The shard dominion is the reason for the " evil"

[Tommymater]

Based on the trinity in the catholic faith . there is heaven. Hell and purgatory. In my opinion if i had to correlate these places with shards or worlds i would guess this. Yolen - heaven./ Hell - threnody   dominion /and purgatory is odiom

Edited November 9, 2018 by Tommymater

[Weltall]

Welcome to the Shard!

I assume you mean 'the Evil' on Threnody is related to Dominion? Sorry but Dominion was splintered by Odium before anything happened to Threnody so he can't be responsible. Khriss says outright in Arcanum Unbounded that what happened on Threnody was due to Ambition's power being strewn about during the clash with Odium warping things.

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Argent

Some of the few Shards Rayse Splintered included Ambition, I believe, Dominion, and Devotion.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Argent

And those were all way back, in the history. So, we know that the Shards' personalities overrides the Vessel's personality over time?

Brandon Sanderson

Strongly influence, and depending on the individual, override.

Argent

Okay. So did Rayse choose those Shards because--

Brandon Sanderson

He went after Ambition first, but didn't find Ambition until after going after Devotion and Dominion. But Ambition was number one on his hit list.

Argent

Was it because of the Shard or because of the Vessel? Like did he hate the person?

Brandon Sanderson

In this case it was the Shard, primarily, that drove him--

Argent

Oh, he was maybe afraid the Shard would grow too powerful and take over--

Brandon Sanderson

He was afraid that this Shard that would rival him. And so he's like "This one is number one on the hit list. We're taking down Ambition." But then he got trapped in the Rosharan system.

source

Oh, and per Brandon the Shards themselves are not inherently evil, not even Odium.

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Blightsong

Can honorspren, or any other type of Knight Radiant spren, be evil despite their relationship to Tanavast or Cultivation?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, because I don't call the Shards good and evil. There are no good and evil Shards in my opinion, like and so, what's evil and what's not evil- you can totally have spren that are of Honor that you would consider evil. They have free will; they are much more strictly limited in that free will than we are, because of their nature as spren. It's very hard for most spren to ever break an oath or to lie. That's just like- as manifestations of laws of nature makes it very hard for that to happen, but they can be cruel.

source

 

Edited November 9, 2018 by Weltall

[Fezzik]

I am not certain what your point is. Why do you think there is a heaven/hell/purgatory correlation between three planets, (of which you list four: Yolen, Threnody, Damnation [the Rosharan name for Braize], and Ashyn [the name of the planet Rosharans call the Tranquiline Halls]) and two shards (Dominion and Odium)?

[Tommymater]

Both good points. Thanks for the info. Not sure i really thought that out to the point of anything but just a random thought. I should i have not put it up yet. My mind was on Vax. 

[Fanghur Rahl he/him]

9 hours ago, Weltall said:

Oh, and per Brandon the Shards themselves are not inherently evil, not even Odium.

 

Honestly, I’ve always said that the only way this can be true is if we arbitrarily hold the Shards to a completely different standard of morality than we do literally anyone else. I don’t know of anyone who wouldn’t readily agree that if a person did even a fraction of the terrible things that Odium and Ruin did, that that person qualifies as being evil. So quite frankly, I see no justification in excluding the Shards from deserving the label too, unless we effectively render the term meaningless.

[Gavtyven he/him]

The morality of Shards basically comes down to, does the Intent of the Shard cause the actions of the Shard? A tiger can kill a human, but that doesn't mean the tiger is evil. Basically, who is in control? If it's the instinct of the Intent that's controlling the actions, you can't say it's evil any more than a tiger is evil. If the Vessel controls the actions, but is influenced by the Intent, I'd say that's evil. 
Maybe this is Brandon's way of saying that the Vessels are being controlled by the Intent. *rambles on with aluminium hat* 

[+Croaker's Apprentice he/him]

56 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Honestly, I’ve always said that the only way this can be true is if we arbitrarily hold the Shards to a completely different standard of morality than we do literally anyone else. I don’t know of anyone who wouldn’t readily agree that if a person did even a fraction of the terrible things that Odium and Ruin did, that that person qualifies as being evil. So quite frankly, I see no justification in excluding the Shards from deserving the label too, unless we effectively render the term meaningless.

