The Ends Do Not Justify the Means & the Means Do Not Justify the Ends!

The timeworn locution the ends justify the means and/or the redundancy the means justify the ends, is the most wellpropagated ethical shortcut known to Philosophy. Popes use it for God's good. Bankers use it for Capitalism's good. Presidents use it for the Nation's good. Generals use it for the Army's good. Lawyers use it for the Law's good. Journalists use it for The Truth's good. The war criminal, Henry The Carpet Bomber Kissinger, used it with aplomb defying international law. One mayor of New York, Michael R Bloomberg, rationalizes that the NYC crime rate has decreased because his police officers transgress the Constitution of the United States. One president of the United States, again brushing aside the Constitution, has kept prisoners locked in cells for years and years without having charged them with any crime. Can one think of an example where this overexerted, tyrannical in nature, expression has no clout? Do we have here an ethical code in reverse? Life is not a black and white affair even if authoritarian spokesmen and women would have us believe it is. Rules might be bent to accommodate some unique but not universal dilemma. It is also thought by the majority of human beings that regulations are in fact made to be brokenand, of course, they are! In Philosophy, situation ethics is robustly debated with varying self-serving interpretations of it offeredthe majority of which decry, thank goodness, the use of immorality (Foolishness) to attain a moral (Intelligence) final stage. Here are two ethical brainteasers to consider: On one beyond one's imagination police television series in which the father of a police detective and his sister, a prosecuting attorney in the same city, is coincidently the chief of police of that city, the family confronts various ethical quandaries. The police detective is an emotional and frequently hotheaded character. His sister, the lawyer, is a

calm, cool and collected individual and definitely less impassioned than her brother, but when they are embroiled in argumentation, the police chief father brings them both to respect Shakespeare's famous saying: Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper, sprinkle cool patience. At the dinner table, this self-righteous family frequently rests its cases, passes the hot potato, to the Lord aboveafter they have recited the Roman Catholic grace before meals. Yet one day, when the two of them are out of their father's sight, they both come to verbal blows over the handling of a hostage situation. The brother has admitted to his sister that he to save the life of a little girl sequestered in an unknown hostage locationrammed the head of a suspect into a toilet bowl until he told the detective the place where the young lady was being held against her will. The prosecuting attorney is aghast at her brother's behavior, yet he still insists he was right in doing what he did because he saved the missy's life. The sister eventually throws up her arms in frustration and turns and taunts her brother with this admonition: You just don't get it. On another police television series, two detectives put a hood over a suspect's head, drive him to a beach, and tell him that if he doesn't reveal his secrets to them, he will be thrown off a cliff into the dark blue sea. The defendant relinquishes all he knows to satisfy the two undercover police officers. When the interrogation is terminated, the investigators push the individual off the cliff, only five feet high, and the interrogated gent safely falls onto a pile of sand. There are two trends at work here. In the first, some mortals will exclaim that the police officer should not have dunked the one in custody's head into the toilet bowlbut most would be glad that he did! There exists a tension between what is done and what should be done. The sister, the functionary representing the law, offers the idea that there is an alternative to outright violence, to some course that does not pander to the base instincts of human beings under an enormous stress during a genuinely difficult state of human affairs. But she also signals that it might be almost useless to hope that the city's citizens might upgrade their conduct to reach that more sublime stratum where dignity and courage are the norms. If she cannot convince her brother to change his ways, how could she expect to alter the deportment of millions? They just don't get it. They never will? The law enforcers who have threatened to dump their captive into

the sea, have completely abrogated the principles of law set in place to protect all citizens belonging to a determined society including themselves. They have no qualms about stepping out of bounds no matter what the existential situation might require of them. They have given themselves carte blanche to interpret the law as they see fit. These defenders of the law have voluntarily become criminals. They know it; they also know they can get away with doing what they do illegally because, quite frankly, nobody knows what they have done or what they might do. They just don't get it. They never will. The two cases are pitiable. We view human beings caught up in double-bind settings that are tormenting them. If we calculate that we bipeds have not been crawling on all four's now for about four million years, the fact that we have been in a the ends justify the means and a have your cake and eat it too dead end (We just don't get it!) for all these millennia is not a terribly remarkable compliment regards our intelligenceour ability to rationalize. Further, the fight fire with fire mindset (fight the criminals by being criminals) is additional proof that we also are in flight to becoming even more uncivilized. The concept of Justice, lamentably, more and more, every day, is enfeebled. Fiat jus titia et pereat mundus? Throughout the world, Society is running amok with crime, greed and corruption, and governments are at a loss trying to tame this freewheeling madness. For decades, during the cold war, reactionaries employed the threat of using nuclear arsenals to chasten human nature's propensity to use whatever means available to attain its ends. But corporations that construct nuclear reactors have called this bluff. (Who needs nuclear bombs when we have nuclear reactors?) A new paper tiger had to be concocted: the more insidious Big Brother! The wordspeak is that every word we utter or note down, every thought we possess can be observed, recorded, archived and used indiscriminately against us at a later date. The hypocrisy is striking! The president of the DisUnited States rallies to defend the excogitations of Justice, while at the same time reactionary dupes (Manning and Snowden?) are let loose to let the world know anyone might have his head dunked in a toilet bowl merely at the command Just do it! Two reasons offer us the idea that things will only get worsethat our sense of a global community functioning in peace and cooperation is only a pipe dream that will end in a frightening

reverie. The first is that people all over the world are migrating exponentially to the cities where they expect a better, more prosperous life. (More toilet bowl dunks?) The second is that the population of the world is estimated to be 8,000,000,000 in 2025 and 10,000,000,000 in 2050. The United Nations predicts that if the world population continues to increase at its present rate, in 2300 there will be 134,000,000,000 people on our planet. We just don't get it, do we! Have a nice nightmare...
Authored by Anthony St. John 18 August MMXIII Calenzano, Italy www.scribd.com/thewordwarrior