(( a bad, bad man ))
Greed's . . . an interesting character. He's a homunculus, and so he comes with all the moral issues of being a homunculus, and yet there are also differences we see between him and the other homunculi. Because his function in canon is basically to explain homunculi to Ed and Al, we also get an interesting look of what he thinks of them and himself.
In camp, when he's interacting with his canonmates, the question often comes up of whether or not Greed is a "bad guy" or a "monster" or whatever. I keep meaning to essay a little on how Greed works in a moral sense and my own take on homunculi and what they are, and he's been out a little more lately, and it's been coming up a little lately ICly.
So! This is my take on Greed and--how bad of a bad guy he actually is. Because I haven't actually read ALL of FMA that's been released yet, my canonmates or others are free to come in and correct me if I've overlooked something, or to argue with me if they see it differently. |D
In canon, Alphonse actually asks Greed if he's a Bad Guy. It's one of the first exchanges they have. And Greed says in response that he wouldn't call them--meaning all homunculi, as I read it, although he could be referring to himself and his chimera gang specifically--"bad," but he wouldn't call them "good," either.
I believe that he believes this, because part of Greed's makeshift moral code is that he doesn't lie (more on that later). And I don't think it's a matter of "the bad guys always think they're doing the right thing." The way I see it, what he's saying is that homunculi are not inherently good or evil. They just are, and they can do good or bad deeds, the same way people can. A homunculus isn't "born" with a predisposition to hate humans, or to want to cause pain and chaos. It's not a matter of "I'm a homunculus, so I'm always going to enjoy watching people suffer for the hell of it." I think that's how Greed is defining "bad guy" here. Likewise, this barely needs mentioning, but obviously homunculi don't have a predisposition towards doing good deeds, either. XD
So then what is the difference between homunculi and humans? First of all, I have to say that I don't happen to know the other homunculi as well as I do Greed, and that in my opinion there are differences between Greed and the other homunculi, but I'll get into those a little more later.
There are obviously differences between Greed and a human being, and there's one that I think is the most important. And Greed knows this about himself, and he brings it up to people like Izumi and Himeko who like to argue it with him. The one major difference between Greed and a human being is that Greed absolutely can never change or control what he is.
Greed is Greed. He can't decide to turn over a new leaf. He can't go to therapy and slowly learn how to overcome his inner Greedness and learn how to be happy with what he has. He can never, ever be happy with what he has. That's beyond his abilities as a homunculus. Greed does not, in a sense, have the free will that a person has. Even if he did decide he wanted to stop viewing people as objects and learn how to be content with not having anything? He would be 100% incapable of doing so. And because he is Greed, he will never want to try. But it doesn't matter if he did! Greed exists as the embodiment of a concept, not as a human being who is simply greedy. He cannot change or grow, period. He is not a man.
Am I apologizing for him? No. I don't see Greed as a victim per se. He . . . sort of is? Because he has no control over himself. He is what he was made to be, and everything he does is a result of that. But . . . he's subhuman. It's not worth looking at him as a victim, because being a victim sort of implies that under different circumstances, he would have been a different person, and this isn't true. He's not a victim of Father, he's a creation of Father. Greed acknowledges this himself as he's about to die--he tells Father that it's his own fault Greed won't join him, because Father made him Greed, and in doing so he made it impossible for Greed to ever join him. It's built into his personality.
And Greed doesn't see himself as a victim either, I don't think. When he says that, there's no hint of self-pity or regret. Greed doesn't see anything wrong with what he is, because there is nothing else for him to be.
I think the proof that Greed is incapable of Not Being Greed is the fact that he does die. Here's a being who's obsessed with eternal life and wants nothing more in the world--and that's saying a lot--than not to die. Yet in the end, his death is his own choice. Given the decision between joining Father and living or not joining Father and dying, Greed "chooses" to die. But it's no choice at all. Joining Father at that point would mean giving up his quest to fulfill his own needs, which would essentially mean giving up being Greed, and he can't do that, not even to save his own life.
To me, that's what it means to be Greed. No, he's not a "bad guy," but he is a guy who is programmed to seek gratification for himself and to seek to possess things and to look at people as objects, and he can't change that about himself. Some of those possessions he is genuinely fond of. And I think that it is possible for Greed to do good things and be a functional, social person . . . as long as it falls within the parameters of What He Is. Like, would it be possible for him to work with Roy or Ed or whoever to take down the other homunculi? Would it be possible to be their friend, even? Yes, I think it is. But only as long as it doesn't conflict with something he wants. Greed couldn't join Father because it would involve giving up his own pursuits to aid Father's cause, and Greed's pursuits are his. Giving them up is unthinkable. He had to die rather than do so.
