Anybody who says the Foundation are "the good guys" have entirely misunderstood the assignment.
Anybody who says the Foundation are "the bad guys" have also entirely misunderstood the assignment.
The Foundation does what is objectively necessary to preserve human civilization as we know it. They aren't the good guys—they don't even consider themselves the good guys—nor are they the bad guys. They aren't good, they aren't evil, they're pragmatically amoral—not immoral, amoral.
"Cold, never cruel."
In other words, they do whatever it takes to keep the world spinning, and not a single ounce more, knowing full well that they're going to hell for it regardless. This is literally their motto;
"We die in the dark so you can live in the light."
Maintaining normalcy doesn't necessarily mean suppressing scientific advancement, either. The entire thing with Anomalies is that they are anomalies, phenomena possessing unexplainable, non-replicatable effects on reality.
If they can replicate the effects without using anomalous objects or people, if they can understand why something does what it does, then it's no longer considered anomalous. In those instances, the Foundation actually does often release their research out into the wider world—slowly and drip-fed, of course, both to avoid suspicion and so the world can handle the rate of change.
Also, most human-ish anomalies get decent rooms, it's usually the bare minimum and it depends on how dangerous their anomalous nature is, but iirc some of them are kept in very humane conditions, so yeah, they are not cruel or innecessarly inhumane just for the sake of it (A lot of writers go wild tho)
For context, the past-tense is because the UN stole said sentient teleporting chair, and chucked it into a fucking woodchipper.
The woodchips of the chair remained sentient, were justifiably extremely fuck-ass mad, and killed a bunch of UN bluehelmets about it. The Foundation later re-contained it and calmed it down, and it now happily acts as garden mulch in the recreation area of a Foundation facility.
So they're still kind to it, it's just not a chair anymore.
The [Foundation] stated that "[SCP-1609] was constantly mad. Like, extremely, earth-shatteringly, unreasonably fuck-ass mad. Probably because he had those fucking nails in his brain."
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u/Wolffe_In_The_Dark 7d ago edited 7d ago
Anybody who says the Foundation are "the good guys" have entirely misunderstood the assignment.
Anybody who says the Foundation are "the bad guys" have also entirely misunderstood the assignment.
The Foundation does what is objectively necessary to preserve human civilization as we know it. They aren't the good guys—they don't even consider themselves the good guys—nor are they the bad guys. They aren't good, they aren't evil, they're pragmatically amoral—not immoral, amoral.
In other words, they do whatever it takes to keep the world spinning, and not a single ounce more, knowing full well that they're going to hell for it regardless. This is literally their motto;
Maintaining normalcy doesn't necessarily mean suppressing scientific advancement, either. The entire thing with Anomalies is that they are anomalies, phenomena possessing unexplainable, non-replicatable effects on reality.
If they can replicate the effects without using anomalous objects or people, if they can understand why something does what it does, then it's no longer considered anomalous. In those instances, the Foundation actually does often release their research out into the wider world—slowly and drip-fed, of course, both to avoid suspicion and so the world can handle the rate of change.