Societies: Lawful and Chaotic; What Are They?

[Wolfen Priest]

A great example of a Lawful religion in the real world is the Catholic church. Stories I have heard about Catholic schooling indicate that the Church believes that obedience to the church power structure as well as getting everyone to conform to their way of doing things is important in and of itself. A Chaotic religion would be Hinduism. Every family can choose their own god or guru. Again, this is based on the definitions that the D&D designers seem to be using.

Growing up in a Catholic parish, and going to Catholic school for 10.5 years, I can attest to this truth. But I think what makes it more lawful than anything else is the fact that there is this huge Singular Hierarchy, the likes of which no other religion has. In fact, one of my biggest problems with the Catholic church is that so many people in it cry out that if you disagree with anything the hierarchy proclaims(or sometimes anything that they themselves proclaim), you are simply not Catholic; basically a modern form of excommunication.

As to the argument of law vs. chaos being roughly equivalent to group vs. individual, I really haven't seen any strong argument here to the contrary, and it seems the most sound (and least confusing!) one presented in this thread.

Adam Smith's theories (not that I'm intimately familiar with them) might embrace individualism (i.e. chaos) as a means to a communal (i.e. lawful) end, but I don't see why that changes anything in regards to the approximation that {law = group & chaos = individual}.

For all intents and purposes, Adam Smith might have been basically selfish and uncaring of others, but not to the extent of being cruel or heartless (thus making him neutral along the G-E axis); it would seem, irregardless of whether the previous is true, that he could well be neutral along the L-C axis, which is what I would assume to be the case baed on the presented evidence.

Whether or not he, (A.) in his theorizing, was simply justifying an individualistic/selfish (for lack of a better term) outlook by making the claim that such actions benefit society as a whole, OR (B.) in his quest to benefit society as much as possible, he just stumbled upon or deduced this theory that selfishness (or individuality) does indeed benefit society, it seems that he ultimately resides in the middle of said axis, a.k.a. neutral.

In other words, I don't see how, even assuming his theory is "truth," it changes the idea that law = group & chaos = individual. Hope that makes sense.

 

[herald]

Here you're saying that Lawfuls happen to be in a group that works towards a common goal they share. Chaotics belong to groups as need be. These are essentially the same thing. Really, Lawfuls (as used in D&D) do what they have to for the group, regardless of whether that group helps their individual goals or not.

I think that I'm not being as clear as I need to be.

A lawful tends to join a group and stay with that group. Once they have met thier goals. The find another goal. A chaotic person is likely to turn to something else once that needed goal is met.


IMHO societies need a balance of both to succeed. Lawful to bid citizens together to live in an area with some safety and Chaos to push the citizenry to grow, and be able to react with change.

If a society is too Lawful, it becomes to predictable, it stagnates and rots from with it. A society too chaotic is unlikely to put anykind of form of defense to protect itself.

 

[Chrisling]

As to the argument of law vs. chaos being roughly equivalent to group vs. individual, I really haven't seen any strong argument here to the contrary, and it seems the most sound (and least confusing!) one presented in this thread.

Well, if I was going to take a stab at invalidating another idea rather than just supporting my own, I'd say that the dichotomy between group and individual is illusionary.

I mean, take the US for instance. Some people have said, "It's chaotic!" Others have said, "No, it's lawful!"

I'll tell you what I think it is, ideally if not in practice: a group of laws, the following of which, allow individuals to be free. So <I>by following the laws of society, you have individual freedom</i>. Is this law? Is this chaos? Is it using law to have chaos?! What?! Now we're just into contradictions.

But, sure, you can say we're neutral. So let's bring up another interesting case: the Netherlands.

Ah, the Netherlands. Easily, citizens of the Netherlands have more personal freedom than anyone, anywhere else in the world. I mean, in Amsterdam, when you get arrested the cops can't search you without a search warrant! But it's also a strongly collectivist society -- lots and lots of social programs, a welfare state, etc. So, in the Netherlands, you have people <i>working together for the good of everyone in such a way as to allow enormous personal freedoms</i>.

So, how do you fit "working as a group for the freedom of the individual" into a simple "group vs. society" argument? The truth seems to be that a person can belong to a group and look out for themselves <i>at the same time</i>.

Which confuses me, so I do without it.

Adam Smith's theories (not that I'm intimately familiar with them) might embrace individualism (i.e. chaos) as a means to a communal (i.e. lawful) end, but I don't see why that changes anything in regards to the approximation that {law = group & chaos = individual}.

