Note I said 'pretty much' For example, soldiers killing other armed soldiers in the defense of the nation is not evil. But killing people who are surrendering is evil. We've agreed on this and have laws about it.

Killing to save yourself is evil, and has been defined as evil and people who have killed to save themselves have been convicted of crimes like murder. Thus vampires, who irreparably damage people to save themselves are evil.

Yes. You are correct. So, where were you going with that?

Magic isn't automatic with vampirism. Wendigos get it automatically, but that isn't the case with vampires.

And just because you (or some people in the Sixth World) think it is sweet, does not mean it would be a common desire. Even if it were clamored for, the vampire population at large would realize that they would be best served by keeping the number of 'infected' in check.

Not in the US of A, it ain't

So every Soldier in war is evil...now to think of it...they have the choice...or do they really have one...

Not necessarily. There can, and have been cases throughout history where this very act has been seen as a Good Thing™, both at the time and in the long run.

Generalizations are very rarely always true, and 'Evil' is extremely subjective.

Yeah, yeah, relative morality blahblah, I am now proceeding with a strict legalistic defintion of morality and assuming that all posters come from NATO or ANZUS members.

But Malicant, yes, it is. If you are alone in the wildness with some guy and kill him and eat him to avoid starving to death, I'm pretty sure you share the same British common law precedent for that that we (Australia) do. Ie they got convicted of murder and thats the way it works.

Meh. Overrated, and if you really wanted to become immortal, just ask a Free Spirit to grant you Immortality. All he wants from you is "Karma", whatever that shit may mean ingame, and however that is quantifiable.

No, you need to drain it from non-astral critters with the sentience powers. No rats, dogs, hellhounds or earth spirits. Must be dragons, sasquatches, merrows, nagas and metahumans. It would even be better if you didn't have the allergies at all.
Only if you really did get the magician or any other awakened quality. There is a (notdefined) chance of failure that you might just be a mundane vampire, with mediocre powers. Oh, and perhaps the corps might want to get you to extract those essence-draining virii out from you to create new and better essence-regenerating gene-treatments.

No, really, with simsense and all that other stuff in the late 21st century, being a vampire is quite a downer.

I think as long as you're not a manic sociopath who enjoys the killing or kills based on calculations, you must'nt be called evil.

Or earth spirits you inhabited into a bag of blood and didn't get a true form merge Plastic has a good OR! I'm not seeing how immortality, superhuman qualities across the board and near complete immunity to accidently dying (you can survive getting hit by a semi) isn't highly desirable.

So a guy who gets drunk and hits a kid while driving home isn't evil? We've decided they are, that is why we send them to jail. YMMV. It's really hard to come up with any other definition, so the legal one is the best hope in this debate

Grind the universe to it's finest parts and then show me even one part morality. So, yeah, like every lie, it is relative. Also, law never uses terms like Evil. It is not evil, but wrong to kill, steal, rape. Well, it is "evil", but that is not the point right now.


I don't care about british law much, but getting a lesson on it from the descendant of a convicted criminal feels weird

Actually no. He is wrong to do so and a moron most likely, but considering him evil is giving him way to much credit.

If you already have the power to summon spirits and do your biddings, why would you even need a pathetic vampire? If you're already a mage, just create ally spirits all the time, set them free, till one gains the power of Hidden Life or can grant the Immortality Spirit Pact, and as their daddy (or mommy), they will always love you (if you were nice to them, but their formula already has them being imprinted to you, their creator), and do whatever you want (because their loyal to you, even if they're free), and now you're young (don't forget to get that leonization treatment right before), immortal (never-aging, and you're now even invulnerable to bullets and knives), and can walk day and night without having need for some shit like suppress allergy, while still being able to enjoy food, booze and matrix porn.
Pfff, vampires. If at least they granted you the power to shoot flames out of your ass and fight and seduce ultra-attractive green-skinned alien babes with huge gazoongas, then it might be worthwile. But with the lame-o-power of being sick whenever you eat a steak, they can go and sulk in their tombs and cry me a river.

Teh awesome!

Free settlers all the way, bitch But I don;t care if you don;t care about it, if you live in NZ, USA, UK or Australia, that precedent is almost certainly binding, and is what the judge will use if you kill people for your own survival. It also gives me the only definition of 'evil' we all agree with. Unless you live in a polygamist cult in Texas. Or something.

