On alignments continued

I won't do daily posts as a general rule.  I happened to have a little extra time, and there are many things I've been kicking around that will find their way onto the blog in the early days. 

Neutral Good

The Neutral (Good/Evil) are the toughest.  Years ago in graduate school, we had an old news bulletin board.  That was before the Internet took off.  I saw an article in which some obscure group of Scottish Fundamentalist Christians condemned the Reverend Jerry Falwell as a flaming liberal.  I realized then and there that labels are not always accurate, can be mighty subjective, and often tell more about the ones using the labels than the ones the labels are used against.

In the Alignment System, no alignments are more susceptible to this subjectivity than the Two Neutrals.  After all, what might seem 'neutral' good to one might be Chaotic Good or Lawful Good to another.  To some, break one rule, and you're Chaotic all the way.  To a real anti-establishment hippy rebel, on the other hand, having any regard for the law and customs puts you in the fuddy-duddy lawful camp right then and there.  So it's tough.

And realistically, just when does a person willing to put the common good above law and order cease being Neutral and become Chaotic Good?  I'll give you that once you're willing to lie or break a law for the greater good, you're no longer Lawful Good.  But that arbitrary line between Neutral and Chaotic is the mischief.

So here's how I see the Neutral Good person.  This is the person who is good, but realizes that there are times that rules just need to be broken, obviously if the rule is warped and evil, or if the tradition is in the way of good will toward men.  But no less so if the rule or law is good, but might cause bad ends. The Good is always the goal and always the means, but typically law and order are also part of the good.  It simply understands that there are times when the law and order aren't part of the good, and that's when the heart of the law kicks in.  The Neutral Good will break evil laws.  When it comes to good laws, a little creative circumnavigating will be in order, but that's about it.  The main reason, at the end of the day, is for accomplishing the good.  As long as the law and order points to the good, then good it is.  There can be extremes before going into either Lawful/Chaotic camp, but on the whole, there remains a tension in which the person simply puts the good above all things, without falling into complete fealty to the laws or just concluding that authority and custom is always wrong.

Examples (and this is certainly open to some debate);

 

 

Samwise is not so much a philosophical thinker on this, as much as his actions suggests he's willing to do what he needs to do for his master Frodo, as well as for the greater good.  He's no rebel.  He never really has a point in which he says 'screw the law, I'm doing this'.  But you get, just from his overall life portrait, that he recognizes when something is in the way of the good, he wouldn't think twice in defaulting to doing the good, even if it steps on some traditional toes.  And yet, overall, Sam is still a person who puts much stock in those traditional toes, and would never just willy-nilly jettison them, seeing them as an important part of the greater good in most cases.

The other two represent extremes.  Robin Hood (the Errol Flynn version), breaks laws, kills people, lies and doe everything a Chaotic Neutral person would do.  And yet, he also exists within a social framework that he never completely disregards.  He breaks such laws for the greater good and to protect the weak and the helpless, not just because he has an issue with law and order.  Flynn's Robin is one that, when the laws are aligned to the good and are administered by the right people for the best reasons, he will gladly be part of administering the laws and following the leaders.  He doesn't have some beef with authority or laws in general.  He simply does whatever when those laws are wicked, or are used by wicked individuals for wicked ends.

Atticus, on the other extreme, is darn near LG.  He doesn't lie.  He's honest.  He's loyal.  He's brave.  He's willing to do whatever for the right reasons using the right methods.  And yet, at the end of the story, he is willing to lie, or at least support a lie.  He may not come up with the lie that gets Boo Radley off the hook, but he finally realizes it's the lie that must be upheld. 

The last two particularly show the extremes that exist within this category.  The Lawful Good, in the end, won't lie, and won't break rules and laws.  He may oppose evil societies and their evil laws.  But those laws he cherishes won't be broken, because they are part of the common good.  The Chaotic Good individual is almost entirely skeptical of any order or rules.  Laws are made to be broken, because generally they impede the common good, the primacy of the individual circumstance.   But the neutral is in that broad area in between, and may be, for those individuals of good will (and more humble dispositions), the default alignment since most good folks will be somewhere between the Robin Hoods and the Atticus Finches, much less hover in the two extremes of the good.