For all intents and purposes, Adam Smith might have been basically selfish and uncaring of others, but not to the extent of being cruel or heartless (thus making him neutral along the G-E axis); it would seem, irregardless of whether the previous is true, that he could well be neutral along the L-C axis, which is what I would assume to be the case baed on the presented evidence.

Whether or not he, (A.) in his theorizing, was simply justifying an individualistic/selfish (for lack of a better term) outlook by making the claim that such actions benefit society as a whole, OR (B.) in his quest to benefit society as much as possible, he just stumbled upon or deduced this theory that selfishness (or individuality) does indeed benefit society, it seems that he ultimately resides in the middle of said axis, a.k.a. neutral.

In other words, I don't see how, even assuming his theory is "truth," it changes the idea that law = group & chaos = individual. Hope that makes sense.

Actually, I'd put Adam Smith as Neutral Good. He was trying to help people escape the onerous burdens of the mercantile and early Industrial Revolution era economy through elimination of laws that prevented individual initiative but at the same time he was wildly in favor of Britian's Poor Laws for moral reasons. A pretty good guy.

Modern interpretation of Smith -- which ignores most of what he actually wrote, by the way -- has sought to cast him in the role of a guy favoring rugged individualism. Which, sure, maybe he was -- but he also believed that society should help up people who have fallen.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Well, if I was going to take a stab at invalidating another idea rather than just supporting my own, I'd say that the dichotomy between group and individual is illusionary.

I mean, take the US for instance. Some people have said, "It's chaotic!" Others have said, "No, it's lawful!"

I'll tell you what I think it is, ideally if not in practice: a group of laws, the following of which, allow individuals to be free. So <I>by following the laws of society, you have individual freedom</i>. Is this law? Is this chaos? Is it using law to have chaos?! What?! Now we're just into contradictions.

But, sure, you can say we're neutral. So let's bring up another interesting case: the Netherlands.

Ah, the Netherlands. Easily, citizens of the Netherlands have more personal freedom than anyone, anywhere else in the world. I mean, in Amsterdam, when you get arrested the cops can't search you without a search warrant! But it's also a strongly collectivist society -- lots and lots of social programs, a welfare state, etc. So, in the Netherlands, you have people <i>working together for the good of everyone in such a way as to allow enormous personal freedoms</i>.

So, how do you fit "working as a group for the freedom of the individual" into a simple "group vs. society" argument? The truth seems to be that a person can belong to a group and look out for themselves <i>at the same time</i>.

Which confuses me, so I do without it.

Well, for one thing, DON'T attach having laws to being Lawful. Having lots and lots of laws (as the U.S. does) does not by default mean it's an orderly system (quite the contrary, actually), or that it brings order to the people involved. But then, the system I've been defending doesn't attach Order to Lawful, either. You're still mixing several incompatible systems together.

Laws do NOT equal Order which does NOT equal being pro-society.

Let's ignore all the order & chaos baggage, and use the terms Societal & Individualistic, and I'll address your issues about the U.S... (NOTE: some people might be offended by the below, as there are implicit criticisms of U.S. federal policy since around the year 1800 or so. If you're offended, I apologize, but maintain that the U.S. was founded ON THE CENTRAL IDEA that the government CAN, and SHOULD, be questioned. If you don't believe me, ask Jefferson, Hancock, Franklin, and Washington. They'll tell you )

Historically, the U.S. was very Individualistic. The framers of the Constitution based it around providing maximal freedom to the states, because they were well aware that the land was too big to be a true democracy. So they designed the U.S. as a Republic of little democracies (of course, the states were inconsistent about following through there, but that's another argument). At any rate, federal government was in charge of very few things. Some trade regulation, common defense, and making sure none of the individual states got out of line. In fact, the Constitution exists to STRICTLY LIMIT centralized federal power. The language includes that all powers not strictly delineated within the Constitution should default to LOCAL government.

Just because we've completely screwed that up since then doesn't invalidate their intent.

But in what ways did we screw it up? Well, for one thing, we expanded the powers of the Federal government repeatedly. The fact that this is a natural consequence of war is really something for which the framers of the Constitution should have accounted. I think we can let them off the hook on the globalization effects though. Jefferson was a visionary, but not THAT visionary.

Secondly, we repeatedly add and change things that shouldn't be in Federal government purview at all, while refusing to change things that should be changed with the times (in this way, our government is a lot like most organized religions).

They also built in a simple mechanism for change. For some obscure reason, we prefer to ignore that one and pile different, independent mechanisms on top of it. Oh, wait. It's not so obscure. It's so lawyers and politicians can cover their tracks.