Ps, the grind the universe up crap is stupid. I guess that means up, down, strange and charm are the only terms we can use in discussion?

I expect all future posts from you use only that words and still communicate meaning!

I'm not surprised you didn't understand the grind/morality part. Let's just say that morality is very relative and based on culture, religion and situational circumstances. It is never a truth.
Evil consequently depends totally on the point of view. Killing baby seals might be evil for some, but those who do so most likely think otherwise. Invading a country and bombing it back into stoneage to get it's oil might be considered evil, but others call it their holy mission from god. Etc, etc.

Also, you generalized that "killing for survival" part too much. You can't discuss this on such a childish level and expect to be taken seriously.

To Cthulhudreams:

You like walking the pacifist way: no hurting, no killing and such?

Ever killed a fly because it annoyed you?

Or do you think humans are so much better and higher lifeforms than animals?

You must be a very strict vegetarian and you must abandon to modern healthcare which is based on animal experiments and watch your every step not to kill something else you're evil.

Life must be very hard for you.

No. I am, for this discussion, just using what is legal and what is not legal as my definition of morality.

So to address your points

Hurting and killing are illegal, and I refrain from doing them, except with my friends in a manner that has been defined as legal.

Yes, and killing flies is legal thus it is either a moral action or neither a moral or an immoral action.

Yes, because they have been legally defined as being so. For example, by choosing to live under australian's legal system I have chosen to accept double standards such as 'putting down dogs in pain' is okay but that is not okay for humans.

No, because eating meat and modern health care are both legal. So is testing on animals. I have no issues with any actions undertaken within the guidelines of the therapeutic goods administration, who is the body that regulates these issues. We do have animal cruelty provisions, and cruel behavior is illegal, and thus, immoral.

@Malicant

Yes, I am entirely aware that morality is a very difficult question that is virtually impossible to nail down.

However considering the broad body of commonality between the laws of the nations of the participants, a very handy definition of morality that is, also very usefully, black and white, is the legal system. Using the legal system as a defintion of morality is called 'Legalism' and is very useful for this sort of debate. It allows me to completely bypass any discussion of whether eating someone is wrong or not, as we have both individually agreed to a morality system (the law) that includes eating people in basically any circumstance (unless they die of natural causes and you need to to survive) is evil.

Intrestingly, my basic assumption here is that you do live in the US or the UK or new zealand. together we share the common burden of british common law and have many, many similarities in our legal system as a result (The Us to the least degree). Please correct me if you do indeed live in the congo and a congalese tribesmen, or saudi araba or china, because different principles do apply. Another assumption is that we are discussing an area where we have broad legal commonalities. This would not work if I wanted to discuss the morality of the implementation of sales taxes or gun control. Fortunately, that is not the case here.

Also, we are not examining the morality of an existing law. Instead we are examining the moral basis of an actor. Again, if we where to examine such a law, my approach is invalid.

This circumvents the entire argument and neatly provides a common base of previously agreed morality as a framework for a discussion about specific actions. However, crass quoting of retarded analogies isn't going to help. Obviously for this discussion we are assuming concepts about 'law' 'soul' 'essence' 'rights' 'human nature' that are not components of the universe.

I full understand what you where attempting to imply and dismissed it as irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Now that we are on the point:

Morality is made by the ethnic of the society for which this moral counts.

We are now in 2008.

SR takes places in a fictional future in which the morality of the society defenitly has changed. Through things like Magic, Dragons, Metahumanity, new kind of Slums = Barrens or in Denver Warrens with a new way of Poverty etc.
Not to mention the corps.

So what do you think how morals would look those times under those circumstances??

I don't particularly care. I imagine, it is still the case that offenses like 'assault with a deadly weapon' and 'grevious bodily harm' exist. I'm pretty sure that sort of thing is referenced by the rules. As it is the case that the legal system has been extended to include magical offenses, in 2070 a vampire using essence drain in any form on a human (even if they consent) is illegal (as it is impossible to consent to certain forms of violence being inflicted on you, and I'd posit that it is highly likely that essence drain is one of those forms of violence)

Thus it is immoral. It may not be immoral to use it on SINless, but the rules are fantastically unclear about whether it is technically legal to gun SINless down in the street or not. I think that it is, which would also make essence draining them illegal.