Doesn't that quote from Brandon just mean that Odium/ Anger as a concept is not inherently evil ? But if Rayse or Ati choose to do terrible things we can consider them to be evil. After all, surely Brandon isn't saying that in the Cosmere, humans have free will but Shards of God do not ? 

[Gavtyven he/him]

3 minutes ago, Croaker's Apprentice said:

After all, surely Brandon isn't saying that in the Cosmere, humans have free will but Shards of God do not ?

Maybe they're too controlled by the Intent, a bit like the programming of an AI that can only operate within specific parameters. So Ruin can only do things that ruin, but within that, Ati is free to operate. There's just not many things he can do to not be "evil". Same with Odium. Divine Hatred is hard to put a positive spin on (and Rayse was said to be a bit of a jerk so I'm sure that doesn't help). 

[+Croaker's Apprentice he/him]

10 minutes ago, Gavtyven said:

Maybe they're too controlled by the Intent, a bit like the programming of an AI that can only operate within specific parameters. So Ruin can only do things that ruin, but within that, Ati is free to operate. There's just not many things he can do to not be "evil". Same with Odium. Divine Hatred is hard to put a positive spin on (and Rayse was said to be a bit of a jerk so I'm sure that doesn't help). 

Interesting point. Do you have Free Will if your freedom is constrained by parameters ? I don't see how Ruin and Preservation could not have Free Will, but could create humans (the Scadrians) who do. Also, Autonomy, the Shard of Free Will, must surely have it, mustn't she ? It would be a bit weird if the Shard of Free Will was governed by Determinism. 

...But funny !

[Gavtyven he/him]

Just now, Croaker's Apprentice said:

It would be a bit weird if the Shard of Free Will was governed by Determinism. 

Would be weird, and I hadn't considered Autonomy. Maybe she'd be an exception, or she's as controlled by the limits of the Intent as the others, but it's just that the Intent allows for more freedom, since "Autonomy" is a bit more vague than "Ruin". Just look at the numerous posts and discussions about Autonomy on this site. 

[Fanghur Rahl he/him]

27 minutes ago, Gavtyven said:

Maybe they're too controlled by the Intent, a bit like the programming of an AI that can only operate within specific parameters. So Ruin can only do things that ruin, but within that, Ati is free to operate. There's just not many things he can do to not be "evil". Same with Odium. Divine Hatred is hard to put a positive spin on (and Rayse was said to be a bit of a jerk so I'm sure that doesn't help). 

I dunno, do you consider yourself to have free will? Because ultimately all of us are in the same position as the Vessels, just not nearly in such an overt way. Ultimately, all of us are manifestations of matter obeying the laws of physics, and our will emerges from that. I personally would say that as long as we aren’t coerced to act in a way against our own desires, then we do have ‘free will’ (the technical term for this position is ‘compatibilism’). And Ruin certainly seemed to enjoy what he was doing, as does Odium. So it would seem that by that definition, the Shards have as much ‘free will’ as we do. The only difference is that the range of possible desires they can possess is much more limited than ours.

[Gavtyven he/him]

If their full range of possible desires fall into what we consider evil actions, can you consider them evil? The actions are bad, I'm not denying that, but morality is based on choice. If all their possible desires are "evil", they don't have a choice but to act in that way. 

That's not to say that Ruin and Odium shouldn't be stopped, just that they're not evil, perse

Edited November 9, 2018 by Gavtyven

[Quantus he/him]

1 minute ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

I dunno, do you consider yourself to have free will? Because ultimately all of us are in the same position as the Vessels, just not nearly in such an overt way. Ultimately, all of us are manifestations of matter obeying the laws of physics, and our will emerges from that. I personally would say that as long as we aren’t coerced to act in a way against our own desires, then we do have ‘free will’ (the technical term for this position is ‘compatibilism’). And Ruin certainly seemed to enjoy what he was doing, as does Odium. So it would seem that by that definition, the Shards have as much ‘free will’ as we do. The only difference is that the range of possible desires they can possess is much more limited than ours.

