Editing Greater Good (section)

==Is it all really sunshine and lollipops?==
The codices and fluff hinted from the start that all was not what it seemed in the Tau Empire, and with the recent updates, especially the [[Farsight]] Enclaves supplement, the Ethereals have been portrayed as subtly evil space tyrants ruling an empire through clever mind control tricks which the Tau population is unaware of. Basically, the books hint that the Ethereals, a strange breed of Tau who appeared out of nowhere, use some form of mind control or pheromone to influence other Tau to listen to what they say and to obey orders without question. It is further hinted that this has had a diminished effect on even non-Tau. It is in this way they sell the Greater Good. It is the sort of thing the Party in ''[[1984]]'' would love to be able to do and would make their work load much easier.
 
There has been no solid confirmation on the origin or power of the Hypnotau, and like a lot of potentially cool plot points, it has been left underdeveloped in order to [[Advancing the Storyline|drag out the plot]]. Thanks GW. Of course, ''[[Xenology]]'' really, ''really'' heavily implies that the [[Eldar]] stole some other alien race's mind-control pheromones and integrated them into Tau biology.

That said, it's also heavily implied that the Ethereals' pheromones affect the Ethereals themselves as well. They fully believe in everything they preach, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink#Origin_and_concepts as opposed to ''1984'''s leaders]. In the novel ''Fire Warrior'', an Ethereal actually resists falling to goddamn [[Chaos Spawn|daemonic possession]] not because of any psychic resistance or relic but because his faith in the Greater Good gives him total balance and control over his mind, meaning no emotional flaws for a daemon to exploit.

While pheromones and the like account for the single-mindedness of the Tau, the Empire's member races presumably must be won over by more traditional means, so there still has to be a solid philosophical core for other races to latch onto. To this end, prominent [[Vespid]] are outfitted with "communion helms" to assist translation, which obviously contain no mind-control elements whatsoever. Same goes for the Nagi, a race of telepathic brain worms who regularly council with the Ethereals. The fluff doesn't talk about them much, but the moment you read "telepathic brain worms" that's immediately going to raise some red flags. However, as far as we know, the Nagi have no direct contact with the other client races. So whether or not there's mind control amongst the Tau themselves, the Greater Good is still a legitimate motivating philosophy that is proving itself to be quite effective at uniting disparate civilizations.