What is the nature of alignment?
meagloth
Member Posts: 3,806
Just whimsically wondering what most people thought about this. Some people think that lawful means that you follow external laws set by the community, some people (@jackjack?) think that it's a internal code, a strick self discipline. As for good/evil, some people think that good is immediate, the ends never justify the means. Some people think it's long-term, that an out of context "evil" act could be good in a larger arc. I don't want to make the poll options to busy, so I'll explain the options here:
1. Law is external, lawful means you follow the laws set by the community. Good is immediate, the ends never justify the means. Chaos means a disregard for the laws of society, but you can still posses a strick moral code.
2. Law is external, good is delayed. Sometimes the ends justify the means; you could steal or harm for the greater good.
3. Law is internal, to be lawful is to follow a strict moral code, and have much self discipline. good is immediate.
4. Law is internal, good is delayed.
*****clarification: though I didn't really say so, I'm thinking about this mostly in the context of paladins. I think I explain better in a below comment*****
1. Law is external, lawful means you follow the laws set by the community. Good is immediate, the ends never justify the means. Chaos means a disregard for the laws of society, but you can still posses a strick moral code.
2. Law is external, good is delayed. Sometimes the ends justify the means; you could steal or harm for the greater good.
3. Law is internal, to be lawful is to follow a strict moral code, and have much self discipline. good is immediate.
4. Law is internal, good is delayed.
*****clarification: though I didn't really say so, I'm thinking about this mostly in the context of paladins. I think I explain better in a below comment*****
- What is the nature of alignment?36 votes
- Law is external, good is immediate25.00%
- Law is external, good is delayed13.89%
- Law is internal, good is immediate27.78%
- Law is internal, good is delayed33.33%
Post edited by meagloth on
3
Comments
As to your second point - is good immediate or delayed? - I think the answers you¡re going to get won't say much about how to define good, but will rather show whether people are lawful, chaotic or neutral. For a lawful (good) person, good is immediate (there's no elbowroom) whereas for a neutral or chaotic good person, good can be delayed (ends justifying means).
As for good being immediate or delayed, I think it depends on how much good you are. If we're using a points system for alignments, where you can be slightly good, good, ultra good for example, then I think good is likely to be immediate for truly good people.
As far as Law/chaos, I have long maintained that a Lawful alignment has nothing to do what so ever with any judicial system. The two may coincide, but one is not predicated upon the other.
Your second question - whether goodness is immediate or delayed, as you put it - pretty much epitomizes the age old deontology (Kantian ethics) vs utilitarianism debate. Without wanting to engage in excessive philosophical reflection, I myself lean towards the former. As I see it, deontology does not have to connotate blind subservience to a predefined creed (as goes the popular misconception) but can accomodate a rather flexible and situational moral code, depending on how you define your obligations. Also, I would make the bold claim that utilitarianism - aka 'noble ends justify questionable means' - has very little to do with goodness and can, in its more extreme forms, lead to acts of supreme callousness and evil. After all, the only course of action we can ever truly choose (and therefore judge) is the one we take in the present. You don't need to be a Buddhist monk to understand that past and future are all but mental abstractions.
Honestly I think this poll is mostly concerning paladins. Can a paladin commit a small evil act for the greater good, or does he fall for even little things, and can he break the law of the land, or does he need to follow all the laws to the letter to keep his "lawful" status?
You roleplay your Chaotic Good Paladin the way you want to, and I'll roleplay my Lawful Good Paladin the way I do.
Edit: naturally, a topic like this promotes oversimplification - in reality, facets of good and evil are much harder to pinpoint or define
And good, good is what you consider the best for whomever you are considering for that to be good.
Edit: crap, voted the wrong option I disagree with
Being any alignment is intended to be a continuum upon which the subject can and usually does hit upon all points. They just gravitate towards one end of the spectrum (or the middle) more than the other. A Lawful person (being defined here as someone with a strong internal moral code) will, under circumstances, violate that code "Where they feel it is necessary." The degree to which that happens varies with the individual.
No, Lawful alignments are no more 'Extreme' than 'Chaotic' in there adherence to their ideology.
I really gotta leave this thread before it gets ugly.
There are other variations and deviations. and don't even get started on Paladins....
At the end of the day, I blame some combination of Michael Moorcock for being a truly visionary writer, and Gary Gygax and Company for adopting the Law/chaos axis into some very loose net structure for a free form game, without fully explaining/exploring the ramifications.
In my personal opinion (and that is all any of these opinions are, opinions), Alignment was intended to be a guideline, an arrow in the dark, to say if someone was basically a good person, or a rotten one and the degree to which they were OCD or free spirits (those being the fundamental two axis involved).
But people want to turn it into monopoly or checkers, or a set of flight instructions where everything is rigid and defined to their exacting specifications (and I fall victim of this as well). I don't believe that was the intent.
But I'll try, the Law-Chaos scale is how the character views Order-Individuality. Lawful means either following them or working within them. Also it means a preference for a society with rules. Chaotic means individuality, whatever the person's goals are (Good/Neutral/Evil) those are best achieved with less laws governing them.
