Within their context, that's all that exists. As such, what other goal could there possibly be? If they can kill you, to them that counts as an existence proof

Within their context, that's all that exists. As such, what other goal could there possibly be? If they can kill you, to them that counts as an existence proof of their ethic… and a failure-to-exist-proof of both you and whatever competing ethic you had. I'm reminded of Prisoner's Dilemma tournaments, and times when TitForTat tended to win out over much more hostile and ruthless strategies. In situations like this I like to look to modeling and experimentation for axioms: like the easily demonstrated proof that discontinuities in simple exchange produce inequities that are not in any way representative of merit: the natural state is not for things to average out, given some simple and natural conditions the natural state is for some unfit competitors to become vastly over-rewarded relative to their merit. Thus disproving certain assumptions that wealth in any way signals merit in any sense.