If you want to discuss other philosophical systems outside of legalism thats fine, I won't participate, I think you'll find that under most the vampire has to die. Both dentalogical and utalitarian ethical frameworks seem to preclude the predators existence for example.

Why does the term "Survival of the Fittest" comes in my mind??

Is it because down on the Street, especially in the Squatter parts of town with all the SINless people and Organized Crime, Meat Markets, Ghouls and all the other threats, you need to have your own ethnics and morality to survive?

At last the first few runs. That does'nt mean you have to kill all the time but when it's necessary in part of self defense for example. There is nothing evil to it. Ever was in a life threatening situation in real life?
I was. I know how it is when bullets fly around you and your instincts come into play. There was'nt much thought of ethic or moral it's just me or him/them. So get some life experince and tell me about it.

And I think as long as the vampire has the desire or wish to live on he will do what is necessary. And that has nothing to do with evil. Against the law is not = evil

?!?! Are you even reading what I'm saying

A) Self defense is a legal reason to kill someone. Depending on the circumstances. Say a 6 foot 8 NFL linebacker pulls and assault rifle and blows away a 12 year old that tried to mug him with a knife. Thats not self defense. But if the same linebacker tries to sexually assault a 90 year old granny, then she shoots him, thats okay. If someone is actively trying to murder you, fighting back is okay.

B) As for the ghouls, organized crime, etc. Shadowrunners have consciously chosen to *break the law* and *kill people for money* Are you actually telling me that that is 'ethical'? Are you bat shit crazy?

Same for organized crime. They actually run slave trading rings. Slave trading rings are ethical?

What the hell?

I was just scimming the post and saw this, so I thought I would reply. If I was a 6 foot 8 NFL player and had a gun, I would definetly shoot the kid trying to mug me with a knife. True, I would probably try to shoot him in the leg or something, but if he bleed to death from it in the hospital and died, well, I would not feel a shred of guilt. The kid took the risk pulling a knife on a person and trying to stab them if they dont get the wallet. So yea, you reap what you sow.



Basically, my opinion is, fight back is okay, and killing someone who is trying to kill you is OK. At least in my book. Of course you try not too, but if it happens, its the other persons fault, not yours. You didn't initiate the situation, they did.


Now, as for all this Dragon Pc stuff and the people for it, and the people against it. All I have to say on the matter is some groups can handle it, some cant. Simple as that.

You forgot that SINless does'nt exist for the law.

So if a Vamp desides to live on the life of SINless, it is not against the law you're babblin' about. So if he do it to survive it is no act of pure evil but of necessary evil.

And do'nt get me wrong but the people who make the laws are breakin' them by themself. That's how it is and ever will be. And to find the real evil you have to search on other perspectives than that killing is bad issue.

Moral is a thing that everybody has to determine for themselves. Blame the society and not the people who must live in it.

No, I didn't actually forget that. I specifically mentioned that as an issue in paragraph 2 of post 270 of this thread, and that could go either way. However, to me it does not seem like I can just, say, launch mortar attacks on the barrens for shits and giggles. If it your world rich young brats do by heavy military armour and assault rifles with daddies money and go shoot up poor people though, thats okay and being a vampire doesn't require actually being evil, because we are accepting in world in which people who don't have SINs are less protected in the social order than, say, dogs. Or sheep.

Anyone that makes his moral choices based purely on legality, even only for argument's sake, has something very wrong with them.

Not all crimes are acts of "evil," not all jail terms exist to remove "evil" from our society, not all laws are "good." You are being very scary -- albeit perhaps completely on accident -- with the level of faith you're putting in the system right now.

haha. I don't. As I said, I think there are lots of things about the current system that is inequitable and unethical as a result, for example sales taxes and unequal treatment of capital gains vs income. both disproportionately disadvantage the poor.

But when we are looking at inflicting violence on our fellow man, we have a system that has been thrashed out over quite some time by very smart people and is actually pretty good. Maybe you disagree, but when discussing the evils or lack there off of an assault, or whether an action constitutes self defense, or what inflicting irreparable harm on someone means and if they can consent to that, I cannot think of a better common point of reference.