Neutral means picking whichever is the best path for the situation. And even that is iffy because someone who is sticking to laws might be thinking in the long term sticking the the laws is the best option.
So Law is external.
Good and Evil isn't about long or short term goals. It's about perspective. If a person thinks doing bad things for the greater good is still good then it's good. If a person thinks doing bad things for the greater good is bad then it's evil.
This is what's actually internal. If the reasons for a person doing something is good then they're good. If it's evil then they're evil.
I don't think the system is "horrible" so much as not very well defined. With so many potential (and contradictory) definitions of any point on the axis, it is open to interpretation in ways that were not intended. And with it being a "Rule" people try to "Rule Lawyer" it and try to make it a hard and fast 'Fixed' location instead of the continuum that the DMG describes.
I also absolutely disagree with your definition of Lawful. While it is true that a lawful person will in all probability gravitate more towards structure, that structure in no way means or has to have any relation to Society or the legal or judicial system of the land. It MIGHT do, but it doesn't HAVE To.
A Lawful evil thief is not anachronistic. Stealing and breaking the law is completely within character for a Lawful individual. Being a terrorist and undermining society as a whole is completely in character, if their internal code of conduct dictates a higher order. Being part of the church and disagreeing with (even taking action against) the State to effect change is completely within the purview of a lawful character.
And it is in no way external. It is 100% an internal belief system or code of conduct. It "CAN" be modeled after some external framework (say government or the church or order) but even then it is internal. And it doesn't HAVE to have anything to do what so ever with government or church.
In short, Lawful does not in any way equal or correlate to Legal. It's just a poor choice of the word "Lawful".
All in my personal view.
I think the problem with Lawfulness being defined strictly by the law of the land (and the letter of the law) is that there is tremendous social and cultural diversity in the Forgotten Realms, and therefore what is lawful in one place may not be in another. That sort of forces consistency for lawful behavior into the realm of principled and morally consistent behavior.
As for Good defined in terms of immediate impact versus a longer term outcome, that is a personal judgment that I think is best left to ropleplaying the character, and should be handled case by case.
Interesting take on the two axes in the topic starter. I just don't see them as linear and discreet, but rather as part of a more fluid and organic whole--i.e., aspects of the character's more complex entire personality.
Neutral Good believes that laws should be followed if they think they're good, but can be be broken if not. That is also a moral code.
If anything every alignment across the spectrum operates off an internal moral code.
It's horrible because it's not well defined. With classes, spells, items running off alignment, it should have been well defined given that the game decides to compartmentalize everything into 9 neat categories.
I can see this "flavor" of Lawful Good for Paladins being the view that there are moral absolutes that must be adhered to. Thus evil actions cannot be taken for "the greater good" and the ends do not justify the means. Think Immanuel Kant or the ideas of "natural rights". Killing is fundamentally wrong, so killing one man to save two is still wrong in the most basic sense. If you read the comic Watchmen you will see a pretty elegant and striking example of this sort of position.
Similarly there is another "flavor" of Chaotic Good that is entirely Utilitarian. It is the view that the "greatest good for the greatest number" should be the end goal, and whether or not an action moves toward an outcome in this direction determines its morality.
Just take the judicial system out of your thinking when talking about alignment. It's got no place in that conversation, certainly not as a driver for either Lawful or Chaotic.
And to really mess with you, a chaotic would have an internal moral code as well. that isn't the defining concept. But the types of things that the internal moral code was concerned about, and how the person might act to achieve those goals, THAT is what defines the difference.
At the end of the day, given any situation you care to mention, being lawful or chaotic won't dictate definitively the outcome of any individual action. It might dictate the reasons WHY an action is taken, but not the outcome.
Think of a Lawful neutral coven of Druids protesting against the encroachment of development into a wooded area. The internal code of the druids may very well be a structured, logical, group minded and holistic approach to stopping Society's march of progress.
Think of a Chaotic good band of elves, who roam about the forest stopping bandits from attacking merchants and other travelers and generally upholding the law of the land. Neither of these situations is anachronistic or in violation of their individual alignments. Because 'The law' is not alignment based.
What people are saying about Lawful and Chaotic is that a person who is Lawful has an internal code of adhering to a system of laws to govern a society while a person who is Chaotic has an internal code of favoring personal freedom.
And Lawful doesn't mean adhering to the biggest set of laws out there. It's adhering to a society's set of laws and sticking to those rigidly. And just because those elves just happen to uphold the law doesn't mean they think those laws should be there. All you have is two groups that happen to be working towards a similar goal.
A Lawful soldier can just as easily stick to his home country's own laws while in another country. And in a situation where the laws of the two countries clash, that soldier would seem Chaotic, but he's still Lawful. So it's no different from the Druids. The laws they adher to are their order's own laws.
It's all about your individual code.
All you've given so far is an internal moral code. Which applies to all the alignments.
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Outer_Planes_(3.5e_Environment)
"Each Outer Plane is usually the physical manifestation of a particular moral and ethical alignment and the entities that dwell there often embody the traits related to that alignment."