But . . . if something "good" happened to coincide with his interests? Or even just to not conflict with them? There is nothing preventing him from hooking up with the Good Guys or making friends with them or whatever. Greed is "evil" in the sense that he's the embodiment of a sin, and sin is evil. But he's not "evil" in the sense that he's compelled to do evil deeds or to sympathize with his fellow homunculi. He's compelled to do his own deeds, and he has no loyalty to his family whatsoever.
Greed does things for two reasons: to obtain something for himself, or to enjoy himself, the second only provided that it doesn't conflict with the first. It doesn't have to further the first, it just has to not conflict with it. And so he can never have any loyalties, and he can never really be on a side in a true sense. As it stands, right now, he is more "on the side" of Ed and Roy et al (hahah no pun intended) than he is on the side of Father and the other homunculi. This is for the simple reason that he likes them better. They're amusing to him, he's not THRILLED with the other homunculi for killing him, and he stands to gain nothing from either side, so he's kind of going along with the side that he enjoys hanging out with more (also, the side who is present in camp and thus more likely to kill him if he doesn't share info; Greed does not want to lose his lives). But this isn't a real loyalty. He sort of wants to see the Good Guys win . . . as long as he doesn't have to give anything up. If it ever came to that, not only would he not support them, he wouldn't be capable of supporting them. He's not capable of supporting anyone but himself. He's a homunculus, and in the end he has no choice in the fact that he is completely self-serving.
But there's a little more to Greed than that. Greed is . . . different from the other homunculi in a few ways. He has some very interesting quirks, and his history is different, and things start to get a little fuzzy in some places.
First of all, Greed is--as far as I know--the only homunculus that we see who actually embodies his Sin to such an extent. You can make the argument for Gluttony as well here, but when it comes to the other sins, they don't behave in the same way. Greed omg wants everything. He exists to take things! He will fight to continue taking things even at the permanent expense of his own life. On the other hand, Lust is not lustful. She's an object of lust. Wrath is not pissed off all the fucking time or anything. Envy has uh, body image issues, but he's not jealous of everyone and everything. Pride doesn't seem to be particularly egotistical. It's interesting, because Greed's insinuation (hahah ANOTHER PUN) when he dies is that HE IS GREEDY BECAUSE HE IS GREED! and yet we don't see Lust throwing away her life because working for Father will interfere with getting fucked regularly, or anything like that.
It just doesn't work the same way for the other sins, Gluttony excluded. As for whether that means something? I don't know. Maybe that will be answered someday. Or it's possible that it does work the same way for them, and they're just better at working around it. It's really only Greed's Sin that necessitates that he work alone; it would be possible for Wrath to be excessively wrathful and yet still subservient to Father, and that subservience may in time sort of supersede the importance of the Sin. I can't see it working this way for Pride--I don't think a Pride who was as prideful as Greed is greedy would be cool with being Father's bitch. But we don't know much about Pride yet, and when it comes to the other sins, I can see something like that happening.
I DUNNO. There may not really be an answer to the differences between Greed and the other homunculi, or it may be addressed later. But we do know what the effect of this difference was, and that's what's really important. The effect of Greed's greediness was that it led him to strike out on his own and pursue his own life for over 100 years, free of his bondage to Father. He is the only homunculus that we know of who has lived away from Father and refused to work for him for any period of time, much less such a long one. Greed was his own man! And this, I think, is what led to the other major difference between Greed and the other homunculi . . .
Greed has morals, of a sort, that have nothing to do with What He Is, and which even conflict with it at times.
They're rudimentary morals, arbitrary ones, and I have my theories as to how he came up with them (which I'll get to in a second). It's by no means a complete moral code. Greed has no moral compass for the most part. But he doesn't lie, and he doesn't fight women. These are like little ideals that he's chosen for himself and made a part of himself, and he dies for one of them.
