Pathfinder: How views on Slavery influences character alignment

[hamishspence]

I was responding to the idea of slavery being "illegal captivity" by pointing out slavery can exist in places where it's not illegal, either because it's actively legal, or because there is no law.

I look at it this way:

"Illegal captivity + work is always slavery"

"Legal captivity + work is sometimes slavery". The main way to make legal captivity not slavery, is to emphasis that the captive is not owned, and has rights. Hence, the criminal "doing hard labor" isn't generally considered a slave.

[Scripten]

I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. Authoritarians usually cloak themselves in a guise of lawfulness, but they care only about personal power, and will change the laws at a whim in their own interests. Look at Putin and Erdogan. Look at the rise of the Fascists. "Authoritarians are lawful" is a lie the people at the base of authoritarian regimes tell themselves in order to pretend that the horror is justified, and that it can't happen to them if they just toe the line.

It seems like you are conflating Lawfulness with Goodness a bit here. Being Lawful doesn't have to mean that laws are just, as Max_Killjoy pointed out.

Like I said, Chaotic individuals can exist in or even lead a Lawful society - the point is that their power is codified through the establishment of rule of law. I'd like to avoid getting too deep into politics, but your examples of authoritarian leaders is quite cherry-picked. Imperial rule (examples of which lasted for many hundreds or thousands of years) is authoritarian and were in many cases quite happy to maintain a rigorously defined society where the laws are not capricious.

[hamishspence]

Imperial rule (examples of which lasted for many hundreds or thousands of years) is authoritarian and were in many cases quite happy to maintain a rigorously defined society where the laws are not capricious.

Or, as DMG2 3.5 puts it "Empires are always Lawful. If they become Chaotic, they fall apart."

[Andor13]

As a general - though there are lots of nuances and exceptions - rule, criminal behavior is Chaotic.

Slavery as an institution is a Lawful thing because, to make it differentiable from any sort of thuggish compulsion, it requires an enforcible and thus well-defined concept of ownership. These slavers and pirates are either privateers, making them actually lawful and technically waging war, or are criminals who aren't really engaging in Lawful activities, themselves. The institution into which they sell their captives may well be Lawful, but it's only when they actually get enrolled in that institution that it's really "slavery." Before that, it's just captivity. Captivity is not inherently lawful nor chaotic.

This is circular. "Slavery is lawful because if there are no laws it's not slavery." Someone can be a slave in the presence or absence of laws that either support or forbid the practice of slavery. The only thing that effects is whether or not the one keeping slaves is a criminal, as far as the slave is concerned laws only matter to the extent that they ameliorate the conditions of their slavery.

Is it your opinion, then, that "lawful evil" is an impossible thing? That unjust, unfair, or abusive laws cannot exist?

I have not the slightest idea how anyone could draw that conclusion from what I wrote.

People always get confused by this. It's why Lawful should really be called Order.

Lawful doesn't mean "follows all the laws everywhere ever". It means you believe in a world view that relies on things like hierarchical authority.

I agree that Order might be a better term than Lawful, but I disagree that an adherence to hierarchical authority is mandatory. Unless you are claiming it's impossible to have a Lawful Democracy? Plus Lawful/Chaotic isn't a binary proposition, it's on a scale.

It seems like you are conflating Lawfulness with Goodness a bit here. Being Lawful doesn't have to mean that laws are just, as Max_Killjoy pointed out.

Like I said, Chaotic individuals can exist in or even lead a Lawful society - the point is that their power is codified through the establishment of rule of law. I'd like to avoid getting too deep into politics, but your examples of authoritarian leaders is quite cherry-picked. Imperial rule (examples of which lasted for many hundreds or thousands of years) is authoritarian and were in many cases quite happy to maintain a rigorously defined society where the laws are not capricious.

Lawfulness is when the law is held to be higher than the individual. Authoritarian Societies can be lawful, Bureaucracy Era China for example (also an excellent example of a Lawful Evil Society.) All Fascist regimes, and most Authoritarian ones that I'm familiar with change the law to suit the leaders, not the other way around. Term Limits getting in the way? Remove them. Parliament getting uppity? Better re-write the constitution. Kingdoms, and Imperiums both tend to operate this way as well, that's why England is so proud of the Magna Carta, it's one of the few times a King was forced to submit himself to the law (and even then English Kings still had the Star Chamber.) Now there are examples where attempts to change the law failed, because the society wasn't willing accept the change. I can't, off the top of my head, think of an example where blood wasn't shed before the law was changed back.

[Scripten]

I agree that Order might be a better term than Lawful, but I disagree that an adherence to hierarchical authority is mandatory. Unless you are claiming it's impossible to have a Lawful Democracy? Plus Lawful/Chaotic isn't a binary proposition, it's on a scale.

A democracy or republic is still hierarchical. While, yes, the hierarchy is beholden to a system of distributed governance, representatives at any given time have a degree of accountability to their superiors. Even in a direct democracy, some population of executors exists to carry out the will of the voting population.

But I do agree here that Law/Chaos is a spectrum, with every society existing on a certain range over its existence. Most (successful per longevity) societies have historically been more Lawful than Chaotic, but Chaotic societies exist.

