The cleric Axios is of course correct. The transformation of free societies into authoritarian, ideologically dominated versions of themselves is evil. Particularly because of what it subjects people to, and what it demands of them. In all this, the people are both victim and perpetrator, as one cannot imagine a society constructed of anything but its component individuals.
So do the people shoulder both responsibility for the change (whether by action or inaction) as well as suffer the results.

This transformation is effected through the gradual ossification of societies' established order into a rigid, ideologically driven form. An imbalance occurs - all the power begins to aggregate towards the top, becomes divorced from competence and turns into an object of jealous hoarding by short-sighted elites.

A normal, healthy society is a dynamic mix of forces, pushing and pulling in an emergent equilibrium that is safeguarded by the assurances of safety, justice, and fairness by what we may call "leadership". That is a measure of order that is required for a society to thrive. Just the same, that must be equaled by a measure of chaos (that dynamic mix), of freedom, in order for it to not stagnate and become evil.

Contrary to the cleric Axios, here I would argue that this phenomenon is not particularly or at all characterized by a meeting of potential, or the general advancement of sentient life, at least not if we are to narrow the scope of our perception of existence past the most general, cyclical nature of it.

Yes, salient arguments can be made in regards to that nature, noting societies evolving then devolving, then evolving once more - and so any devolution becomes a prerequisite for evolution - but that becomes a chicken-and-egg kind of affair rather quickly, and nevertheless I suspect it isn't where the clergyman was going in the first place.

By that same note, the "enbrutalization" of society is nothing more than a failure to self-regulate (once again, either by inaction, or too much action), and an abandonment of the dynamic equilibrium that is essential for a people to flourish at an individual and a collective level.

And there can be no doubt that the individual is harmed within this new kind of freedom-less relationship of master and slave. At the very least, those with power will not allow that power to become threatened (waving goodbye to competence on a massive scale), and at the most it would be most desirable that the masses are completely subservient, as far as the elites are concerned.

This also harms the potential of society on the whole - again, which can only be comprised of its individual members. While the masters blindly play for power, they miss both the point of leadership (to structure and to guide - leading to severe problems of myriad sorts), as well as how their avidity stifles the life and possibility out the people they rob of agency, creating untold harm both at home and abroad.

I will take this moment to preempt the potential argument that hardship fosters individual growth, with which I wholly agree. One cannot define growth without struggle (or good without evil or vice versa for that matter). However, such an argument is often made while missing the point that people gather in communities not so they struggle less, but so that their efforts matter more.

If hardship builds strength, then the maximization of self-imposed hardship by taking on the hardships of others must also maximize the resulting strength. And insofar as this behavior is reciprocated by your neighbours, this is practically guaranteed.

And so you have the essence of a flourishing communal system: free co-operation. The "good", as opposed to the self-serving, short-sighted, immature excess of individualism that we may call its opposite.

Because a tyrannical, authoritarian, brutal ruler is just that: someone self-serving, uninterested, who cannot see five minutes in front of their nose, and does not understand what makes a mortal society tick, nor can they tell where they're making it go in any way that matters in the long run.

Alternatively, they know what they're about perfectly, don't care, and are merely seeking to destroy it in the long-winded way.

Given that the result is the same, I would call both options equally evil.


Riahn Aegocerus
Thinking Goat

Penned by my hand on the 19th of Scarlatan, in the year 997 AF.