Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-7232811-20130620224607/@comment-7123746-20130629183301

Kadjah Thoris wrote: Some wise ancient philospher (possibly Empy in one of his previous identities) observed that no man deliberately does evil in his own eyes. What makes our beloved Catholic Space Nazis scary is their absolute belief in the rightness of killing the alien and the witch. What's even scarier is they have a point! The major alien threats are hostile by conviction - and the Eldar are arrogant asseholes who DESERVE to be dammed. Most if not all of the minor xenos are tools of Chaos and the Devil is not only real but there are four of him (her, it)!! In this setting tolerance is giving an open gate to chaos cults and Daemonic take-over. The Tau clearly know this as well as their 'Greater Good' seems to involve assimilating aliens into their system and given that that system is controlled by enigmatic and powerful xenos and that nobody has ever bothered DEFINING the Greater Good I think strong suspicion is justified - again given the setting.

Right! The 40k universe is a very different place from our own reality- for them, concepts of mercy, freedom and tolerance are as dangerous as a bolt or chainsword to the face. It's tough to justify a supposedly "good" ideal that gets countless billions killed in the process. So I'd say that from the sounds of things, The Greater Good is actually not necessarily "Good" as we know the concept- more like "beneficial to the Tau way of life."

Maybe that term(Greater Good) is simply a poor translation and it actually means something very different to them?