Then again, so can very strict law and order. 😮
What is good? Balance? Neutrality? But if neutral is good, then is good bad? 🤕
Good is law and order abided by in conjunction with love, compassion, mercy and forgiveness.
Without law, anything goes, and it is survival of the fittest. Savage brutes can get away with whatever they want without fear, but those who are weaker must fear constantly.
Law provides conditions where things can flow together in unity, harmony and piece, but only if tempered with patience and love.
In the very first iteration of D&D's alignment system, you simply had Law and Chaos; the good guys generally sided with Law and the forces of evil mostly sided with Chaos, but there were exceptions. Shortly thereafter, Good and Evil were added and then I think Neutral/Neutrality was added after that (or it may have been silently assumed in the background...my knowledge on this is fuzzy). If I had to guess, I'd say the then-contemporary shifting cultural norms in the United States contributed to the breaking away from the notion that "Law equals inherently good" (if the Nixon administration's crimes and the revelation of war crimes in Vietnam wouldn't do that, what would?).
That aside, Neutral Good is the best fit for my ideal society.
