Bad examples here.

Both times the Valar intervened militarily in Middle Earth they broke the world pretty badly. Beleriand no longer even existed after the second intervention. There are very good reasons they are loath to intervene again.
Those old men you deride were Maiar, of the same type of spirit as Sauron. Just with more restrictions on the use of Power.

I'm making no pronouncements on the rest of your argument.
But this was a terrible example, since the situations are not comparable.

this example would be fantastic if it did not contain the sentence "real-world religion"

did you know that there are many different approaches to evil across literal thousands of religions

and some of them don't even have a concept of evil

thus being inapplicable to this

thus making it a): a bad example and b): a misapplication of the epicurean problem of evil to all real-world religion and not just christianity

for example, in zoroastrianism, evil is straight up held to be weaker than good, god is not omnipotent and evil was not created by them and finally evil can and will be defeated by good deeds and good acts

which is, you know, completely in opposition to this assertion of yours

This are both broadly similar enough that I am responding to them together.

I know both of the things you said and still said them the way I did on purpose. Because linkhyrule5's standard of responsibility is that bad.

Because even with the line about utilitarian calculation it was never formulated with that cutout.

Because linkhyrule agreed with that line Lioness quoted which means they do take it to apply to religions with different sorts of gods and different conceptions of evil.



I had a rather long respons to him written up, and posted, which I deleted because I didn't want to give the appearance of being the unpleasant dog-with-a-bone. (again) It is in the spoilers below if you care to look.

I'll cut you off here.

Yes, I do.

That being said, literally none of your examples are all that good. The reason the gods don't interfere with mortals in D&Dland varies from setting to setting, but in general, any world where Pelor could come down and interfere is also one where, I don't know, Vecna or someone could as well. Pelor may well be responsible for all the harm he could've prevented, but he is also responsible for all the harm he permits if he lets Vecna into the world, so that might just be a utilitarian calculation. The Maiar don't dare get close to the One Ring lest they create a new Sauron, which again might well kill more people than they could save. And ... I really don't see how "the Greek gods were assholes" is relevant?

The Sun, meanwhile, is unopposed, stupidly powerful, stupidly competent in a number of fields even before Glories and Perfection Beyond Imagining, and the legitimate King of Heaven. He has no such excuse. Even in your cases I'd still consider them responsible, I'd just understand that it's the best option they have -- but the Sun could, and therefore should, and therefore is not so easily forgiven when he does not.

To get the examples out of the way:

Pelor, and any god since at least 2E, can make avatars who are free to go around doing what they like. There was a whole thing about it in FR where divine avatars fought a war with a mortal empire and ruled the successor states. However, Pelor also isn't taking the fight to Vecna or whomever with the various other magically-identified-as-objectively-good forces. Most assuredly they would suffer tremendous losses, but by your standard of responsibility, utilitarian calculations don't actually absolve anyone of anything. He knowing lets any sort of bad thing happen anywhere when he manifestly has the power to send an avatar to go deal with it. That makes him just as responsible as the perpetrator. That is your standard.

The Maiar may have been vulnerable to the temptation of the ring, but its power was the power of Sauron and he was of a lesser order than the Valar (who I specifically mentioned). However, I had more in mind Numenor, which turned into a cruel, imperialistic, human-sacrificing, slave-taking empire ere it fell. The Valar, being neither blind nor stupid, saw it coming and... sent vague warnings? Until the fleet of Ar-Pharazon was literally at their doorstep when they had God deal with it. Before that, they left Middle Earth to suffer under Morgoth basically to punish the Elves for the kinslaying and leaving Valinor (before commanding them to return). The argument about not tearing up the world again loses its force when they proceeded to do exactly that when the rather arcane conditions they set for intervention (a representative of elves and men showing up to ask) were met.

As for the Greek gods (and numerous others), the point is that human standards of morality do not matter to them. Morality exists for a reason, it was created by people for a particular end which the gods have no use for. To use the Greek example, valor is a uniquely human virtue because humans die. When humans die the only thing that survives them (besides the shade which is apparently mindless most of the time) is what people say about you. So to be a good human you do impressive things so people talk about you forever. That is the closest to immortality a mortal can get. The gods, who do not die, do not need to win glory because they already have their own immortality.

