Noncanon:Alignment

Excerpt from a lecture by Galerant Panneneon, metaphysicist for the Fraternity of Order, presented at the Civic Festhall on Regula 19, Hashkar 110.

One issue that confuses many as to the nature of the aural manifestation commonly known as the "moral axis" (a misnomer for reasons to be elaborated on) is the precise nature of the Good and Evil configurations. These names are quite unfortunate, assigned by a guardinal sage eons ago when the configurations were first discovered; to quote a prominent yugoloth sage, "the terms 'good' and 'evil' for these manifestations are perhaps the biggest propoganda triumph on the part of the guardinals in the multiverse's history". Here, I will describe exactly why these terms do not apply as commonly conceived.

Logically, the idea of aural configurations being determined by some sort of abstract, objective morality is paradoxical in a number of ways; though the Sentient Multiverse theory is espoused by many, none have given any reasoning why the multiverse would manifest a moral leaning in such a manner. Further, while these configurations do line up somewhat with the moral beliefs of many cultures, no culture strictly holds to it except those guided by the configurations themselves, of which there are few. So what exactly are these configurations?

Alternate terminology for a time for these extrema were the terms "self-sacrificing" and "self-interested", though experimentation proved that acts categorized in such a manner didn't seem to always correlate properly. Recent research suggests a far more accurate representation of the extrema of this axis. It is proposed - though this is admittedly unlikely to be accepted by the lay public - that these extrema be renamed "Other" and "Self".

I shall elaborate. The extreme commonly referred to as "Good" seems to best correlate with actions associated with placing interest in Others before interest in Self, and vice versa for the extreme commonly referred to as "Evil". At the extreme interpretations, as seen by the exemplars, these interpretations do manifest in the form of many of the actions most commonly associated in various systems of morality as "Good" and "Evil" respectively, yet this does manifest very good correlation with the murky gray areas located between. Indeed, there have been discovered many commonly-believed immoral and amoral actions - including at a major level, stalking and harassment, and at a minor level intrusion on the affairs of others and gossip - associated with the extreme of "Other", while there are some moral or amoral actions - including self-preservation - associated with the extreme of "Self".