I am a bit of a selfish prig at times. I tend to focus on what I want or need above and beyond what others want, and regardless of the consequences. I am also a huge order freak. Structure and planning are my big things. I am not 'Doctor Doom' lawful evil or anything, but yeah. I admit my shortcomings.
As a piece of advice, I would like to share my feelings about the Law/Chaos axis :
Many people here, and over the world, are voting more for Chaos than for Law. I know many RL friends who consider themselves Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral while I think they aren't. I think the most common alignment in developed countries is Neutral Good or Lawful Good.
Let me quote Baldur's Gate itself.
Lawful Good : "Characters of this alignment believe that an orderly, strong society with a well-organized government can work to make life better for the majority of the people"
Is this not what you all think ? Don't you believe in this ? Watchout, I'm not saying the actual goverment of any country is perfect, I'm saying that a "well organized government can work to make life better for the majority of people"
"To ensure the quality of life, laws must be created and obeyed. When people respect the laws and try to help one another, society as a whole prospers."
Don't you all agree with this ? Why do you think laws are still obeyed in this world ? If the majority of the people were Chaotic or Neutral as this poll describes, there would be no society.
Because Chaotic doesn't mean that you do what you want, this is a common misconception. Doing what you want is being Neutral. When you are Good, you act Good. When you're Evil, you act Evil. And when you are Chaotic, you don't act Lawful and Chaotic at the same time, you act Chaotic, you try to destroy the society and the laws because you disagree with them to the point you can't bear them. If you want to do nothing about the Law/Chaos axis or if you want to act Lawful and Chaotic at the same time, you are Neutral.
Robin Hood is a good example of a Chaotic Good character, he is an outlaw and obeys no rule.
I am pretty sure some of you (I'm not speaking of everyone, I can't, because I don't know your life), who consider themselves Chaotic are not fighting the society, aren't trying to protest against their government and are accepting the laws despite not liking them. I'm pretty sure you aren't Chaotic, but Neutral instead.
I have a real life friend who IS Chaotic. He is a hacker and attacks government sites non-stop while hiding himself. To my mind, that is Chaotic.
Now allow me to quote Baldur's Gate once more.
Chaotic Neutral : "Chaotic Neutral characters believe that there is no order to anything, including their own actions."
"Chaotic Neutral characters are extremely difficult to deal with."
Are you really difficult to deal with ?
"Such characters have been known to cheerfully and for no apparent purpose gamble away everything they have on the roll of a single die."
Do you really do this ?! Are you playing your house and your family on online poker sites ?
"They are almost totally unreliable. In fact, the only reliable thing about them is that they cannot be relied upon !"
Woah that's incredible ! If a friend of yours give you a Rendez-Vous, are you going to come late, in advance or not to come at all just to not obey the rule ? Did you refuse to go to school because it was following what the society ordered ? Maybe I am a bit extrapolating here, but you undertand my point.
As a conclusion, I would to remind that this is only my opinion, and while I hope I gave some clues to some people, I know that others won't agree with me and that's totally fine.
TL;DR : Chaos is too mainstream, some of you (but not everyone of course) who consider themselves Chaotic or Neutral are in fact Neutral or Lawful. The whole "F*ck the police" picture is exagerated.
Thanks for reading and if I offended someone, be assured that I didn't intent to. I apologize for my poor english !
@Gotural, I take no offense But I've said it before and I'll say it again: I consider myself chaotic because I consider democracy a joke and don't feel myself in any way represented by any government. I can't see how checking a box on a ballot once every four years gives a small (heavily lobbied) elite the right to pour out a cartload of laws and regulations over me. It's a form of tyranny imo: I never signed for any of it.
The reason most people adhere to the status quo, I think, is that fortunately most people simply want to live their life in peace and and harmony with their environment. So long as that's possible, people won't generally rebel. Personally, I like this humble approach, and I think that the world would be a better place if all people lived that way, lived to do good in their own circle of people rather than to want to impose one's ideas upon millions of "citizens".
I also don't have a strong personal code, other than to try to be kind and truthful, and rather deal with problems on a case-by-case basis. So yes, I definitely consider myself chaotic.
Trying to improve myself,have broken some laws in the past but nothing really serious. Also become a little more egocentric with my age due to life experience though.