Your assertion that the problem of evil making all gods evil
First, while you may not have said so in as many words it is a necessary consequence of your position. The gods can't be exactly as responsible for evil as the perpetrator without being just as evil. I will grant you are free to define evil in a specific way to avoid this, but you seriously risk your definition of responsibility becoming amoral.

As for finding basically every real and fictional god ever responsible for evil in their various worlds, you are certainly free to be whatever species of contingent misotheist you like (contingent on the existence of god(s) of course), but the problem of evil existing at all is not a slam dunk rebuttal of either the existences of god/gods or their goodness. People resolve the problem to their satisfaction every day, in numerous ways. However, it is rather difficult to have any sort of nuanced discussion about religion when your starting position is that gods are evil by virtue of existing in a world where evil exists.

As regards your "knowingly permit to occur" standard of responsibility and why it is so bad
Your standard of responsibility is also aggressively unhelpful for morality. By the "knowingly permit to occur" standard, you are personally responsible for every human rights abuse in the world you are aware of because you don't immediately drop what you are doing and go do something about it. It demands that every nation in the world with at least one soldier get involved in every single incident that makes the news. It has no provision for not being able to effectively stop the thing in question, no possibility of degrees of guilt, and perhaps worse gives no guide for action.

By your own admission, it also means that people are evil even if they are doing the best they can.
Under that standard victims are as responsible as perpetrators if they could have stopped what was done.

In my estimation it is worse than useless when it produces the two above non-sensical outcomes. Unless you have watered down responsibility to the shallowed possible meaning that makes a butterfly responsible for a hurricane.

On the actual topic of Sol
So what? Why is he obligated to lift a finger? You haven't established that he has any positive duty. The deal was gods don't interfere in Creation. He is keeping up his end. He didn't make any sort of guaranteed employment promise to Heaven, and they screwed it up themselves. The Celestial Bureacracy exists to do a job, to the extent Creation is still around they are doing it, and he pays all their salaries and rubber stamps the things that require his direct authorization.

Sol has held up to his end of all his agreements. The only next step is that being powerful and competent obligates you to do something nice. Since I am reasonably sure you don't open your home and pantry to all the poor cold and hungry stray animals in the area, or the homeless people if you want to make the claim that this responsibility only extends to other moral agents, you appear to be holding him to a standard you don't even try to meet.
 
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This are both broadly similar enough that I am responding to them together.

I know both of the things you said and still said them the way I did on purpose. Because linkhyrule5's standard of responsibility is that bad.

Because even with the line about utilitarian calculation it was never formulated with that cutout.

Because linkhyrule agreed with that line Lioness quoted which means they do take it to apply to religions with different sorts of gods and different conceptions of evil.
Because I misunderstood what he said. I should be allowed to spontaneously lose my basic reading comprehension and violently castigate people for things they haven't said. :mad::mad::mad:
:(
 
There's not really much ambiguity here, and while there is some nuance it doesn't change the basic situation. He's unambiguously a crummy person. But there's a wide distance between a bad person and a monster.
And then one day, you wake up and realize there's nothing left but silence where your soul used to be; the voice of humanity has finally, finally died, and you realize what you've done, what you'll continue to do, what can never undo. Drown the pain in whatever you can, block everything out and try to forget, let everything slide into decay and entropy and just do whatever you have to to get through the day. You're miserable and broken and empty and hollow and damned, a corpse that walks, rotting from the inside and there's nothing you can do, nothing you can do, nothing you can do. Say it until you believe it. Say it until you don't feel like a liar. Say it until the words break down and all you hear is white noise, as empty as your world has become.

You deserve this.

The Sol Invictus that was, the figure of hope and power, only exists within the souls of the Lawbringers. He failed, but they can succeed. They are the future, and he is the past.

I'm addressing these together 'cause I feel like my response is the same point and it's sort of the same reason that, like, "who else should take over then" is a pretty pertinent question imo and I feel as if couching the Sun as a gutted husk from blocking out all-the-suffering-in-Creation or as a plain fuckup is- is misunderstanding the situation somewhat?

