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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4702008" data-attributes="member: 4937">That's possible, and one of the problems I have with 'chaos' and 'law' is there are couple of extreme cases where it is impossible to determine 'law' or 'chaos' by external evaluation but only by knowing the character's internal mental state.  Particularly for law and chaos, we have to know what motivates the character as well as how they act because there is a pretty large subjective component to the law/chaos access.  'The servant of an extinct of forgotten authority' is one of the two cases that is very hard to answer.  In this case, the individual would appear to have all the characteristics normally associated with 'chaotic'.  They would tend to be a loner, tend to be following a personal code distinct to them, tend to reject existing authorities, and so forth.  However, in fact, if we could see their motivations, we'd realize that they weren't motivated by their consciousness and personal choice, but were one of the last isolated members of a now faded organization and were motivated by the loyalty to the memory of that organization and the code which governed it.With Rorshcach, it's possible that the loyalty could be to 'the America that was' and he rejects modern authority as having lost his way because his deepest loyalty is to 'the American Way' rather than American institutions itself.  I don't think that is the strongest possibility, because a number of things argue against that, but it is certainly possible.Another complexity is that an chaotic philosophy can be instituted into a rigid law which can then become the external authority to which other people then subjegate themselves.  We can easily imagine for example, Objectivism becoming the dominate morality of a land and the government being organized according to minimalist principles that celebrated personal liberty.  We can imagine then the writings of Ayn Rand and others being used almost as bibles.  In such a situation we'd ironicly have at least some Objectivists who were 'lawful Objectivists', who might for example have occasional pangs that perhaps Socialism isn't such a bad idea in the face of human suffering, but who distrusted their own feelings and reasoning in favor of adhering loyally to the admired external authority or who rigidly and fervently adhered to Objectivism precisely because it was the lawful external authority.  In such a situation it would be very hard to tell the chaotics from the lawfuls, without internal evidence.Then like most people you are in the ambigious middle.  In particular, someone with a well thought out 'neutral' position on the law/chaos axis would probably say that using the combination you just described would be the only way to choose the middle path that led to correctly maintaining your way on the good/evil axis.  My general assumption is that 80%+ of people have ambigious complicated morals.  Only a few 'extremists' are really going to stand out as having a definite ideology.  Rorschach is definately an 'extremist' and since he isn't an extremist about 'maintaining the balance', I think we have to throw out neutrality as a likely candidate.The lawful would argue thusly, "Suppose everyone was allowed to judge for themselves whether they were adhering to that code?  If everyone was there own judge, then each individual could interpret the code differently, and no one could judge whether they had done so rightly or wrongly.  In such a situation, there could be no order.  In such a situation, no one could say that they have rightful authority, nor could they ever issue a decree with the expectation that it would be obeyed.  Such a situation would be indistinguishable from anarchy where everyone made their own laws, and held themselves to be the judge."I love how you see the heart of the problem clearly.  In some cases, we can only answer the question if we know who was right.  If Luther was wrong and the church was right, then clearly he is a rebel and clearly his loyalty lies to his own conscious.  But if Luther was right and the church was wrong, then its quite possible that it's Luther's loyalty which is true and pure, and the church is the rebel with a corrupt loyalty to its own self-interest.My position on Luther is too complicated to go into here in much detail, but I would say that the crux for me are two things.  First, that Luther was unwilling to become a martyr, and secondly that judged by his fruit, Luther followers had a spirit of contention, division, and strife we would not expect of Lawful minded people.  Finally, it's quite possible that both the Luther and the Church were wrong at some levels.  (Lest anyone think I'm being too judgmental here, I should say I'm a Protestant myself.  Please don't jump me in defense of your personal beliefs, to which I'm probably quite sympathetic, in this forum.)I think he certainly saw himself in this way, but we aren't always the best judges of ourself.  I think personally, he's was a Chaotic follower of his own consciousness who'd been set off by some very hypocritical (and 'not good') actions on the part of those with lawful authority.  There are of course other possibilities, but the evidence we would need to make a definitive statement is invisible too us.</blockquote>

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