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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5705377" data-attributes="member: 4937">Spoken like a true chaotic. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The lawful response, which for the record I don't necessarily endorse, runs something like the following.This 'free will' you speak of doesn't even really exist anyway.  It's something that you imagine in your ignorance because you don't really understand the reasons for your actions.   In fact, the governing force of the universe isn't your personal choice, but your unalterable destiny.   Either it is the case that the universe is deterministic and your choices are just the inevitable result of the bumping gears in the machinery of your mind over which you have no control, or else there are higher powers which are actively manipulating everything in the universe - including you - to their own ends.  You have no real will in the matter to begin with, so it can't really be taken away.And even to the extent that you might have some powers of choice, they are such flimsy and weak that they are hardly worth speaking of.  You can at best change your destiny only when it is delicately balanced on the head of a pin anyway.  You violition and self-control are so limited, that some more powerful being has to arrange to do most of the lifting for you just to get your life into a point of balance where you can decide which way to tilt it.  In most cases, you haven't the power to alter your destiny any more than you have the power to lift mountains or direct the course of rivers.  From the perspective of law, the debate doesn't revolve around free will at all.  The debate revolves around the right of the one dominating the other to do so.   To go back to Jedi's as the arbiters and defenders of law and order, "Jedi Mind Tricks" aren't evil precisely because - as the rightful arbiters and defenders of law - they have every right to correct and control the actions of others.  Provided that they use the powers only for selfless ends - that is to say, they have no passions and attachments that would cause them to consider their own interests - they can't 'wrongly' use the power (and stray to the chaotic dark side).   However, of course if some other group were to have this power, then that would be wrong because it attempts to usurp the right ordering of the universe from its rightful gaurdians.  It's a violation not of free will, but of natural order that they are concerned about.  It's the violation of the natural order that is always considered wrong, and not the violation of a person's choice.  Consider for example the relatively trivial uses that the Jedi make use of the power for, and the relatively lack of interest that the Jedi show in the existance of slavery (or abolishing it).  It's not  choice but order that Law is interested in.This is true to a least some extent even if we are speaking of Lawful Good.So, I do agree that on the two axis spectrum, this is much more a conflict of law vs. chaos than a conflict of good vs. evil, though of course the Chaotic Good person might not see it that way if they consider chaos to be an inherent and inseparable aspect of goodness.  (And of course, the LE might see the power to compel obedience to an inherent and essential aspect of a rightly ordered society.)Your personal take, that questions can't be answered in general but only in the specific, is a very chaotic take on it.  The Lawful would answer that there does in fact exist an answer that applies universally, though they  would concede that for some questions the answer might be more complicated than any simple axiom thereby rendering simple questions like, "Is dominate evil?" unanswerable by either "yes" or "no".   To the lawful, this is a result of not asking the right question, where the right question might be more along the lines of, "Under what circumstances will ones duty compel one to compel someone else to obey?" or, "What procedures must be first undertaken before it becomes lawful to force obedience through compulsion?"</blockquote>

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