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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ppaladin123" data-source="post: 4701743" data-attributes="member: 60923">From the SRD:Lawful Neutral, "Judge"      Italics are mine. The alignment descriptions are ambiguous about this internal/external code dimension so I don't think it is fair for you to claim that others have some "misunderstanding," at the heart of their arguments.The problem is that "law" is meaningless without analogous norms to guarantee enforcement. Norm enforcement occurs as a result of norm internalization (through primary and secondary socialization processes) on the part of those that sanction deviance. If compliance with a law on the part of an individual becomes rooted over time in an associated internalized norm, is that individual by your definition now "chaotic," because his behavior no longer depends on the continued existence of that law as an external written code? Even if that external code is the origin of his internal code? Would he be lawful if he continued to follow the law while it existed but suddenly become "chaotic" if he continued to follow the obligations/restrictions after the law was repealed?Are people only "lawful," if they follow currently existing laws out of fear of sanction(that is, they have not internalized associated norms but do not wish to provoke the ire of those who have)? Are they only lawful if they automatically accept all governments as legitimate?Say I am a citizen of country X and I admire the legal code of that country. I have in fact internalized those laws. Now I move to country Y and find that the legal code is quite different, I dislike it greatly and think that it is in fact immoral. I continue to follow the legal code of country X to the letter even when it contradicts the legal code of country Y. Am I chaotic now?St. Augustine (and others) argued that there was a natural law that ordered the universe and that could be discovered through reason. That law was objective and ought to be followed. Human law was a pale imitation of natural law and when it contradicted it, it was illegitimate and ought not to be followed. St. Augustine laid this all out in City of God (and compared the City of God to the City of Man). St. Augustine thought that he (like other reasonable men) had knowledge about the natural law and lived his (later) life according to it. Is St. Augustine chaotic? Is he only chaotic if there actually is no objective natural law that trumps the law of man (i.e. he was wrong)? What if there is but he was mistaken about a few of its details?I don't think there is an easy answer to these questions. I certainly don't think we can locate all individuals on some order/chaos scale (or love/fear for your Donnie Darko fans) without losing a great deal of nuance.</blockquote>

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