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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 430826" data-attributes="member: 4937">RW: Your interpretation sounds a little more liberal than mine.I myself IRL would object to the statement,  "that if he's stealing money, to take it from someone who can afford to give it up" and I consider myself more NG than LG.   Who are you to judge who can afford to give it up?  Who are you to decide that you are entitled to the labors of someone else, no matter how good you deem the cause?  Since there are alternatives to theft, it strikes me that the statement "I grudgingly put up with breaking a few laws if it meant we'd be able to stop the bad guys faster.", is very much not putting enough faith in the code which prevents you from stealing things.  Clearly, if you believe you can abolish certain aspects of the code when they become inconveinent, you don't have a lot of faith in the validity of your own beliefs.   If you steal, how are you sure that 'they' are the bad guys?   What makes you so different?I think the behavior you describe is much closer to CG.I myself IRL could not take part in it, percieving that your desire for 'Justice' had led you to do unjust things.   The only person that I would agree to steal from would be the bad guy himself.   Otherwise, we look for alternatives.   Stealing it and then putting it back when you are done with it is less problematic, but you have still missed the mark.  I'm not even sure a true LG could steal from the bad guy.  Theft is theft, he would reason.  The code forbids theft and provides no exceptions.   Therefore, no theft.And, IRL, I reason similarly for lying.   I IRL believe that there is never a good reason to lie, and so I don't.   I behave (or strive to behave) exactly as the Paladin I've described.   The code I follow claims that all lies are 'evil', and that there is no exception when evil is good, therefore one should never lie.   Therefore I try very hard not to, and when I do, even if it was only a 'white lie' I feel like I have failed.   It is my sincere belief that every lie does more harm than good.   I don't lie to my wife ("Honey, does this dress make me look fat?"), because I reason, if I did she will surely come to believe that I _am_ lying when I say that the dress doesn't make her look fat.   And then, when the dress _does not_ make her look fat she will have a much harder time believing me (and much less faith in me overall).  The few times that I must crush her in some small way, ("I don't think that's the most flattering cut for you, etc.") are more than made up for by the times when I sincerely flatter here and she _KNOWS_ I mean it because she also _KNOWS_ I don't believe that there is such a thing as a 'white lie' and won't lie to protect myself from unpleasantness (which is usually what is going on when people claim that they are protecting someone elses feelings).A besides, lying is usually a form of cowardice and I don't believe in practicing cowardice.Breaking the law is ok for the greater good, but only if the law itself is not a codification of 'good'.   Laws against theft and deciet are codifications of 'good' and are absolute.   Traffic laws are not.   They are codifications of societies standards for interaction among individuals and are relative.</blockquote>

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