Rest assured, I am very aware of what I am likely to accomplish WRT the subject of this thread. I am not presenting my arguments expecting to change his mind. I don’t need y’all to help show me the errors of my ways, and I do not care if Max is sincere with his representations or not.
I mean that’s fine–but we get to call you out for feeding him same as I would if I saw campers feeding a bear. It’s a free country so you can certainly continue feeding. [Actually, you probably aren’t really allowed to feed the bears, so the analogy isn’t 100% apt.]
Dude, this isn’t bear country, or even GD, it’s the pit. So more like the circus. I’m going to keep dancing with the bear for so long as it appeals to me.
…hypothetical.
You are a undocumented black man, living in 2022 Vermont. You are hiding in a barn, having escaped from indebted servitude at a farm just down the road.
A white man opens the door to the barn.
Do you:
- Immediately turn yourself in, because the law is the law, and you are breaking the law, and you have been caught, fair and square.
- Appeal to the humanity of the person that opened the door, hoping that they let you stay for the night.
- Kill them. Because…they were probably going to turn you in anyway, so what do you have to lose?
Yepppers.
For what it’s worth, I have appreciated your posts and insights here. Not all the pearls you have cast have been wasted on swine.
It’s just a bit surprising to me, as you’re usually the one telling us to not to feed people and just put them on ignore.
I suspect you’re doing it for the same reason I will do it. He’s saying things in a way that seems superficially reasonable, and so it’s useful to show why it isn’t.
Plus, while I don’t expect it, I do know that occasionally all this stuff adds up and people get an epiphany. It’s happened to me, and a large part of why I still try. There are some ways in which I was like Max, stuck in my own head and oblivious to the world around me. And, while I’m not perfect, I am trying to get better about that.
So there’s this small part of me that hopes he’ll grow out of it. I remember a previous poster who did, though he was a lot younger than Max. In fact, I think he’s about Max’s age now.
The pit is different. Fewer rules, fewer limits on how I can engage (and who I can engage with). Not that I know if there’s a way to do it, but you may find I have not engaged much with Max outside the pit. Not that I have him on ignore (yet) but do not think for a moment I would be engaging with this thread if it were in GD, FQ, or even IMHO. FWIW, I’m not certain I’ve even posted in this thread up until yesterday.
ETA: I see now I have. Twice. But never engaging with Max, or posting on something Max has said (in this thread or elsewhere on the board). Point being, there are some posters I won’t engage with at all, and there are some I will only engage with in certain forums where I feel I am at least not disadvantaged by “the rules.”
Well, he’s on record as respecting amendments that retain the narrow reading of the Constitution that he prefers (yes, I know that any amendment will by definition necessarily broaden the effects of the Constitution’s ambit.Just go with it).
Not the 21st amendment! 
What the whole philosophy seems to amount to is that the strong and ruthless should be allowed to do whatever they want and society at large should have no say on how things are ordered or what constitutes justice. What’s bizarre is that he seems to be somewhat melancholy about it but … alas … trying to do something about it would be immoral. The only moral course of action is to just allow all forms of cruelty, degradation, oppression, outrage, rapine, and looting to continue unchecked.
Certainly an easy position to take for someone who believes E will remain largely unscathed by it.
But … sigh … one must but endure the suffering of the world and there ought one can do but gamely try to enjoy one’s own richly deserved good fortune.
Yeah, I haven’t explored the full scope of his opinions so I can’t speak to the entirety of the 14th. But he certainly rejects even contemporaneous to its ratification jurisprudence around it that he “doesn’t like”, and seems to reject the obvious original intent of the amendment, which is good enough for me to conclude he isn’t operating out of any intelligent legal theory. Like he’s a less intelligent version of Gorsuch or Thomas, they at least struct viable veneers for their beliefs.
Lawful Neutral. Just a crap alignment.
So, if I’m reading this correctly, @Max_S is basically saying that if he benefits from slavery, it’s immoral for him to violate the laws propping up slavery.
He has also said that the strength of his obligation to follow a law is based on how severe the punishment is for violating it, not on… I dunno, whether the law itself is moral.
I have to wonder if he understands the difference between morality and expediency.
I could almost see his argument if he had at least done his research better.
I hate, hate the arguments, you’re looking at the issue from a 21st century perspective, overlooking how little support there was for slavery and that extra evil fugitive slave law in the North, especially New England.
The problem, I believe, is he is, as many do, working from his own conclusions and backfilling with information that confirms his aberrant reading of, well everything. His ‘research’ as such, is fundamentally flawed, because as shown here, he has no actual interest in anyone else’s POV or needs unless he is subject to FORCE, whether physical or legal.
So, IMHO, he’s projecting a veneer of reasonability and morals, but has no heartfelt care for either.
Of fucking course not. Being the Pit, I’ll question your intelligence in even wondering such an obvious fucking thing.
He’s revealed himself as either being a full on sociopath (like actual dictionary definition of one) or being within a hair’s breadth of one.
As a long-time D&D player, I have a problem with alignments, as such. However, I would define lawful neutral in believing that morality was based on the law regardless of what the law is.
The pittee has an additional trait of actually having an opinion on what the law should be and his choices are reprehensible.
Taken at face value, that seems to describe his own worldview to a tee. “I believe theoretically in this virtuous thing, but I can’t really support it now because the letter of the law says otherwise.”
Well, yeah. But that’s par for the course for the awful-lawful.
Of course I agree with you that the alignment system, even as a gaming mechanism, is kind of a silly straight-jacket. I always hated alignment-restricted character classes - never made a lick of sense.
Using the law as a crutch to justify evil (especially when you have a twisted interpretation of the law) seems really LE to me.