I don't think that the lying thing or the women thing are either inherent qualities in being Greed. It doesn't really make sense that that would be the case. Ling, after he becomes Greed, does share these traits with the first Greed, but I think that if the first Greed hadn't decided upon them at one point, Ling wouldn't have them. In other words, I don't think that Greed was born thinking that Lying Is Wrong. I think it's something he came up with himself in the course of his 100+ years doing his own thing. Greed was busy obtaining things, being greedy, you know, rollin' how he rolls. He had no loyalties to Father or anyone else, and he wasn't made to DO anything for anyone that he didn't want to do. And in that time, things happened, and he started to develop for himself a code of conduct. He had the freedom to do this, because he didn't have a Father making him lie to anyone or sucker-punch the ladies.
I said Greed doesn't have a moral compass, and he doesn't. What I mean by that is that he doesn't give a crap about what society or any higher power thinks is "right" and "wrong." He can't--it might go against being Greed. He kidnaps Al and threatens him and tries to kill Ed all without batting an eyelash, because it doesn't bother him that killing is wrong. Why should it?
So Greed's not lying and his not fighting women . . . these aren't things he doesn't do because they're wrong. They're things he doesn't do because he's decided for himself that they go against his own PERSONAL code. Why? My guess is that he has experience with them and has had to deal with the consequences of them. In his past, he lied to people, and it came back to bite him on the ass, probably repeatedly. He's hit women, and the same thing happened. And eventually in both cases he went "Enough! I'm not doing that thing anymore. It only ever leads to trouble." And he adopted those values as a part of himself.
For the record, there are other things my Greed in CFUD Will Not Do that aren't canon, for the same reason. The list of things I can think of that CFUD!Greed will not do is rape women, try to convert lesbians, and molest children. These are all things that Greed, as I play him, has in fact done in the past, multiple times. I imagine that raping a woman was like, one of the first things he ever did after he was born. XD; But similar to the way he's developed a code not to lie or hit women, he's developed a code not to do these things, either. He did them, they didn't turn out well, and he said enough and vowed never to do them again. Again, these aren't canon. And it's not that he doesn't do these things because omg raping women and children is so wrong! Greed's mind doesn't work that way. He doesn't do them because when he did, it ended up badly enough that he decided he wasn't going to anymore, and he added them to his Code. The canon "things Greed doesn't do" came about in the same way.
What's interesting is that it seems Greed's managed to work himself to a point where the Code is actually more important than being Greed--which is completely amazing. I've been saying that Greed can't change and he can never override what he is in order to turn over a new leaf. But the fact remains that . . . he died rather than join Father. And not only did he die rather than join Father, he died rather than lie to Father about joining him.
What was there to prevent Greed from saying "Sure Dad, I'll join your cause! Just let me down and we'll work out the details!" and then, maybe, working for Father for a week and then splitting town again? Greed might have known the futility of a ploy like that, but on the other hand, here's a man obsessed with not dying; wouldn't even a lie like that, not guaranteed to work, be better than resigning himself to certain death within instants? It would at least have bought him some time to think up a plan. But no--it would have been a lie, and that's something he doesn't do. In the end, Greed's rudimentary code of values actually overrode his desire to continue living and obtaining things.
So Greed's moral code is powerful. He implements things into his code slowly and erratically, for self-serving purposes rather than "because it's wrong," according to standards that have nothing to do with being a good person. But once something's managed to make it in there, it's important to him. They're standards he has that he feels he needs to uphold for some reason, even at the expense of his own nature and his life. How does it happen? Do the other homunculi do it? Could or would they, given enough time to live their own lives instead of acting as tools of Father? I don't know.
I also don't know what exactly this implies for Greed. Does it mean that he IS capable of change and humanity? I still say no. XD I tend to take a pretty hard-line view on the homunculi when it comes to them turning "good." I will not play Greed as if it's possible unless we see it happen to another homunculus in the manga, and only if it happens to a first-generation homunculus like Envy, not to one like Greed 2.0 or Wrath (who are part human). I don't think the second-generation homunculi are the same, and I do actually think it may be possible for a homunculus like that to change and grow and break out of the bonds of what they are. But I don't think the first homunculi can do that, not fully.
Given a couple hundred years, Greed has managed to build up a little bit of humanity for himself. He's obviously capable of suppressing his nature enough to function in society. He's capable of making friends and genuinely enjoying being around people--he likes people. He feels uncomfortable and slightly guilty when he upsets them. And he's even got his own little mini code of ethics developing, and it's important to him. But he's still Greed, and he's still completely dedicated to his own fulfillment, and he still doesn't truly have a moral compass or any concern for anyone other than himself. Changing those things is beyond his reach--so no matter who he pals around with and how functional and normal he seems, he is not actually on his way to becoming a good person . . . or a person at all.