Like...the dude did a thankless job -again as a slave, from the moment of his creation/genesis by fucking awful "parents" 'cause man I love TEDdy but let's not pretend the guy is any kind of healthy- for uncounted years before finally rising up to free himself and the other gods from their shackles. And at the end he handed over the keys to the kingdom to his beloved heirs, he retired more-or-less because fuck didn't he earn that much at least? (And saying he's not entitled to at least some kind of respite and comfort after, again, a horrific war against the proto-Yozi and, again, being a literal slave-creation and only gets any kind of pass if, like, he sits in a cave and hibernates is A Take but alright).

And then his kids go full mega-mengele except with more gold leaf.

He's flawed, he dropped the ball pretty hard at times, he's a nuclear four-armed dragon war-god who eats hearts. He's also been burned pretty badly in a pretty similar way to the parents of addicts who watched their kids callously leverage them for cash or resources, knowing that they're being used, and end up pulling away completely because it's kind of all they can do. The guy has one of the best reasons for not getting involved in Creation again out of almost anyone and ignoring that completely in favor of emphasizing his obligation to Everything and Everyone isn't really fair I think?

Edit:
Honestly I think the biggest thing that you can decisively lay at his feet as a pretty incontrovertible failure that he definitely should be blamed for is letting Heaven itself get as bad as it's gotten. His position as an Incarna and the privileges he enjoys come from that throne, that seat, but he's let everything around it rot in the face of his own addiction. He should be providing leadership and authority in that regard instead of just leaving a dusty, yellowed "back in 15 min" sign on his desk and fucking off.

But, then again, this is something that could/should be leveled at all the Incarna to a significant degree I think. Sol slightly more 'cause he's King but the Maidens and Luna have let the bureaucracy invert upon itself and turn deeply toxic.
 
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I feel that, like, there should be a fair bit of space between "exemplar of virtue, source of moral authority, Big Good" and "villain." Or even "shitty person."

It should be entirely possible for the Sun to be too tired to deal with this shit without, y'know, declaring he's a hostile actor who needs to be removed, potentially by violence.
 
At the risk of quoting myself:

Sol has kept all his agreements.
He promised Creation would be the domain of the Exalted. It is.
He promised Heaven he would pay their salaries and sign the things that needed his direct authorization. He does.

He never said Heaven would be run like a well-oiled machine. He never said he would send divine armies to deal with dictators. Those have never been his jobs and he never agreed to them.

These arguments about all the things he ought to do seem to assume that having power and competence imposes a positive duty to do nice things for other people. That is a far more contentious claim than those making it seem to think.
 
Thanks for using Josef Mengele as a stand in for "sick fuck who liked to hurt people" rather than a genius who makes progress by crossing ethical lines.
What?

No, seriously, what the fuck? Are you trying to sarcastically defend Mengele here? Or do you regularly encounter people who genuinely consider him a visionary rather than a psychopathic child-torturer with a surgery fetish? If so stop talking to those people and report them to either the mods or the police!
 
What?

No, seriously, what the fuck? Are you trying to sarcastically defend Mengele here? Or do you regularly encounter people who genuinely consider him a visionary rather than a psychopathic child-torturer with a surgery fetish? If so stop talking to those people and report them to either the mods or the police!


She is saying the latter. Discourse about Mengele often ends up amounting to, "but he was crossing the lines! He was just not limiting himself! Nazi science was taken up by the West!" when in reality, no, it's just that Mengele was a sick fuck with a title he should never have had who was so insane that the SS Wiking division he was assigned to had considered him a suck fuck before he got his job at Auschwitz.
 
She is saying the latter. Discourse about Mengele often ends up amounting to, "but he was crossing the lines! He was just not limiting himself! Nazi science was taken up by the West!" when in reality, no, it's just that Mengele was a sick fuck with a title he should never have had who was so insane that the SS Wiking division he was assigned to had considered him a suck fuck before he got his job at Auschwitz.
Christ. I've genuinely never seen anyone make that argument, if only because that's a good way to get done for hate speech and put on a registry in the U.K.. Fuck me, this is like finding out there are still people who take phrenology seriously.
 