Looks like most people seem to be CN. Ermm, i'd like to think CG but i can be way to selfish at times. I guess i change between them. And i've been fired twice in the past 4 months that cant be good....
@Gotural, again, I agree. No butt paladins, but I want to add something.
Good<--->Evil and Lawful<---> Chaotic are exactly this - axes (but not Axes of the Unyielding, luckily) for a reason. There's Stupid Good, Chaotic Stupid etc. at the opposite ends of them, but generally they describe a tendency. It's kind of redundant to speak about real, complete (or fictional, developed) people in such absolute terms. Chaotic people don't necessarily daydream about overthrowing the government. Some of them obviously do, but here the other axis comes into play. It's not just about what, but also why. Chaotic Good (tendencies) means the person doesn't agree with rules not for sheer sake of opposing them, but because they're harmful, no matter that they consolidate the society in some way. But it's not just about rules, it's about stereotypes, superstitions, prejudice and "ultimate truths". Chaotic Good people probably believe that in their perfect world everybody would use common sense and it would work. Reasonable Chaotic Good people realize that the society needs rules to work - and that it's exactly that, living according to rules and laws that make societies need them. The scale says what those people do with their beliefs - do they start an insurrection when the need arises, or do they work on developing common sense in others? Both qualify IMO.
Chaotic Neutral works similarly, probably, but I'm pretty sure I'm not one, so I won't elaborate on that.
TL;DR: CG people real world-wise consider law lesser evil and don't oppose it openly unless it's directly harmful. There's simply so many of us now it changes literally everything we know about how societies and civilizations work.
@Gotural well, technically, and canonically, yes. But no. There are simply to many people to have "chaotic" denote a complete disregard for any law, active attempt to overthrow the government, or wild anarchism. There would be very few chaotic people, and if out of 9 choices, 90% of the population is to of them, (LG&LN) then you're doing it wrong. There's no point in making a system of classifying people if functionally everybody fits only one category. Canonically, there is a huge focus on "balance" in the alignment system, at least the way BG describes it. The alignment descriptions often mention a characters view on the need for "balance of forces" and whether or not they think that's important.
Oh no. Not another debate about the relative(ly non existent) connection between Lawful and 'The Law'.
Curse you Michael Moorcock for not choosing a better, less ambiguous term!!! (not really, I think he is a great writer).
A Lawful person can and will happily violate any law that they wish that doesn't coincide with their own internal belief system. Chaotic people can and will happily abide by and even uphold any number of laws. the two are not connected or correlated in any way.
A belief in structure is not a tacit support of the current (or any) legal form of government. Most governments in my opinion, are more chaotic than they are lawful anyway. Just ask a lawyer.
And yes, any behavior pattern, regardless of for a character or IRL is supposed to be a continuum along the Axis of Order<----->Chaos and Good<---->Evil. People will act along all points in that continuum. they just 'tend' more towards one side or the other (mostly).
I think there is a great difference between alignment in real life and alignment in a video game like Baldur's Gate. I think that LG&NG are the dominant alignments in RL because there is a huge focus on values like Love, Family, Courage, Honesty, Friendship, etc, that you are being taught (by your family, your friends or Disney movies ...) when you are young. To keep or not these values as you're growing is your choice.
In real life, or maybe it's just in my country, when terrorists are taking hostages, things are getting real serious. We are talking about human life. When someone you knew die, it touches you deeply. And in real life, I assume no one of you stole anything in a supermarket.
These are just examples, but in Baldur's Gate it is very different, everyone die all the time, and Charname often steals everything he can find in every containers of the game ! You can die if you want, there is the Power Word : Reload for this situation (And nearly anyone else can be raised from the dead). The fact that there is so much power going on (Mages who can cast Time Stop and Abi Dalzim, Priest who can raise a few people at the same time) makes it more credible to think all alignments are represented.
At the end of the day, the whole alignment discussion depends very much of your own definition of the numerous alignments. I quoted Baldur's Gate because this is a Baldur's Gate forum and to put a definition with my interpretation. And if you refer to the alignments as described in the game, I definitively think LG&NG are the dominant alignments in real life.
But once again, this is purely my opinion. Everyone can be of any alignment and feel free to disagree with me.
