ROW Episode 43

In this episode we explore the need to replace the outworn belief that the ends justify the means with a new, more constructive belief that the means must be as worthy as the ends.

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast dedicated to envisioning a better world and to infusing hope that we can make the principled choices to build that world. In this episode, we explore the need to replace the outworn belief that the ends justify the means with a new, more constructive belief that the means must be as worthy as the ends. Let's just launch into today's conversation. If we are interested in successfully building a better world, we're going to have to identify the limiting beliefs and false assumptions upon which the ship of humanity has repeatedly foundered, and upon which it will continue to founder as it sets sail on its course towards a better world, which is something we all want. These limiting beliefs and false assumptions are akin to icebergs. They're hidden from view and yet they threaten us as a human society. So it's key that we first identify them, then remove and replace them with a new set of more empowering and constructive assumptions and principles. There is one particular old outworn belief that I wanted to talk about today. It's encapsulated in the old saying, The ends justify the means." This belief has been prevalent in all aspects of human life, including, but not limited to, business and government. On the basis of this belief, we justify our behavior on the grounds that the benefit of the end result excuses any harm done along the way. That's the justification. Now recently I've been reading a really interesting book by Rachel Maddow. It's a new book called Prequel. I'm going to hold it up here for you to see. I highly recommend it because one learns a lot about the history of the United States in the last century, especially in the 30s, when we came very close to fascism and yet we managed to avert that crisis. It's really intended to be of hope to say we've done it before. If we were to find ourselves, as we may be doing, in a similar precarious situation today, we should take heart because there are things we can do as individuals. It is a book that's intended to empower individuals. When I read books, what I like to do is to reflect on the things that I learn and to correlate them with some ideas and beliefs that I myself have or some thoughts and reflections that I've been having. And there was a particular tale in this book about a gentleman by the name of Huey Long that I wanted to share with you because it meshes with this idea. It's actually an illustration of what happens when we blindly follow this adage of the ends justifying the means and what it can lead to and therefore what we can learn from it. So who was Huey Long? Huey Long was the governor of the State of Louisiana in the 1930s, at a time when Americans, after the Great Depression, were clamoring for a better life. He, in order to answer this distressing call of the American people, built a grassroots political movement called Share Our Wealth. Sounds great, doesn't it? On the one hand, he had this great vision and the stated motive to eliminate the extremes of wealth and poverty. What a laudable goal. And to share the great wealth of this nation. He famously said,"None shall be too rich and none shall be too poor." Again, on its face, this was a very appealing end, appealing goal. To this end, he also proposed policies, that included, according to Rachel Maddow and her research, a guaranteed monthly pension for those over 60 who needed it, a free college education for all those who wanted one, a guaranteed annual family income amounting to a third of the national average, and so on. You get the idea. This guy has come up with some really good policies. But he didn't limit himself to policies. He actually achieved a lot for his people in the state of Louisiana. He took concrete steps to achieve these lofty goals. For example, he built 2,500 miles of newly paved roads in Louisiana. He built 40 bridges. He provided free textbooks in public schools. He provided free night schools to teach over 100,000 illiterate adults to read. And he made sure that state hospitals were built to serve everyone in Louisiana, whether they have the means to pay for their hospital stay or not, and for the cost of the procedures. These are all incredibly laudable achievements. But here comes the rub. The means that he used to attain these lofty goals were deeply problematic and unworthy of those goals. So what happened here? He did away with all competing political interests. So he stood alone. He had no rivals. There were no checks and balances on his own powers. He basically brought the whole State of Louisiana under the control of his political machine. He stacked officers at every level of government. He used bribes and threats to get what he wanted. He essentially ran Louisiana like a mob boss, doling out rewards to those who are loyal while also demanding that they pay him tribute. The police and prosecutors were under his control, as was the state militia. He had a limitless appetite for authority, according to Maddow, to such an extent that when he was then elected a senator of the United States, he insisted on keeping his job as governor for the remaining two years until he could install a successor, knowing that no one was going to stop him. By doing this, he reaped benefits like controlling public funds, having the taxing power to raise more funds, having control of the judiciary, and the armed militia. As he famously told a reporter, here's the quote,"A perfect democracy can come close to looking like a dictatorship, a democracy in which people are so satisfied. They have no complaint." In effect, what he was doing was that in the guise of harnessing discontent and addressing the needs of people, he was actually decimating democratic norms from within. Now, this should serve as a warning to all of us. Here's a lesson to be learned from taking this idea that,"The