Do the Ends Justify the Means? (Blog Post 3)

     A question as broad as this one can be quite subjective.  While it is easy to make a decision regarding extreme cases on opposite sides of the spectrum, as one delves deeper into this concept they quickly discover a huge gray area.
   
     In some cases, the ends do indeed justify the means.  One side of abstract issue can be illustrated by an everyday concept: time out.  A parent may put their child in time out to stop bad behavior and prevent it from happening again.  To the child, this punishment is neither good nor noble, rather it is often unpleasant and upsetting.  However, in retrospect, when one considers the mildness of the punishment compared to its effectiveness and resulting improvement in behavior, one would not hesitate to announce that in this case the ends do indeed justify the means.

     On the opposite side of this issue is an extreme case: that of Joseph Stalin.  When he gained control of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s, its economy was far behind that of the rest of the world.  Stalin was determined to industrialize the Soviet Union and transform it into a superpower.  After only a few decades he accomplished what had taken multiple centuries in other countries.  However, there was a catch: in order to institute this much change in such a short period of time, millions of his own people had to be killed.  People who opposed him were killed or exiled to labor camps, while the forced collectivization of agriculture resulted in widespread famine and starvation.  Although Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into a successful superpower, he did so by becoming a totalitarian dictator who used terror and violence to reach his goals.  In this case, the ends certainly did not justify the means.
   
     Now consider the issue of Hiroshima and the atomic bomb.  100,000 American soldiers had already died in the Pacific theater during World War II, and every day that Japan did not surrender, more were killed.  However, 80,000 people were killed instantly in Hiroshima, with another 40,000 in Nagasaki.
Now it is immensely more difficult to ascertain what the correct or ethical answer is.  Perhaps it will never be answered.



Becky Reals