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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7974809" data-attributes="member: 18">So is thievery/trespass legal? Or not sufficiently illegal to make them not lawful?I mean, that's not a totally unreasonable viewpoint. Some societies take different kinds of theft vastly more or less seriously than others. Maybe to hobbits, theft of food which doesn't make others go hungry, nor destroy livelihoods, is merely naughtiness rather than illegality.Yet Farmer Maggot and his lads (also hobbits) seem to pretty clearly think thieving and trespassing is wrong, though not so wrong as to rat out Frodo et al to scary outsiders. And this is a specific incident I'm referring to. Frodo and apparently all hobbits are kind of nuts for mushrooms (... Tolkien wrote it not me!) and they discuss that they've stolen them before. I guess it's equivalent to "scrumping", low-end poaching and the like.The hobbits are based on an idealization of English pastoral culture, but have interesting similarities to tribal cultures, and I feel like they would agree with the notion that, when outsiders are involved "snitches get stiches".Also re: hospitality, I don't think there are many cultures which don't take that fairly seriously, and the historical ones I can think of who take it least seriously are clearly Lawful cultures in all other senses, so I think that's a very weak connection to make.</blockquote>