Lawfulness is when the law is held to be higher than the individual. Authoritarian Societies can be lawful, Bureaucracy Era China for example (also an excellent example of a Lawful Evil Society.) All Fascist regimes, and most Authoritarian ones that I'm familiar with change the law to suit the leaders, not the other way around. Term Limits getting in the way? Remove them. Parliament getting uppity? Better re-write the constitution. Kingdoms, and Imperiums both tend to operate this way as well, that's why England is so proud of the Magna Carta, it's one of the few times a King was forced to submit himself to the law (and even then English Kings still had the Star Chamber.) Now there are examples where attempts to change the law failed, because the society wasn't willing accept the change. I can't, off the top of my head, think of an example where blood wasn't shed before the law was changed back.

This is still an expression of power through the use of laws, even if those laws change over time. I'd argue that a Chaotic society would not use the rule of law to begin with.

Of course, this is all pretty subjective, since alignments are just a sometimes useful contrivance for determining character choices.

[Thrudd]

My point, however, is that I can see how an LG person, coming from a different perspective, would have to have a lot of philosophical work and analysis, far beyond what most people bother doing even with the best of intentions, to come to that conclusion. It's a pretty deep examination (often deeper than we, as children of the culture in which we grew up, realize it actually is...and sometimes deeper than we give it, as many would just have a knee jerk "slavery == evil" reaction without actually being able to tell you why) to really get to the root of why slavery is fundamentally evil. It's far from being obvious if you aren't starting from the knee jerk "slavery == evil" position.

And a completely LG person with a moderate but not soul-searchingly deep examination of the institution, could very easily come from a society where the notion that slavery is evil on its face is alien. Such a person would agree that various abuses that happen to slaves are wrong. He would also point out that such abuses happen in non-slave employer/employee relationships, and that corrupt officials always are an issue. He'd blame many of the problems on corruption of the system, not the system, itself.

Here's the thing- that's not how alignment works. It doesn't matter what a society thinks. It matters what the game rules/universe/DM thinks is Good. If slavery in a given society is objectively non-Good (because it involves capturing people in conquest, or buying and selling people that others have captured, or using force to coerce people to work, etc.) by definition, a person who thinks that slavery is an acceptable thing isn't Good, no matter how they arrived at that belief. Even if they really, truly believed that their city/tribe was better than all others and being a slave in their city is an improvement over any other sort of life, they are wrong and are not Good.

If your society engages in wars of conquest and takes captives as loot, then slavery for them would not be Good. If society engages in raiding for loot and slaves- not Good(prob. Evil). If society tacitly approves of raiding by buying slaves from raiders, that slavery is not Good. If slaves are born into bondage, not Good. If violence and threat of violence can be used to coerce slaves to work, not Good. If slaves are treated like property rather than as fellow people, branded or tattooed or permanently marked to distinguish them, not Good. If non-criminal slaves are shackled, bound or caged as a routine practice, not Good. If slaves can legally be abused or forced to do things a free worker/employee could not- not Good. If a non-criminal cannot choose to end their servitude or seek employment elsewhere- not Good.

If a person looks around their world, sees these things going on and does not decide that they are wrong and should stop, then they are not Good. The reason or social conditioning leading to their decision is irrelevant. It is possible, under objective universal alignment, to be labeled for wrong views despite your intentions and despite the source of those views.

The only way "slavery" could be acceptable to Good is if it refers only to workers that are assigned jobs, beholden to a superior or the state, that have the same legal protections as other people and are not held against their will (unless they are convicted criminals carrying out a justly applied sentence of labor).

That people can suffer abuse under systems acceptable to Good, as well, is irrelevant. That there are people trying to take advantage of any system for their own benefit does not mean all systems are therefore equally Just.

[Segev]

This is circular. "Slavery is lawful because if there are no laws it's not slavery." Someone can be a slave in the presence or absence of laws that either support or forbid the practice of slavery. The only thing that effects is whether or not the one keeping slaves is a criminal, as far as the slave is concerned laws only matter to the extent that they ameliorate the conditions of their slavery.

The question here is about the institution of slavery, or of slavery as an institution, and whether one can be LG and still be cool with owning slaves.

Not about whether all instances of anything termed "slavery" is lawful, chaotic, good, or evil.

The institution of slavery, almost tautologically by being an institution, is Lawful-aligned.

If slavery in a given society is objectively non-Good (because it involves capturing people in conquest, or buying and selling people that others have captured, or using force to coerce people to work, etc.) by definition, a person who thinks that slavery is an acceptable thing isn't Good, no matter how they arrived at that belief.

And there we have it. You've outlined things that make it non-good. Please recognize here that I am not going to speak for myself, but am going to argue from the "in character" perspective of Nobilius Beneficus, the LG scion of a powerful house in a slave-owning society where slavery is accepted as "just fine."

Enemy soldiers captured in war are given work to do, lest they become burdens on the capturing army. This isn't really 'slavery,' and selling soldiers into slavery to civilians is generally a bad idea. I scoff at your notion that that's how any legitimate slaves happen.

Using force to coerce people into working is hardly necessary. Slaves who don't work simply won't be fed more than the minimum to survive, and may be denied privileges such as their discretionary allowances. Your own culture starves people who do not work, which I think is far more cruel. At least our starving poor have the option to sell themselves into indenture to escape that horrific poverty.

