made to be broken

[mrissa]

markgritter has labeled me Chaotic Good, which is a little strange considering that I am the force of organization in this house. (Anybody agree/disagree with him there?)

Here's how it came up, and I think this is important: yesterday I encountered someone who was not sure she was "family enough" to count in the "family only for ICU visits" rule for someone close to her. She definitely is, but I was boggled that this even came up, and frankly it was pretty upsetting. Important life lesson, people: you do not have to follow rules simply because someone else has gone to the trouble of making them.

If someone you love is in an ICU where they have a "family only" rule, and you know they want to see you, and you can be quiet and respectful of the other patients, congratulations! You are now their Cousin Cynthia. Or their Uncle Frank. Or whatever the hell else you want to be. Because the family only rule is not there because ICU patients benefit only from seeing people with specific blood or legal ties to them. It's there to keep the number of visitors down so the staff can work and the other patients aren't being disturbed by wild ICU parties. The first night my grandpa was in the ICU, my aunt Kathy came up to stay with him and my mom, and when I say "aunt," I mean "person who has no legal or blood relationship with me whatsoever." And my mom, without turning a hair, said to the night nurse, "This is my sister-in-law." Here's what this semi-fib did: it gave the night nurse a leg to stand on if anybody administrative challenged her on who was in Mr. Adams's room and/or the family lounge, and it expressed the closeness of my aunt Kathy to Mom and Grandpa without giving the night nurse the impression that she was someone who should be consulted with my mother equally on Grandpa's care. And on Grandpa's last Saturday with us, it was Grandma's "niece" Vicki (again, no relation) who stayed with her while we drove into the wee hours of the morning to get there. Was that rule there so that a person whose husband was dying would have to sit alone and wait? No. Hell no. And if it was, I don't care; that is not my problem. I had a dozen or more really major problems that night, and strict adherence to hospital guidelines was not anywhere on the list.

You know what else? Grandpa had c. diff., and I took off the gloves to hold his hand on the day he was dying and the day before that. You bet your ass I did. I didn't touch anything else while I had the gloves off, and I washed up like crazy after, but did I make my grandpa's last contact with me come through latex or nitrile? No. No. A thousand times no, a million times no. I am not high-risk for infection, I followed the anti-infection procedures better than some members of the hospital staff in that regard, and I am a competent adult human being with my own judgment. They can make their rules. I make mine.

I know some of you are facing medical issues. Do not let them intimidate you pointlessly. Things are bad enough when you're dealing with a crisis without deciding that a spirit of legalism must inform your doings. Your first obligations are moral and interpersonal, not regulatory.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I think an awful lot of people confuse "lawful" and "good". You sound like you're neutral to outside laws, but very true to your own principles, which sounds like "neutral good" to me. (Or "evil", if people don't like your principles :-)).

Lawful neutral are the worst, because you can't make any sort of argument from necessity, or intent of the law, or anything, they don't care about the outcome, just the laws.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Which is why I've been trying to think of how to respond to columbina's categorization of me as such upthread without Further Unpleasantness, yah.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

I believe Col has mistranslated from the Scandasotan (and possibly the reverse is true as well). And this is a bit of what I'm working on myself--the difference between "following rules because someone else has made them" and "preferring that everyone understand and follow the correct rules." The hospital rule is incorrect.

I don't think that's the difference between lawful and good, either, which may be the disagreement here.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Probably just an RL vs. Gaming terminology confusion, she says, seeing how easy it would be to do the same herself. :D

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Ohhhhh. Glad I read further down, I was quite puzzled.

No, no, I parse Lawful Neutral as "acting according to a strict rule set, but I make my own determinations as to what that rule set is." Or, what dd_b said: Neutral to outside laws but true to your own principles.

I wouldn't have called that Neutral Good because I always thought of the whole Good/Evil thing as conforming to some outside axis.

The kind of nasties dd_b refers to in his second paragraph are, to me, true neutrals. Generally I tend to want to shoot true neutrals on sight.

Sorry about that terminology confusion there.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Hee, and I hope I haven't made it worse! Let me amend: I consider you a good person (I should hope that is obvious). I think it is possible to be a good person without conforming to society's ideals of what a good person is in every particular. In fact, I should say it is often preferable not to.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

(And whew. I was trying to figure out what about my behavior and the bits of my life you know had given you the impression I didn't care whether something was right as long as it conformed to a rule set.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah! We have achieved communication!

Here's the thing: I am not willing to give up on the word "good." "Lawful" is one people can argue with me and win: "But the law says this." "But it shouldn't." "But it does." "Show me!" "Here." "Oh. Okay. I guess I can't call that 'lawful/unlawful,' then."

But there are words like "good" and "community" and "consideration" and "respect" and "peace" that I'm just not willing to concede.

Example: Star Trek has generally conceded the word "community" to mean only the negative things people mean when they say community. If you hear somebody in a Star Trek episode--at least Next Gen and DS9, I'm not absolutely clear on the others--say "community," prepare to beam out in haste, firing all the way, because anybody who talks about "community" on Star Trek means "do it my way and not your way," not "I will support and help you" or anything like that.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

No, I really do like laws. I would rather change the laws to be right than disobey because they're wrong. But if you can't do the former, you might have to do the latter, you know? I have lied about relationships to hospitals and I'll do it again, for sure, but I also place a high priority on health care proxies and marriage equality so that the law can do its proper job, rather than being an arbitrary exercise of power.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Real people have more complex alignments than D&D characters, I suspect :-).

Sounds like "neutral, leaning lawful" or something. The laws being wrong causes you no particular stress in deciding to disobey them, so the basic orientation is neutral. But you'd *like* the laws to be right, so you could obey them (and so others might?).

Whereas "lawful, leaning neutral" would mean needing to disobey the law would be a Big Deal, but could happen if the law was sufficiently wrong.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Real people have more complex alignments than D&D characters, I suspect :-).

You speak sense. Unfortunately, we also have much blander costuming in most cases.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Well, sure, people are more complex! But then the jokes are less funny.

I guess I think of my relationship to law as a sort of non-fundamentalist Christian approach to the Bible. (Sayeth the secular Jew, so take it as an analogy and not a commentary.) You can know the historical context and understand that the document itself is a literary and political document, yet still believe that it is your explanatory and revelatory connection to God and truth and morality. My sister, on the other hand, is a devout anti-hierarchical anarchist who doesn't believe in representative democracy. Your neutral is in the middle.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity: does your sister not believe that representative democracy works, or does she not believe it should be permitted to do so?

I mean, is she like people who don't believe in divorce or like people who don't believe in God?

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Heh. She is opposed to representative democracy on a philosophical level, I think because it's hierarchical and takes power away from individuals. Also she does not believe any of the people attempting to represent her would do so in a satisfactory way. Or that's the last I heard, anyway.