Celebrim said:
The American constitutional document is an attempt to enshrine values that are in D&D terms enherently chaotic and born in large part out of a generation of radicalism and rebellion. Of course, the framer's themselves would not have for the most part used the term 'enshrine' as I have, as the never intended or expected the document to be enduring and socially protected in quite the context 'enshrine' implies. So what you have in America is something of an apparant contridiction, in that for example 'conservative' economic values in America are what in most parts of the world are called 'liberal'. In America we have an essentially Libertarian system which is codified in an increasingly baroque system of laws. For example, you won't find hardly anywhere that has quite the same values of 'Freedom of Speach' as the American system, nor will you find hardly anywhere that has quite the same commitment to individual gun rights as America. Likewise, the United States isn't a single unified government, but a patchwork quilt of governments and laws with degrees of sovereignty going all the way down to the local level. It is almost unique in this. A person from France would probably be shocked to learn that local elected officials - Sheriffs - with a constuiency of a few thousands in some cases can in practice and theory excercise soveriegn jurisdiction rights within thier county. France, for those that don't know, has a single national police system.
This doesn't answer the question - is constitutionalism a chaotic or a lawful value? My own view is that this question has no answer - that constitutionalism (one of the most important of modern political ideals) cannot be adequately described within the D&D framework.
Celebrim said:
Lawful minded individuals always favor government by the few, by the able, or by the elect. Rule by the mob is always feared by the lawful minded.
And, given that it is an express feature of the US system of government to avoid rule by the mob (hence, for example, the presidential electoral college) does it therefore follow that the US system of government is lawful?
Celebrim said:
I think you get a good contrast in how a chaotic system views the law when you notice that the Constitution is subject to ammendment, and not just ammendment by anyone or someone, but by everyone. Contrast that with the account of the government of Persia recorded in the Book of Daniel, where it reports that the law 'of the Medes and Persians' was by inflexible custom not even overturnable by the sovereign ruler who excercised by todays standards virtually unlimited autocratic authority. I think it is pretty easy to see which system holds the law and which individuality on the higher platform. We have no notions of irrevocable law. We largely take for granted that all customs are overturnable. We even have a word 'fashion' which refers to the customs that change with the seasons according to whim.
In which case every post-enlightenment system of government is chaotic, as they all have methods whereby the law can be lawfully ammended.
Celebrim said:
I would strongly agree that the leadership of the Nazi party were highly 'chaotic' individuals for the most part who governed not through laws but rather through personal relationships and decrees. However, this core 'chaotic evil' leadership harnessed the naturally highly organized culture of the German people which on the whole was lawful in inclination to set up a very efficient police state. So again, you have a tension in that you can't easily classify the whole system, but bits and peices of it are quite clear.
Again, I point out that this claim depends upon assuming (without argument, as far as I can see) that Lon Fuller was wrong and Hart right.
Furthermore, the National Socialist "legal system" had a wide range of methods of ammending its "laws" (indeed, this is part of what Fuller has in mind when he denies that it was not a system of law at all). Does this make it Chaotic rather than Lawful?
Celebrim said:
The traditional D&D alignment rules make no argument that good and law are independent notions. In fact, if anything traditionally, D&D has had as its implied assumption - perhaps in error and perhaps not - that 'lawful good' is more good than other sorts of good. D&D has traditionally reserved its most saintly and virtuous descriptions for the followers of 'lawful good'. So I don't think you can argue that at all.
Fuller's point is not that Lawfulness is the best Good, as D&D sometimes seems to have it, but rather that Law of necessity tends towards Good, which D&D denies.
Celebrim said:
Of course, this originally vibrant and Libertarian system is increasingly ossifying, but that doesn't change its original character - minimalist, individualist, and populist.
And committed to the Rule of Law. Is that a lawful or a chaotic commitment?
Celebrim said:
on the whole, the country was founded by a bunch of radical firebrands.
But if the correct conclusion, then, is that the Rule of Law is a Chaotic value, I rest my case that the D&D alignment system has been refuted as an adequate framework for moral description - in this case, the refutation is by reductio ad absurdum.
