First of all he’d argue that apart from really young children and the mentally disabled (though mentally disabled helots are probably culled early) there are unlikely to be many “innocents” in the Hegemony as its “free” population seems rather small compared to the massive number of helots and drudges.
But in essence, yes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet and with a caste system as entrenched as the Hegemony’s is you cannot expect progress, in the form of demolishing that system, to come either cheap or easy.
That said, as the player I know full well that realising my mc’s vision will require some extremely astute judgement calls and a fair bit of luck as it entails pulling back from @Havenstone’s anarchy cliff and beginning the rebuilding at basically mere seconds before the metaphorical midnight. Whereas your mc will likely have a somewhat broader window of opportunity there.
As for the eye of the beholder, regarding my XoR character there is a quote from C.S. Lewis that might as well be attributed to one his in-universe detractors, who might view him (and his “new world order”) as “evil” later on:
_"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. _
It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
The approval of his conscience is the big point here, as my mc naturally sees himself as a true idealist, who rejects the corruption and decadence of the old Hegemony and has a genuine vision for a brighter future. He is also willing to practice what he preaches and live
Of course the irony here would be the mere fact that a potential detractor would even be allowed to make such an argument would mean that, whatever its flaws, the new world order would at least be less of a totalitarian nightmare than the Hegemony currently is, even if it merely encourages a certain amount of free thought in the name of (scientific) progress.
Then again it could also be because he doesn’t really care so much about his person as he does his vision and the latter has to be strong enough to weather a fair amount of criticism.
As far as the “survival evil” or ambition bit is concerned, my mc is probably smart enough to know that unless he utterly smashes the caste system and dis-empowers the vast majority of the current nobles he’s never going to be free enough to be allowed his pursuit of both knowledge and men, at best they’d boot him back to the backwards countryside after making him either yeoman or a very minor “noble”, either way it would be back to subsistence farming, with or without a fancy sounding title. Though the more likely outcomes by far are slave, serf or sharecropper and they’d all be followed by an “unfortunate accident” rather soon after.
That plus the fact that he loathes the church of Xthonos and the Shayardene Monarchy possibly more than the Thaumatarchy itself doesn’t leave him a whole lot of options other than total revolution, if he is to avoid a Pyrrhic victory.