Ruin was Crazy by that point and had basically given in to the drives of the Intent, but the Intent itself is natural Entropy and Decay; that itself isn't evil, but a person being constantly pushed toward Destruction and always defaulting to the most destructive drives is most likely going to eventually become something pretty evil.  The Shard is not evil, but it sure as hell drove Ati to become something evil, not unlike any number of mental illnesses.  Rayse, by all accounts, started out as an cremhole so it was probably a much shorter trip to EvilLand than Ati, and Divine Anger is a at least as unhealthy a Drive to give a person as Destruction.  But neither are inherently Evil any more than Devotion, per Brandon synonymous with Love, is innately Good; just ask anyone with a stalker; hell, in DC Comics the universal Incarnation of Love is called The Predator. 

[Gavtyven he/him]

12 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

and it would be something like Death from the show Supernatural

Death is different from Ruin though. While Death is inevitable, unless you're Hoid, and can be peaceful, Ruin has, at least in the minds of most people, a negative connotation. Ati was probably himself ruined (pardon the joke) by Ruin, as Ati was "Once a kind and generous person." 

So the question again comes down to what's more powerful, Shard or Vessel.

Speaking of Ati: I once had the thought that Ati, as the kind and generous person he used to be according to Hoid, may have taken up Ruin because he thought he could mitigate the dangers of the Shard, instead of for example Rayse, who would have destroyed immediately. When Ruin made Scadrial with Preservation, he helped, with the condition he could destroy them at some point. To me, this shows his natural inclination towards entropy, instead of intentional destruction. Then, after a while, he was corrupted by the Shard and by Preservations betrayal. This led him to be the Ruin we see in WoA and HoA. That's just a thought I had though.

[Fanghur Rahl he/him]

23 minutes ago, Gavtyven said:

Death is different from Ruin though. While Death is inevitable, unless you're Hoid, and can be peaceful, Ruin has, at least in the minds of most people, a negative connotation.

Actually, in the early show it was at least implied that Death personified natural decay as well. But I agree that if we’re going on Supernatural analogies, Ati-Ruin is far more analogous to the Darkness than he was to Death. My point was just that if Ruin truly was just a personification of natural decay as Ati claimed, Death would be the kind of being I would expect it to be like. Instead, he was an omnicidal psychopath who could care less about the natural order.

[RShara she/her]

I think what he means is that the intent is neutral, but how it's expressed can certainly be evil. Odium as Hatred could easily be hatred against injustice or oppression. Instead, it's hatred of, well, anything that isn't him. The intent can be applied to "good" purposes as well as "evil" ones, so in itself is not good or evil.

[Fanghur Rahl he/him]

1 hour ago, RShara said:

I think what he means is that the intent is neutral, but how it's expressed can certainly be evil. Odium as Hatred could easily be hatred against injustice or oppression. Instead, it's hatred of, well, anything that isn't him. The intent can be applied to "good" purposes as well as "evil" ones, so in itself is not good or evil.

The confusion also arises in that Brandon often refers to the Shards alone and the Shards + their Vessels as if they were synonymous, so it’s unclear exactly which he’s referring to sometimes. Because Rayse is certainly evil, with or without holding Odium, but the books just call the Vessels by their intents.

[Calderis he/him]

On 11/9/2018 at 4:34 AM, Croaker's Apprentice said:

Doesn't that quote from Brandon just mean that Odium/ Anger as a concept is not inherently evil ? But if Rayse or Ati choose to do terrible things we can consider them to be evil. After all, surely Brandon isn't saying that in the Cosmere, humans have free will but Shards of God do not ? 

The Shards don't have free will. They don't even have a will at all. They need a vessel to have a mind. A Shard that was left alone and developed a mind of its own would have a will, but at that point it would be an entity to itself and a moral judgment would be applicable to it. 

But a force is not a mind. 

On 11/9/2018 at 4:53 AM, Croaker's Apprentice said:

Interesting point. Do you have Free Will if your freedom is constrained by parameters ? I don't see how Ruin and Preservation could not have Free Will, but could create humans (the Scadrians) who do. Also, Autonomy, the Shard of Free Will, must surely have it, mustn't she ? It would be a bit weird if the Shard of Free Will was governed by Determinism. 

...But funny !

This in itself is an assumption. We don't know what Autonomy's intent is. 

I've proposed something very different. 

Which is also an assumption. But generally speaking, I think we don't know nearly as much about the intents as we've been lead to think. 

Edited November 10, 2018 by Calderis