How to be a real-life paladin

Intentions don't matter, only consequences. Believing you're doing the right thing won't make your actions moral, acting moral will.

Morals are subjective tho.

Belief is all that matters

>Hi Veeky Forums, how does one become a real-life paladin?
Realize that good =/= nice. This is especially difficult in this age of virtue signalling.

Run for President, build that wall, make your country great again.

Become a sikh
Grow a beard
Carry a sword
Do no evil, and do not allow evil to be done through your inaction.

empathy, compassion, self discipline, love for life, willingness and ability to slap a bitch who dont love other people.

My father hated me, and once I reached the age of six, he started beating me whenever I annoyed him. To avoid the ire of my mother, he cloaked it in her religion, saying it was necessary discipline and that God required him to do this, and telling me it was because of my misdeeds.

The beatings became so severe that I began having severe nightmares and wetting the bed at night. When I woke him up to tell him what happened, he beat me for it, and told me it was because of my misdeeds. As a result, I wet the bed until I was in the seventh grade.

So that I wouldn't be beaten, I tried everything in my religion to become a good person. That annoyed him more, so he beat me worse. He thrashed me with a thick leather strap until there was no such thing as sin, no other existence but pain.

Somehow, I still thought that perfect behavior would end my torment. Discovering that most of the patriarchs of my religion had two-way communication with God, I tried to get it as well through fervent prayers.

What I got was more than I bargained for.

>philosophy
>outdated

>utilitarianism

>I already study philosophy
>I don't think law or theology can help us

Confirmed college philosophy snob. Law is literally practical application of moral philosophy and theology is the only place you'll find much worthwhile discourse on the nature of vice and virtue.

>how do I do x?
>no no no you're all doing it wrong I know best anyway.

You will never be more than a sniveling CN cleric with his head up his own ass

You really can't realistically be lawful good in the modern world, because what is lawful is not necessarily what is good, and vice versa.

The best you can really get is to be Lawful Neutral or Neutral Good.

in what way does this contribute to this thread at all?

Didn't Jesus freak out when one of his followers actually cut a guy during the arrest?

>confusing Lawful alignment with Law of the land
lurk

True Law is inherently good. It is a set code which dictates your actions in a manner that covers as many scenarios as possible to prevent evil from being visited upon yourself or others, both in the short and long term.

>Cutting a guy is the same as calling a guy a moron

I felt a voice within myself, speaking to me softly. It said very little at first, as I tried to cope with the cognitive dissonance of it all.

"How do I know that you are not me?" I whispered. "I'll address that soon", was all it said.

The voice said nothing for five days. But on the sixth day, it told me to go to the shed and get a shovel and dig at the place it would show me. After digging there for a full day, I unearthed a massive lead box.

Just then, my father came home, and claimed the box for his own. He set it on the kitchen table, broke open the lock, and lifted the lid.

I'm just saying the part about buying a sword is out of context

I guess you're right in that it doesn't justify using violence willy-nilly, but the fact that the apostled were ordered to grab their swords (even if it were only 2 swords to defend a group of 12) does imply approval of self-defense rather than mindless pacifism.

The box was filled with castoff pottery, most of it cracked and damaged and worthless. My father went berserk, and I fled for my life. I got about a mile away and began planning how to leave home forever.

"No", said the voice, "go back home."

"He'll kill me," I replied.

"I've got it sorted," the voice said.

"I'll go back home, but you must never talk to me again," I said.

"-never?" asked the voice. It sounded sad.

"-well, only in an emergency. My dad goes crazy, I can't risk anything like what happened with the box."

"Ok", he finally said.

4 weeks later my father put down the work belt he was about to hit me with. He complained of a sudden severe migraine, the first of many, which laid him up for seven years, and he never laid a hand on me again.

But my descent into the paladin's way was only just begun.

Thanks to everyone for all the replies guys, I appreciate your input.

If you're going with a sort of "natural law" universal definition of Law, then the distinction between the Lawful/Chaotic axis and the Good/Evil axis becomes basically meaningless.

Due to the Eighties Moral Panic, my father had disallowed any Dungeons and Dragons in the house. He made me burn my books, and he wouldn't allow most video games. But when he was struck down with the sickness, I was able to dabble a little bit. I found the video game Ultima IV Quest of the Avatar. Becoming intrigued with the morality questions and the Bhuddist Eightfold Path in it, I began to study morality more deeply.

None of it did any good, and I was a bitter, trembling wreck. I was committed to a moral life through my religion, but it was a white-knuckled, griping existence.

Many years later, late one night as I was driving home, I was approaching a traffic light, which was green. And I heard the voice again, the very same voice, telling me to stop at the green light.

"No," I said, "I am a modern day paladin, committed to upholding the law. I would never do that."

"Do it", he said.

What happened next freaks me out to this day.

>Law is literally practical application of moral philosophy

Law is literally practical application of what was lobbied the hardest

this

At the last possible moment, I applied the brake and stopped at the green light. As I did so, I saw a flash of light as the glow of my car's headlamps reflected off something. A massive truck barreled through the intersection, running its red, and careened off. I hadn't seen it because the driver had all his lights off.

I would surely have been killed.

But I wasn't into talking to strange voices any more. I remembered the beatings, remembered how my father took my goods from me. I knew if it came out that I was hearing voices, he would take everything and lock me away forever.

So I chalked this up to a wild coincidence.

Until it happened a second time.

I hope this doesn't end in a dinosaur

The second time, I had someone with me in the car who saw the whole thing. I could no longer deny that I had heard a supernatural voice.

"Will you help me?" I asked. "I'm trying to be good, but I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm afraid of everything, and everyone."

"You don't have to be afraid of everyone," he said. "I'll help you."

That voice is how I live as a modern day paladin. All rules are rescinded, all theologies are partial models to be shelved. Some actions I took at its behest brought the ire of others, but it was always the proper thing, accounting for aspects of life that no one, not even myself, were even aware of. It is the divine, and its path, though narrow, is always a moral one. end

Become a cop or a judge and place justice higher in priority than the law while still upholding it.

Here you go, OP, welcome to the club.

>I mean a perfectly disciplined lawful good human being who always does the best possible thing.
If Paladins were all perfectly disciplined lawful good human beings who always does the best possible thing, there wouldn't be rules for falling.

No one is immune from fucking up, OP. If you want to be good, you just have to try, and if you fuck up you just have to atone.

Wrong. Intentions matter most for morality. You arent some perfect predictor of outcomes; you aren't even a decent one, or else you wouldn't have posted in this thread.
Outcomes matter, but not in Morality.

>I'm spiritually open and study philosophy.

>Kant is outdated, lel.
Pluck the cocks out of your ears and listen, OP-faggot. You're the reason Philosophy majors get a bad rap: you mention a quandary and then obstinately ignore the answer as its presented to you, like Menos. Morality isn't so gentle as to let you escape into the realm of fanciful chance and happenstance, to let you be MORAL by being LUCKY! You are wholely resonsible of the intentionality behind your actions, and if you wish to escape into Utilitarianism to hide away from true Righteousness, then its pretty damn clear you were never cut out to be a Paladin in the first place.

No, and fuck off, this is not Veeky Forums, you fucking desperate NARPfag.

vatican.va/roman_curia/swiss_guard/swissguard/ammissione_en.htm

here you go

I think there were multiple reasons Jesus was upset with Peter for cutting the man's ear off, but the foremost is probably because Jesus had already told all the apostles what was going to happen to him and that it must happen. Peter openly defied that by attempting to prevent the arrest.

Study philosophy and do your best. The fatal irony of the paladin code is that it's impossible for a real human to truly follow.