05-10-2017, 01:35 PM | #1 | ||||||
Join Date: Dec 2007
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My Honest Opinion
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What's more it is both wrong and unfair to characterize Honest as "a pathological belief in an external authority as a source of immutable ethical law." Nothing prevents an Honest person from working to change a law it considers unjust by lawful means. An Honest person is usually not a rebel (although they [I]can[I] rebel to restore a previous status they consider more legitimate) but they are free (as far as Honesty goes) to be a reformer or a martyr. That being said, you certainly can be an Honest villain who makes the most of any opportunity the law gives them to be cruel and oppressive, or just do what the law requires. You can be Lawful Evil, Lawful Neutral or Lawful Good so to speak. Quote:
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No. It isn't. It's the belief that even when a law is wrong, it's also wrong to break it. That's not the same thing as thinking the law isn't wrong. As mentioned working to change the law within the system is always an option and in the opinion of the Honest person a better one. And no, it doesn't require you to inform on everyone else. It requires you to try to persuade everyone else. |
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05-10-2017, 04:40 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: My Honest Opinion
Doing your best to make others obey the law obviously includes notifying police when others are breaking the law. Just telling someone that by being flagrantly homosexual or believing in the wrong things they are persisting in not obeying the law isn't doing your best when a single phone call can bring legal authorities to stop their terrible law breaking.
And GURPS Honest characters explicitly may lie as long as their lies are technically legal. With careful attention to fraud statues where they are, they can absolutely cheat and steal, as long as they take care to do it in jurisdictions without robust business legislation. Nazi judges and jurists at Nuremberg were convicted for passing laws and enforcing them inside Germany. Nothing in the Geneva Conventions or any other international treaty even remotely covered their actions, and, in fact, many of the convictions were based on alleged 'natural law', i.e. retroactively stating that things the victors found immoral were illegal, despite no such criminal statues having existed at the time of the offences. To a GURPS Honest character, their actions were mandatory until the Nuremberg court found differently, at which time they retroactively became forbidden and required him to turn himself in.
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05-10-2017, 04:52 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: My Honest Opinion
Hrr... the original point that "GURPS Honesty isn't Honesty" is is pretty accurate, the everyday meaning of the term is pretty much a combination of truthful and an appropriate code of honor. However, it doesn't amount to pathological law obedience, in part because Honesty also seems to include an aspected Gullible so you're really bad at getting other people to obey the law.
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05-10-2017, 05:08 PM | #4 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: My Honest Opinion
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I quite agree that a GURPS Honest character is not the ideal informer, but then again, prolific informers usually have mental Disadvantages of some sort anyway.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! |
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05-10-2017, 06:44 PM | #5 | ||
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: My Honest Opinion
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05-10-2017, 06:54 PM | #6 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: My Honest Opinion
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If a character is expected to 'do their best', it means more than just stating their preference without being willing to actually do anything to stop others from breaking the law. A non-violent or physically weak character might not be expected to attack those who break the law, but someone who has a reasonable expectation of winning would. And as long as the character is physically capable of notifying the authorities, it would require some weird interpretation of 'doing their best' if obtaining aid from the authorities were excluded from the things the character is expected to do. The reaction bonus is for sharing the values and prejudices of the society. In a society where the laws are respected, the majority may respect the GURPS Honest character. In a society where the law is feared, people may be terrified of the GURPS Honest character. Game effect is the same, they are more likely to give him what he wants, because he is on the side of the entrenched authorities and the powerful elites. Sure. But they only have to deliver what they literally promised, not what the other person believes that they promised. They can have deceived the other party about the value of what the promised, as long as such deception is not against the law.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 05-10-2017 at 07:01 PM. |
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05-10-2017, 07:04 PM | #7 | ||
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: My Honest Opinion
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Last edited by David Johnston2; 05-10-2017 at 07:14 PM. |
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05-10-2017, 07:17 PM | #8 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: My Honest Opinion
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Whether that really counts as Honest, I don't know. Perhaps if you make a point of it. But I should think an Honest person really is JUST following orders if indeed he follows orders like that, and he is not doing the sorts of things that get you promoted into a position where you can follow orders like that all the more efficiently.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison Last edited by jason taylor; 05-10-2017 at 07:21 PM. |
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05-10-2017, 07:20 PM | #9 | ||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: My Honest Opinion
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Besides, if lawbreakers are punished, it will usually interfere with their opportunity to break further laws. It might be immoral to execute members of ethnic or religious minorities, but it cannot be argued that it doesn't effectively stop them from continuing to be members of illegal groups. If someone is imprisoned and bankrupt because he solicitated prostitutes, it will make it hard for him to do it again, if only because they are too poor to afford even the few packets of cigarettes required.* And jailing litterers is going to make it hard for them to litter again, because prison guards really frown on that. Reasonable people might doubt that there is any purpose in enforcing laws which legislate morality, where there are no victims other than the outrage of the majority using the machinery of the state to impose their morality upon others, but GURPS Honest people are not reasonable people. By definition, they are compelled to follow laws. In the absence of special circumstances or a legal position which requires confidentality, GURPS Honest characters will follow laws that state that if they are witnesses to a crime, they must inform the appopriate authorities. *They might be turned out themselves, but that's a different matter and, in any case, in many jurisdictions, they wouldn't be the ones committing a crime in that case. So it's all good to the GURPS Honest character. Quote:
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05-10-2017, 07:44 PM | #10 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: My Honest Opinion
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Or what if someone is court-martialed for cowardice under fire? Everyone knows that the army can spare one man. But everyone equally knows that panic is contagious and a rout is detrimental to the lives of anyone in the army and anyone they happen to be protecting. Likewise antitrust laws have ambiguous victim status. Who is hurt by someone owning something? Unless it hurts the market generally. Which is the same argument in macrocosm for litter laws. Furthermore the Honest person can say that laws are decided above his pay grade without being irrational. Indeed it would hardly be rational for me to claim competency to decide more then a small proportion of the law. Which is an argument for the proposal that perpetual lawdump is a way of gaining oligarchy by fogging society but that would be for gen chat.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison Last edited by jason taylor; 05-10-2017 at 08:27 PM. |
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disadvantages, honesty |
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