The problem here is that TSR never knew what they were trying to do with the alignment system, and had the moral philosophy credentials of an educationally subnormal yak. Hence different versions of D&D had different meanings for the alignments, the alignment set never spanned all possible (or indeed all likely) characters, and any given alignment set was rarely consistent.
Hence all this stuff should at least be qualified by version. D&D1-chaotic might be the most selfish of the 6 possible "trends", but it doesn't necessarily follow that the same is true of AD&D2-chaotic. In AD&D 2nd, for example, a Lawful Evil character serves his group but promotes its ends to the exclusion of the interests of all possible other groups, so is ultimately far more selfish than a Chaotic Good character who has little concern for avoiding anti-social behaviour, but is strongly sympathetic to the interests of other individuals.
If I were going to try to make any sense of the irredeemable, I'd say that "selfish-unselfish" is a characterisation of the chaotic-lawful axis by the lawful. A chaotic might characterise it as "progressive-reactionary" and a neutral as "individualist-conformist" or perhaps "libertarian-authoritarian".
Re:
The problem here is that TSR never knew what they were trying to do with the alignment system, and had the moral philosophy credentials of an educationally subnormal yak. Hence different versions of D&D had different meanings for the alignments, the alignment set never spanned all possible (or indeed all likely) characters, and any given alignment set was rarely consistent.
Hence all this stuff should at least be qualified by version. D&D1-chaotic might be the most selfish of the 6 possible "trends", but it doesn't necessarily follow that the same is true of AD&D2-chaotic. In AD&D 2nd, for example, a Lawful Evil character serves his group but promotes its ends to the exclusion of the interests of all possible other groups, so is ultimately far more selfish than a Chaotic Good character who has little concern for avoiding anti-social behaviour, but is strongly sympathetic to the interests of other individuals.
If I were going to try to make any sense of the irredeemable, I'd say that "selfish-unselfish" is a characterisation of the chaotic-lawful axis by the lawful. A chaotic might characterise it as "progressive-reactionary" and a neutral as "individualist-conformist" or perhaps "libertarian-authoritarian".