Hello all! I just read a fascinating bit of philosophy on Law and Chaos by Stephen R. Donaldson as found in "The Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge." Thought I'd share because I think it's a good way to consider some angles for incorporating law and chaos into your RP...
INTRO:
For convenience, history is often viewed as a conflict between the instinct for order and the impulse toward chaos. Both are necessary: both are manifestations of the need to survive. Without order, nothing exists: without chaos, nothing grows. And yet the struggle between them sheds more blood than any other war.
ORDER & LAW:
The instinct for order is an expression of humankind's devout desire for safety (which permits nurture), for stability (which permits education), for predictability (which permits one thing to be built on another) - for equations of cause and effect simple enough to be relied upon. Indeed, without resistance to change, growth itself would be impossible: resistance to change creates safe, stable, predictable environments in which change can accumulate productively.
The instinct for order is therefore aggressive. It actively opposes any alteration of circumstance, any variation of perspective, any hostility of environment or intention. It fights to create and defend the conditions it seeks.
CHAOS:
The impulse toward chaos is a manifestation of humankind's inbred knowledge that the best way to survive any danger is to run away from it. This instinct focuses on the resources of individual imagination and cunning, rather than on the potentialities of concerted action. Its most common overt expression involves an insistence upon self-determination (freedom from restriction), individual liberty (freedom from requirement), and non-conformity (freedom from cause and effect). However, such insistence is primarily a rationalization of the desire to flee - to survive by escape.
Therefore the impulse toward chaos is also aggressive. The very act of escape breaks down systems of order: it contradicts safety, avoids stability, defies cause and effect. Like the instinct for order, it fights to create and defend the conditions it seeks.
INTERACTION BETWEEN LAW & CHAOS:
Nevertheless, stability and predictability themselves would be impossible without chaos. Chaos exerts the pressure which requires order to shape itself accurately. Without accuracy, order would self-destruct as soon as it came into being.
For those reasons, the struggle between order and chaos is eternal, necessary - and extremely expensive. By nature, human beings are are at their most violent and belligerent in self-defense. The cost of their survival would be prohibitive in any less fecund universe.
My biggest problem with incorporating the DnD alignment system into my RP is the continual suppression of my gag reflex. The dialectic presented by the opposites...good and evil...order and chaos... is not some all encompassing world view that takes all points of view into account. It is merely one point of view and it is one that I do not share. The Manichean dualism that accords good and evil equal status is a very old world view that does not reflect my own beliefs in the slightest. Unfortunately this places me at a disadvantage in playing a game whose fundamental categories are quite foreign to me. I cannot, for example, play an alignment that diverges too far from my own because it places me in thoroughly unfamiliar territory. My understanding of evil is quite different from the game's understanding of evil so playing that alignment is perhaps more of a stretch than most.
What I do to function in this fantasy world is play an alignment that approximates my own personal alignment. The rest, as I have said somewhat facetiously above, is a matter of suppressing my gag reflex.
Nice attempt to raise the general intellectual tone of these forums a tad...gotta give you points for that.
for me, personally, i always end up replying out of character, with something i would say in the situation instead. So, i figured it, and now most of my characters are (well, were, and still are on occassion) simply facets of my own personality.
One of the biggest problems with alignment paths is that people falsely believe that one most always conform to the selected alignment.
Most humans span the scope of alignments.
We obey the prevailing laws out of a sense of duty and desire for stability.
We break laws (chaos) we deem to be overly restrictive when we think the reward is worth the risk of being caught (oppessed) by the police. I.E. Speeding
We volunteer and donate our time, energy, money and teachings to benifit our fellow man in hopes of raising up others (good).
We also enjoy watching the misery of some guy (evil) fall of his roof top on a late night video and if the grocer fails to charge us full price and we notice, we rationalize it as something we are due (selfish).
For the most part, humans slip back and forth between the D&D alignments of Neutral Good and Neutral Evil and dabble in the realms of law and chaos depending very much on thier mood and what they percieve as thier place in the society they live in.
That said....
The reason why something like D&D is fun is because it provides us a place to play, explore realities that are not real and, in effect, escape the shades of grey we live in and adopt ideals for characters that are clearly defined and simple in scope.
Add in the ability to explore our more noble and villianous sides in an environment that such behavior is fostered, and the draw of the fantasy game is clear...
It offers a safe and constructive way to explore aspects of ourselves that are not fit for expression within the real world.
I did a thesis paper in college on Stephen R. Donaldson. He rocks.
DnD allows us to explore alignment potential. It does not, however, give us the full scope of alignments. I personally believe that each person is composed of differing alignments depending on social, environmental, and genetic influences.
I mean come on, when the moon is full, your girlfriend left you with those poison words "I just want to be friends", and the coffee maker is broken, the chaotic evil side seems to take over. The next telemarketer to call receives the full brunt of it.
But when the sex is right, the caffeine flows, and the sun shines, Lawful Good runs through your veins.
LoT-zine©
