Your problem, Broddigan, is that you're reading what I write and translating it into things I'm not writing. About half of what you wrote up there has absolutely no bearing on any of the arguments I'm making, including every instance of you trying to restate what I've said.
Gah, I give up.
How does "they wouldn't think anything of breaking them anytime the circumstances favored doing so" not equate to "doing what suits you best in the moment"? You even agreed that when I restated your position as "Clerics should never be allowed to be Chaotic as written, because Chaotic characters adhere to no authority" that it was correct.
I don't know if you're just trolling or getting way too worked up that someone would dare disagree with you, but I'm not in the mood to engage this any further.
Your problem, Broddigan, is that you're reading what I write and translating it into things I'm not writing. About half of what you wrote up there has absolutely no bearing on any of the arguments I'm making, including every instance of you trying to restate what I've said.Gah, I give up.
How does "they wouldn't think anything of breaking them anytime the circumstances favored doing so" not equate to "doing what suits you best in the moment"?
For one thing, the lack of the word "you". If one tenet of your faith is to never be outdoors at night, but you hear a child screaming in agony in the square outside your house, a Chaotic Good person would charge outside without a moment's hesitation, while a Lawful Good person would, at the very least, pray for forgiveness from his faith as he went, and, if he was extremely Lawful and held his faith to be the foremost authority in his life, might not even leave at all.
That situation has nothing whatsoever to do with "what suits you best at the moment". In fact, it's quite the opposite. It's simplest to just stay indoors and obey your faith. The Chaotic character doesn't give two whits about that. He does what the circumstances dictate he should be doing -- in this case, breaking a tenet of his faith to possibly save a child's life.
If the majority of the population is Good, slavery is bound to disappear.
Probably, but when? Over the course of a few years? Decades? Centuries? In the context of a Role Playing Game campaign that takes place in a given place and time, it's easily possible the have a heroic nation in which slaves exist. There will be laws that protect them from excessively cruel treatment, and probably a period after which a slave will be freed.
Prior to the 17th century or so, most cultures throughout the world had no laws against slavery, and it was common. So, we could say that these Fantasy societies, by the time the reach the equivalent of our 18th Century, could begin to rebel against the idea of slavery, but at the time most campaigns have been run, they have not yet reached that level of morality.
If the majority of the population is Good, slavery is bound to disappear.Probably, but when?
The speed at which it will happen will be inversely proportional to how the slaves are treated?
Well, any arguments I can come with will not hold if you don't accept that Good is a universal principle. I wouldn't take it against if you don't as it is a very debated subject even today.
I don't buy the fact that an accepted evil isn't evil. Whether slavery is evil or not is a debate in its own; but I don't see denying someone's freedom as a Good act.
But as I wrote in one of my posts above, there is a way to romance slavery in a way that it doesn't relate to evil, but I admit that I am not familiar with the region of Golarion in question.
I don't know why I'm that sensitive on the subject, but for me it really feels wrong...
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Whether slavery is evil or not is a debate in its own; but I don't see denying someone's freedom as a Good act.
The problem is with the many definitions of slavery.
If someone is raiding other lands and kidnapping people and selling them as chattel, that's one thing.
If the system is forcing criminals to work, then that's something you'll see along the highway between South Carolina and Florida on the way to spring break.
And if the society allows a person to pay off a debt (such as a debt incurred by someone offering to get you out of a country like China) by going into servitude to the debtor, that's a third branch (and anyone who's wearing clothes from Wal-Mart or K-Mart has benefitted from unpaid laborers, who have gun-towers and barbed wire between them and the palatial estates of the factory owners).
Two different types of 'slavery,' one commonplace in the south, one at least accepted by the bulk of Americans so that they can buy cheap textiles from the Marianas with the sticker 'Made in America' tacked on them because they made by virtual slaves in American territories.
We draw the line only at outright kidnapping people and, buying and selling them, it seems.
Which is typically capitalist thinking. It's okay to force people to work, but you better not buy or sell anything without the proper licenses, business registrations and taxes being paid!
Whether slavery is evil or not is a debate in its own; but I don't see denying someone's freedom as a Good act.The problem is with the many definitions of slavery.
Actually, reading my own "I don't see denying someone's freedom as a Good act" would mean that imprisonment of criminals wouldn't be a good act. My comment was obviously flawed...
I'm still sensitive about slavery, but that's beside the point.