SO STFU KATAGIRI. >/
In camp, when he's interacting with his canonmates, the question often comes up of whether or not Greed is a "bad guy" or a "monster" or whatever. I keep meaning to essay a little on how Greed works in a moral sense and my own take on homunculi and what they are, and he's been out a little more lately, and it's been coming up a little lately ICly.
So! This is my take on Greed and--how bad of a bad guy he actually is. Because I haven't actually read ALL of FMA that's been released yet, my canonmates or others are free to come in and correct me if I've overlooked something, or to argue with me if they see it differently. |D
In canon, Alphonse actually asks Greed if he's a Bad Guy. It's one of the first exchanges they have. And Greed says in response that he wouldn't call them--meaning all homunculi, as I read it, although he could be referring to himself and his chimera gang specifically--"bad," but he wouldn't call them "good," either.
I believe that he believes this, because part of Greed's makeshift moral code is that he doesn't lie (more on that later). And I don't think it's a matter of "the bad guys always think they're doing the right thing." The way I see it, what he's saying is that homunculi are not inherently good or evil. They just are, and they can do good or bad deeds, the same way people can. A homunculus isn't "born" with a predisposition to hate humans, or to want to cause pain and chaos. It's not a matter of "I'm a homunculus, so I'm always going to enjoy watching people suffer for the hell of it." I think that's how Greed is defining "bad guy" here. Likewise, this barely needs mentioning, but obviously homunculi don't have a predisposition towards doing good deeds, either. XD
So then what is the difference between homunculi and humans? First of all, I have to say that I don't happen to know the other homunculi as well as I do Greed, and that in my opinion there are differences between Greed and the other homunculi, but I'll get into those a little more later.
There are obviously differences between Greed and a human being, and there's one that I think is the most important. And Greed knows this about himself, and he brings it up to people like Izumi and Himeko who like to argue it with him. The one major difference between Greed and a human being is that Greed absolutely can never change or control what he is.
Greed is Greed. He can't decide to turn over a new leaf. He can't go to therapy and slowly learn how to overcome his inner Greedness and learn how to be happy with what he has. He can never, ever be happy with what he has. That's beyond his abilities as a homunculus. Greed does not, in a sense, have the free will that a person has. Even if he did decide he wanted to stop viewing people as objects and learn how to be content with not having anything? He would be 100% incapable of doing so. And because he is Greed, he will never want to try. But it doesn't matter if he did! Greed exists as the embodiment of a concept, not as a human being who is simply greedy. He cannot change or grow, period. He is not a man.
Am I apologizing for him? No. I don't see Greed as a victim per se. He . . . sort of is? Because he has no control over himself. He is what he was made to be, and everything he does is a result of that. But . . . he's subhuman. It's not worth looking at him as a victim, because being a victim sort of implies that under different circumstances, he would have been a different person, and this isn't true. He's not a victim of Father, he's a creation of Father. Greed acknowledges this himself as he's about to die--he tells Father that it's his own fault Greed won't join him, because Father made him Greed, and in doing so he made it impossible for Greed to ever join him. It's built into his personality.
And Greed doesn't see himself as a victim either, I don't think. When he says that, there's no hint of self-pity or regret. Greed doesn't see anything wrong with what he is, because there is nothing else for him to be.
I think the proof that Greed is incapable of Not Being Greed is the fact that he does die. Here's a being who's obsessed with eternal life and wants nothing more in the world--and that's saying a lot--than not to die. Yet in the end, his death is his own choice. Given the decision between joining Father and living or not joining Father and dying, Greed "chooses" to die. But it's no choice at all. Joining Father at that point would mean giving up his quest to fulfill his own needs, which would essentially mean giving up being Greed, and he can't do that, not even to save his own life.
To me, that's what it means to be Greed. No, he's not a "bad guy," but he is a guy who is programmed to seek gratification for himself and to seek to possess things and to look at people as objects, and he can't change that about himself. Some of those possessions he is genuinely fond of. And I think that it is possible for Greed to do good things and be a functional, social person . . . as long as it falls within the parameters of What He Is. Like, would it be possible for him to work with Roy or Ed or whoever to take down the other homunculi? Would it be possible to be their friend, even? Yes, I think it is. But only as long as it doesn't conflict with something he wants. Greed couldn't join Father because it would involve giving up his own pursuits to aid Father's cause, and Greed's pursuits are his. Giving them up is unthinkable. He had to die rather than do so.