Okay, now I'm done talking as him for a bit.

The point is, he doesn't see "slavery" the way you do, and any forced enslavement of those he'd deem innocent (and, remember, even if you soundly disagree with him on the issue of slavery, he is LG in all ways other than that) he would view as horrifically as you would view the incarceration in prison of the innocent. Even though I doubt most people have too much trouble with the notion of, say, murderers being imprisoned.

Even if they really, truly believed that their city/tribe was better than all others and being a slave in their city is an improvement over any other sort of life, they are wrong and are not Good.

As you can see, that isn't the position an LG person need take to believe slavery is just fine.

You haven't really hit the core point of why slavery is inherently wicked, and neither has our hypothetical LG okay-with-slavery person.

If your society engages in wars of conquest and takes captives as loot, then slavery for them would not be Good. If society engages in raiding for loot and slaves- not Good(prob. Evil). If society tacitly approves of raiding by buying slaves from raiders, that slavery is not Good. If slaves are born into bondage, not Good. If violence and threat of violence can be used to coerce slaves to work, not Good.

All things our LG person would agree with. "That's evil of those slave owners," he'd say. "But these need not be how slavery is practiced."

If slaves are treated like property rather than as fellow people,

Here, you're getting very close to the actual heart of it, the part the LG person brushes past.

branded or tattooed or permanently marked to distinguish them, not Good.

But here, you've veered away from it, giving him something to focus on that allows his justifications to stay intact.

If non-criminal slaves are shackled, bound or caged as a routine practice, not Good. If slaves can legally be abused or forced to do things a free worker/employee could not- not Good.

And we're back in "safe" ground for him to feel justified in dismissing your criticisms as being unrelated to slavery, since anybody being treated this way is wrong and it would be wrong of the perpetrator whether he owned the person or not.

If a non-criminal cannot choose to end their servitude or seek employment elsewhere- not Good.

"That's just silly," says Nobilius. "Many free people lack this option, as well. Over-invested in their own business, or unable to find better work in a hard economy, or even simply under contract to complete a task. Your notion of leaving work you're not happy with would lead to nobody being able to pay for anything in advance, which would restrict many craftsman's jobs to only the already-wealthy. No, people can be forced to complete their tasks and not abandon them, once the terms are settled, or we undermine society."

The only way "slavery" could be acceptable to Good is if it refers only to workers that are assigned jobs, beholden to a superior or the state, that have the same legal protections as other people and are not held against their will (unless they are convicted criminals carrying out a justly applied sentence of labor).

Actually, the State is no more legitimate an owner of people than are individuals. I hold out your claim here as indicative of how cultural bias can make even a good-hearted person who cares about human rights view slavery as perfectly fine; your position here ignores the true evil at the heart of slavery, justifying it.

That people can suffer abuse under systems acceptable to Good, as well, is irrelevant. That there are people trying to take advantage of any system for their own benefit does not mean all systems are therefore equally Just.

And here, you've just argued Nobilius's point. The system of slavery isn't evil, according to him; the evils you have mentioned are all evil men taking advantage of the system. Just because they do this doesn't mean the system is inherently unjust.



Now, the core reason why Nobilius is factually wrong, but that he's missing in his analysis, goes very very deep into the core of what slavery means: slavery means owning another person. It denies their basic humanity (or equivalent term in a world with non-human sophonts), and all the evils you list arise more often with slavery than in other institutions because of this sometimes-subtle dehumanizing factor. When one's labor is inherently not one's own, when one's choices are inherently denied them, one is not a complete human being. This is acceptable for children, unable yet to be responsible for themselves. This is similarly acceptable for the mentally incompetent, who need a competent caretaker to look out for them.

But such relationships are of caregiver, not taskmaster. When one is dealing with those competent to do labor, to judge their own life, taking that away and selling that Agency to another is evil.

It doesn't matter if it's ownership by private citizens, corporations, or the government. The notion of owning another human being (or equivalent sophont) is where the inescapable evil arises.

But while I spell it out thusly, it takes really scraping to the core of what Agency means, and linking it inexorably to the concept of Good, to get there. It is very easy to miss it, even in lengthy discussion and examination, but especially if one has grown up surrounded by philosophical arguments designed to avoid that point and instead justify the institution this point reveals to be wicked.

Because it is a hard-to-reach point - so hard that we haven't really had it exposed here until this post in this thread, despite many people discussing how slavery is inherently evil - that I claim that one can have an LG person who's never managed to reach said point. Who therefore thinks all the "evils of slavery" are really evils of individual men who would do the same things with or without slavery, and thus there's nothing wrong with slavery itself as an institution, provided it (like so many other things) has the necessary legal regulations to protect all parties involved in it.

Not because he's right and it's fine, but because everything outside of that core point can be sloughed off as people abusing a system, not evidence that the system itself is evil. And that core point is not easy to reach without some deep examination of some notions that, frankly, were absolutely radical about 250 or so years ago, and still are contested by many around the world today.

[Thrudd]

The question here is about the institution of slavery, or of slavery as an institution, and whether one can be LG and still be cool with owning slaves.