ends justify the means. I'll do anything it takes to get to this lofty goal I have." We have to beware and we have to train ourselves to be astute and always ask ourselves this question. What are the means that you're planning to employ in reaching this wonderful, lofty, sought after goal? And what are the costs of employing those means? And are we willing, or is it worth it to us to shoulder those costs? Because we will often find that the costs that we will have to pay, put us in an even more disadvantageous position. So any benefits we are to gain from achieving the end will be severely undermined and overtaken to a large extent by the costs that we have to pay. Now, we see this kind of bargain being struck in countries in our world today, where the autocrat or the dictator will say to their people,"Hey, listen! You just give us full control of your lives and state resources, and we will make sure that you have economic prosperity." we know that there are nations that are built on this bargain and the cost in terms of the quality of the lives of their people, and their freedom to express themselves and freedom to truly actualize their potential is severely limited. What is even more worrying is that we hear continually the stated willingness of voters in various countries to give up democracy if they could have in return a benevolent dictator, who could guarantee that some of their pressing problems would be fixed. In South Africa, I remember them questioning some of the voters. And they were saying, we're happy to have a dictator, give up democracy, if the dictator can ensure that we were all employed, that we can earn a living, that we have access to electricity, and so on. Basically, some of these pressing needs that they had would be met. And we hear this in other places. It behooves us, the onus is on us as citizens of the world to educate ourselves and to be astute and to be wary and to ask the smart questions. Now, one of the interesting things we see is that this belief that the ends justify the means often goes hand in hand with something else, which is a behavior that is one that we could call short termism. Acting in short term self interest and without regard to long term consequences. Another word for it that I like to use is expediency. We have to be careful about this, because by employing short termism, we find that not only do we not actually solve our current problems at root--we may temporarily quench the flames, but the embers continue to burn, waiting for another wind to blow and fan the flames-- but in addition to not addressing the actual root cause problems, we tend to sow the seeds of future and greater disasters. A good example that I recently came across that I wanted to share with you of this, of short term behavior that involves very often turning a blind eye to bad behavior on the part of other countries is what Britain is currently doing. It is failing to speak up about Rwanda's use of force and involvement in the atrocities in the war in East Congo. Why is Britain failing to speak up? Because of its expedient short term interest. It's looking to send a portion of those seeking asylum in Britain and shipping them out to Rwanda, deporting them to be processed there. It's entered into a deal with the Rwandan government to, to take a number even though the number is not great,--apparently it's only several hundred people,-- but they're trying to use this as a way of quelling the surge of migrants to their shores. Now, this is definitely a short term approach. What is astounding and sad is that this behavior of failing to speak up and do the right thing is compounded by Britain's current toying with the idea of withdrawing from the European Court of Human Rights. This is a court that sets the freedom of individual rights. And it was a court whose principles were signed off on by Britain. She was the first country to sign off on these principles after the end of the Second World War. Having taken a hand in shaping these principles and this court, Britain is now thinking of withdrawing from these principles. Why? Because the court had the audacity to block the first group of flights of these asylees that were supposed to be flown to Rwanda, on the grounds that Rwanda was not a safe country and under international law, it was not possible for Britain to expel and deport these asylum seekers to Rwanda. So you see how, one set of short term thinking leads to consequences that we would never have dreamt on, and we start basically digging our own long term graves. Another example of this expression of the ends justifying the means and therefore short termist behavior includes trying to buy peace at any cost, including appeasing the aggressor. We all know the history of the Nazis, and we know what happened, especially when Hitler first set out to conquer the land surrounding Germany, and unlawfully took them. There were those countries who in the name of peace, were willing and wanting to appease him and turn a blind eye to this flouting of international law and norms. Today we see something similar, and I just want to raise this as a question because it's worth thinking about it in the context of this conversation we're having about this principle. We see something similar playing out, for instance, in Ukraine, with some insisting that there be negotiations for a deal for peace based on giving up land for peace. That's the transaction, land for peace. Question mark, something for you to think about. Is this short term expedient thinking? Are we prioritizing short term results? A short term piece, we don't know how long it will last, in fact likely to be temporary if the aggressor is emboldened to continue their bad behavior and doesn't suffer consequences. If we reward them with land, then what is to stop an aggressor from going after new pieces of land? Especially if this is not the first time they've done it. To think that we can solve a problem like this by just giving up some land and we'll buy peace, we may buy peace, but for how long? A