So if for a second I may ask you to forget about the definition of Law and Chaos, what do you guys thing about the first part of my initial post (actually, the second post, the first was kind of a welcome to the thread...)
In the alignment nomenclature, a character is lawful or chaotic before he is good or evil. Note that this does not mean that the character is more lawful than good or more chaotic then evil (although this may be the case); it just means that the most initial reaction of a character will depend on his Law-vs-Chaos alignment, while the underlying motivation behind those reactions will depend on the Good-vs-Evil axis. It should be stressed that Law-vs-Chaos has nothing to do with Good-vs-Evil. These are two separate, perpendicular axis crossing only at true neutrality.
Law is often described as loyalty, rigidity, honour, adherence to a personal code of conduct, self-discipline, respect for the civil laws etc. While these are all traits that are more likely to be dominant in a lawful character, they are not Law itself. Neutral or chaotic characters may posses one or many of these traits just as strongly as a lawful character. Similarly, defiance, insanity, selfishness, pride, independence, aloofness, adaptability, lack of respect for the authorities are traits commonly found in chaotic characters, but they do not incarnate Chaos itself. Once again, these traits may just as well define a lawful character. Without considering the Good-vs-Evil alignment, a character could be loyal to his friend but selfish in his actions, very disciplined yet independent. Character traits, by themselves, do not define neither Law nor Chaos; but the driving force behind these traits do.
That was actually the part I was expecting comment from. I didn't expect that I was that far off in my definition of Law and Chaos...
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Law is often described as loyalty, rigidity, honour, adherence to a personal code of conduct, self-discipline, respect for the civil laws etc. While these are all traits that are more likely to be dominant in a lawful character, they are not Law itself. Neutral or chaotic characters may posses one or many of these traits just as strongly as a lawful character. Similarly, defiance, insanity, selfishness, pride, independence, aloofness, adaptability, lack of respect for the authorities are traits commonly found in chaotic characters, but they do not incarnate Chaos itself. Once again, these traits may just as well define a lawful character. Without considering the Good-vs-Evil alignment, a character could be loyal to his friend but
My understanding of it is thus;
A lawful sort relies on / trusts in external authority (laws of the state, traditions of the people handed down over generations, precepts of faith, parental rules). He will accept the dictates of others above his own personal views, and may be prone to performing actions that he doesn't enjoy if 'under orders.' Obedience is sometimes instinctive and ill-defined, coming from a weak sense of self, and other times the result of intensive training and a strong faith in the judgement and good intentions of those superior to oneself in the 'chain of command.' A violation of that trust (someone higher up in the chain of command who does not have the best interests of their followers in mind) can shatter such a person completely. When the laws are just, and fairly enforced, a law-abiding individual can be a strong asset, resisting distractions such as pride, self-love, fear or anger, pushing them aside to perform a difficult task uncomplainingly, and encouraging others to also cooperate in a time of trial or danger. In such a situation, where the situation is chaotic (such as a fire), the sight of individuals who are performing their assigned duties seemingly fearlessly and confidently, helps to inspire others, who lack structure and whose fears and anxieties are running away with them. On the flip side, lawful individuals are prone to groupthink and avoidance of personal responsibility, passing blame up the chain of command to whomever ordered their actions or claiming 'hey, I didn't make the rules' in their own defense. Faced with those who do not respect their chain of command or legal system or codes of faith, they find themselves uncomfortable, and many such systems *encourage* this discomfort by painting 'unbelievers' or 'perps' as an enemy, with themselves as some last bastion of right-thinking people or as a 'thin blue line' that protects the undisciplined other from themselves.
Depending on which side of the line you stand, the 'lawful' state could be seen as an irresponsible child-like state, where you pass off responsibility for your own decision-making to outside forces, rather than ever stepping out into the scary, scary world and making your own choices, or as the grown-up state, where you become responsible and accept the social contracts that keep us from collapsing into anarchy and rioting in the streets and [insert scenes from Escape from New York or Mad Max here].
