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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6738298" data-attributes="member: 4937">Good.  Because I had based on that statement thought we'd defined "lawful" in a way that is congruent.  Now, though I'm thinking that, congruent as it is, we've still got our own flavor. I feel like we are having a conversation rather like Alice and Humpty Dumpty.I don't necessarily see a conflict either, but we'll get to that later.  For now, for me, the question is, "Which is to be master?" - emphasis addedI don't see the conflict here.That your barrister was evil is something I never challenged.But I didn't say that I required the barrister to be perfectly lawful and undivided in his desires and fealties either.  All I want to know is whether he defines himself by the social construct, or if he defines the social construct by himself (or something betwixt the two, and in between these extremes.  The problem I'm having with your construction, "defines self based on social constructs", is that it seems to me rather vague.  I'm inclined to think that a CE person can both belong to a social construct and use it for his own benefit.  The question is, in a moral crisis, which rules?  What comes first?Not so much, or to the extent that what you say about the "overwhelming dedication" is true, I am not making that any special attribute of lawfulness but of alignment itself.  Your criticism that this description sounds like zealotry, is a criticism made from the middle (a neutral perspective).  From the perspective of the Neutral, all of the other 8 alignments seem like extremists in their beliefs.  My assumption is that you must be a standard deviation or two outside the normal, before you are strongly enough aligned to be considered of a non-neutral alignment.  To the average person, every single aligned person would appear to be something of a zealot, an idealist, and a bit of a weirdo that was just taking things too far.  But this viewpoint is I think being exaggerated because I'm wanting to speak of purer forms rather than something that is say 80% lawful and 20% chaotic, lest there be confusion regarding what is fundamental to an alignment and what is actually a complication of character.You refuse to discuss good and evil any further, and I'm somewhat at a loss of what you mean by "modern, Western morality".  The modern West is marked by great pluralism and cultural conflict, so that I don't know which morality you mean specifically.   While there are certain older principles that tend to be universal, there are a great many principles on which there is absolutely no agreement.  I'm not even entirely sure what you mean by "modern".  Do you mean now?  Do you mean since the counter-culture?  Do you mean post-Hegelian?  Do you mean since the Enlightenment?  Do you mean post-Renaissance?   All would be acceptable definitions of "modern" in context.  When I wrote my Essay on evil, one of the criticisms I received was that it was too narrowly dependent on Western conceptions of mortality.  I certainly didn't intend any other thing.  Yet I note that you rejected the definition outright as a thing worthy of mockery.  So while I've generally been working on the assumption that for most examples of good and evil, we'd be able to accept the example without quibbling (again, I never found a reason to question whether your barrister was evil), I'm beginning to wonder if I've also misjudged how close we are on those concepts as well.  You want me to ask questions about what you really mean, but you are also refusing to answer my questions.  And I'd rather prefer you took my restatement of what I think you are saying as, "This is what I think you are saying.  Is that right?", and just say when I get your position wrong, "No.  That's not at all what I meant."   So, toward that end, are you insisting that "Evil is selfishness" is the core of this "western, Modern morality" you are speaking of?I'm certainly never doing that.  And I'm not upset, but you here and elsewhere in your response seem to be doing the very things that you are taking such vehement umbrage over.  Certainly none of that was phrased in the form of a question.I prefer the term mental calisthenics. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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