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Chaotic Good Is The Most Popular Alignment!
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7783030" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Law/Chaos has always been a little less clear than Good/Evil to the average reader, and while I think entropy has some connection at some philosophical level, at the practical ethical level your interpretation is pretty non-traditional. Additionally, after reading through your list a few times, I feel no closer to understanding what you mean or why they contrast.</p><p></p><p>Without going into a long write up, one traditional axiomatic contrast I've heard is, "The needs of the many outweigh the few, or the one." versus "The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many." Or, in somewhat the same vein, "To understand something, you have to see the big picture." versus "There is no big picture: only a lot of little pictures." </p><p></p><p>And if you can tell intuitively which end of the spectrum is which, without me labeling them for you, then I think the contrasts do a pretty good job.</p><p></p><p>On a very practical level, the way that I judge whether a character in a story is lawful or chaotic is when making a big decision, where do they put their trust? The Chaotic always reserves for themselves the right of appeal. The consider themselves their own highest court, and feel that in so far as decision concerns themselves, they have every right to make a final determination. They believe that they have or ought to have an absolute right to follow the dictates of their own consciousness. This self-centeredness does not necessarily make them selfish - consider the self-centeredness of an axiom like, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.", but it does mean that they believe in the end that they are the highest arbitrator of what is right and wrong, and certainly what is right and wrong for themselves. (We could go further into breaking down how within this framework, CG, CN, and CE differed.)</p><p></p><p>By contrast, the nature of being Lawful is to believe that you are always and always ought to be subject to some external review. You are not your own highest court, and your own judgment ought to be subject to the judgment of a wiser higher power. Your highest fealty is not to yourself, and if your own consciousness is prompting you to dispute that higher (or highest) authority you are the one in the wrong. It is ultimately not for you to determine for yourself on your own authority what is right or wrong or how you ought to behave.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7783030, member: 4937"] Law/Chaos has always been a little less clear than Good/Evil to the average reader, and while I think entropy has some connection at some philosophical level, at the practical ethical level your interpretation is pretty non-traditional. Additionally, after reading through your list a few times, I feel no closer to understanding what you mean or why they contrast. Without going into a long write up, one traditional axiomatic contrast I've heard is, "The needs of the many outweigh the few, or the one." versus "The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many." Or, in somewhat the same vein, "To understand something, you have to see the big picture." versus "There is no big picture: only a lot of little pictures." And if you can tell intuitively which end of the spectrum is which, without me labeling them for you, then I think the contrasts do a pretty good job. On a very practical level, the way that I judge whether a character in a story is lawful or chaotic is when making a big decision, where do they put their trust? The Chaotic always reserves for themselves the right of appeal. The consider themselves their own highest court, and feel that in so far as decision concerns themselves, they have every right to make a final determination. They believe that they have or ought to have an absolute right to follow the dictates of their own consciousness. This self-centeredness does not necessarily make them selfish - consider the self-centeredness of an axiom like, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.", but it does mean that they believe in the end that they are the highest arbitrator of what is right and wrong, and certainly what is right and wrong for themselves. (We could go further into breaking down how within this framework, CG, CN, and CE differed.) By contrast, the nature of being Lawful is to believe that you are always and always ought to be subject to some external review. You are not your own highest court, and your own judgment ought to be subject to the judgment of a wiser higher power. Your highest fealty is not to yourself, and if your own consciousness is prompting you to dispute that higher (or highest) authority you are the one in the wrong. It is ultimately not for you to determine for yourself on your own authority what is right or wrong or how you ought to behave. [/QUOTE]
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