Celebrim said:
Protestantism broke to a certain extent from traditional Christianity by denying the inherent moral value of poverty, reading for example the beautitudes as 'blessed are the poor in spirit' rather than 'blessed are the poor', but it did not in doing so claim that charity to strangers was rendered less good than miserliness. Rather it moved prosperity up into the virtuous category without displacing charity as a value.
Again, this is a controversial claim about economic and social history. I'm not persuaded it is true. There is at least a strand in Calvinist thought that holds that "charity" is wrong as it encourages the indolence of the poor. This thought also takes on Social Darwinist aspects in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Whatever the better view, I contend that it is a weakness of traditional D&D alignment that,
if those at the table have different view on such matters then the game cannot proceed smoothly.
Celebrim said:
It's hard to make a claim that isn't controversial, but I'm prepared to defend them.
But agreement on controversial matters of history, politics, sociology and morality should not be a necessary condition of smooth gameplay. It is disruptive and adds nothing.
Celebrim said:
I think primarily, the traditional D&D alignment system makes no argument about which moral philosophy is the 'right' one.
There is at least a mild implication that Good is good and Evil evil. More seriously, however, it presupposes that certain matters are true which are in fact controversial (eg that law does not tend towards good) and is unable adequately to encompass certain fundamental political ideals (like the Rule of Law and constitutionalism).
Celebrim said:
It is merely suggesting that for the purposes of fantasy, these are useful philosophical groupings
And I happen to think that the 4e system, from what I understand of it, is more useful for the purposes of heroic fantasy, as (as far as I can tell) it does not purport to offer a total framework for all moral thought. It hives off a few categories of outlook that the genre itself defines, and leaves everyone else in the "unaligned" basket.
Celebrim said:
there is nothing within the D&D system which suggests that the adherents of the various philosophies with in the game universe admit the truth of say 'Nuetral Good' as the highest good if they themselves believe something different. Perhaps it could be that real goodness as you define it is found by embracing the tenents of law and evil, and not the one conventionally labeled 'good' at all.
This notion of Good as purely inverted-commas good runs into its own problems in the semantics of moral argument and moral disagreement, but I'm not sure that this thread is the place for it.
Celebrim said:
It is obviously true to me that the particulars of the US culture and government are extremely particular. In fact, I dare say that I believe them to be more particular than you do unless you are a particularly 'extremist' sort of person yourself.
I wouldn't know. I'm an academic lawyer and philosopher who teaches (among other things) social theory. D&D's alignment system is of no use, as far as I can see, for understanding any actual system of moral or political thought that humans have created and acted upon, nor for understanding any actual moral or political conflict or transition that humans have experienced. It can't even tell me whether one of the greatest theorists of US political ideals, John Rawls, is Lawful (because he believes in order and an important role for government) or Chaotic (because he believes in individual rights).
Celebrim said:
But it is not at all obviously true to me that any argument I'm making depends on these particulars, and I've repeatedly made reference to other systems and cultures separated from modern America in both time and space.
I don't think I asserted that it does. I do think your arguments rest on controversial premises. And I do think that a game should not depend, for its playability, upon these beliefs being shared by the participants.
Celebrim said:
Even to the extent that I agree with you, I don't see how that follows from what you've said. More ancient systems are actually typically easier to classify than more recent ones by the virtue of the fact that they are generally much simplier, much less internally diverse, much smaller, and so forth.
I think that the endless disputes over the 1st DDG classification of pre-modern religious sytems, or the endless debates about Aztecs, are a sufficient refutation of this. Also, I don't know if you've read Inga Clendinnen's well-regarded book on the Aztecs, or Mary Midgley's writings on cultural relativism and morality, or Bernard Williams on the "relativism of distance", but the lesson I draw from these sorts of writings is that understanding and classifying cuturally and historically diverse forms of life is actually quite difficult.
So instead of a Paladin falling and becoming a Blackguard ... he swaps to an evil diety and perhaps has to swap a couple powers [since it seems that dieties have some powers specific to them for the divine characters to get access to.]
