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Which type of True Neutral are you?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9312390" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>I don't think that's true using the definition of LN in any extant edition of D&D. I feel like that's a huge and slightly funny overreach on your part, because that is in fact <em>precisely</em> how a lot of LN characters and societies and gods and so on are presented as seeing the natural world, or the world outside of "civilization". The routine understanding of LN, whether you agree with it or not, is precisely what you're saying it isn't. Which means you're really just asserting an implausible niche position - not at all uncommon in D&D discussions involving alignment of course. Routine even.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't think so - it's reflective of the debate in 4th and 5th century Greece, so I think you're just a bit ignorant on the particular subject here. There was intense debate over how society and law interacted with human behaviour, and what it enabled and didn't enable. Humans aren't intrinsically individualistic animals either, which the Greeks realized and which informed the discussion. That's completely unarguable given human evolution and history, indeed it's easier (though I think also an overreach) to actually argue humans are eusocial, as the biologist Edward O. Wilson did. But there's a difference between formalized rights and informal ones. Which again, was part of what the Greeks were discussing.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Perhaps because generally such societies didn't really exist in the past. The rights of individuals tended to strictly delimited by hierarchical position, and usually based on specific needs for that particular society, and thus quite flexible and changeable. The Code of Hammurabi is fascinating here. You can see it hands out responsibilities, rights, requirements and so on in a way that is largely pragmatic and focused on keeping Babylon and environs running and minimizing conflicts, dishonesty, and so on. That's not to say that, in practice, people didn't often de facto have rights beyond those written down in society - customary behaviours and traditions and de facto give people significant unwritten rights. But those aren't "organised and regulated to support and protect the individual and individuality", in fact, I struggle to think of society that did that for the bulk of its members before the 20th century.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Indeed to keep an anarchist society going you'd need people to be pretty dedicated, individually, to following specific rules and guidelines in a fairly consistent manner, and to make sure they passed them on to future generations (and particularly to getting together - entirely by choice - to stamp on anyone who started trying to get into the warlord/conqueror business). D&D's conceptions of Law and Chaos, being simplistic derivations from the half-considered concepts fantasy authors used primarily to make "cool antagonists", aren't really a good match for complex concepts like that.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm not an anarchist, but my brother in Erathis, do you think the anarchists don't know that? Do you think this isn't literally the first thing they considered? Do you realize how deeply sophomoric it is for you to point this out, as if it were wisdom, not an obvious truism? This is like saying that if you choose be a sea-fisherman, you should be aware that storms might cause you problems! I don't think many people have suggested anarchism would be easy, apart from maybe utopian ruralists.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9312390, member: 18"] I don't think that's true using the definition of LN in any extant edition of D&D. I feel like that's a huge and slightly funny overreach on your part, because that is in fact [I]precisely[/I] how a lot of LN characters and societies and gods and so on are presented as seeing the natural world, or the world outside of "civilization". The routine understanding of LN, whether you agree with it or not, is precisely what you're saying it isn't. Which means you're really just asserting an implausible niche position - not at all uncommon in D&D discussions involving alignment of course. Routine even. I don't think so - it's reflective of the debate in 4th and 5th century Greece, so I think you're just a bit ignorant on the particular subject here. There was intense debate over how society and law interacted with human behaviour, and what it enabled and didn't enable. Humans aren't intrinsically individualistic animals either, which the Greeks realized and which informed the discussion. That's completely unarguable given human evolution and history, indeed it's easier (though I think also an overreach) to actually argue humans are eusocial, as the biologist Edward O. Wilson did. But there's a difference between formalized rights and informal ones. Which again, was part of what the Greeks were discussing. Perhaps because generally such societies didn't really exist in the past. The rights of individuals tended to strictly delimited by hierarchical position, and usually based on specific needs for that particular society, and thus quite flexible and changeable. The Code of Hammurabi is fascinating here. You can see it hands out responsibilities, rights, requirements and so on in a way that is largely pragmatic and focused on keeping Babylon and environs running and minimizing conflicts, dishonesty, and so on. That's not to say that, in practice, people didn't often de facto have rights beyond those written down in society - customary behaviours and traditions and de facto give people significant unwritten rights. But those aren't "organised and regulated to support and protect the individual and individuality", in fact, I struggle to think of society that did that for the bulk of its members before the 20th century. Indeed to keep an anarchist society going you'd need people to be pretty dedicated, individually, to following specific rules and guidelines in a fairly consistent manner, and to make sure they passed them on to future generations (and particularly to getting together - entirely by choice - to stamp on anyone who started trying to get into the warlord/conqueror business). D&D's conceptions of Law and Chaos, being simplistic derivations from the half-considered concepts fantasy authors used primarily to make "cool antagonists", aren't really a good match for complex concepts like that. I'm not an anarchist, but my brother in Erathis, do you think the anarchists don't know that? Do you think this isn't literally the first thing they considered? Do you realize how deeply sophomoric it is for you to point this out, as if it were wisdom, not an obvious truism? This is like saying that if you choose be a sea-fisherman, you should be aware that storms might cause you problems! I don't think many people have suggested anarchism would be easy, apart from maybe utopian ruralists. [/QUOTE]
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