@Gotural, I second, third, or even fourth that :] I absolutely love this alignment vs anthropology thing you did here. Most of us live in stable environments. Stability on such scale (forty million people live in my country and it's considered small!) requires developed economy and umpteen other things I really don't want to discuss here. We also don't have magic. Harmonious development which allowed our civilization to grow so enormous needs time and well, let's call it massive amounts of neutral goodness. Wars happen, awful things happen, obviously, but we generally don't consider them normal anymore, like seasons.
there is a huge focus on values like Love, Family, Courage, Honesty, Friendship, etc, that you are being taught (by your family, your friends or Disney movies ...) when you are young. To keep or not these values as you're growing is your choice.
I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment, but I think having values like these doesn't concern the L-C axis as much as the G-E axis. All Good and Neutral people, be they lawful, neutral or chaotic, will more or less succesfully (try to) observe values like the ones you mentioned.
An example: Helpfulness is a value I give weight to. At this moment I have two friends I care about but almost never see asking me to lend them considerable amounts of money for what seem to be legitimate purposes. In the past I have lent fairly large amounts of money to other people without getting anything back. I know however that those people aren't the same people as the two that are currently asking me to help them, so I have no reason to be suspicious about the latter. I wouldn't get into financial trouble if I decided to lend and then not get my money back in the end, though lending would be pretty inconvenient and not getting my money back would be disappointing. Honestly, I'm hesitant, and I think that doesn't make me Chaotic as opposed to Lawful, but rather Neutral as opposed to Good, i.e. not going out of my way to help others. In other words a Choaotic Good person is imo more likely to adhere to the value of helpfulness than a Lawful Neutral one.
Edit: I'll probably go ahead with it, which shows my CG tendencies (or even suggests I'm CG instead of CN), but my past experiences don't make this easy.
See, and then looking at @Blackraven, I can say I wouldn't lend the money. I think it's good that he will, and that doing stuff like that is what makes the world better (specifically, the trust in one another)- yet I wouldn't bring myself to part with my money for anyone but my family and maybe one other specific person. Now, part of that is that I'm not in the best financial situation (though I have time to goof off on video game messageboards, so it's certainly not *that* bad), but part of it is simply selfishness. It's an 'I earned this money through sweat and tears (pretty common at my job, heh), so why do you deserve it?'
It's not really fair to people, because face it, I have many friends who are simply unable to get jobs in this current climate (mostly due to being overqualified). Yet I wouldn't lend anyone money.
I put myself as chaotic neutral because I'm whimsical. Not going in to much detail, but I would have no problem breaking the law (and have broken some) if I don't think I'll get caught. I tend to be concerned for myself, my family, and my friends, and then sort of 'and the rest of the world goes on' indifference. I think our version of democracy is warped, the two party system is a disaster but I have no ideas on how to fix it, and I don't feel any ties with laws or rules. I break promises more then I should, though I at least can be counted on always finishing my obligations, and I say things I don't mean at times (but don't we all?). I do have a trace of extreme empathy, and tend to be very empathetic of strangers and causes and situations... yet I abandon them, usually, after putting all my effort and intention in to them for about three weeks. I am definitely, permanently chaotic.
Yet I would never harm someone, even to get ahead. I'm selfish, but I do have time for others, and the people I care about. People who cause harm to others (and animals) horrify me: reading the news usually makes me cry, in truth, because it's story after story of being hurting each other.
So... I definitely think I'm more good than evil. But I think I'm too cynical and selfish to truly be good, though I'm certainly more CG then CE.
But alignment in real life is a very difficult subject. I don't think people in the real world fit prettily in to nine categories.
Hhmmmm... It seems like the main difference between chaotic neutral and chaotic good is how people see the alignments, not themselves. I bet a lot of you would see me as chaotic neutral, not good, though I think of myself as good. (I don't know anymore!) As for the money lending, really, it depends. It depends on how much we're talking about, who, and for what. I could see myself lending money to a friend, though I don't have much experience with real sums of money(got me first job last month) so I'm not really sure.
As for @Gotural, I think you have a point. I think if most of us where put into a relatively lawless environment such as the one bg is set in, we would be mostly lawful, or we would change considerably. I think when we're talking about real life things change a bit, and the alignments are closer together. You made a very good point there, I don't imagine a chaotic good coran or Minsc staying out of jail for long around here.