A chaotic sort relies on internal authority. He tends to be more self-assured and less self-doubting, which can be a strength (less prone to collapse in a situation where lines of authority are unclear) and a weakness (less prone to accept judgements of others, more likely to think that the best decision in any situation is the one originating in his own head, even if he's surrounded by people *vastly* more qualified to make judgements on the situation at hand). A chaotic person can be inherently selfish, arrogant, and make a situation much worse, running off to do their own thing, convinced that 'the rules don't apply to them,' and only exist to let the sheep know where to go. Some chaotic individuals come from strongly lawful situations, and have either had 'the system' fail (in their view), or have been jaded to heirarchy by the actions or behavior of someone who has abused authority (the anecdotal 'preacher's daughter' who turns out to be a hellion because she knows that her bible-thumping father is an adulterer and hypocrite, convinced that authority is inherently corrupt and tainted by the examples of her past, she justifies her own 'wild' behavior as self-determination, instead of recognizing it as outrage and betrayal over finding out that the 'rules' of her childhood were *best practices* and that no human was likely to ever be able perfectly follow them...). Just as the organized lawful sorts are prone to demonize non-believers, independent-minded chaotic sorts are prone to think of enforcers or missionaries or other agents of an organization or faith as 'robots' or 'drones,' unable or unwilling to think for themselves.
Again, depending on which side of the street you frequent, the 'chaotic' state could be seen as utterly irresponsible and selfish, caring only for yourself and not a whit for others, arrogantly assuming that your own personal feelings-of-the-moment are somehow more true or valuable than dozens of generations of established law, tradition or faith, or as a truly adult state where you take personal responsibility for your own actions, rather than blaming your mistakes (or your successes) on diety, society or upbringing, or using excuses like 'everybody does it!' to justify personal misdeeds.
Blurring the line, there are only really so many ways to 'buck the system' in the world, and when independent-minded folk with similar views cluster together, their own organizations can become just as monolithic and 'groupthink-y' as the most repressive and censored third-world secret police. The 'system' that they rebel against has failed them (in their eyes) with it's corruption, hypocrisy, etc. and yet they gather with like-minded revolutionaries and firebrands *and do it all over again!*, creating a new 'system.'
No matter how indepedent we want to be, no matter how much we desire to accept responsibility for our own actions and break away from the herd, it seems that we just end up creating a new herd, from which our children will feel the need to escape when the pendulum swings.
In the worst, worst case, breaking them down to horror movie cliches, the lawful character is the one who says, 'No, we have to stay here! Are you crazy! You can't go out there! Someone will come to save us.' and then ends up dying when the safe place turns out to not be safe, while the chaotic character is the one who says, 'Who made you boss? I say we fight this sucker! He can't kill us all!' and then storms out and gets their head hacked off 30 seconds later (and, quite often, at least one other person who followed them killed as well). One trusts to outside forces to come save them, and wants to just 'follow protocol' or 'do the right thing' or 'play it safe.' The other trusts only their own judgement and tries to take control of their own fate.
Being a horror movie, they both die anyway. There were no right choices!
...five paragraphs long of stuff about law and chaos...
Thanks for the input Set! Thanks to all of you actually. Now I'll have some digesting to do...
'findel
How chaotic religions work.
They are a democracy. The various members vote on religious issues. The pray time for a cleric, well that is decide on by the individual cleric. There is not a set time for all the clerics of a chaotic faith. Instead each cleric chooses the time of day that they feel is best for them.
Chaotics value personal freedom, and thus free will is important to them. Making choices for yourself is not losing one's free will, but exercising it.
As for non-deity clerics, when they lose the abilities it is not due to an outside entity taking them away, but instead because they have betrayed themselves and lose faith in themselves. Again free will and the consequences of it.
In the worst, worst case, breaking them down to horror movie cliches, the lawful character is the one who says, 'No, we have to stay here! Are you crazy! You can't go out there! Someone will come to save us.' and then ends up dying when the safe place turns out to not be safe, while the chaotic character is the one who says, 'Who made you boss? I say we fight this sucker! He can't kill us all!' and then storms out and gets their head hacked off 30 seconds later (and, quite often, at least one other person who followed them killed as well). One trusts to outside forces to come save them, and wants to just 'follow protocol' or 'do the right thing' or 'play it safe.' The other trusts only their own judgement and tries to take control of their own fate.
Being a horror movie, they both die anyway. There were no right choices!
and the moral of the story is: be the villain!
If being chaotic is valuing its own personal freedom: is wishing for another's freedom chaotic or good?
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If being chaotic is valuing its own personal freedom: is wishing for another's freedom chaotic or good?
Good. Because it's all about empathy and identifying with the imprisoned person and wanting good things for them, without any obvious benefit for yourself.