Not about whether all instances of anything termed "slavery" is lawful, chaotic, good, or evil.

The institution of slavery, almost tautologically by being an institution, is Lawful-aligned.


And there we have it. You've outlined things that make it non-good. Please recognize here that I am not going to speak for myself, but am going to argue from the "in character" perspective of Nobilius Beneficus, the LG scion of a powerful house in a slave-owning society where slavery is accepted as "just fine."

Enemy soldiers captured in war are given work to do, lest they become burdens on the capturing army. This isn't really 'slavery,' and selling soldiers into slavery to civilians is generally a bad idea. I scoff at your notion that that's how any legitimate slaves happen.

Using force to coerce people into working is hardly necessary. Slaves who don't work simply won't be fed more than the minimum to survive, and may be denied privileges such as their discretionary allowances. Your own culture starves people who do not work, which I think is far more cruel. At least our starving poor have the option to sell themselves into indenture to escape that horrific poverty.

Okay, now I'm done talking as him for a bit.

The point is, he doesn't see "slavery" the way you do, and any forced enslavement of those he'd deem innocent (and, remember, even if you soundly disagree with him on the issue of slavery, he is LG in all ways other than that) he would view as horrifically as you would view the incarceration in prison of the innocent. Even though I doubt most people have too much trouble with the notion of, say, murderers being imprisoned.

As you can see, that isn't the position an LG person need take to believe slavery is just fine.

You haven't really hit the core point of why slavery is inherently wicked, and neither has our hypothetical LG okay-with-slavery person.

All things our LG person would agree with. "That's evil of those slave owners," he'd say. "But these need not be how slavery is practiced."

Here, you're getting very close to the actual heart of it, the part the LG person brushes past.

But here, you've veered away from it, giving him something to focus on that allows his justifications to stay intact.

And we're back in "safe" ground for him to feel justified in dismissing your criticisms as being unrelated to slavery, since anybody being treated this way is wrong and it would be wrong of the perpetrator whether he owned the person or not.

"That's just silly," says Nobilius. "Many free people lack this option, as well. Over-invested in their own business, or unable to find better work in a hard economy, or even simply under contract to complete a task. Your notion of leaving work you're not happy with would lead to nobody being able to pay for anything in advance, which would restrict many craftsman's jobs to only the already-wealthy. No, people can be forced to complete their tasks and not abandon them, once the terms are settled, or we undermine society."

Actually, the State is no more legitimate an owner of people than are individuals. I hold out your claim here as indicative of how cultural bias can make even a good-hearted person who cares about human rights view slavery as perfectly fine; your position here ignores the true evil at the heart of slavery, justifying it.

And here, you've just argued Nobilius's point. The system of slavery isn't evil, according to him; the evils you have mentioned are all evil men taking advantage of the system. Just because they do this doesn't mean the system is inherently unjust.



Now, the core reason why Nobilius is factually wrong, but that he's missing in his analysis, goes very very deep into the core of what slavery means: slavery means owning another person. It denies their basic humanity (or equivalent term in a world with non-human sophonts), and all the evils you list arise more often with slavery than in other institutions because of this sometimes-subtle dehumanizing factor. When one's labor is inherently not one's own, when one's choices are inherently denied them, one is not a complete human being. This is acceptable for children, unable yet to be responsible for themselves. This is similarly acceptable for the mentally incompetent, who need a competent caretaker to look out for them.

But such relationships are of caregiver, not taskmaster. When one is dealing with those competent to do labor, to judge their own life, taking that away and selling that Agency to another is evil.

It doesn't matter if it's ownership by private citizens, corporations, or the government. The notion of owning another human being (or equivalent sophont) is where the inescapable evil arises.

But while I spell it out thusly, it takes really scraping to the core of what Agency means, and linking it inexorably to the concept of Good, to get there. It is very easy to miss it, even in lengthy discussion and examination, but especially if one has grown up surrounded by philosophical arguments designed to avoid that point and instead justify the institution this point reveals to be wicked.

Because it is a hard-to-reach point - so hard that we haven't really had it exposed here until this post in this thread, despite many people discussing how slavery is inherently evil - that I claim that one can have an LG person who's never managed to reach said point. Who therefore thinks all the "evils of slavery" are really evils of individual men who would do the same things with or without slavery, and thus there's nothing wrong with slavery itself as an institution, provided it (like so many other things) has the necessary legal regulations to protect all parties involved in it.

Not because he's right and it's fine, but because everything outside of that core point can be sloughed off as people abusing a system, not evidence that the system itself is evil. And that core point is not easy to reach without some deep examination of some notions that, frankly, were absolutely radical about 250 or so years ago, and still are contested by many around the world today.

You've explained how a person can think they and their system are good, but you have ignored the other major part of this - that there is an objective alignment system which labels those things not-Good. So Mr.Nobilius is Lawful, certainly, but he is not Good no matter how much he thinks he is right. Because he and his society do, in fact, practice non-Good things and allows non-Good things to be practiced for their benefit and comfort, and he approves of those practices. Even if it is a foreign idea to him and his culture and would require a deal of introspection and perspective he's not likely to ever attain, treating people as property is objectively not Good and therefore he isn't LG, he's LN. Before you say that one non-good act isn't enough to change his alignment: he has had a lifetime of being presented with opportunities to choose between Good and not-Good in the form of every slave he's ever seen that someone treats as property, and has hundreds or thousands of times chosen the non-Good act of ignoring instead of helping. This is why every adult in a slave society who is not actively resisting or working to reform that society is at best Neutral.