Christ. I've genuinely never seen anyone make that argument, if only because that's a good way to get done for hate speech and put on a registry in the U.K.. Fuck me, this is like finding out there are still people who take phrenology seriously.
the difference between exalts and mortals is literally a few millimeters of bone
 
So I guess that's my issue in a nutshell basically, I feel like you're kind of blasting past all possible complexity in the question of "how much does the Unconquered Sun owe Creation, what is Creation entitled to demand of him" in favor of a pretty simple, not-nearly-as-interesting "he can theoretically do X, therefore he should and because he doesn't he's a monster". I mean the guy was literally a slave y'know? It's hard to fault him in general for not being super keen on taking up his old job for the sake of people who've abused his trust in the past and the power he gave them and generally don't give a damn about him and just want him to Solve Everything For Them. I'm not saying the guy's happy, even, as he is. But I think saying "he deserves his rest" shouldn't inherently be met with derision.
"That which you knowingly permit to occur, you are just as responsible for as if you had done it yourself" is a great argument for a character in the setting to make and a very boring one to make OOC. Who cares if TUS is "moral" or "good" or "evil" or not? He's not real! The only people who should care about whether he matches any particular standard of mortality are the people for whom he is real.
thus making it a): a bad example and b): a misapplication of the epicurean problem of evil to all real-world religion and not just christianity

for example, in zoroastrianism, evil is straight up held to be weaker than good, god is not omnipotent and evil was not created by them and finally evil can and will be defeated by good deeds and good acts

which is, you know, completely in opposition to this assertion of yours
.... So, I think I need to clarify my position

I don't actually think the Sun is evil, or a monster. I'm a utilitarian, I don't think anyone is evil; that's an adjective that takes actions or goals, not people, IMHO. Just because I hold him responsible for his (in)actions, doesn't mean I can't also be sympathetic to the position he's in. (So yes, I do in fact find 'responsibility' to be a somewhat amoral thing, along with literally anything that isn't "shut up and multiply.")

Despite my occasional comments to the contrary, I do not universally believe in "Murder the Gods and Topple their Thrones." The UCS does not need murdering, just deposing; he is misusing the power of his position, and as better candidates are available[1] he should be replaced in favor of one of them. I will still find him responsible for not helping people with his personal power -- but well, so be it, I am as I said not unsympathetic and anyway forcing people to do heroics literally never works. Though it'd be nice if some Zenith eventually was able to give him a, heh, Second Breath, a shining moment of inspiration, someday...

With regards to Moral Relativism argument #8201 -- why do I care? I judge people by my own standards. I have none other to judge them by. It certainly makes no sense to judge them by their own, or else few indeed would ever be guilty. Certainly I acknowledge that my own standards can only be said to be my own -- but I don't actually consider that as an argument to use some (any) other standard.

Oh, and one response to @Exthalion directly because it really bugged me:


Your standard of responsibility is also aggressively unhelpful for morality. By the "knowingly permit to occur" standard, you are personally responsible for every human rights abuse in the world you are aware of because you don't immediately drop what you are doing and go do something about it. It demands that every nation in the world with at least one soldier get involved in every single incident that makes the news. It has no provision for not being able to effectively stop the thing in question, no possibility of degrees of guilt, and perhaps worse gives no guide for action.

By your own admission, it also means that people are evil even if they are doing the best they can.
Under that standard victims are as responsible as perpetrators if they could have stopped what was done.

In my estimation it is worse than useless when it produces the two above non-sensical outcomes. Unless you have watered down responsibility to the shallowed possible meaning that makes a butterfly responsible for a hurricane.

Uh, no. You're... fundamentally misunderstanding how utilitarianism works.

First, again, no, I don't think anyone is evil, that's a type error.

Second, I am responsible for all predictable consequences of my actions. (A butterfly is not responsible for a hurricane it 'causes' because there's no reasonable way for it to have predicted that.) This applies no matter what I do. If I take action X, A people die; if I take action (or inaction) Y, B people die. If B is less than A, I had better choose action Y or I have done wrong; but that does not, in fact, make it less true that the blood of B people are on my hands. There are no actions that leave your hands clean, ever -- but that is not in fact relevant to anything. It's fundamentally not something I care about.

Save as many people as you can. The precise number isn't something that can be called "good" or "evil"; only the comparison. Did you save as many people as you could? Was there a predictably better path, or not?


The trick is, the Sun is responsible for everything that happens due to his knowing lack of oversight, and is choosing an action A that has no excuse, is saving nobody except his own pride. He isn't miscalculating and he isn't making a questionably-necessary sacrifice, he's just straight up not caring. So he's a crummy person who needs to be deposed, the end.