A totally chaotic soul is not *necessarily* going to give a hoot about another persons freedom. Chaos is about self-determination. Indeed, a Chaotic Evil (or just unpleasant Chaotic Neutral) might believe that it's the other persons onus to win their own freedom, that they don't inherently deserve freedom unless they fight for it themselves. A Chaotic person can be downright Nietzchean, with a 'survival of the fittest' and 'the rules were made to be broken, by those with the will to break them' mentality.
Persig's 'Infinite Players and Infinite Games' theory could be seen as inherently chaotic. Ozymandius' Gordian knot anecdote from Watchmen is another example. Alexander may not have been chaotic, but Ozy was very much a 'rules were not meant for me' sort of self-actualized (arrogant) person, and the challenge was to *solve* the Gordian knot, not to whip out a sword and cut the darn thing in half. What Ozy praises as non-linear thinking or 'thinking outside the box' is more commonly known as 'cheating.' Changing the rules of the game to win? That's also 'cheating.' We admire it today, and business managers use the 'think outside the box' mantra all over the place (usually horribly inappropriately), but it's an appeal to an inherently chaotic approach to problem-solving.
TV shows appeal to that sort of sentiment *constantly.* The detectives / NCIS / CIS / CIA / whatever are stumped, and they have to find a way to get evidence without a warrant, or get a confession through illicit means, or flip out on a suspect in the interrogation room, to 'win' the day. It's all about breaking (or at least bending until they scream) the legal system to 'win,' and it's enough to get an actual policeman or prosecutor to walk out of the room in disgust that we watch this stuff, since the inherent message of most of these shows is that the system that has defended us for the last 200 years *doesn't work unless 'mavericks' break the rules.*
And then there's 24, where the premise of the show is that *everyone* in the US government counter-terrorism task force who is not Jack Bauer is either a soft-minded fool or an actual terrorist plant out to destroy America, every single member of the US government (particularly Congress) is incapable of rational thought, and that *the only thing* that can save our country is a single man with a gun who has 'gone off the reservation' and ends up breaking dozens of laws in the course of saving the country from the ticking-bomb scenario of the week.
My current mood on this topic probably isn't helped from having watched Die Hard (where the authorities are hapless pawns of the bad-guys, while the lone 'cowboy' with a gun saves the day) followed by Law Abiding Citizen (which is all about the legal system failing) today.
If being chaotic is valuing its own personal freedom: is wishing for another's freedom chaotic or good?Good. Because it's all about empathy and identifying with the imprisoned person and wanting good things for them, without any obvious benefit for yourself.
That was my though also. Thanks Set, you've brought me some very insightful comments. I particularly like the concept of internal authority. Really puts the term on the concept that I fumbled horribly to describe.
'findel
If being chaotic is valuing its own personal freedom: is wishing for another's freedom chaotic or good?
Could be either depending on the measures one is willing to take. Neutrals (on Good-Evil axis) generally don't wish ill on others and thus a CN person would not want to see someone else's personal freedom's impeded unnecessarily. Thus a CN might support laws that protect other's rights, because they also protect their own (enlightened self interest).
I think a CE viewpoint might be something along the lines that the only "freedom" or "rights" you have, are the ones you can defend yourself. All else is an illusion. "All that matters is what a man can do and what a man can't do."
CG folks tend to put the needs of others over themselves and thus would risk their own personal freedoms (and perhaps their lives) to protect the personal freedoms of others.
I don't see denying someone's freedom as a Good act.
I totally agree; I do however think it's possible for slavery to exist in a society that's both lawful and good; it's doomed to fail, eventually, but it can hold on for some time.
In fact, that's got me wondering if slavery is more likely to persist in a lawful good society than a chaotic good one. In a society where chaotic good is a more common alignment, more people would be willing to ignore laws that seem evil and attempt to help slaves, whereas the lawful goods might placate themselves for quite a while with excuses like "law serves the greater good, so violating it even to stop an evil is still wrong".
I don't see denying someone's freedom as a Good act.
I totally agree; I do however think it's possible for slavery to exist in a society that's both lawful and good; it's doomed to fail, eventually, but it can hold on for some time.
In fact, that's got me wondering if slavery is more likely to persist in a lawful good society than a chaotic good one. In a society where chaotic good is a more common alignment, more people would be willing to ignore laws that seem evil and attempt to help slaves, whereas the lawful goods might placate themselves for quite a while with excuses like "law serves the greater good, so violating it even to stop an evil is still wrong".
