He has exactly the wrong level of conscience: just enough to feel bad about what he’s doing, but not enough to ever stop doing it. --This is ... very identifiable. I feel like there's inertia involved. You can decide something you're doing is wrong, bad, mildly undesirable, not what you want, etc., but summoning up the energy to make a change--that's another thing. ... Maybe it ought to be easier when the bad thing you're having an attack of conscience about is using people's love of their children against them, but it seems like as with small things, so with big ones...