He is saying "that would be an evil practice" of the examples, but he is not saying particularly what is his society's practice. This is what's important. He needs to say "slavery in my society works in such and such a manner" and to show that none of the things that are allowed under their laws are unjust or non-good.

The implication based on his objections is that his theoretical Good slave society has as its only sources of forced-servitude:
-captured soldiers from objectively justified defensive wars
-justly convicted criminals
-people voluntarily choosing servitude in order to pay off a debt

He has not specified that these people have legal protections. He has not specified that the duration of servitude is tied to any legal code. The type of society that can actually, objectively be determined to be compatible with Good lacks many or all of the features of what we'd call a slave society.

If I went to his society and saw that they had voluntary indentured servitude enforced by the terms of a legal contract, criminals sometimes serving out sentences of labor, and POWs being put to work in an army camp and then set free to return to their home lands as part of conditions for ending the war (but never sold to civilians for profit by the returning soldiers), and all those people were treated humanely according to a legal code and had recourse to legal protections in case of abuses...I would not identify that as a slave society, even if they called some or all of those people "slaves".

My saying that Good/just laws can be manipulated does not also mean the there is no such thing as unjust laws. That was my point. He is wrong - laws that allow slavery are inherently unjust and not-Good. To be Good in such a society requires going against the social order in some way. That is not a case of bad people corrupting society, it is bad society corrupting the people (or not giving good people any legal way to protect themselves or others). If it is not against the law for a slave owner to beat his slaves, or keep them chained in a shack, or force them to work until they collapse from lack of food - then you can't say the system is being ruined by bad people, the system says the bad person is justified in their behavior and the slave is wrong if they complain.

I also did not say my own or any other society was all Good, necessarily. This is not a claim that his society is bad because another society is better - alignment is not relative. I am saying that law codes which allow not-Good things to be legal are not-Good, and Good people would not defend them. Lawful Good people would be working to fix the laws so not-Good things are not legal (that's what makes them Lawful).

A Good person could conceivable find themselves in a slave society, but they would not try to defend it, they would try to fix it. A Lawful Good person would be trying to reform the laws to make all the Evil things illegal (the resulting society may look very different than the origina one). A Good person in general would be working in some way, within or outside of the law, to protect people being harmed and to put an end to those causing the harm (even if that means doing illegal things like freeing slaves or killing cruel slave owners, esp. as Chaotic Good). A Lawful Good person would not long be able to stay Lawful Good in a society where the laws are so clearly not Good - in the likely case that they can't get the laws changed, they'd leave for somewhere with more just laws. Or, they would shift to Neutral Good or Chaotic Good, because they've decided the laws need to be resisted and undermined, and start freeing the slaves of bad slave-owners, and all those who were made slaves by the unjust laws.

[Quertus]

Everyone who uses animals as a slave labor force, enslaves them for food or entertainment, who views animals as property, is inherently Evil, right?

Every person who has eaten farm-grown meat, every D&D character with a horse, every modern human who hasn't thought through the ramifications of treating a creature with thoughts and emotions as property, is decidedly non-good, and probably Evil, right?

[Nifft]

Everyone who uses animals as a slave labor force, enslaves them for food or entertainment, who views animals as property, is inherently Evil, right?

If you're confused about animals being people, then I guess this sort of statement might make sense to you.

But animals aren't people.

[Quertus]

If you're confused about animals being people, then I guess this sort of statement might make sense to you.

But animals aren't people.

Perhaps more accurate to say, I'm as confused about humans being animals as your average Illithid.

[Max_Killjoy]

When is the last time a chicken invented calculus, or painted a masterpiece, or held a conversation with you about the nature of the stars in the sky and why some seem to move and others don't?

The idea that the difference between Illithid and humans is the same as the difference between humans and a chicken just doesn't cut the mustard.

[Andor13]

The question here is about the institution of slavery, or of slavery as an institution, and whether one can be LG and still be cool with owning slaves.

Not about whether all instances of anything termed "slavery" is lawful, chaotic, good, or evil.

The institution of slavery, almost tautologically by being an institution, is Lawful-aligned.

The word institution means Laws, or Custom, or simply long standing practices.

I disagree with the notion that anything that is a Law or Custom must, by use of the term, be Lawful. To pick an extreme example, in the Buck Godot series by Phil Foglio the planet of New Hong Kong passed a law saying that "There shall be no new laws on New Hong Kong." They have abided by that law, but that doesn't make them a Lawful society, it makes them an Anarchy.

Similarly Organized Crime families are a long standing custom in many places. That makes them an Institution, it does not make them Lawful, even though many of the have very strong internal rules or customs.

Carried to the extreme there cannot be any societies more organized than Limbo that don't count as Lawful.

