From time to time people post all sorts of little quizzes and memes on social media. One of the more prevalent ones deals with alignments such as what they had in boardgames like Dungeons & Dragons.
Some background. In these boardgames you had to make up a character. This reflected what values you wanted to represent in the game so you could be wise or strong or agile. Further the game allowed you to customize the character by choosing your character’s outlook on life. This was determined by two variables.
The first variable is fairly easy to understand. Good, Evil, and Neutral. Are you good or evil or somewhere in between. Are you the type of person that kicks puppies or rescues kittens out of trees or stops to consider what to do based on the situation.
The other variable is also somewhat self explanatory. Lawful, Chaotic, or again Neutral. Do you follow the letter of the law in every situation? See a rule and break it just because or again go with what your gut tells you to do.
These two variables form a matrix with nine elements and when you start mixing and matching elements you get some pretty interesting results to consider.
An alignment matrix using characters from popular movies and TV shows as examples.
For example let’s consider lawful evil. Wait, that’s possible, you ask? Quite so and it makes for some extremely interesting and seemingly conflicted characters. A person that believes that the rules of law and civilization must be followed but then turns around and uses that very law and order for evil purposes. In many ways the scariest of the combinations. Look at some of our own real world examples. Hitler, several of the roman emperors, the Russian czars. On a more local level think of a crooked city official or policeman that uses the law for his own corrupt purposes.
On the opposite side of the matrix is the Chaotic good. Someone that doesn’t want to hurt anyone or do anything bad but just can’t seem to live by any sort of rules. I think that describes a fair portion of the population, don’t you? Hard to come up with world leaders for this combination as by definition they don’t work well within systems. In the real world this would be your messed up friend that always means well and wants to help but his life is an eternal mess of unresolved issues and pending problems.
True neutral is a combination that gets mistaken for good neutral quite a bit. I think it’s something that some people strive for but really don’t comprehend or consider the ramifications of that combination. Sometimes you do good, sometimes you do bad, sometimes you follow the rules and sometimes you don’t. The overriding consideration is how the situation will affect you personally and sometimes that will make you look like a heel. Real world examples are kind of tough. Thomas Jefferson comes to mind as he advocated rule of law but on the other hand he was a revolutionary. He preached equality and brotherhood but owned slaves. A character such as this would be a person that did what he needed to survive but occasionally did something good for others but with the understanding that it somehow benefited him.
So what am I? Well when I was a kid and played this game I have to admit I always went for the lawful good. Goody two shoes that I was. It wasn’t till later in life that I had a chance to really sit down and think about all the implications of it all. True neutral? no. Probably somewhere between neutral good and chaotic good
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