A good example of Chaotic Good is buying your family chocolate eggs. Then secretly waking up near midnight, creeping downstairs, munching on said chocolate, posting on the forum, then creeping back upstairs with happy heart as they would have had no chocolate eggs at all without you...
If I was Lawful, that would be classed as stealing...
If I was neutral, I would not bother buying any chocolate eggs... If children want chocolate eggs... I'm not stopping them from getting them...
If I was evil, I would eat the chocolate eggs in front of them and give them broccoli to chew on...
If you have eaten a little bit of a chocolate egg that did not belong to you, whilst the owner was unaware, you are chaotic!
That's a very nice metaphor explaining your alignment @Anduin. I like it. Now...how to explain mine...? You know, when you are too good, people will abuse you and call you a pushover. Be too evil and you will end up in jail and without friends. So I try to walk the fine line between those two states. ergo-do the good deed in the most evil way possible.
I guess I swerve around the alignment chart, especially in the evil regions, because I am in it mostly for myself and I don't really care about people that aren't close to me. Also...I want to rule the world. (who doesn't?)
That's a very nice metaphor explaining your alignment @Anduin. I like it. Now...how to explain mine...? You know, when you are too good, people will abuse you and call you a pushover. Be too evil and you will end up in jail and without friends. So I try to walk the fine line between those two states. ergo-do the good deed in the most evil way possible.
I guess I swerve around the alignment chart, especially in the evil regions, because I am in it mostly for myself and I don't really care about people that aren't close to me. Also...I want to rule the world. (who doesn't?)
My ideal is to be lawful good, and in youth I definitely qualified. As I've aged, though, I've grown a lot more cynical and self-interested, too much so to meet a D&D definition of "good". I still care very much about people, want everybody to be happy, and aspire to be good, but I'm not willing in real life to do much about things or to work very hard.
I'm fairly unwaveringly lawful not in the sense that I follow the law (although I do most of the time), but in the sense that I strongly value order, routine, accountability, honesty, structure, and regimentation.
One of the most popular online tests pegged me as "true neutral", probably because I admitted that I mostly just keep to myself in real life, see to my own interests, and will often break the rules if I can get away with it and judge that it is to my benefit to do so.
Really, I think most people waver and shift along the two alignment axes over their lives and by context. Most of us are very complex, multi-layered, and inconsistent beings.
@FinneousPJ If it is true that both of us are True Neutral, we are probably of different variants. I want nothing to do with this world as far as possible, not to mention rule it or reap some benefit out of it
The trouble with applying alignment to reality is how fluid it would necessarily be. Ascribing a single alignment presupposes a base state of self, detached from the body and from temporal experience. Is alignment the sum of actions to date? The sum of the most recent or best remembered actions? The sum of actions taken while experiencing similar brain chemistry? The best predictor of future actions? The actions one would take if one had complete understanding of a situation? The actions that differentiate one person from another in otherwise identical situations (which can only exist hypothetically)? Does intent matter as much or more than outcome?
It seems at first glance like an oversimplification of morality, but honestly, I think it's more complicated than the real thing.
I am always ready, willing when it suits me, and will make myself able if and when I feel like it. I am undeniably selfish. I am a textbook narcissist. I willfully manipulate others for my own personal gain. I abuse adverbs almost as much as I do adjectives. I overuse certain words. I bloviate. I am a slave to my impulses and I've made peace with that. I think I'm smarter than I actually am. I have deluded myself into thinking I have a proper writer's voice. I either commit to something 100% or disengage entirely. I will only put myself in someone else's shoes if there is a paycheck involved. Too often, I fall out of bed and wake up on the floor, because I can't even sleep peacefully. I am lazy up until the moment I'm on someone else's clock. I am not proud to call myself Chaotic Neutral - I begrudgingly accept that I am.
I was looking through Wikipedia to see if the had any interesting info on alignments (they do) and I found this: "In the Complete Scoundrel sourcebook for D&D 3.5, Batman, Dick Tracy and Indiana Jones are cited as examples of Lawful Good characters.[10]"
@meagloth Well Batman I think could pass for LG, very honorable and undeniably good. Not sure about Indy Jones, haven't seen those flicks for a while. I remember one scene where Indy is facing an Arab swordsman, and instead of trying to fight him, he just shoots him down. That wasn't the most paladenesque solution I suppose.