In D&D, societies as well as people, as rated on a scale from Lawful to Chaotic. The assumption that slavery is a characteristic of lawful societies but not chaotic ones is not one I find stands up to examination. For example I would argue that the Norse cultures are as close to Chaotic as you can get, but they still practiced slavery. Many Chaotic monster races keep slaves.

[Quertus]

When is the last time a chicken invented calculus, or painted a masterpiece, or held a conversation with you about the nature of the stars in the sky and why some seem to move and others don't?

The idea that the difference between Illithid and humans is the same as the difference between humans and a chicken just doesn't cut the mustard.

I agree, but not the way you'd think.

I had a cat who did a better job teaching and communicating than most humans I've met - and, I believe, better than all humans I've meet if given the same limitations.

I suspect Illithids may be more justified in enslaving humans than humans are of treating animals as property.

But that's not exactly my point.

My point is, what justifications do we use for treating animals differently? Could one not use similar justifications for treating slaves differently? Has a slave ever invented calculus, painted a masterpiece, or held a conversation with you on the nature of the stats in the sky? IIRC, they haven't done so for me, so therefore slavery is moral?

Should we ever encounter other sentient life, I'd like our morality to be sufficiently well defined that we don't have to change our morality to prevent them enslaving or exterminating us, and justifying it under our moral code.

Has a human ever invented interstellar space travel, held an intelligent conversation with you on the different flavors of thoughts, or created telepathic art? No? Then they are inferior species, and we can own them.

Illithid enslavement of humans is moral.

That's something that I'm assuming we'd like to avoid being true, right?

[Nifft]

I suspect Illithids may be more justified in enslaving humans than humans are of treating animals as property.

You'd be wrong, of course.

My point is, what justifications do we use for treating animals differently? Could one not use similar justifications for treating slaves differently? Has a slave ever invented calculus, painted a masterpiece, or held a conversation with you on the nature of the stats in the sky? IIRC, they haven't done so for me, so therefore slavery is moral?

Should we ever encounter other sentient life, I'd like our morality to be sufficiently well defined that we don't have to change our morality to prevent them enslaving or exterminating us, and justifying it under our moral code.

Personhood can be granted to all sorts of intelligent life-forms (including artificial ones) without making animals into people.


Illithids are evil and alien -- this is explicit in their write-ups. They treat people like animals. That does not mean people are animals, and it does not mean animals are people. It means Illithids are evil.

Illithids doing an evil thing and claiming that it's justice is not actually proof that the evil thing is justice.

Evil beings can and do lie.

[Max_Killjoy]

I agree, but not the way you'd think.

I had a cat who did a better job teaching and communicating than most humans I've met - and, I believe, better than all humans I've meet if given the same limitations.

I suspect Illithids may be more justified in enslaving humans than humans are of treating animals as property.

But that's not exactly my point.

My point is, what justifications do we use for treating animals differently? Could one not use similar justifications for treating slaves differently? Has a slave ever invented calculus, painted a masterpiece, or held a conversation with you on the nature of the stats in the sky? IIRC, they haven't done so for me, so therefore slavery is moral?

Should we ever encounter other sentient life, I'd like our morality to be sufficiently well defined that we don't have to change our morality to prevent them enslaving or exterminating us, and justifying it under our moral code.

Has a human ever invented interstellar space travel, held an intelligent conversation with you on the different flavors of thoughts, or created telepathic art? No? Then they are inferior species, and we can own them.

Illithid enslavement of humans is moral.

That's something that I'm assuming we'd like to avoid being true, right?

By concentrating on the specific examples I gave of things chickens haven't done that humans have, you're missing the point. Not having invented interstellar travel doesn't make people "dumb animals" -- not having done anything of the sort and indeed being grossly incapable of doing anything of the sort is evidence beyond any reasonable doubt that chickens are, however.

Fixating on one example is like trying to prove I'm not an adult because I don't have children, and ignoring all the other evidence that I am, in fact, an adult.

And no, you don't get to define away an adult's adulthood or a person's personhood by playing silly semantic or categorical games.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Similarly Organized Crime families are a long standing custom in many places. That makes them an Institution, it does not make them Lawful, even though many of the have very strong internal rules or customs.

I would absolutely describe organized crime families as leaning Lawful. Again, Lawful doesn't mean "always obeys the law".

[Thrudd]

Everyone who uses animals as a slave labor force, enslaves them for food or entertainment, who views animals as property, is inherently Evil, right?

Every person who has eaten farm-grown meat, every D&D character with a horse, every modern human who hasn't thought through the ramifications of treating a creature with thoughts and emotions as property, is decidedly non-good, and probably Evil, right?

That depends on the DM and the setting. If they declared it so, then yes. Maybe they're vegans...I've known some folks who do genuinely believe all those things to be true in real life. Otherwise, no. As human creators, we generally write our rules as human-centric and favoring our own way of life. If we were Illithids writing the rules of the universe, it wouldn't be Evil to enslave and eat humans.

But the rules have been established in this case. In D&D and PF, treating animals as humans have always treated animals is not considered Evil on the alignment scale. The distinction is made for creatures of human-like intelligence - enslaving, eating, hurting us and people like us for fun or profit is what is called Evil.

