ISSUE212

TOPIC: ISSUE212 - "If a goal is worthy, then any means taken to attain it is justifiable."
WORDS: 516 TIME: 00:45:00 DATE: 2008/7/20 0:56:46

The speaker asserts that if a goal is worthy, then any means taken to attain it is justifiable. We cannot simply decide whether this statement is right or not before we clarify that what a goal can be regarded as a worthy one and what kind of means can be used to attain a goal.

To begin with, how can we define the worthiness of a goal? Taking the cheating in exam for example, a student intend to achieve his goal for getting good scores in examination by cheating, such as copying other students' answers, using electrical devices for communication and so on. If he succeeds in cheating, undoubtedly he will get perfect scores. However, once he failed, he will be punished for what he have done and lost more than an exam eventually. So, is the goal worthy for the student's cheating in exams? Absolutely not. Only when what we received is much more than what we cost for achieving the goal can the goal be regarded as worthy one. Furthermore, it is no deny that nobody want an unworthy goal, even if it is simple to attain.

In addition, although a goal is worthy enough, we cannot take all means to attain it without being concern with the legitimacy of what we do for achieving it. For instance, nearly all the scientist wants to be the famous one in the world. Some of them make good efforts to implement their goal by hard working, persistent researching and so on, while others attain this goal by stealing others accomplishment, making fake experiment results and so forth. They both have the same goal, but the latter one, compared to the former one, using the illegal way for attaining the goal, what we call it "unjustifiable". Furthermore, what will our science field be, if all of us achieve our goal by taking any means including unjustifiable ones? These unjustifiable means will undermine the fair and honest in the science and therefore do harms to ourselves.

And then, we cannot achieve our own worthy goal with justifiable means, which has bad effects on others. Hitler, the primer of Germany in Second World War, attains his own goal which is to conquer all the other nations and kill all the Jews in the world by taking all possible means. He forced his goal on the entire German and lead the Germany into endless and crucial war. Hitler's goal is worthy, which only is regarded as worthy one by him, but his goal really did harms to others, especially the Jews. In a word, Hitler's goal is worthy for himself but was illegal and unjustifiable for the world. We cannot attain such an unjustifiable goal by certain means even if the methods we use are justifiable.

Generally speaking, before we judge whether the mean taken to attain a goal is justifiable or not, we must check whether the goal is really a worthy one. Furthermore, only when the means, which we take for achieving our goal, are not illegal and undermine others, do we regard it as justifiable one.