Editing Greater Good (section)

==What is important to remember is this!==
Despite all the jeers about naiveté, subtle mind control and Big Brother watching you, the Tau Empire and its philosophy of the Greater Good is still the nicest option to go with in the 40k universe, especially if you're one of those rare [[neckbeard]]s who actually realizes that grimderp and sadness doesn't always equal coolness and profundity, or who don't think that survival at the cost of your humanity is worth it when there's hope - perhaps futile hope, but hope - for doing so without sacrificing the things we value (love, beauty, compassion, freedom). So what if your leaders control the population like a club of puppet masters? At least you can trust these people not to throw you and your family into a meat grinder suicide war or to crush all the individuality and freedom out of you while saying it is for your own good. Some have said "give it ten thousand more years and the Tau Empire will be just like the Imperium" (don't forget the current Imperium is a lot more backwards and oppressive than the Emperor intended, although the Horus Heresy books reveal the only major difference besides technology is the Imperial Creed than Imperial Truth and the Creed is far more lenient and tolerant, Emps was even more purge-happy than 40K Imperium). But really, will it? The Tau are quite different from humans, so their response will be quite different as well. Until then, the Greater Good remains one of the few doctrines of the 40k universe that makes sense, and despite all the grimdark made of it recently, it is still so [[noblebright]] it can blind [[Night Lords]] a light year away.

At the level of narrative a big thing about The Greater Good is that it's an ideology that many a real world person today would find to some degree or another attractive. Beyond the obvious ability for people to relate to and become more invested in the setting, it also provides a stepping stone and a contrast to the grimdark everywhere else, providing a yardstick to measure against, and get some idea of the sheer scope and scale of the grimdark. Even if there are reasons in universe as to why it's the case the Imperial Creed is going to be a hard sell to pretty much everyone in the modern day to say the least even when we see what it's like in practice and the nastier interpretations there-of. The Greater Good is in general a much more palatable worldview. In Star Trek the philosophy of the Vulcans, which is framed in a positive light, is "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations" and "The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few". Various real world philosophies also hit the same notes to various degrees. Encouraging altruism, cooperation between different groups, the idea that society should have a place for everyone and striving for an idea of societal harmony and the benefit of all is things that many people can get behind. Of course people can do horrible things in service of noble ideals even as they strive for them, but that does not mean that the ideas in of themselves are fundamentally repugnant.

The problem isn’t the ideals or how they’re exercised in this case. The problem is that entities in the Warp can potentially take advantage of these ideals to horribly fuck over the Tau Empire. That shit (and the fact that literally anything except the Imperial Doctrine is considered heresy for not having been around for 10,000 years) is why these ideals are heresy. Already it's beginning to falter in cases like the Fourth Sphere's growing xenophobia.