[gmatht]

It is easy for people to be caught in a false dichotomy. Say you have your Neutral society where taking PoWs as slaves is legal, and its major rival is an Evil society that tortures PoWs to death for the lulz. Then your character would see the choice as being between slavery and murder. Slaves might have more rights in a Neutral society than they had previously in the Evil society (which may not be saying much). Your character might idly think of some third way without taking it seriously "We could charge them with Attempted Murder, and put them in boxes that we could call jails. If they were in a jail, they couldn't hurt anyone. Hmm, but if we put them in boxes they couldn't gather food. It would be kinder just to kill them outright. What silly ideas I have!".

The character would be picking the most Good option their cultural understanding allows them to consider. It might be interesting is if your character came across Good societies and their values.

[MrSandman]

In D&D, societies as well as people, as rated on a scale from Lawful to Chaotic. The assumption that slavery is a characteristic of lawful societies but not chaotic ones is not one I find stands up to examination. For example I would argue that the Norse cultures are as close to Chaotic as you can get, but they still practiced slavery. Many Chaotic monster races keep slaves.

Here's where you're missing the point. Nobody has said anything about slavery occurring only in lawful societies or that chaotic societies can't have slavery. The point is examining how slavery works in a lawful society.

[Andor13]

Here's where you're missing the point. Nobody has said anything about slavery occurring only in lawful societies or that chaotic societies can't have slavery. The point is examining how slavery works in a lawful society.

No, the OPs post is about a LG character dealing with slavery in her society. I'm raising a tangential point about how the D&D alignment definitions themselves assign slavery to Law and freedom to Chaos.

I would absolutely describe organized crime families as leaning Lawful. Again, Lawful doesn't mean "always obeys the law".

Ok. What culture, custom or people would you describe as chaotic?

[Quertus]

Ok. What culture, custom or people would you describe as chaotic?

Playgrounders. They can rarely stay on topic, often skirt the rules or brazenly ignore them, and tend to have a "your way is not my way, but that doesn't make your way wrong" attitude.

[Satinavian]

He is saying "that would be an evil practice" of the examples, but he is not saying particularly what is his society's practice. This is what's important. He needs to say "slavery in my society works in such and such a manner" and to show that none of the things that are allowed under their laws are unjust or non-good.

Ok, let's just make some example slaver nation X to have some context for the theroretical debate.

The implication based on his objections is that his theoretical Good slave society has as its only sources of forced-servitude:
-captured soldiers from objectively justified defensive wars
-justly convicted criminals
-people voluntarily choosing servitude in order to pay off a debt

That is true for X.

If I went to his society and saw that they had voluntary indentured servitude enforced by the terms of a legal contract, criminals sometimes serving out sentences of labor, and POWs being put to work in an army camp and then set free to return to their home lands as part of conditions for ending the war (but never sold to civilians for profit by the returning soldiers), and all those people were treated humanely according to a legal code and had recourse to legal protections in case of abuses...I would not identify that as a slave society, even if they called some or all of those people "slaves".

No, we are not building some unrealistic utopia.

POW slaves go home when they are ransomed or when their homeland has paid reparations and there is a prace treaty. Until then their work is taken in lieu of reparations. Also, while POW slaves usually belong to a state, a POW can also end up private property if he surrendered to a certain person directly (Which serves as incentive for soldiers to not kill everyone). Criminals usually end up private property of their victoms and people in debt become property of their creditors.

All slaves have certain rights. Usually less than free people, Free people have usually less rights than citicens (who also pay tax and must serve). Citicens have less rights than ruler. Exceptions always exist. I would not go in too much detail, but let us say that only taxpaying citicens have full legal access and that slaves always have the right to own property. And that slaves owning other slaves is a thing that happens.

If it is not against the law for a slave owner to beat his slaves,

Not sure about that one. How archaic do we want X to be ? Let's say a slave owner can beat his slave if the law also allows a family head to beat spouse and children and people are thinking of it in the same way.

or keep them chained in a shack

I don't see that as something that happens in X. Why would someone do that? But it should also probably not explicitely forbidden.

, or force them to work until they collapse from lack of food

But that should not be allowed. Slaveowners should be responsible to provide for their slaves.

I also did not say my own or any other society was all Good, necessarily. This is not a claim that his society is bad because another society is better - alignment is not relative. I am saying that law codes which allow not-Good things to be legal are not-Good, and Good people would not defend them. Lawful Good people would be working to fix the laws so not-Good things are not legal (that's what makes them Lawful).

X is not good. But X is neutral and Good people from X have no problem whatsoever defending X's legal system.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Ok. What culture, custom or people would you describe as chaotic?

Lone wolf mass shooters. (Some) forms of Anarchism. Bonnie and Clyde style outlaws that aren't tied to larger criminal organizations with a rigorous structure. Somalia as a whole (individual parts of the country and people in it may still be lawful).

Chaotic people/countries in the real world are extremely rare, I would say. I would also say that the vast majority of countries over the course of human history have all been Lawful Evil.

[Durzan]

honestly, this is why i tend to downplay or ignore alignment altogether in my games. I could easily create a slave owning society that could be classified as lawful good.