[1] Yes, contrary to some positions above I do think better candidates are easily available, for the simple reason that it's not hard to improve over "basically nothing." Even if the Solars, or a Solar, would go bad eventually, or some other random god or Exalt, that still means that right now Yu-Shan would get cleaned up, that still means that for the next few decades we could have a properly running Heaven which in turn would make a lot of things better in Creation. There are lives that would be saved that way, and it isn't clear at all that even a power-mad Solar, without the backing of the Deliberative and the sheer technological ability of the First Age, would be worse than the current state of "don't destroy Creation this time, next apocalypse's fine though".

And if you really want to do better, this is Exalted. You 100% can just stick Caliburn into a stone and wander between villages looking for someone who can pulleth it out.

Of course, it's very true that "good luck getting the other gods to accept this" is a problem. But that doesn't really count as a reason it shouldn't be done, only as a reason it'd be hard to do. -- In other words, it's a problem for the Player Characters.
 
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What?

No, seriously, what the fuck? Are you trying to sarcastically defend Mengele here? Or do you regularly encounter people who genuinely consider him a visionary rather than a psychopathic child-torturer with a surgery fetish? If so stop talking to those people and report them to either the mods or the police!
Josef Mengele has a mythology surrounding him that's well summarised by this page and well, basically any fictional portrayal of him. To the point that invoking his name is a shorthand way to say what a character like The Seven-Degreed Physician of Black Maladies is all about.

As you can see with the fact the trope has been nuked, truth is gradually winning out.
 
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Josef Mengele has a mythology surrounding him that's well summarised by this page and well, basically any fictional portrayal of him. To the point that invoking his name is a shorthand way to say what a character like The Seven-Degreed Physician of Black Maladies is all about.

As you can see with the fact the trope has been nuked, truth is winning out.

Of course, we know that the Physician is actually Dr Wario, Dr Mario's rival who lost his licence for malpractice
 
If there's any issue with invoking the Sun as part of a morality discussion in Exalted, it's that people/players continue to over-emphasize him as a game objective or actor. Do whatever you want at your table, but the books and setting should make it clear that the Sun is not supposed to show up casually.
 
I feel like complaining that the Unconquered Sun is not very good at utilitarian ethical calculation is sort of missing the forest for the trees.

The Unconquered Sun is running on Virtue Ethics. Like, literally, his power is tied to his being virtuous. And the virtues themselves are well-understood, documented things in the context of Exalted.

Calling the Sun bad at his job because he doesn't act in a utilitarian fashion is like saying he's bad at his job because he totally overthrew the natural order of the universe and thumbed his nose at Divine Command logic. Which is to say, sure, it's sort of true, but only if we accept your moral axioms as correct. And why should we, or he, do that? He's got a good thing going for him already, which has worked for longer than human history.
 
.... So, I think I need to clarify my position

I don't actually think the Sun is evil, or a monster. I'm a utilitarian, I don't think anyone is evil; that's an adjective that takes actions or goals, not people, IMHO. Just because I hold him responsible for his (in)actions, doesn't mean I can't also be sympathetic to the position he's in. (So yes, I do in fact find 'responsibility' to be a somewhat amoral thing, along with literally anything that isn't "shut up and multiply.")

Despite my occasional comments to the contrary, I do not universally believe in "Murder the Gods and Topple their Thrones." The UCS does not need murdering, just deposing; he is misusing the power of his position, and as better candidates are available[1] he should be replaced in favor of one of them. I will still find him responsible for not helping people with his personal power -- but well, so be it, I am as I said not unsympathetic and anyway forcing people to do heroics literally never works. Though it'd be nice if some Zenith eventually was able to give him a, heh, Second Breath, a shining moment of inspiration, someday...

With regards to Moral Relativism argument #8201 -- why do I care? I judge people by my own standards. I have none other to judge them by. It certainly makes no sense to judge them by their own, or else few indeed would ever be guilty. Certainly I acknowledge that my own standards can only be said to be my own -- but I don't actually consider that as an argument to use some (any) other standard.

Unless you're writing self-insert Exalted fanfiction* then you don't live in Creation and aren't capable of deposing TUS**.

* please don't do this
** at least not since the wiki died
 
Unless you're writing self-insert Exalted fanfiction* then you don't live in Creation and aren't capable of deposing TUS**.

