A New Alignment

Today I realized that my alignment is now Chaotic Neutral. For those who don’t understand the whole Dungeons and Dragons alignment system, I shall explain briefly. The alignment is basically your outlook on life. It is made up of two components. Each component has three stages. Two of the stages are ideas that are complete opposites. Law versus chaos and good versus evil. The middle ground being neutrality. Pick one from column A and one from column B and you have an alignment. Double dipping in the neutral gives you what is called true neutral. This gives you nine different ways of seeing the world. For those who have just been under a rock, I will explain the ideas. Good of course means that you respect life, liberty and all that. Evil means that you could care less about other peoples lives or anything else. Lawful means you are into truth, justice and the way of everyone staying their behinds in line. Chaos is the random basis of the anarchists soul.

We are indoctrinated into certain beliefs from the time we can assimilate information. Which beliefs are determined by environment. In America that indoctrination is into the lifestyle of wonderfulness called Lawful Good. Be nice, care for others, don’t steal, yadda yadda yadda, bump bump bump. The indoctrination is so tough that you get it in school, in church and even in cartoons. The ultimate representation of this idea being that paragon of good called Superman. Nearly all powerful, but he doesn’t take anything by force from anyone. In fact this dude ain’t even from around these parts but he gives his life to the service of others. Guardian, protector, friend to all, all-around good guy. Lex Luthor being his arch villian, he is supposed to be Chaotic Evil. This being the complete opposite of Supes’ LG. You know, the "bad guy".

As I said, my alignment is now Chaotic Neutral. Not necessarily a big thing by itself. I mean it takes all kinds right? But like in D&D, an alignment change is a big thing. I am no longer that idealist that America tends to try to create. I understand the concepts of law and good. They just are not as useful to wear as they once were. Evil, I just don’t see the reason to give up your scruples full time. Chaos tends to serve my purposes these days. Not always staying in line. Not always fulfilling other people’s expectations. Doing what is right, just not necessarily for the greater good. Writing this weblog and not caring if anyone hates it! Accolades are a different thing…

Unlike in D&D where dramatic events usually trigger such a change, life provides a more subtle change for us in the real world. Instead of one dramatic event, it tends to be a string of events that move you around the alignment square. Sometimes a few big ones will change us for the better or worse. In others it is a long string of small but frequent events that slowly move us from one place to the next. I found that mine was a combination of both. Wonder what it will take to make me change again? On the other hand, I can wait on that.