[Segev]

You've explained how a person can think they and their system are good, but you have ignored the other major part of this - that there is an objective alignment system which labels those things not-Good. So Mr.Nobilius is Lawful, certainly, but he is not Good no matter how much he thinks he is right.
If I went to his society and saw that they had voluntary indentured servitude enforced by the terms of a legal contract, criminals sometimes serving out sentences of labor, and POWs being put to work in an army camp and then set free to return to their home lands as part of conditions for ending the war (but never sold to civilians for profit by the returning soldiers), and all those people were treated humanely according to a legal code and had recourse to legal protections in case of abuses...I would not identify that as a slave society, even if they called some or all of those people "slaves".

Sorry for the lousy edit job on the quote. My phone is not cooperating.

Anyway. First, Nobilius is LG, not just LN, because he honestly does care for others in general and genuinely upholds the ideals of “good.” Nothing he believes to be inherent to slavery is inherently evil.

There are avowed socialists today who feel capitalism is inherently evil. There are avowed capitalists today who feel socialism is inherently evil. Are those people unable to view capitalists/socialists as anything but genuinely not-good? Or can they see good people who are just, in the avowed-whatever’s opinion, tragically wrong?

There is a level of indirection here that severs the chain of culpability. If you help a little old lady across the street, and it turns out that that was all the evil bound demon needed to be let out of the binding seal the the street represented, are you guilty of performing an evil act? No. You’re duped into aiding another’s evil, despite your best efforts to be well-intentioned. I would look askance at any DM who made a paladin fall for such a thing.

Similarly, being wrong about the inherent goodness or evil of an institution doesn’t make you more wicked.

To your second point, Nobilius would scoff at your “No True Scottsman” definition of “slavery.”

“You don’t like the term,” he would say, “so you warp and change it until it must include things you can identify as evil, despite its plain meaning clearly including the response subtle and acceptable practices of the institution. I do not deny that it is slavery when evil men force the innocent into it, only that slavery is not at fault, but rather the evil and greed of men abusing it. You do not, therefore, get to brush aside the practice of it when done responsibly and in a Good fashion just to justify your absurd claim that slavery is inherently evil.

“It’s like saying pies are evil, because any pie that isn’t somehow cursing or poisoning those who eat it isn’t a real pie.”

[Kader]

I wouldn't expect the person brought up in a society that has slavery as "okay" would be comprehensive enough to get to the core problems with slavery as an institution, either.

[...]

You don't have to be a brilliant and deep thinker with high Int and Wis sufficient to see through all possible flawed philosophies to be Good. Not being so can lead to tragic errors in judgment, but making honest mistakes - even arguing strenuously in favor of what is a mistaken position - doesn't make you Evil. Or even Neutral. It just makes you wrong.

I generally agree strongly. Slavery is an institution that pulls towards LE, but it is possible to have people of other alignments engaged in it, even people who are good (for now) especially if that engagement is shallow.

That said, one caveat is that this is strongest when slavery is really a relatively unquestioned everyday fact of life. As was for example the case in 50 but not in 1850 in the real world. Golarion is firmly in the nineteenth-century camp, with coalitions trying to sweep the slave trade from the seas, publishing houses churning out abolitionist literature (and probably proslavery literature in Cheliax and such), and so on. Whether slavery is right or not is a very prominent moral fault line being actively struggled over by the societies of Golarion.

This tends to harden positions on both sides and makes the sort of liminal and only partially rationalized LG position you advocate harder to maintain. It's simply harder in such circumstances to go through life and never be prompted to consider your position less shallowly.

(Whether you rise to the prompt or whether your shallowness starts to become willful is another question, and has alignment implications).

[Segev]

It is deep enough buried by surrounding philosophical considerations that it takes more than “not being shallowly engaged.” As things get wrapped up in politics, the sense that the philosophical disagreement is an attack on their culture, motivated not by honest moral concerns, but dishonest efforts to use morality to justify political and military aggression.

There is rarely a way to learn your own society and culture is wrong while immersed in it. It isn’t impossible, and the more blatantly evil it gets, the easier it is to figure out. But genuinely good people can believe that some rather horrid institutions and practices are not problems if “done correctly.”

It can take being directly confronted with the evils over and over in many forms and under nearly every circumstance to get through to determining he problem is the institution, not (just) the people practicing it.

[Kader]

How provincial are we assuming the character is? If she were a dirt farmer, sure, but nobles were generally the class least immersed in solely their own culture and most immersed in larger cultural networks. And this generalizes past the one character in question in the OP, anyway, since dirt farmers with no education or information about the wider world generally aren't the heart of the slaveowning class.

[Satinavian]

That said, one caveat is that this is strongest when slavery is really a relatively unquestioned everyday fact of life. As was for example the case in 50 but not in 1850 in the real world. Golarion is firmly in the nineteenth-century camp, with coalitions trying to sweep the slave trade from the seas, publishing houses churning out abolitionist literature (and probably proslavery literature in Cheliax and such), and so on. Whether slavery is right or not is a very prominent moral fault line being actively struggled over by the societies of Golarion.

Galorion is some ridiculous anachronistic mess. But if i really had to pick a reference time, i would say 17th century not 19th . There is too much industrial revolution missing.

Eberron would fit 19th century, but Galorion is far less advanced. Not that it matters slavery seemes to be quite rare on Galorion.