* please don't do this
** at least not since the wiki died
I would find it very difficult to write a character that didn't have my morality. Luckily, utilitarianism is, if not intuitive, at least fairly easy to derive, so while everyone in-setting probably will give me the same weird looks everyone IRL does, at least it's not completely ridiculous for a Creation-born Exalt to believe roughly the same things I do.

I feel like complaining that the Unconquered Sun is not very good at utilitarian ethical calculation is sort of missing the forest for the trees.

The Unconquered Sun is running on Virtue Ethics. Like, literally, his power is tied to his being virtuous. And the virtues themselves are well-understood, documented things in the context of Exalted.

Calling the Sun bad at his job because he doesn't act in a utilitarian fashion is like saying he's bad at his job because he totally overthrew the natural order of the universe and thumbed his nose at Divine Command logic. Which is to say, sure, it's sort of true, but only if we accept your moral axioms as correct. And why should we, or he, do that? He's got a good thing going for him already, which has worked for longer than human history.
... But why should I care?

Or rather, why should my character care?

My character is just going to go try and help people, because he can. If the easiest way to do that is to depose the Unconquered Sun (not likely, granted), then why shouldn't he do that?
 
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... But why should I care?

Or rather, why should my character care?

My character is just going to go try and help people, because he can. If the easiest way to do that is to depose the Unconquered Sun (not likely, granted), then why shouldn't he do that?

No reason at all! If your character dislikes how the UCS behaves, and wants to depose him, and can scrape together enough power to do it, then you've got everything you need to make it happen.

"Might makes right" is the most consistent moral axiom of all, in the end.
 
Josef Mengele has a mythology surrounding him that's well summarised by this page and well, basically any fictional portrayal of him. To the point that invoking his name is a shorthand way to say what a character like The Seven-Degreed Physician of Black Maladies is all about.
As you can see with the fact the trope has been nuked, truth is gradually winning out.
I like to consider myself fairly well read, and this is the first time I've ever heard of Professor Mengele as anything other than a byword for cruelty and malpractice. Regardless of what knowledge was salvaged in the aftermath of his capture.
 
[1] Yes, contrary to some positions above I do think better candidates are easily available, for the simple reason that it's not hard to improve over "basically nothing." Even if the Solars, or a Solar, would go bad eventually, or some other random god or Exalt, that still means that right now Yu-Shan would get cleaned up, that still means that for the next few decades we could have a properly running Heaven which in turn would make a lot of things better in Creation. There are lives that would be saved that way, and it isn't clear at all that even a power-mad Solar, without the backing of the Deliberative and the sheer technological ability of the First Age, would be worse than the current state of "don't destroy Creation this time, next apocalypse's fine though".

Except Sol isn't the root of the problem. Like heck, he'd probably get up from the Games more often if he weren't pretty much the only one that tried to pull his weight productively.*

Sol doesn't really have anyone that he can share a significant part of his burden - whilst individual Exalted and Gods have sometimes come through overall all the systems failed when he didn't get directly involved. The Deliberative ultimately failed, the Shogunate failed hard, the Five Score Fellowship is in a continuous fail state, the various Heavenly departments failed without direct supervision, the Maidens and (perhaps to a lesser extent) Luna are themselves constrained by their own natures and also have different approaches and the two allied Primordials went off to do their own thing.

Sol has very little impetus to get over his addiction because everything outside of the Games is endless toil and disappointment and he's very much incapable of fixing any of the underlying causes.

*Okay, that's not exactly true but the number of people who are pulling their weight isn't large.
 
I feel that it is worthy pointing out that one could take the position that the UCS is a bad king not due to any moral failing on his part, but because he is inherently unfit for and incapable of fulfilling the role of the King of Heaven. That he, the Incarnae, the other gods, and by extension all of their Exalts, are simply unable to properly rule and manage Creation, and killed or maimed the only ones who could. That the rule of the gods and Exalted spiraling into corruption and ruin was inevitable, and no more surprising than the result of your home security system being elected President of the Universe, to rule with the aid of an army of knife roombas, magic eight balls, Furbies, and action figures with kung-fu action grip.

It's not a very productive position to take when playing most splats, but one, or at least one's antagonists, could take it.
 