@meagloth Well Batman I think could pass for LG, very honorable and undeniably good. Not sure about Indy Jones, haven't seen those flicks for a while. I remember one scene where Indy is facing an Arab swordsman, and instead of trying to fight him, he just shoots him down. That wasn't the most paladenesque solution I suppose.
@blackraven 1. Boy, that's one of the most famous scenes in movie-watchingness. 2. Have you seen the (latest)batman movies? Daaarrrk. Veeeeerrrryy dark.
Comments
Edit: @SethDavis & @the_spyder how does your lawful evilness manifest itself?
Many people here, and over the world, are voting more for Chaos than for Law. I know many RL friends who consider themselves Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral while I think they aren't. I think the most common alignment in developed countries is Neutral Good or Lawful Good.
Let me quote Baldur's Gate itself.
Lawful Good : "Characters of this alignment believe that an orderly, strong society with a well-organized government can work to make life better for the majority of the people"
Is this not what you all think ? Don't you believe in this ? Watchout, I'm not saying the actual goverment of any country is perfect, I'm saying that a "well organized government can work to make life better for the majority of people"
"To ensure the quality of life, laws must be created and obeyed. When people respect the laws and try to help one another, society as a whole prospers."
Don't you all agree with this ? Why do you think laws are still obeyed in this world ? If the majority of the people were Chaotic or Neutral as this poll describes, there would be no society.
Because Chaotic doesn't mean that you do what you want, this is a common misconception.
Doing what you want is being Neutral. When you are Good, you act Good. When you're Evil, you act Evil.
And when you are Chaotic, you don't act Lawful and Chaotic at the same time, you act Chaotic, you try to destroy the society and the laws because you disagree with them to the point you can't bear them. If you want to do nothing about the Law/Chaos axis or if you want to act Lawful and Chaotic at the same time, you are Neutral.
Robin Hood is a good example of a Chaotic Good character, he is an outlaw and obeys no rule.
I am pretty sure some of you (I'm not speaking of everyone, I can't, because I don't know your life), who consider themselves Chaotic are not fighting the society, aren't trying to protest against their government and are accepting the laws despite not liking them. I'm pretty sure you aren't Chaotic, but Neutral instead.
I have a real life friend who IS Chaotic. He is a hacker and attacks government sites non-stop while hiding himself. To my mind, that is Chaotic.
Now allow me to quote Baldur's Gate once more.
Chaotic Neutral : "Chaotic Neutral characters believe that there is no order to anything, including their own actions."
"Chaotic Neutral characters are extremely difficult to deal with."
Are you really difficult to deal with ?
"Such characters have been known to cheerfully and for no apparent purpose gamble away everything they have on the roll of a single die."
Do you really do this ?! Are you playing your house and your family on online poker sites ?
"They are almost totally unreliable. In fact, the only reliable thing about them is that they cannot be relied upon !"
Woah that's incredible ! If a friend of yours give you a Rendez-Vous, are you going to come late, in advance or not to come at all just to not obey the rule ? Did you refuse to go to school because it was following what the society ordered ? Maybe I am a bit extrapolating here, but you undertand my point.
As a conclusion, I would to remind that this is only my opinion, and while I hope I gave some clues to some people, I know that others won't agree with me and that's totally fine.
TL;DR : Chaos is too mainstream, some of you (but not everyone of course) who consider themselves Chaotic or Neutral are in fact Neutral or Lawful. The whole "F*ck the police" picture is exagerated.
Thanks for reading and if I offended someone, be assured that I didn't intent to. I apologize for my poor english !
But I've said it before and I'll say it again: I consider myself chaotic because I consider democracy a joke and don't feel myself in any way represented by any government. I can't see how checking a box on a ballot once every four years gives a small (heavily lobbied) elite the right to pour out a cartload of laws and regulations over me. It's a form of tyranny imo: I never signed for any of it.
The reason most people adhere to the status quo, I think, is that fortunately most people simply want to live their life in peace and and harmony with their environment. So long as that's possible, people won't generally rebel. Personally, I like this humble approach, and I think that the world would be a better place if all people lived that way, lived to do good in their own circle of people rather than to want to impose one's ideas upon millions of "citizens".
