So, the gods, how exactly are they right and wrong?
Slaanesh represents happiness, which is the most important thing, almost by definition. Happiness, in the most basic sense, is the fulfillment of values.
But that’s exactly why Slaanesh isn’t good. Physical sensation (or even more general “enjoyment”, of a more abstract kind) is not everything, that’s extremely simplistic and reductive even when applied only to normal humans, let alone other weird sapient species, in universes with metaphysical properties.
What's important is the fulfillment of values people have, to get things according to their “volition” as distinct from “desire”.
And “when bombarded with pleasure people stop acting to fulfill their original goal” doesn’t mean they don’t want the original goal. If you make them unconscious they will stop acting to fulfill the original goal, too! Or, for a better example, if you make it hard for them to think. They will still do actions, just different ones. But the original goal stays the same.
“People don’t actually want the things they think they want, they want the things I am doing” is not an acceptable argument. It’s Deceiver* thinking, and Deceivers should go die in a fire. Raz put a lot of effort into not becoming a Deceiver (metaphorically. Mostly).
People can be wrong about themselves, not wise or reflective enough to understand their thoughts and souls. Then you should teach them, guide them to better understand themselves, to understand the world, understand how values and goals and desires work. So they can make the decision by themselves, this time correctly.
It is a complicated, delicate process. It’s not what Slaanesh is doing. Not even close.
He isn’t fundamentally opposed to obedience. But only obeys people whose goals and values fully overlap with his. This isn’t the case.
Addiction is not just something you are suffering without. Addiction is something you are fine without, but start suffering without it after you try it. The thing to do with addictions is to avoid acquiring them (even if you do care about feeling better, though that’s not absolute).
Sugar and sleep are addictions? Possibly. That just means you should find ways to be less addicted to them. Many worlds have various methods for overcoming the reliance on sleep, some of which he successfully used.
Reason shouldn’t be slave to passions. He worked very hard at it. The things his body and unconsciousness want are important considerations for planning his life (it’s harder to do actions that are completely opposed to those considerations), but they are not the actual goal to optimize for, no way.
And so on.
The music is nice, that’s true. But not worth serving chaos gods for. You can have music without them, too.
Nurgle is somewhat right.
Stability is important.
It is very important to know your limits. To recognize the things that you can’t change, no matter how much you want to.
And caring too much can be a problem. If you want to be happy, sometimes the best way to do it is change yourself rather than the world. Sometimes, if you want things you care about to go the way you want, the better solution is to want it less. Raz did that a lot, couldn’t be a stable functional person without it.
But this isn’t the only solution. Not even the main one. Not all desires should be changed, and not all that should be can be. Changing the world is the other necessary side of the coin.
And just because some thing is easier, and is therefore more common in reality, "natural", doesn't mean it should exist. That's a very basic fallacy. Maybe it should be changed, no matter how hard it is!
Tzeench…is certainly the chaos god Raz himself is most personally aligned with. Understanding the world, gathering information, making plans, changing things.
But Tzeench desires change for the sake of change, not to arrive at any final worldstate that is better. Tzeench lies and manipulates information, rather than sharing it to create a collectively-perfected-information-state.
The idea that everything can be changed is, as mentioned previously, just wrong (or at least, irrelevant in all actual cases, on practice).
And also, a rational person should be instinctively suspicious, from a standpoint of practical deontology, of the claim “you should join me, because I am too strong for you to do things without joining me”. If fewer people followed this argument, maybe whoever-it-is wouldn’t be strong enough in the first place! Be it a god, or a government, or anything else.
It’s not important if those things are Tzeench’s choice or not. The point is not moral judgment, fault is irrelevant. If Tzeench is the kind of entity that he is, people shouldn’t trust him or help him, because his actions are harmful to the-collective-efficiency-of-the-world. (Though seaching for ways to make Tzeench less dishonest and less insane would be very useful, if it really is possible.)
(Malal isn’t a god of order. Malal is (if he could be said to be anything at all) the god of nonexistence and annihilation (which is the reason why he can’t really be said to exist), and also anarchy and opposing authority. Which is, nearly, the most pure definition of “chaos” after Tzeench’s “things that change”. Wait, why did he even think about the idea of Malal being a god of order? Not the point!)
Khorne…is a manifestation of an idea alien to Raz. Possibly – [the motion of trying to reach into higher metaphysical concepts, that are impossible to describe but are at least possible to intuitively grasp a shade of] – an idea that is hard to truly express at all in the current context and/or informational space? But, trying anyway…it’s not just rage and murder, even if those are the main parts. The concept Khorne Is a manifestation of includes positive things too. Strength, not only physical, but strength of spirit, resolve, the ability to do things even if they are hard, even if you don’t enjoy them, out of belief they should be done, or maybe spite**.
That’s a quality Raz sees in many people, and respects recognizes the positive value of.
(Still not really one he has, he doesn’t have spite, and his kind of determination is a more Nurglite one, continuing onward, not hoping for anything, because that’s his natural state, going through the motions like a program, not like a person, never loosing hope because there was no hope to lose….not the point!)
It’s possible that this quality of Khorne is the missing side of the coin to Slaanesh’s focus on pleasure. Though maybe not, a combination will probably still be a terrible god of chaos. Just a god of all kinds of wild emotional impulses, instead of only some part.
Because generally, the chaos gods are…well, evil, but in a deeper sense than just the moral one. They are corrupted manifestations of the concepts they represent. Possibly that is the reason Khorne is much more focused on rage and slaughter than courage and resolve.
There could be, for example, gods of pleasure that are not Slaanesh…hell, Raz met priests of Sefelina Midra. She is a goddess of pleasure that is actually good, unlike Slaanesh. Well, neutral. “Pleasure-Neutral”. A Pleasure-Good god would care about structuring society in a way where people are hurt less, and doesn’t cause any damage to random bystanders due to selfish impulsiveness.
That actually may be a good system of categorization, putting some different parameters on the axes of worlds that have those ontological traits, instead of order and chaos. Technically, different kinds of the same “order” could work. Like…”systematicness”? Systematic Good is the city he tried to build once, which wasn’t “Lawful”, according to some definitions.
System Neutral is, well, the System. Not the one that gives interfaces to people, the magical-computer one. And Systematic Evil…shudder, The Factory.
Actually, this could be…
Raz will proceed to develop his “model of categorizing ideologies and societies №397” for the next several hours.
* “Deceiver” here refers to the (anti)divine beings from the setting Nobilis, but is used metaphorically to describe everyone who shares their philosophical approach.
** Raz didn’t think about what traits the Emperor has/would have as a god, and how similar they are to this idea.