Maybe you'd care to enlighten me!

Not really, because the amount of space, time, effort, and bandwidth it would take to get into such an argument would be something the rest of Dumpshock probably isn't too interested in -- and that I, personally, don't feel like actually arguing. You either implicitly trust authority figures to tell you what's right and wrong, or you don't. The fact you once said drunk drivers are locked up for being evil (not for being stupid and dangerous, but for being "evil") tells me a lot about you. The fact you also once said killing in defense of self is "evil" tells me something else. More than anything else, they tell me you're looking and thinking and coming from such a different direction than I am that there's just no point in wasting time trying to tell you just how very strongly I believe you to be wrong.

So instead I'll just say that I think you're incorrect, that I think having that level of belief in the system is scary, and -- like I tried to do already -- be on my merry way.

Fine
Go to one of the refugee detention centres
We aussies have no right to use our laws as a basis of anything resembling ethics or morality

You're probably right. i will make two statements to clarify my position re: immoral actions.

If I said killing in self defense is evil, then I apologise for the misunderstanding as that was not my intent. It is clearly not immoral, and I can probably even condone it as a last resort.

As for what constitutes an evil action I defined it as an immoral action, because as was rightly pointed out by Malicant it is a societal thing.

I defined immoral actions as actions contrary to the laws of free societies that people in this discussion are members off, which society condemns and punishes people for. You may have a different definition, but under the definition I am using here, sexual assault, drink driving, tax evasion and fraud are all immoral actions, of different degrees yes, but they are all immoral.

I do not think it is possible to condone jail for drink drivers unless one also finds that the action of drink driving is immoral. Incidentally, immoral and evil are both synonyms for wicked.

Edit: Refugee centres, like sales taxes are not really the subject of discussion. Intrestingly, while I find the concept of the GST inequitable and disgusting, I also think that one should pay it and vote for people that may withdraw it.

So it is evil and immoral and wicked to steal a loaf of bread when you are starving?

It is evil to smoke a cigarette in a non-smoking section of a restaurant?

It is evil to go through a stop sign without coming to a complete stop?

It is evil to park in a loading zone?

Evil is all around us!

haha, most of those things only carry civil penalties But more importantly of course it is, and if you caused a serious traffic accident by negligent driving, we'd send you to jail. If you don't you gt a small fine and loose a point off your license.

We've obviously decided that the outcome is important, and things can have degrees. Like speeding. 5kms over is illegal, but it's only a modest act so you get a small fine and thats the end of it. If i'm doing 5km'h over and cannot stop in time and rear end someone, no-one will mind, I just have to pay for his car. If you do 100km/h hour over the limit in a school zone and then hit a kid, you get smashed for vehicular manslaughter and go to jail for a fair while. And now you are the guy who killed a 10 year old and yes the national news media will call you 'evil'

Or are you seriously saying that shouldn't be illegal?

As for the lame bread thing. Do you think you should go to jail? I don't, and the fact is you won't! The courts don't (mostly) send people to jail when their is circumstances like that. You won;t even get a conviction, and you will get a referral to a homeless centre. Wow! the system has a series of checks and balances that examines the fine detail of edge cases in particular circumstances and isn't hugely absolutist? Society has decided that that isn't immoral? And the system that determines if that was or was not a moral action works like it is supposed to? Sheesh.

The exception is of course the retarded three strikes rule that they tried in darwin, but that got struck down as unconstitutional.

And we're not discussing loading zones or sales taxes, or stealing a loaf of bread to save your starving family. If you bring up roe vs wade you can argue both sides forever and the universe will explode. But we're not.

We are discussing whether it is okay for me to take you outside and suck your life force out resulting in you needing millions of dollars of reconstructive surgery. Are you saying thats not evil?!?! you heartless bastard!

No. I am saying none of those things are evil ... at least to me. But by your definition they all are, as they are all against the law.



I wouldn't bet on that. I have seen that very thing happen in Canada, USA, NZ, and Australia, and heard about it in other nations as well. Hell, Oz was partially populated with people who committed just such crimes.

The Artful Dodger, for instance. I think.

Or did he die? I never can remember.