But . . . if something "good" happened to coincide with his interests? Or even just to not conflict with them? There is nothing preventing him from hooking up with the Good Guys or making friends with them or whatever. Greed is "evil" in the sense that he's the embodiment of a sin, and sin is evil. But he's not "evil" in the sense that he's compelled to do evil deeds or to sympathize with his fellow homunculi. He's compelled to do his own deeds, and he has no loyalty to his family whatsoever.
Greed does things for two reasons: to obtain something for himself, or to enjoy himself, the second only provided that it doesn't conflict with the first. It doesn't have to further the first, it just has to not conflict with it. And so he can never have any loyalties, and he can never really be on a side in a true sense. As it stands, right now, he is more "on the side" of Ed and Roy et al (hahah no pun intended) than he is on the side of Father and the other homunculi. This is for the simple reason that he likes them better. They're amusing to him, he's not THRILLED with the other homunculi for killing him, and he stands to gain nothing from either side, so he's kind of going along with the side that he enjoys hanging out with more (also, the side who is present in camp and thus more likely to kill him if he doesn't share info; Greed does not want to lose his lives). But this isn't a real loyalty. He sort of wants to see the Good Guys win . . . as long as he doesn't have to give anything up. If it ever came to that, not only would he not support them, he wouldn't be capable of supporting them. He's not capable of supporting anyone but himself. He's a homunculus, and in the end he has no choice in the fact that he is completely self-serving.
But there's a little more to Greed than that. Greed is . . . different from the other homunculi in a few ways. He has some very interesting quirks, and his history is different, and things start to get a little fuzzy in some places.
First of all, Greed is--as far as I know--the only homunculus that we see who actually embodies his Sin to such an extent. You can make the argument for Gluttony as well here, but when it comes to the other sins, they don't behave in the same way. Greed omg wants everything. He exists to take things! He will fight to continue taking things even at the permanent expense of his own life. On the other hand, Lust is not lustful. She's an object of lust. Wrath is not pissed off all the fucking time or anything. Envy has uh, body image issues, but he's not jealous of everyone and everything. Pride doesn't seem to be particularly egotistical. It's interesting, because Greed's insinuation (hahah ANOTHER PUN) when he dies is that HE IS GREEDY BECAUSE HE IS GREED! and yet we don't see Lust throwing away her life because working for Father will interfere with getting fucked regularly, or anything like that.
It just doesn't work the same way for the other sins, Gluttony excluded. As for whether that means something? I don't know. Maybe that will be answered someday. Or it's possible that it does work the same way for them, and they're just better at working around it. It's really only Greed's Sin that necessitates that he work alone; it would be possible for Wrath to be excessively wrathful and yet still subservient to Father, and that subservience may in time sort of supersede the importance of the Sin. I can't see it working this way for Pride--I don't think a Pride who was as prideful as Greed is greedy would be cool with being Father's bitch. But we don't know much about Pride yet, and when it comes to the other sins, I can see something like that happening.
I DUNNO. There may not really be an answer to the differences between Greed and the other homunculi, or it may be addressed later. But we do know what the effect of this difference was, and that's what's really important. The effect of Greed's greediness was that it led him to strike out on his own and pursue his own life for over 100 years, free of his bondage to Father. He is the only homunculus that we know of who has lived away from Father and refused to work for him for any period of time, much less such a long one. Greed was his own man! And this, I think, is what led to the other major difference between Greed and the other homunculi . . .
Greed has morals, of a sort, that have nothing to do with What He Is, and which even conflict with it at times.
They're rudimentary morals, arbitrary ones, and I have my theories as to how he came up with them (which I'll get to in a second). It's by no means a complete moral code. Greed has no moral compass for the most part. But he doesn't lie, and he doesn't fight women. These are like little ideals that he's chosen for himself and made a part of himself, and he dies for one of them.
I don't think that the lying thing or the women thing are either inherent qualities in being Greed. It doesn't really make sense that that would be the case. Ling, after he becomes Greed, does share these traits with the first Greed, but I think that if the first Greed hadn't decided upon them at one point, Ling wouldn't have them. In other words, I don't think that Greed was born thinking that Lying Is Wrong. I think it's something he came up with himself in the course of his 100+ years doing his own thing. Greed was busy obtaining things, being greedy, you know, rollin' how he rolls. He had no loyalties to Father or anyone else, and he wasn't made to DO anything for anyone that he didn't want to do. And in that time, things happened, and he started to develop for himself a code of conduct. He had the freedom to do this, because he didn't have a Father making him lie to anyone or sucker-punch the ladies.
