in neutrality in regards to the law vs chaos spectrum

[vasilidor]

reading the bit about what do demons want, a argument about law and chaos and neutrality seemed to spring up, and that lead me to the though of what neutrality actually means in for both neutral good and neutral evil. for me it means going with which ever one will accomplish my needs (good or evil) at this moment. actually a neutral good character may be the only one to care about the balance of law and chaos on a society level, seeing the need to balance personal freedoms and power of the law. true neutral being to ho-hum until it bites them in the ass, and neutral evil to self-centered to care about the society (outside of some sort of long term scheme or some such). what do you guys think?

[Florian]

It could also mean that you´re flexible in regards to the L-C axis, not being to stuck up with both extremes or actually accepting of both extremes.
On the G-end, that could mean that you try to pick the best aspects, at the E-end, that could mean that you chose what is most favorable to you.

[Seto]

I think your assessment of True Neutral and Neutral Evil is simplistic :smallbiggrin:

To develop : Neutral Good can be too busy running an orphanage to give a rat's behind about political theory, while True Neutral can be a philosopher who thinks that balance is the key to most quagmires and that equal footing between state regulations and self-regulation is what's best for everyone. So can NE, for that matter. But their definition of "what's best" will probably vary. And let's also remember that wanting good and theorizing it is different from actually working your butt off to do good, and only the latter earns you a Good alignment.
Finally, NG, TN and NE can all be played as pragmatic, as you suggest. Or they could be social conformists, but all with different moral visions.

Point is, there are only a very few cases where you can ask "what would (insert Alignment do)?" or "Would Alignment X care about idea Y?" and expect a blanket statement for an answer. That exists, when the question involves a core component of the alignment (for example, Good cares about others, and Chaos doesn't like highly hierarchized structures), but that's a small percentage of the time. The rest of the time, people answer with a limiting archetype in mind, and miss the fact that there are a myriad of interesting ways to be Neutral (in this case) and that each alignment covers a variety of characters.

(If the question was: does being Neutral mean that you care about balance between state laws and self-regulation, my answer is: not necessarily, no. If another question was: can TN and NE care about that stuff, my answer's yes.)

[vasilidor]

ok, thanks for the feed back, it helps actuality.

[OldTrees1]

Don't forget that L-C is so poorly defined that there are actually at least 2 L-C axes (Order vs Chaos and Laws vs Anarchy).