I also don't have a strong personal code, other than to try to be kind and truthful, and rather deal with problems on a case-by-case basis. So yes, I definitely consider myself chaotic.
Also become a little more egocentric with my age due to life experience though.
Good<--->Evil and Lawful<---> Chaotic are exactly this - axes (but not Axes of the Unyielding, luckily) for a reason. There's Stupid Good, Chaotic Stupid etc. at the opposite ends of them, but generally they describe a tendency. It's kind of redundant to speak about real, complete (or fictional, developed) people in such absolute terms. Chaotic people don't necessarily daydream about overthrowing the government. Some of them obviously do, but here the other axis comes into play.
It's not just about what, but also why. Chaotic Good (tendencies) means the person doesn't agree with rules not for sheer sake of opposing them, but because they're harmful, no matter that they consolidate the society in some way. But it's not just about rules, it's about stereotypes, superstitions, prejudice and "ultimate truths". Chaotic Good people probably believe that in their perfect world everybody would use common sense and it would work. Reasonable Chaotic Good people realize that the society needs rules to work - and that it's exactly that, living according to rules and laws that make societies need them. The scale says what those people do with their beliefs - do they start an insurrection when the need arises, or do they work on developing common sense in others? Both qualify IMO.
Chaotic Neutral works similarly, probably, but I'm pretty sure I'm not one, so I won't elaborate on that.
TL;DR: CG people real world-wise consider law lesser evil and don't oppose it openly unless it's directly harmful. There's simply so many of us now it changes literally everything we know about how societies and civilizations work.
Curse you Michael Moorcock for not choosing a better, less ambiguous term!!! (not really, I think he is a great writer).
A Lawful person can and will happily violate any law that they wish that doesn't coincide with their own internal belief system. Chaotic people can and will happily abide by and even uphold any number of laws. the two are not connected or correlated in any way.
A belief in structure is not a tacit support of the current (or any) legal form of government. Most governments in my opinion, are more chaotic than they are lawful anyway. Just ask a lawyer.
And yes, any behavior pattern, regardless of for a character or IRL is supposed to be a continuum along the Axis of Order<----->Chaos and Good<---->Evil. People will act along all points in that continuum. they just 'tend' more towards one side or the other (mostly).
In real life, or maybe it's just in my country, when terrorists are taking hostages, things are getting real serious. We are talking about human life. When someone you knew die, it touches you deeply. And in real life, I assume no one of you stole anything in a supermarket.
These are just examples, but in Baldur's Gate it is very different, everyone die all the time, and Charname often steals everything he can find in every containers of the game ! You can die if you want, there is the Power Word : Reload for this situation (And nearly anyone else can be raised from the dead). The fact that there is so much power going on (Mages who can cast Time Stop and Abi Dalzim, Priest who can raise a few people at the same time) makes it more credible to think all alignments are represented.
At the end of the day, the whole alignment discussion depends very much of your own definition of the numerous alignments. I quoted Baldur's Gate because this is a Baldur's Gate forum and to put a definition with my interpretation. And if you refer to the alignments as described in the game, I definitively think LG&NG are the dominant alignments in real life.
But once again, this is purely my opinion. Everyone can be of any alignment and feel free to disagree with me.
Most of us live in stable environments. Stability on such scale (forty million people live in my country and it's considered small!) requires developed economy and umpteen other things I really don't want to discuss here. We also don't have magic. Harmonious development which allowed our civilization to grow so enormous needs time and well, let's call it massive amounts of neutral goodness. Wars happen, awful things happen, obviously, but we generally don't consider them normal anymore, like seasons.
An example:
Helpfulness is a value I give weight to. At this moment I have two friends I care about but almost never see asking me to lend them considerable amounts of money for what seem to be legitimate purposes. In the past I have lent fairly large amounts of money to other people without getting anything back. I know however that those people aren't the same people as the two that are currently asking me to help them, so I have no reason to be suspicious about the latter. I wouldn't get into financial trouble if I decided to lend and then not get my money back in the end, though lending would be pretty inconvenient and not getting my money back would be disappointing. Honestly, I'm hesitant, and I think that doesn't make me Chaotic as opposed to Lawful, but rather Neutral as opposed to Good, i.e. not going out of my way to help others.