I said Greed doesn't have a moral compass, and he doesn't. What I mean by that is that he doesn't give a crap about what society or any higher power thinks is "right" and "wrong." He can't--it might go against being Greed. He kidnaps Al and threatens him and tries to kill Ed all without batting an eyelash, because it doesn't bother him that killing is wrong. Why should it?
So Greed's not lying and his not fighting women . . . these aren't things he doesn't do because they're wrong. They're things he doesn't do because he's decided for himself that they go against his own PERSONAL code. Why? My guess is that he has experience with them and has had to deal with the consequences of them. In his past, he lied to people, and it came back to bite him on the ass, probably repeatedly. He's hit women, and the same thing happened. And eventually in both cases he went "Enough! I'm not doing that thing anymore. It only ever leads to trouble." And he adopted those values as a part of himself.
For the record, there are other things my Greed in CFUD Will Not Do that aren't canon, for the same reason. The list of things I can think of that CFUD!Greed will not do is rape women, try to convert lesbians, and molest children. These are all things that Greed, as I play him, has in fact done in the past, multiple times. I imagine that raping a woman was like, one of the first things he ever did after he was born. XD; But similar to the way he's developed a code not to lie or hit women, he's developed a code not to do these things, either. He did them, they didn't turn out well, and he said enough and vowed never to do them again. Again, these aren't canon. And it's not that he doesn't do these things because omg raping women and children is so wrong! Greed's mind doesn't work that way. He doesn't do them because when he did, it ended up badly enough that he decided he wasn't going to anymore, and he added them to his Code. The canon "things Greed doesn't do" came about in the same way.
What's interesting is that it seems Greed's managed to work himself to a point where the Code is actually more important than being Greed--which is completely amazing. I've been saying that Greed can't change and he can never override what he is in order to turn over a new leaf. But the fact remains that . . . he died rather than join Father. And not only did he die rather than join Father, he died rather than lie to Father about joining him.
What was there to prevent Greed from saying "Sure Dad, I'll join your cause! Just let me down and we'll work out the details!" and then, maybe, working for Father for a week and then splitting town again? Greed might have known the futility of a ploy like that, but on the other hand, here's a man obsessed with not dying; wouldn't even a lie like that, not guaranteed to work, be better than resigning himself to certain death within instants? It would at least have bought him some time to think up a plan. But no--it would have been a lie, and that's something he doesn't do. In the end, Greed's rudimentary code of values actually overrode his desire to continue living and obtaining things.
So Greed's moral code is powerful. He implements things into his code slowly and erratically, for self-serving purposes rather than "because it's wrong," according to standards that have nothing to do with being a good person. But once something's managed to make it in there, it's important to him. They're standards he has that he feels he needs to uphold for some reason, even at the expense of his own nature and his life. How does it happen? Do the other homunculi do it? Could or would they, given enough time to live their own lives instead of acting as tools of Father? I don't know.
I also don't know what exactly this implies for Greed. Does it mean that he IS capable of change and humanity? I still say no. XD I tend to take a pretty hard-line view on the homunculi when it comes to them turning "good." I will not play Greed as if it's possible unless we see it happen to another homunculus in the manga, and only if it happens to a first-generation homunculus like Envy, not to one like Greed 2.0 or Wrath (who are part human). I don't think the second-generation homunculi are the same, and I do actually think it may be possible for a homunculus like that to change and grow and break out of the bonds of what they are. But I don't think the first homunculi can do that, not fully.
Given a couple hundred years, Greed has managed to build up a little bit of humanity for himself. He's obviously capable of suppressing his nature enough to function in society. He's capable of making friends and genuinely enjoying being around people--he likes people. He feels uncomfortable and slightly guilty when he upsets them. And he's even got his own little mini code of ethics developing, and it's important to him. But he's still Greed, and he's still completely dedicated to his own fulfillment, and he still doesn't truly have a moral compass or any concern for anyone other than himself. Changing those things is beyond his reach--so no matter who he pals around with and how functional and normal he seems, he is not actually on his way to becoming a good person . . . or a person at all.
SO STFU KATAGIRI. >/