Furthermore, the U.S. is increasingly into limiting individual freedoms under the entirely false pretense of increasing safety. I don't know how this strikes all of you, but personally, I'm with Thomas Jefferson when he said, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it."

Currently, the government is embarked on a crusade to remove individual freedoms in favor of what a collection of reality-impaired old men and nitwits think is best for the society. Unfortunately, society, as a consequence of being unaware of its own history, is quite fine with this.

That's in Societal territory. And, IMO, not very nice.

As for welfare states...

Welfare does NOT benefit the society as a whole. It benefits individuals within society, to the detriment of the rest of them. Welfare recipients are not required to contribute to society in order to receive benefits. That's anti-society, and therefore Individualistic. If welfare recipients were required to make a societal contribution (even a small one), it would be Societal - society taking care of its own. But it currently functions as society caring for indivduals who are not actually part of that society. So it's protection of individuals enforced upon a society. Individualistic.

Having lots of laws on paper doesn't enter into it. A defense attorney can knowingly get a guilty murderer or rapist off and turn him loose to wreak more havoc on society, and be perfectly within the law. In fact, the law requires him to do his best to do so, even though it's clearly to the detriment of society. That's the law, but it's not Lawful. Ask a paladin if you don't believe me.

 

[Chrisling]

Canis,

Whoa. I'm not touching that last post with a ten-foot pole. For me to discuss it would take us way, way, way afield from the law and chaos debate into a discussion about the intent of the Founding Fathers, the expansion of federalism with a healthy topping of socialism.

I erred bringing up the United States. I should have kept it impersonal.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

LOL

Alright. I should have known that was a bit much.

Ignoring the real world politics (which, looking back, I realize is probably a tall order), do you see how I'm framing Societal vs. Individualistic?

 

[Chrisling]

LOL

Alright. I should have known that was a bit much.

Ignoring the real world politics (which, looking back, I realize is probably a tall order), do you see how I'm framing Societal vs. Individualistic?

Honestly? I'm still think the division is aritificial.

I'll not mention any names, keep it nice and abstract but . . . I find it easy to imagine a <I>cultural value</i>, be it a law, tradition or whatever else, that would incline people to behavior I feel inconsistent with lawful behavior.

For instance, I can easily imagine a culture in which <i>freedom of action</i> was the key cultural value. It's a real value. People in this culture have it, know they have it, admire it, etc. They have a real tradition of individual freedom. Is the society lawful, because they strictly adhere to this cultural value they possess, or are they chaotic, because the value possessed is one of individual freedom? In short, individual freedom is <i>demanded</i> by the society.

BTW, I think this sort of demand in a society is reasonably common. This isn't, in my mind, an abstract case.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

For instance, I can easily imagine a culture in which <i>freedom of action</i> was the key cultural value. It's a real value. People in this culture have it, know they have it, admire it, etc. They have a real tradition of individual freedom. Is the society lawful, because they strictly adhere to this cultural value they possess, or are they chaotic, because the value possessed is one of individual freedom? In short, individual freedom is <i>demanded</i> by the society.

We're defining society differently. Occupying the same area does not a society make. A group of people who actively contribute to each other's well being is a society. Anyone who chooses not to contribute is not part of the society.

A collection of people who are completely self-sufficient individually aren't a society.

 

[Chrisling]

We're defining society differently. Occupying the same area does not a society make. A group of people who actively contribute to each other's well being is a society. Anyone who chooses not to contribute is not part of the society.

A collection of people who are completely self-sufficient individually aren't a society.

A group of people who contribute to each other's well being is certainly a legitimate definition of society. However, society is also a group of people who share common langauge, culture and history as in, "The persons, collectively considered, who live in any region or at any period; any community of individuals who are united together by a common bond of nearness or intercourse."

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

There are about 27 different definitions of society, some of them mutually exclusive.

There are even dictionaries that only acknowledge this one:

The rich, privileged, and fashionable social class
The socially dominant members of a community

Which is completely exclusionary of both of our definitions.

Here's the one I chose to base my Society vs. Individualism idea:

Connection; participation; partnership

All of my examples follow logically from that, combined with a my potentially skewed world-view (which heavily weights participation ).

Besides, you're insisting on an absolute. A society of people who believed strongly in individual freedom, but recognized the advantages afforded them by putting those freedoms aside at times for the common good would, as a group, be neither Lawful nor Chaotic. That's why there's a Neutral, after all.