Balance is arguably an
alignment onto its self, it will resist any
opposing force that threatens its
opposite. Harmony is a bit of a stretch as it implies
peace, where in fact the
fundamental reality of good and evil both existing is their
antagonism for each other.
If
good and
evil are
light and
dark then those of the alignment of balance are
servants of the gray, they
maintain both, attempting to insure that the world does not fall to destruction in
stagnation or
disintegration, intolerable
placidity or infinite
horror.
I agree that a true neutral is fundamentally without concern for good and evil,
law,
order, and
chaos. It is of course applied to wild
natural creatures because they do not have these concepts. A thinking being that lives purely for its self though is almost invariably a
source of evil, but consideration for others is essentially the
root of all good. Hence a
sapient would be almost utterly impossible to exist as true neutral without actually doing so by effort (or perhaps more accurately application of a common sense reasoning of
keeping your damn nose out of the affairs of
primal forces to
what ever extent is possible), which would more likely make them a creature of balance, if only with an inward
focus.
A creature could also be labled as neutral if their
agenda does not agree significantly with ither the course of good, evil, chaos, or order. Such a being however does probably have an agenda and is likely in their own eyes
right, where right is both an arguable form of good and order, even if their definition contains acts of
destruction and chaos.
Given that there is no extra alignment of balance in the
D&D world,
as defined here, we must consider neutral to be a
generalization of a larger set of sub groups, just as to what ever lesser degree the other alignments are.