| Description |
A great danger of our time is our intense preoccupation with the ends we seek, so much so that we have overlooked the effect, usually and perhaps always the determinative effect, that our choice of means will have made upon the nature of those ends. This problem is made more difficult in that our vision of our end, or purpose, or goal, is thoroughly interlaced with and powerfully defended or even determined by intense, ferocious ideology. The choice of means barely has a chance to be examined on the basis of its congruence with the end selected. Yet the selection of means will almost surely determine the end and without doubt will crucially affect it. For there exists a dialectic relationship between ends and means that cannot be denied and is ignored at the peril of grotesque distortion of our goals or ends. The problem of congruence between ends and means affects all aspects of our lives. It has obvious consequences for our political institutions, for our society, and for our psychological, emotional, and spiritual lives. The dialectical relationship between ends and means-the Hegelian thesis, antithesis, and synthesis-is nowhere more crucial and apparent than where violence is employed as a means of accomplishing a particular end, for example, to strike our husband, wife, or child; or to go to war to resolve a dispute with another state. The most extreme example of this problem would be to use nuclear weapons against another state and risk retaliation in kind in order to defend our society.2 |
