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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6738033" data-attributes="member: 4937">We are at an impasse.And there are tons of different ways I could show where I disagree with your conception, but the most obvious is you've apparently defined "lawful" as "follows the law" and "chaos" as doesn't follows the law.   Which leads to your apparent conclusion that because the character is a lawyer, he's lawful.  Presumably all thieves are chaotic.  The problems that viewpoint causes and the contradictions that arise from it are well documented and endlessly discussed, so there is no need to repeat them. Likewise, I don't agree that sacrificing the self for others is "what's good".  I agree that it can be good or even that it is good, but I don't agree that it defines what good actually is.  I think taking your viewpoint seriously would make predictions about good that wouldn't conform to what we'd see as good, and that one example of this is that my dystopia is absolutely filled with people sacrificing themselves for others and yet it has no good in it.  Nor, to point a finer point on it, do we credit the kamikaze pilot with understanding goodness but merely understanding honor and sacrifice.  If sacrifice defined what is good, we'd see the kamikaze pilot as an ideal to emulate. If good requires giving and evil requires taking, does that mean the giver of charity is good and the receiver evil?  I think that your statement is nonsense.  It's not the giving itself at that is good, nor the taking itself that is evil.You can assert nonsense as true all you like, but it doesn't make it less nonsense.  You've proposed a thin wall that is thick, entirely red but also entirely white, made of only bricks but also made of wood.  If I ask how that is true, "Because I said it is.", is not a satisfying response.  And if you say, "Well but he's a lawyer, he follows the law, of course that makes him lawful", then we are back to the first point.  None of your barristers motivations for following the law are the respect for the law.  Presumably a person with real respect for the law would obey it even when inconvenient and even when it wasn't in his self-interest.  Your entirely self-interested lawyer would presumably happily break the law to preserve himself because it is convenient, just as he find at present obeying the law congenial and convenient.</blockquote>

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