Sure, the USA in particular is retarded. Do note that we have no such law now because the legal system said 'you want what?!?!' and had a cry. As for the rest, it clearly has degrees. So speeding a bit is not very evil and like stealing stationary off your employer no-one cares. Still a cardinal sin though if you are catholic, and sinful is another synonym for evil.

As a totally tangential note, one thing that has always puzzled me about our legal system is that it takes the same set of actions (the only thing you have control over) and punishes you differently in different circumstances. So if I get drunk and get picked up by an RBT, I'll loose my license for 6 months. If I plow into a group of school children I get front page media stories calling me evil and many years in jail. if I fail to stop and kill an old granny, I get punished differently than if I didn't hit anyone. But if outcome 1 is 'bad' how is the action any less bad if I got lucky and didn't kill someone.

As I said before though, if you speed at 100 over in a school zone we care a lot. if you are unwilling to recognise that 'degree' is part of a legal system, and thus the system of morality I am using as a benchmark, I not sure what to say.

Either way though, I don't care about that. We are discussing whether it is okay for me to take you outside and suck your life force out resulting in you needing millions of dollars of reconstructive surgery. Apparently some people think it is.

In my honest opinion, killing SINless is illegal, since the law does not care whether or not someone has a SIN to define what's human. Killing a SINless will often not result in any action taken since the system doesn't show the SINless, and LoneStar prefers to act on cases where the victim is in the system rather than waste manpower on crimes whose victims don't pay taxes, but if you gun down a SINless in front of a honest cop, you'll get arrested. A SINless is more like an illegal immigrant without any country of origin, not someone without any rights at all (at least according to the letter of the law).

As far as evil goes, evil is a question of morality. The distinction between legal and illegal is a question of the law. I'd say that there's something very wrong with someone who tries to take the law into their own hands, but that's me - I live in a country where we vote on most laws (we can force a vote on just about every law), so our laws usually are backed by the population. Coupled with the checks and balances inherent in the judicial system in my country, I'd say it's a good moral compass as well - much better than personal convictions about evil.
I can't speak for the judicial system of other countries though.

That's because the law in this case is based upon an "result" POV. If put someone in danger it's less serious than if you hurt them. It's at odds with the POV that focuses on the intent of the accused, and there are crimes where the result does not matter, the crime is completed when the intent has been transformed into action. Over all, it works out decently though - the "gut feeling" check covers most cases well.

Yep. I agree with this.

A SIN makes you a citizen of the UCAS and gives you access to all the privileges that come with that. Essentially, SINless are tolerated illegal immigrants. However, that doesn't mean killing them (or foreigners) isn't illegal, by far. Just that the executive service provider(s) in the UCAS propably won't put their murder on any high piority list. However, holders of a corp SIN or foreign SIN of a country with reasonable clout might also find the investigation into their murders on UCAS soil on a high priority list, if their respective embassy pressures executive service provider and/or their political backers. Shooting a Pakistani SIN holder propably would hold the same degree of danger of an actual investigation that shooting an ork SINles goganger would have, I imagine.


Please enlighten me how speeding is a cardinal sin in catholic belief. I'd be unaware the Pope has gone that far already, fundamentalist as he may be.

However, the against the law = evil in a moralistic sense doesn't balance out. For instanfce, abortion is legal in many US states (or was it the entirety o the US? I can never remember) up to the ninth month. Does that stop many people there from considering it Evil with capital E? No. Laws are guidelines (strict guidelines) for human behavior. Evil in a moral sense is based on religious or philosophical grounds. Those two don't mix too well.

Whether you buy it or not, in many cases it's easy to make rationalizations how unlawful often/usually equates to immorality. Laws are created ostensibly to benifit society as a whole, and choosing to ignore a law and detract from the benifit it provides to society for your own happiness or convenience could be easily argued to be immoral or relatively evil.

In the case of speeding, those restrictions are usually put in place in order to enhance public safety and conserve natural resources (gas mileage). While you might suggest that you can drive safely going 60 in a 55mph zone, safety is a relative thing, and it's hard to argue that going faster doesn't give you less reaction time, longer breaking distance, and greater potential kinetic energy and damage if a crash does occur. It also wastes more gas and produces more pollution per mile driven. It's not evil on the same scale as torturing babies with blowtorches, but it is putting your own desires and convenience ahead of that of the rest of the community.