One of the worst conceits that human beings----and Oryx is "human" for the sake of this discussion-----are subject to is the ability to DELUDE ourselves into thinking that things we do in the name of selfishness and greed, are **somehow** serving some greater good or higher principle. Oryx is using a classic rationalization that Evil uses to justifiy itself and its excesses. Hilter and the [url=http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law]-godwinslaw!-[/url] used similar excuses to justify their extermination campaigns and their wars of conquest. That "weakness" and "lesser people" had to be eliminated so that the "strong' and the "superior" had "Living Space" to thrive....adn that the whole world and humanity was made the better for it. Unless, of course, you were one of those "undesirable" who got steam-rolled. You can't serve big principles while playing fast and loose with the little ones. There IS no "happy ending" without individual integrity and individual freedom. Without them you simply have the Law of the Jungle. Might is Right and the STrong are Never Wrong. Which is **fine** right up to the moment that you are no longer at the top of the food chain. At which point you simply become someone else LUNCH on the hoof. Its like politics. You find very few old, sick, or disabled people who are Libertarians. Only---as a generaly rule----Young, healthy and relatively wealthy people. Like it or not, Humans are moral beings and social beings. Oryx is right that "evil" doesn't exist outside of a social and moral fabric. But his defintion of it as----the one who doesn't fit it-----is as pedantic and self-serving as Satan's sob story about God in "Paradise Lost". [i] Evil isn't 'socially maladaptive". The Founding Fathers were "socially maladaptive' in a society that was ruled by a distant and capricious King. Evil is what happens when people pursue their own invididual ideas and interest WITHOUT REGARD for the impact that doing so has on others. [/i] Evil is when you feel you have the right to impose YOUR ideas of how the world (or universe) should be....and anyone who gets SLAUGHTERED in the process? Oh well, they were just "weak" and had it coming to them. It is that amoral and boundary-busting pursuit of individual interests at the expense of others is what is evil. ...and Oryx is a classic study into the evil or sociopathic mind...and how it justifies itself to itself.