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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 6886735" data-attributes="member: 6777454">You can start by trying to live in reality rather than adhering to this cult of Gygax? The fact that you would describe people as not adhering to these 9 artificial boxes as being a failure of their Wisdom or Intelligence demonstrates a real failure to understand how humans work."Lawful Evil" is not someone that someone sets out to intentionally be. Their beliefs are never going to be perfectly "lawful evil" Not in reality or anything written remotely close to it. Maybe that is the way you live as you have been inducted into your little Gygaxian cult, but it is not something people are going to adhere to if they are created and act independently of any awareness of Gygax's little boxes.One is classified as Lawful Evil because though they believe in following the following authority or the general guidelines the collective has agreed upon strictly, within that framework they choose to do a good deal more selfish things than altruistic things. They are willing to enact suffering within the world in the name of adherence to the overall order of society or so long as it benefits them... to a point.But there is going to be a point. A point where the amount of suffering they are causing is greater enough than the benefit they gain from it or continued support of the order and one's personal benefit come enough into conflict that one ultimately has to prioritize one over the other. This is not a failure of "intelligence" or "wisdom" because never from the start were their ethical code defined by "Lawful Evil" as they are not adherents to the "one true Gygaxian faith" like yourself. They were simply labeled "lawful evil" because that was the one of the 9 boxes that seemed to best contain their morality.Similarly, one might be altruistic even to the point of giving some of their self and they would be classified as "good". But  virtually no character that has ever been classified as "good" in all of D&D has been the poor little matchgirl who will walk naked through the snow because everyone else seemed to have need of her belongings. Fundamentally we see that these "good" characters generally do act to enrich and empower themselves on a pretty consistent basis. This is not a failure of "intelligence" or "wisdom" because they never set themselves out to be perfectly "Neutral Good". That was the label the artificial system put upon them. They understand their morality-- it is you who has the failure of intelligence and wisdom due to your induction into the Gygaxian faith who fails to comprehend it.But more than that, a lot of people have a list of priorities that they care about. Whatever is good for one's family, whatever is good for one's nation, whatever path seems the surest path to getting the things they desire often without stepping on so many toes to make lots of enemies.... stuff like that.Look at most Super Hero characters. They fight criminals because criminals are doing harm to other people. But they themselves work outside the law. But they aren't "Chaotic" typically, they do not think the world would be better without any laws rather they feel those that are tasked with enforcing the law don't have the strength to do it. Then again, they violate people's rights all the time and so you can't really say they are Lawful either. So are all Super Heroes "Neutral Good"? If so, why is it Superman and Batman end up clashing or Captain America and Ironman do? Because none of them work strictly within the law, all of them ultimately intend to benefit others and stop those who would do harm...This Gygaxian concept that these 9 brackets are somehow universal absolutes and that any failure to be 100% clearly defined by a single access and not to be purely that one thing to an extreme is a failure of intelligence or wisdom of one to not be able to stick to one's moral code is absolute crap. Those boxes were just weak sauce attempts to define people's morality and only work in cases where you have presupposed those boxes exist and have them act according to one. With any other fictional character, you go through a gamut of stories and there will be no universal consensus as to which box they fit into.</blockquote>

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