I kind of refuted my own comment a few posts up. There is a LOT more to it than the simple "denying one's freedom = evil" equation. One can have servants and still be of good alignment. The character's alignment will determine how these servants are treated.
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In fact, that's got me wondering if slavery is more likely to persist in a lawful good society than a chaotic good one. In a society where chaotic good is a more common alignment, more people would be willing to ignore laws that seem evil and attempt to help slaves, whereas the lawful goods might placate themselves for quite a while with excuses like "law serves the greater good, so violating it even to stop an evil is still wrong".
Law makes a fantastic excuse to allow evil to exist, and even to participate in perpetuating it.
Stanley Milgram's {in)famous experiment showed us the ugly truth that no matter how righteous we felt executing Nazi prison guards who used the 'I was just following orders' defense, 37 out of 40 Americans would electrocute another person to death, just because someone in authority told them to. (And by 'someone in authority,' it wasn't even backed by fear of the Gestapo or men with guns, it was just a dude in a lab coat!) His experimental methodology, his ethics, even his sanity were questioned, not because he failed to prove his point, but because the thing he brought to light was too ugly for us to want to see, that the 'I was just following orders!' defense was real, and that the overwhelming majority of right-thinking, law-abidiong, God-fearing people are one order away from being a war criminal.
On the other hand, chaos is inherently selfish, just as obedience to law can be dangerously self-less (when the person, prison guard or not, abdicates his own personal responsibility for his actions, blaming them on a higher authority or 'orders'). A chaotic society is less likely to even have laws against slavery, or to have *centralized* national laws, preferring to allow laws to be handled at the local level. (States rights / libertarian arguments could be seen as inherently chaotic, pushing for dozens of neighboring local solutions to one grand national system that might not work for everyone in tht nation, although assigning labels like chaos or law to political philosophies is probably getting too close to the alligator...) It's true that in a chaotic society, there will likely be more individuals who are also chaotic, and willing to help the slaves of others escape, but there will be just as many who won't care at all about slaves.
In a lawful society that does allow slavery, a law-abiding person uncomfortable with slavery for moral reasons might become testy and defensive when asked about it, using arguments like 'If you don't like it, maybe you should move somewhere else!' to cover their discomfort at having to justify an institution that they themselves don't think is right. They turn the attack on a specific law into an issue of patriotism, to throw the uncomfortable conversation off-track and make it into a personal fight, instead of an objective discussion (which would require them to admit that they also disagree with their country's stance on slavery). Another tack would be to say, 'If you don't like slavery, you don't have to own any slaves!', which willfully ignores the concept that if slavery is morally wrong, it is just as wrong to allow these laws to continue as they are, instead of just forbidding it from your own home.
Looking at our own world history, examples of extremely lawful societies that have done systematically evil things can be countered with examples of extremely chaotic situations where horrible things have also happened (compare WW2 Germany and Japan, ranging from very lawful to fanatically lawful, to the chaotic situation in Darfur).
The last few generations have left us with the impression that very orderly / authoritarian societies are the most prone to 'evil,' thanks to some world wars and acts of terror by religious conservatives from very traditional worldviews, while the more 'chaotic' and disorganized and decentralized nations and societies appear to either be less inclined to evil (or, like WW2 Italy, so prone to internal disorder and upheavel, as to end up sucking at it and changing their mind before they really get started).
But for every such example of brutally efficient 'lawful' massacre (ranging from Stalin to Hitler), there are dozens of smaller, less visible acts of evil that result from a society lacking strong enough laws and protections, allowing evil men to get away with murder (Columbia, Darfur, Ethopia, etc.). Too much law, not enough law, either seems to end in badness, it's just that the most law-abiding tradition-embracing societies get more organized about it and make the biggest headlines.
Fiction goes in both directions as well, often hysterically.
For every evil empire whose dictates are enforced by clones in shiny white plastic, there's the group of kids left alone on an island who freak out and become convinced that a pig's head is a god ordering them to beat each other to death, because apparently without authority and grown-ups and bedtime, kids will flip out and go nuts.
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Too much law, not enough law, either seems to end in badness, it's just that the most law-abiding tradition-embracing societies get more organized about it and make the biggest headlines.
I think the higher horror evoked by "Lawful Evil" IR brutalities has its base in the fact that we are living in mostly Lawful Good groups.
Thus associating Chaos with Evil is quite natural, while associating Law with Evil feels blasphemous, as the groups we live in are used to associate Law with Good.