Camus isn't warning us about villains—he's suggesting that ethics aren't a luxury coating applied to civilization, but the very structure that separates human dignity from mere appetite. What makes this bracing is his refusal to assume people are naturally good; instead, he places the burden squarely on us to construct meaning through ethical choice, not inherit it. Consider the person who follows all laws and social conventions yet has no internal compass: they may function smoothly in society, but Camus would recognize them as fundamentally untethered. Without a self-imposed ethical framework—not imposed by church or state, but genuinely *chosen*—we risk becoming comfortable animals, respectable on the surface but unmoored from anything that makes us actually human.