In other words a Choaotic Good person is imo more likely to adhere to the value of helpfulness than a Lawful Neutral one.
Edit: I'll probably go ahead with it, which shows my CG tendencies (or even suggests I'm CG instead of CN), but my past experiences don't make this easy.
It's not really fair to people, because face it, I have many friends who are simply unable to get jobs in this current climate (mostly due to being overqualified). Yet I wouldn't lend anyone money.
I put myself as chaotic neutral because I'm whimsical. Not going in to much detail, but I would have no problem breaking the law (and have broken some) if I don't think I'll get caught. I tend to be concerned for myself, my family, and my friends, and then sort of 'and the rest of the world goes on' indifference. I think our version of democracy is warped, the two party system is a disaster but I have no ideas on how to fix it, and I don't feel any ties with laws or rules. I break promises more then I should, though I at least can be counted on always finishing my obligations, and I say things I don't mean at times (but don't we all?). I do have a trace of extreme empathy, and tend to be very empathetic of strangers and causes and situations... yet I abandon them, usually, after putting all my effort and intention in to them for about three weeks. I am definitely, permanently chaotic.
Yet I would never harm someone, even to get ahead. I'm selfish, but I do have time for others, and the people I care about. People who cause harm to others (and animals) horrify me: reading the news usually makes me cry, in truth, because it's story after story of being hurting each other.
So... I definitely think I'm more good than evil. But I think I'm too cynical and selfish to truly be good, though I'm certainly more CG then CE.
But alignment in real life is a very difficult subject. I don't think people in the real world fit prettily in to nine categories.
As for @Gotural, I think you have a point. I think if most of us where put into a relatively lawless environment such as the one bg is set in, we would be mostly lawful, or we would change considerably. I think when we're talking about real life things change a bit, and the alignments are closer together. You made a very good point there, I don't imagine a chaotic good coran or Minsc staying out of jail for long around here.
A good example of Chaotic Good is buying your family chocolate eggs. Then secretly waking up near midnight, creeping downstairs, munching on said chocolate, posting on the forum, then creeping back upstairs with happy heart as they would have had no chocolate eggs at all without you...
If I was Lawful, that would be classed as stealing...
If I was neutral, I would not bother buying any chocolate eggs... If children want chocolate eggs... I'm not stopping them from getting them...
If I was evil, I would eat the chocolate eggs in front of them and give them broccoli to chew on...
If you have eaten a little bit of a chocolate egg that did not belong to you, whilst the owner was unaware, you are chaotic!
...
Now FESS UP!
I like it.
Now...how to explain mine...?
You know, when you are too good, people will abuse you and call you a pushover. Be too evil and you will end up in jail and without friends. So I try to walk the fine line between those two states.
ergo-do the good deed in the most evil way possible.
I guess I swerve around the alignment chart, especially in the evil regions, because I am in it mostly for myself and I don't really care about people that aren't close to me.
Also...I want to rule the world. (who doesn't?)
I'm fairly unwaveringly lawful not in the sense that I follow the law (although I do most of the time), but in the sense that I strongly value order, routine, accountability, honesty, structure, and regimentation.
One of the most popular online tests pegged me as "true neutral", probably because I admitted that I mostly just keep to myself in real life, see to my own interests, and will often break the rules if I can get away with it and judge that it is to my benefit to do so.
Really, I think most people waver and shift along the two alignment axes over their lives and by context. Most of us are very complex, multi-layered, and inconsistent beings.
It seems at first glance like an oversimplification of morality, but honestly, I think it's more complicated than the real thing.
I am not proud to call myself Chaotic Neutral - I begrudgingly accept that I am.
"In the Complete Scoundrel sourcebook for D&D 3.5, Batman, Dick Tracy and Indiana Jones are cited as examples of Lawful Good characters.[10]"
Wtf? Batman and Indiana jones are CG, right?
I remember one scene where Indy is facing an Arab swordsman, and instead of trying to fight him, he just shoots him down. That wasn't the most paladenesque solution I suppose.
1. Boy, that's one of the most famous scenes in movie-watchingness.
2. Have you seen the (latest)batman movies? Daaarrrk. Veeeeerrrryy dark.