Segev
2019-05-09, 09:39 AM
If you think of what the outer planes represent, Limbo is a plane of potential, limitless and unformed, and sheer acts of will can force it to be...anything. But it then falls apart when that will stops maintaining it, or when a stronger will asserts itself. Mechanus is a clockwork plane of inevitabile effect following cause, and each cause is itself an inevitable effect of what came before. The Inevitables, themselves, exist as a cosmic police force enforcing what "should be," each in their own way. Their text is riddled with phrases like "don't...at the proper time" or "defy the ... order" as things they punish and put a stop to.
We discuss Law and Chaos amongst mortals and their societies as representations of how many rules there are and how strictly they're followed, but then we get tangled up when we discuss individuals, because you can have disciplined chaotic individuals and lawful types who are lazy or impulsive, as long as they're within the bounds of the external rules. We have, too, iconoclasts who don't obey the laws of the land but who we nevertheless determine are Lawful based on their own personal and rigidly-held codes, while we have conformists who have no internal code and only follow the rules of the land out of fear of retaliation; they wouldn't and don't bother if they think they won't get caught or could get away with it.
But if we think of it more in the cosmic terms the Great Wheel of Philosophy is establishing, it becomes clear that the important aspect of Law is actually Inevitability. Direct, linear, unbending causality extending backwards and forwards as a closed-form equation which enables perfect calculation of any state of the system given conditions of the system at any one point.
In other words, it is Fate. Destiny. The concept that the future is set by the present which was an inevitable conclusion of the past, and your choices, such as they are, are already made based on who you are and who you are was designed by what came before.
Chaos is the antithesis, that the power of will to make choices defines reality, that the future is not yet formed until you choose to take action to form it, and that all that matters is what you choose. The past has no bearing on it, save your own choice to respect it: you can change everything if you put your mind to it and make the choices necessary to change. At the extremes of Limbo, your choice now has no bearing on your choice in five minutes unless you decide it does, and you're not bound by the past so much as by your own ability or inability to imagine and execute a different future.
Similarly, at the extremes of Mechanus, your choices are pre-defined. They may or may not be "yours," and you may or may not have Agency, but it's meaningless to most conversations beyond the technicality of defining Agency as "what you would have always chosen."
Deviation from expected behaviors is anathema to the Modrons and other extreme-Lawful types, because it is defying causality. That Fate Equation which let them calculate exactly how things MUST go based on the present state. They can handle being wrong in their calculations much better than they can handle defiance of the correct solution.
Adherence to the notion that consequences are a result of actions beyond the will of the actor to maintain them is anathema to Slaadi and other extreme-Chaotic types. Why are you still madly clinging to the past when they're doing something different now?
The reason we get so muddled up when discussing "pure" Law and Chaos in terms of mortal individuals and their societies is because they aren't actually capable of being pure enough. Mortal laws and even mortal personal codes fail, ultimately, in the face of Agency that defies them. Mortal Agency and its supreme power of self-determination fails in the face of physical law and even other mortal laws. At its purest, the very fabric of reality is mutable before Will in Limbo. At its purest, the will of the actor is just another cog, inevitably pre-determined by the starting conditions of the machine, in Mechanus.
Law is the dual concepts of predetermination and that actions have consequences. Chaos is the dual concepts that anything is possible if you put your mind to it, but that nothing has meaning beyond the moment.
We discuss Law and Chaos amongst mortals and their societies as representations of how many rules there are and how strictly they're followed, but then we get tangled up when we discuss individuals, because you can have disciplined chaotic individuals and lawful types who are lazy or impulsive, as long as they're within the bounds of the external rules. We have, too, iconoclasts who don't obey the laws of the land but who we nevertheless determine are Lawful based on their own personal and rigidly-held codes, while we have conformists who have no internal code and only follow the rules of the land out of fear of retaliation; they wouldn't and don't bother if they think they won't get caught or could get away with it.
But if we think of it more in the cosmic terms the Great Wheel of Philosophy is establishing, it becomes clear that the important aspect of Law is actually Inevitability. Direct, linear, unbending causality extending backwards and forwards as a closed-form equation which enables perfect calculation of any state of the system given conditions of the system at any one point.
In other words, it is Fate. Destiny. The concept that the future is set by the present which was an inevitable conclusion of the past, and your choices, such as they are, are already made based on who you are and who you are was designed by what came before.
Chaos is the antithesis, that the power of will to make choices defines reality, that the future is not yet formed until you choose to take action to form it, and that all that matters is what you choose. The past has no bearing on it, save your own choice to respect it: you can change everything if you put your mind to it and make the choices necessary to change. At the extremes of Limbo, your choice now has no bearing on your choice in five minutes unless you decide it does, and you're not bound by the past so much as by your own ability or inability to imagine and execute a different future.
Similarly, at the extremes of Mechanus, your choices are pre-defined. They may or may not be "yours," and you may or may not have Agency, but it's meaningless to most conversations beyond the technicality of defining Agency as "what you would have always chosen."
Deviation from expected behaviors is anathema to the Modrons and other extreme-Lawful types, because it is defying causality. That Fate Equation which let them calculate exactly how things MUST go based on the present state. They can handle being wrong in their calculations much better than they can handle defiance of the correct solution.
Adherence to the notion that consequences are a result of actions beyond the will of the actor to maintain them is anathema to Slaadi and other extreme-Chaotic types. Why are you still madly clinging to the past when they're doing something different now?
The reason we get so muddled up when discussing "pure" Law and Chaos in terms of mortal individuals and their societies is because they aren't actually capable of being pure enough. Mortal laws and even mortal personal codes fail, ultimately, in the face of Agency that defies them. Mortal Agency and its supreme power of self-determination fails in the face of physical law and even other mortal laws. At its purest, the very fabric of reality is mutable before Will in Limbo. At its purest, the will of the actor is just another cog, inevitably pre-determined by the starting conditions of the machine, in Mechanus.
Law is the dual concepts of predetermination and that actions have consequences. Chaos is the dual concepts that anything is possible if you put your mind to it, but that nothing has meaning beyond the moment.