C. S. Lewis was asked whether an atheist couldn’t be just as good a person as a Christian, and he agreed that this was so; but he placed a caveat on it.  After all, he observed, the atheist and the Christian have a few very different ideas about the nature of the universe and the people who live in it.

  Bear with me; this really is about role playing.

  The Christian, Lewis observed, believes that people have the potential to live forever.  We are born and we die, but by the grace of God we can continue with Him for eternity.  In contrast, nations last a very short few centuries, maybe several millennia, and races don’t last long at all–even planets and stars have short lives compared to people.  The atheist would, of course, disagree.  To him, people are born, live a few years, and die; it is nations and races that last a long time.  Thus, Lewis concluded, the atheist sees the continuation of societies as important, and sees people as valuable only to the degree that they provide the foundation for this continuation.  People exist for the sake of society, the nation, the race.  On the other hand, the Christian sees the society, the nation, the race as transient, momentary, ephemeral, snapshots in the lives of that which really matters, the people who live on when the universe has passed away.

  There were two things I did not see in this when I first read it.  I should be excused the first, as I had never heard of role playing games back then (in 1975).  The second was just my failure to make a connection between the theoretical and the real–and interestingly is a connection I made eventually because of seeing it through the eyes of roleplaying game theory.

  The role playing game connection has to do with those basic alignment concepts that form so much of Dungeons & Dragons&trade.  Whether you agree with Lewis’ assessment of the distinction between Christian and atheist viewpoints (and although he was outspoken as each of these at different times of his life, it may be said that his observations may apply to only some atheists and some Christians), he makes a clear division of values.  There are those who believe that societies exist for the sake of the people, and those who believe that people exist for the sake of societies.  This, in a nutshell, is the core conflict on the ethical axis, the tension between those who believe in law and those who believe in chaos.  Which is more important:  the people who make up the society, or the society that is made up of people?  Do we sacrifice people to save the society, or sacrifice the society to save people?

  Societies have a lot to offer.  They are useful, even to those who value individuals more highly.  By providing structure, they let everyone know his place, his purpose, his function; in short, they can give answers to those questions that are most troublesome in life.  By creating order, they make it possible to own things with less fear of being robbed, have business and personal relationships with people in which you are less likely to be cheated or hurt, and generally to know what is expected of you and what you can in turn expect of others.  Societies inherently mean that there are rules, and that there are ways of enforcing the rules, and thus that there is discipline.  These things all contribute to making life safer and more predictable.  Threats to societies are inherently threats to the individuals within them, and there could be good reason to defend a society, even to risk life and limb to defend it.  Similarly, societies cannot exist without people, and the society thus has good reason to protect individuals generally even if we agree that the society is more important than any particular individual.  It’s not always a clear cut either/or sort of thing.  It is rather a question of the core reason behind the choice.  Do you protect society because the society is what matters, or do you protect society because individuals matter and the social order is a useful way to protect them?  Do you value individuals inherently, or do they have value because they are necessary to the continuation of society?

  In modern western democracies, the emphasis seems to be on individuals.  Our governments exist, and our armies defend them, because they keep us safe, prosperous, and free.  Internally, our courts have a strong tendency to support individuals, and particularly those in the minority, those whom society would trample in the name of a better, more coherent and unified and efficient, society.  Individuals and individualism are high on our list of values, and we make certain our governments cannot take this away from us.

  The other thing I did not see back then, though, is that twentieth century socialism was exactly the sort of philosophy to which Lewis alluded when he spoke of atheists.  These totalitarian regimes were what they were because those in power believed the nation and the people collectively were more important than any of the individuals.  They thought that the way to run a country was to teach everyone to put the country first, to work to keep the social order stable and moving, and when everyone realized that his own life was an insignificant flash in the pan compared with that something greater of which he was a part–the nation–utopia would emerge.  It would emerge because no one cared what happened to his self as long as his country was as great as it could be.

  Well, asking people to care more for their country than their self might sound like a formula for utopia to some, but it sounds like a formula for disaster to others, and it never worked.  What is interesting in connecting this back to our game concepts, however, is that this utopia, which hoped to be built on the dedicated altruistic sharing of all people in understanding that the whole was more important than any of the parts including themselves, which seemed to expect ultimately to be able to dispose of law and government as common people became self-policing, is the modern example of the ultimate value of law on the alignment chart.  Law doesn’t necessarily mean the proliferation and enforcement of strict rules; to the lawful character, the rules may in fact be superfluous, because he will do the lawful thing in the absence of the rules.  His desire is to put the preservation and well-being of society above that of individuals.  Although rules are required to enforce this among people who don’t see the inherent importance of preserving the nation or the race, the lawful recognizes that order and discipline in each individual is necessary to hold the society together through the current troubles and on into the lives of future generations.

  We can also see from this that the lawful alignment has its own internal complexities.  One of these is that it is quite possible to defend the law and challenge it at the same time.  That is, I may disagree with a particular rule, based entirely on issues that are lawful, and work to overturn that law while at the same time obeying and enforcing it purely for no reason other than that it is the law.  I might conclude that slavery of certain creatures is a bad societal structure because it creates instability in society, and so I might actively oppose the slave trade, making my opinion clear, and yet believe that to assist slave rebellions or escapes or to attack slaver caravans would be an assault on the very fabric of society; that even if this is a bad rule, it is the rule, and none of us may break the rules based on our own conscience or opinion without doing damage to society itself.  After all, if everyone did what he thought was right, society would be doomed to collapse (at least, it would appear so to the lawful) because people would not agree regarding the right thing to do until they have understood the fundamental and central importance of society.

  Another quirk of the lawful alignment is that although it tends to be the alignment of professions demanding great discipline (the samurai, kensai, and monk come to mind), it can be the core belief of people whose lives appear extremely chaotic to the observer.  In fact, someone once suggested to me that insanity was inherently chaotic, and I responded that in my understanding most of those conditions that we would label neurotic or psychotic are extremely lawful in their structure.  Even role playing game simplifications of such things are lawful:  the character is bound by particular rules that control his conduct which make it different and peculiar to those who hold different rules, such as mentally refusing to acknowledge the existence of certain creatures or objects even when they are in his presence, or reacting in fear to such a presence.  On the other side of the coin, chaotic characters can be entirely opposed to the lawful emphasis on society above the individual and still be extremely disciplined as individuals.  In this regard the wu jen is informative.  He is one of the misfits of society, often ignoring its rules and flaunting his independence from them; yet he rigidly observes his taboos, whether they mean not drinking alcohol or never sitting with his back to the west or always wearing something pink among his clothing.  Individual discipline and order is more common among lawful characters, but it is neither exclusive to them nor pervasive among them.  Even a chaotic cavalier must practice rigorously every day; he may oppose the oppressions of society, but as an individual he is dedicated to the pursuit of his craft.

  So again we find that alignment comes down to what we believe; and in this case, it is about whether the individual or the society is more important.

  Next week, something different.

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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.