But in order to justify their actions to themselves, they have to convince themselves that what is best for them is what is best for everyone else. Therefore, anyone who is opposed to them must either be evil, or a fool.

Have you ever seen a villain anywhere who even suspected he might be mistaken, or acting for himself alone? They always justify whatever they are doing as a selfless and moral act. The Communists saw themselves as abolishing the evils of capitalism and bringing about the Worker's Paradise, and the Nazis saw themselves as fulfilling the destiny of the Master Race by eliminating the world of inferior and evil species of sub-humans. Both of them described their ideologies as "scientific", and they borrowed the terminology and methods of science to cloak their lies in legitimacy.

This is the tragedy of Man. Not that he wages war on and enslaves his brothers, but that he feels he has the right to do so. His model of reality is rigged from the start so that he has no choice but to do what is best for himself, and he can prove logically and morally why he has the right to do so.

Still, it isn't quite as hopeless as all that. Most people are aware that others will defend themselves, just as they have the right to do so, and most people try to avoid conflict as best they can because bitter experience has taught them that it is at its best, a very dangerous affair. Natural boundaries establish themselves, negotiation and compromise help ease the pressure, and when there is conflict, it is hopefully minimized.

But look out for the one who has a model (or a simulation, to use the terminology I introduced in this series of "breast threads") that requires that model propagate itself to others, and that those who resist it must be mistaken or evil. This is where religion and ideology becomes ways of organizing our personal realities. There is no difference between Crusade and Jihad. They color and interpret all facts and observations so they justify the model, make it inevitable, make it necessary.