couple of months, a couple of years. It certainly doesn't look like it's going to be a long term peace. And who is to say in the future what other countries might then be threatened by the same aggressor? Countries like maybe Moldova or Lithuania and Poland. This is what one reads about. Also consider the unwitting message that entering into this kind of short term deal sends to other countries who might have expansionist desires. What would be the message that a country like China would get about it being okay for it to swallow up disputed islands in the South China Seas? What about its desire to reunify with Taiwan? What would the message be from the international community to such countries? That it's okay to just go ahead, take what you want, and in the end, we'll always strike a deal with you. You'll get at least a portion of what you took in contravention of international law, at least a portion, if not all. And so it would encourage this behavior of treating international laws with impunity. Now, we said that this principle applies not only in the area of governance, but also in the area of business. And again, another recent glaring example that we see is Boeing. A corporation that has made certain unfortunate decisions with massive impacts to life and limb. Boeing is in competition with another European company, Airbus, that has been building these new jets. Boeing wanted to keep up. It wanted to make profits and get into the market. And so it started producing these new jets and wanting to do it faster and faster at an accelerated pace. It was leading to intense pressure within Boeing upon the employees to meet crazy production deadlines. They were trying to produce planes at high speed to get them out. So the ends were laudable: get out these planes, get them out there, compete with Airbus, and make good profits. Okay, for a corporation, that's considered a good goal, right? That's why they're in business most of the time. But at what cost? What were the means they employed? Was it the cost of getting things right? They basically ended up employing shortcuts in terms of quality control. One of the engineers and aviation safety experts who was interviewed in a New York Times article said that he had seen workers assembling planes, trying to install parts that hadn't even been logged. Parts that arrived from the supplier hadn't been logged or inspected to see whether they were defective or not. They were just trying to cut out as many parts of the process as possible in order to speed up production. Wires were routed incorrectly. Employees, in order to get their piece of the job inspected quickly, would go inspector shopping. So what happens there is that you then create relationships with inspectors who like you and who therefore are not as stringent in their monitoring and verification of your procedures. Mechanics building planes were sometimes allowed to self verify. That means sign off on their own work. Imagine this, you at work, getting to write your own reviews, getting to sign off on your own work without your superior signing off. And to compound all these problems, new crops of workers that were being hired after COVID, when they had to get rid of a lot of workers, a lot of these new workers were less experienced, but Boeing didn't provide them, according to reports reported in the media, with sufficient training and just expected them to somehow pick it up from their more seasoned peers. Suppliers were also struggling to keep up, to meet quality standards while meeting the schedule of production of parts required by Boeing. So it's no big surprise that the means employed were truly not worthy for the ends. Especially since airplanes should be safe, since we all put our lives in the hands of these pilots and these airplane manufacturers every time we take a flight anywhere. So what can we replace this principle of the ends justify the means with? We can replace it with a new, empowering, constructive principle that the means must be as worthy as the ends. The journey to getting to the end is as important, if not more important, than the end itself. This in turn also requires that we replace the habit of expediency with a principled approach to both decision making and problem solving. A principled approach means three steps. We identify the principles that we want to make sure apply. We agree on them within the corporation or within our system of government. And then we apply them methodically and without compromise. It's only by taking these two steps, in other words, shifting the way we think about achieving ends by ensuring that the means are as worthy as the ends, coupled with replacing short termism or expediency with a long term proactive approach that is principle based. It is only by adopting this mindset and habit that we have any hope or prayer of building the kind of better world that we want, that is grounded in principles of equity, justice, and oneness. Now, if you like the kinds of content that we're covering here, including in this episode, you can learn more in this book that was published in 2021, The Alchemy of Peace: Six Essential Shifts in Mindsets and Habits to Achieve World Peace, available on Amazon digitally and in hard copy. And otherwise, please do comment, both for those of you listening to this on the YouTube channel and for those of you on Facebook in the chat. I'd love to hear your thoughts and for us all to engage in conversation and do share what you've heard here today with your friends and peers. These are conversations that I believe it's key that all of us continue having in order to build the kind of country, countries, and world that we want. Okay. Take care. Bye bye. That's all for this episode of Reimagining Our World. I'll see you back here next month. If you liked this episode, please help us to get the word out by rating us and subscribing to the program on your favorite podcast platform. This series is also available in video on the YouTube channel of the Center for Peace and Global Governance, CPGG.