"Were it not for the Evil Inclination, nobody would build a house, take a wife and beget children" said Nehemiah ben Rav Shmuel ben Nachman in Qoheleth Rabba 3:15; in Breishit Rabba 9:7, the same line is attributed to Rav Nahman ben Shmuel ben Nahman, but it is either way a salient point. But on the other hand, it is also said, in Masekhet Sukkah 52, that "In the time to come the Holy One, blessed be He, will bring the Evil Inclination and slay it in the presence of the righteous and the wicked," and it is further said, in Bava Batra 17a, that "three there were over whom the evil inclination had no dominion: Avraham, Yitzhak, and Ya'aqov," so it would seem that it might be possible to survive without the evil inclination.
To bring our use of proof-texts back to Smallville itself, it did seem to me, watching Onyx, that good Lex was quite ambitious, but his ambition led him to want to do good things. He wanted to help his father with his charitable foundation, and he told Clark that his goal with his experiments was to increase farm yields, etc. It also seems to me that good Lex wouldn't need to stand up to his father, because, without the fencing match with evil Lex, Lionel would also have stayed good; perhaps good Lex and good Lionel would have reinforced each other over time.
As for good Lex and evil Lex needing each other biologically, the only reference to that in the show itself was evil Lex' stated concern about what would happen to him if good Lex died, a concern which good Lex did not seem to reciprocate. But that's why I didn't want to kill evil Lex, but just imprison him.
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To bring our use of proof-texts back to Smallville itself, it did seem to me, watching Onyx, that good Lex was quite ambitious, but his ambition led him to want to do good things. He wanted to help his father with his charitable foundation, and he told Clark that his goal with his experiments was to increase farm yields, etc. It also seems to me that good Lex wouldn't need to stand up to his father, because, without the fencing match with evil Lex, Lionel would also have stayed good; perhaps good Lex and good Lionel would have reinforced each other over time.
As for good Lex and evil Lex needing each other biologically, the only reference to that in the show itself was evil Lex' stated concern about what would happen to him if good Lex died, a concern which good Lex did not seem to reciprocate. But that's why I didn't want to kill evil Lex, but just imprison him.