Letters: Does the end justify the means?

 Dear friend,

Trust you’re good.

Here again, right? Yeah.

“The end justifies the means.” This statement is often used in situations that require justification for an action that is typically seen as unacceptable within certain social constructs.

However, does the end really justify the means? Prolly not, in many instances, and ideally, you shouldn’t aim to die on such a hill.

Using this popular example, borrowed from many Western justice Systems during evidence gathering and investigations, an investigator, though he may successfully secure the conviction of an offender with strong evidence, is liable to be prosecuted if the ‘means’ by which the evidence was obtained are legally wrong.

Stay with me,

This means that though the court may appreciate the fact that your evidence helped the conviction, if the process by which you got that evidence is illegal, you just might be prosecuted or fined for it. 

In some cases, it may be ruled as inadmissible.

i.e., obtaining video evidence from an illegally mounted CCTV, or hacking into someone's device just to obtain evidence.

Now, the said offender may be guilty, but has your end justified the means? It appears not.

Since we’ve seen this, which happens literally, why then do we let this philosophy guide our lives?

Does depriving one of their fundamental rights justify whatever goal we set to achieve, even if desirable and ‘good’?

Does fraud justify the good life and money that comes with it?

Understandably, it is a dog-eat-dog world, where most games are zero-sum games, but well?

The end never always justifies the means; have you not heard of, or seen, cases where the means neutralize a potentially beneficial end, and, as a result, the person behind the process gets crushed to the point that they end up wishing the results were taken away from them.

The means matter a lot, because the destination is in the process itself.

Rooting for you, and I trust that you’re rooting for me too.

PS: Next month, I will release the list of some of my recommended podcasts and links to go listen to them. For now, have a productive week, and a merry Christmas in advance.

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• Joseph.

P.S.: At the time I wrote this article, it was in early November.