you have shaped since you started writing on your tabula rasa, this goes to you objectivists especially - you make my life hell by taking the human aspect (choice/agency) out of everything

[PTTG??]

Demons don't have a culture; they function as individuals, much like a shiver of Sharks (yes, that's the real term). Additionally, they are intrinsically supernatural beings, unlike the Goblins, whom are merely normal living things. As such, the Demons are freed from a lot of evolutionary or functional problems.

They presumably have no desires other than intellectual ones- no hunger, thirst, exhaustion, or even motivation for Tentacle Demons¹- at least not directly. These intellectual desires- ambition, fulfillment, an extremely difficult to quantify "social" desire encompassing dislike or appreciation for various people, and possibly a unique desire "to be like my alignment".

That last one represents the odd decision making process that would lead a super-entity such as a Demon or God (for now we really must include DF's Gods and any avatars of them in this discussion for the sake of completeness) to be "Bad for Badness' sake", doing things that don't make sense for any reason other than that it's what that alignment would do. Unlike mere mortal morality and it's required pragmatism, this is the sense of how, for instance, some specific good deity will forever trust an evil one, not fighting against him or destroying him altogether, for the sake of giving him the chance to decide to come to her side willingly, even as all the time the evil one is seeking to harm her followers or lead them astray.

As such, Goblin Demons are not motivated by the quest for the results of power, such as wealth and personal comfort. These things are below them, and surely they could find simpler ways to get them if they desired them. Instead, they have emotional, intellectual reasons for wishing to lead the goblins or otherwise meddling in the medium of mortals, a few possibilities below:
-Some abstract source of power- the closest they come to having physical needs- is provided by the emotions of souls at war. Perhaps with the whole of the world worshiping them, the Goblin Demons become full-on dieties.
-They enjoy the abstract tactical concerns of warfare, i.e., they are toying with the lives of millions as... a game. Perhaps once they conquer the world, they will reset it with a more challenging set of opponents. Perhaps in this game, I'll control the Kobolds and we'll start in a haunted desert, they say to themselves.
-They admire or at least have a form of affection for Goblins and truly believe that they themselves make good leaders to bring the goblin race to glory
-A wish to do something constructive- in a sense- by shaping the world as they see fit. The world will be formed to their will.
-Dislike of Humans or whatever-else-there-be; destroying them and making them suffer is the goal, not anything practical. Perhaps tormenting them is so much of a goal that the Demon takes great pains in not annihilating them so as to provide playthings for eternity.

While this makes the DF world sound dark and terrible, let's not forget the presence of Gods who must have similar, opposite motivations, and Heroes fighting against the Demons personally.

Allow me to make one brief comment about the "Moral Relativity" thing as well; this is not that. This is Functional Morality_{, though I admit I just made up the term}, that is that, regardless of what the origin of moral behavior is, (though I personally believe that it evolved,) it has function and use in a society, and cultures with a moral code are stronger and more successful than those without them. What this means for apparently amoral cultures, such as those of the goblins, is that they must have some kind of structure that allows them to function as well as moral ones. The presence of Demons is something I did not consider thoroughly but it seems that they are definitely, like I briefly mentioned, essential to supporting a goblin culture- and probably to maintaining it as it is.

¹A footnote about the Tentacle Demons; if they would have no intrinsic physical motivation, perhaps their behavior stems from an intellectual desire to enact a specific form of torment.

Thanks everyone for the insightful comments. (Holy Batcave, I got like 8 new responses typing this...)

[KaelGotDwarves]

This is Functional Morality_{, though I admit I just made up the term}, that is that, regardless of what the origin of moral behavior is, (though I personally believe that it evolved,) it has function and use in a society, and cultures with a moral code are stronger and more successful than those without them.

Har, it's okay PTTG, you're a social constructivist without having known it

People often fail to realize there's a middle ground besides TRUTH and NOTHING EXISTS.

Obviously I'm oversimplifying the issue, but I believe we underestimate the true power and potential of intellectual beings to (hopefully positively) shape their paradigm AND reality.

[Neonivek]

Functional Morality exists... it is called Utilitarianism