split WhiteAndGreyMorality and : Rousseau Was Right

Here's a start for White-and-Grey Morality:

A White-and-Grey Morality exists when there's no real evil in the work - there's only Good and "Slightly-Less Good". Villains aren't Evil, they're misguided, or misunderstood, or people who used to be good but were damaged somehow, and simply need a little tender loving care to recover their intrinsic goodness. At the very worst, they'll be a Well-Intentioned Extremist.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I'm not entirely sure what tropes each of the three names are supposed to represent at the moment.

Edit: ^ Okay, what are the other two?

edited 18th Aug '10 10:45:34 AM by Meophist

Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.

The other two correspond more or less to the text of the current article. The question for those is which one gets to be the main name and which gets to be the redirect. I'm leaning towards Rousseau Was Right as a redirect for Humans Are Good, since the former requires an understanding of the philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau to make any sense.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

Humans Are Good will be understandable to a sixth-grader. Rousseau Was Right probably won't be.

edited 18th Aug '10 12:18:54 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

On that note, we'd still have Hobbes Was Right and Machiavelli Was Wrong.

Yeah, but that's kind of going with the pop culture version of what people know about them. I don't think Rousseau is as famous to the average reader as Machiavelli is. Or, if they recognize the name, they might not know what he's famous for.

Humans Are Good implies that it's the opposite of Humans Are Bastards, in that Humans are the good ones among other intelligant races. Like, in a galaxy full of bastards, the Humans Are Good.

White-and-Grey Morality implies that it's the opposite of Black-and-Grey Morality, which is basically what the current Rousseau Was Right description says.

According to the current description, what Rousseau was saying can easily fit into either.

Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.

bump.

I can see the difficulty is not just splitting the trope but the fact that the Rousseau Was Right link is very, very common. Honestly, I think that since most works link to Rousseau Was Right in a White and Grey morality context, it should redirect to that.

Some people say I'm lazy. It's hard to disagree.

^^^ I don't recall Rousseau saying anything about "a galaxy full of bastards".

I think Rousseau Was Right would be good for the main title of the White-and-Grey Morality variation.

edited 30th Aug '10 5:15:39 AM by Superior

De gustibus non est disputandum.

^Yes, exactly. If we use Rousseau Was Right for Humans Are Good, we get to avoid the problem of people mistaking it for the opposite of Humans Are Bastards.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

What would Humans Are Good be if not the opposite of Humans Are Bastards?

Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.

I'm almost positive we had Humans Are Good as the opposite of Humans Are Bastards.

Fight smart, not fair.

Humans Are Bastards: "When compared to other civilizations, or another species, Humans are a bunch of bastards."

The opposite would be "When compared to other civilizations or another species, Humans are more noble and good at heart".

Rousseau Was Right: "Also known simply as "Humans Are Good", Rousseau Was Right is a strong pro-humanity motif that states that all humans are genuinely and intrinsically good and noble in their hearts;"

The opposite would be "Rousseau Was Wrong is a strong anti-humanity motif that states that all humans are genuinely and intrinsically self-servin and evil in their hearts"

They can be seen as opposite each other but aren't strictly opposites.

edited 30th Aug '10 1:57:51 PM by Yamikuronue

BTW, I'm a chick.

Rousseau Was Wrong is already a redirect for Humans Are Bastards.

Why can't Rousseau Was Right be a redirect for Humans Are Good?

edited 30th Aug '10 1:53:24 PM by SeanMurrayI

Because Humans Are Good is a redirect for Rousseau Was Right?

edited 30th Aug '10 1:57:34 PM by Yamikuronue

BTW, I'm a chick.

Looks to me we actually have titles for three separate Tropes:

• White-and-Grey Morality: One side is Incorruptible Pure Pureness, the other side is less villainous than Mahatma Gandhi
• Humans Are Good (as opposite of Humans Are Bastards): Humans are the Paragons of Virtue in a dark, dark universe. (But beware of Designated Hero)
• Rousseau Was Right (as present): Humanity, i.e. Sentience, is of intrinsic worth. But then, what's the difference between this and Humans Are Special?

EDIT: I need to take a closer look at descriptions. From the seart of the second paragraph to Rousseau Was Right:

Sounds like Item 1 on my list to me.

edited 30th Aug '10 3:42:11 PM by DonaldthePotholer

Ketchum's corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced tactic is indistinguishable from blind luck.

If you study Rousseau, his point was "Humans are naturally good": they can still be corrupted—even corrupted completely—by society and events. A setting in which Rousseau really was right is one in which everyone who is some kind of evil was good at some point. It's neither Humans Are Good (they aren't, if you ask Rousseau: his First Discourse is a scathing attack on modern humanity, saying how all of us are more corrupt than our ancestors), nor White-and-Grey Morality (people can still be totally evil, but they weren't so at the very beginning; Black And White morality is possible in Rousseau's view as long as those who/which are now black were once white or might have been white had he/she/it been given the chance).

It's a bit more complex than that, of course. For instance, because our modern society is corrupt, we are all corrupt, to some degree, from childhood. His Emile was all about how to educate a child so that he/she would avoid this corruption. Not that that is important to the trope, but it does make this clear: Rousseau Was Right is (or should be) basically different from the two it's been linked to. This is almost certainly tropeable, so I don't see any reason not to preserve the distinction.

In summary: A real "Rousseau Was Right" means "Humans would be good, but not only is society to blame, people's childhoods screw them up, too." Or, "Evil people are evil because of their evil experiences." It was a direct Take That! at Hobbes, who presents natural humans as self-interested, violent savages.

edited 30th Aug '10 4:02:20 PM by karstovich

So, to summarise, humans are good by default unless environmental influences push them towards evil?

edited 31st Aug '10 6:29:13 AM by Roxor

Accidental mistakes are forgivable, intentional ones are not.

Humans Are Noble sounds like a better contrast to Humans Are Bastards since it feels less like an absolute statement.

Fight smart, not fair.

^^Rousseau in a nutshell.

And the reason Humans Are Good would be a bit more misleading if thought of as the contrast of Humans Are Bastards (which it inevitably will be), is because it doesn't do so in relation to other beings... the "humanity" here is humanity in the... what's the word... metaphysical sense, as in humane, having a nature of goodness in intelligence, or most accurately "human" as in being an identity or a person in one's own right.

More accurate would be Beings Are Good, or even better People Are Good Collectively, though both are also slightly misleading of their own completely different ways. Rousseau Was Right works best, and it gives a bit of philosophical reference at the same time. As an added perk, it's what we already have.

edited 31st Aug '10 10:38:04 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

...I thought we were splitting it. If so, it'll make sense to make Humans Are Good the opposite of Humans Are Bastards, and make White-and-Grey Morality the opposite of Black-and-Grey Morality. Maybe we could also have Rousseau Was Right as a separate trope.

Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.

Roxor: Yep.

The idea boils down to "there is evil and there are evil people/beings, but nobody/no society was born that way." It's a definite third trope.

If nobody minds, I'll add a third option to the crowner.

edited 1st Sep '10 8:26:56 PM by karstovich

So, um, what does everyone think about the reform plan?