I would find it very difficult to write a character that didn't have my morality. Luckily, utilitarianism is, if not intuitive, at least fairly easy to derive, so while everyone in-setting probably will give me the same weird looks everyone IRL does, at least it's not completely ridiculous for a Creation-born Exalt to believe roughly the same things I do.

Yep, it so easy to derive that it only took 5000 years since the discovery of writing for someone to hit on the idea. Do see about having that character also derive communism from the bronze age economics and modern deism from some sort of Aristotelean Prime Mover philosophizing. (Well, to be fair God is an aspect of Nirguna)

To be less sarcastic, just like technology is not some sort of RTS tree where you are guaranteed to hit on certain technologies at a certain level of advancement so also are ideas almost all a product of the unique confluence of social and intellectual conditions of the time in which they arise. Relativity required non-Euclidean geometry developed by people like Riemann and Lobachevsky which in turn required new philosophies on the nature of space started by Newton and Leibniz and expanded by others. People don't derive complex ideas from the empty set.

I feel that it is worthy pointing out that one could take the position that the UCS is a bad king not due to any moral failing on his part, but because he is inherently unfit for and incapable of fulfilling the role of the King of Heaven. That he, the Incarnae, the other gods, and by extension all of their Exalts, are simply unable to properly rule and manage Creation, and killed or maimed the only ones who could. That the rule of the gods and Exalted spiraling into corruption and ruin was inevitable, and no more surprising than the result of your home security system being elected President of the Universe, to rule with the aid of an army of knife roombas, magic eight balls, Furbies, and action figures with kung-fu action grip.

It's not a very productive position to take when playing most splats, but one, or at least one's antagonists, could take it.

Its possible the problem is rather that it is impossible to rule effectively because of more contingent factors. As an example I am not sure on, it may be that a strict division between the governance of Earth and Heaven isn't actually feasible for whatever reason but it was necessary given the means used to defeat the Primordials and the need to keep the Exalts happy. Or it could be that any one of Sol/Luna/the Maidens could rule effectively but because of the necessity of carving up and respecting their individual spheres, they made coherent rule impossible.
 
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Yep, it so easy to derive that it only took 5000 years since the discovery of writing for someone to hit on the idea. Do see about having that character also derive communism from the bronze age economics and modern deism from some sort of Aristotelean Prime Mover philosophizing. (Well, to be fair God is an aspect of Nirguna)
One of the elements of Exalted that a lot of people like is how you can look at your character and say "Yeah, he has a more modern sense of morality than other people in Creation". Sure its mainly on things like slavery, but regardless.

So I'm not exactly impressed by this argument. If you want to play a communist Lunar, go for it. Autochthonia is reasonably close already. Hell, Creation itself has had writing for somewhere around 5000 years too, why can't someone have thought of any of those things?

Sure, most of the world is in the bronze age. That doesn't mean some moral systems couldn't have survived from the First Age. Doesn't mean you can't have a Solar with past life memories of these things. Doesn't mean you can't play a philosopher who came up with it on his own.
 
Yep, it so easy to derive that it only took 5000 years since the discovery of writing for someone to hit on the idea. Do see about having that character also derive communism from the bronze age economics and modern deism from some sort of Aristotelean Prime Mover philosophizing. (Well, to be fair God is an aspect of Nirguna)
The fact that Exalted as a game assumes characters will divorce their sense of morality from religious worship breaks my suspension of disbelief

Actually for real, one of my most consistent issues in playing/running Exalted is the way PCs born and raised in Creation tend to treat Exaltation as a moment of 'actually gods are just dudes' instant realization and grant spirits no dignity or prestige or assumption of authority whatsoever, instead of building up to that. People who were once mortal shouldn't react to, say, a river god demanding judgement for a town who failed to pay due worship three years in a row because of a famine by going "wow, what a bully, fuck off and leave these poor people alone" without like, some backstory or character development leading up to that?

I think the game works better if Exalts start off the assumption that a river god is in fact owed a certain worship merely by virtue of being a river god and approach this as a negotiation between a legitimate grievance and a situation of emergency, or else go full on "You may be right but I am a bigger god than you and I like these people, therefore kneel."

i like it when fictional characters buy into their own culture while questioning its issues rather than immediately having a cynical distance towards it

Immaculate believers are a special case.
 
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