A Lecture for Someone
Apr. 22nd, 2004 01:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueYesterday, it occurred to me that the ends cannot possibly justify the means. The reasoning is pretty simple: when you take a given action, you cannot know with certainty what the result will be. Therfore, the connection of an action to its result will always contain a certain amount of coincidence; even in the controlled conditions of a laboratory performing a chemical reaction I've personally observed dozens of times and moreover worked out in the abstract, there will sometimes be a strange outlier. Maybe the air has a higher ozone level than usual. Maybe the gas line cut out for a fraction of a second. Maybe the water table is turning over. Bearing in mind what can go wrong with a simple procedure in a controlled environment, it takes little imagination to infer the instability of complex procedures in uncontrolled environments -- social and political interactions, where most of the "ends justify means" discussion occurs. I've had people yell at me for saying hello.
What it all boils down to is this: even if questionable means lead to a good end, you can't be certain it was a causal relationship, nor can you know the same thing wouldn't have happened without your actions. Certainly, it isn't healthy to harbor regret for past, unchangeable actions, but that's a far cry from backwards-justifying. After all, how can you know that this end is the end? Time is still moving forward.
By the same token - time moving forward - you can't know that any given piece of art is your best work, or any given year is your pinacle year. It's ridiculous to assume that life is a bell curve, and that eventually you'll fall as far as you've risen. Bell curves don't use time as an x-axis! They describle populations, not the progress of a single person. There is no "over the hill" because there is no hill. Look at the pattern of anyone's life; that's not the way it works. That would be like saying that success causes failure, that there's some kind of balance between the two. Life doesn't have some gravitic force working upon it, pulling down whatever you put up.
Stop comparing where you are and what you're doing to where you have been in the past, or where you may be in the future. Do what seems right now and do it the best you can. If you make something that's good enough, but you know you can do better, then do better . . . but that doesn't make the "good enough" thing any less inherently good. You can never see your own progress clearly anyway; there's a certain lack of perspective involved in not having enough distance, and there's a better than even chance that you're not looking at all the data.
Ultimately, when it comes to art, what people like is not neccessarily the stuff that is the best, or the most profound. People like the things that resonate with them, that express something they need or want to feel. If you give yourself the opportunity to mess up occasionally, you give yourself the right to experiment -- and one of those experiments might be what someone needs to see, even if everyone else rejects it. Moreover, through seeing what did and didn't work, even on a subconscious level, you give yourself more tools with which to improve. Practice and experimentation are neccessary. By definition, you can't innovate without trying something new. Great Art Takes Risks. And even repetitive, safe art can make people happy - witness the success of fast food restraunts, boy bands, and Thomas Kinkaid. There are people who read "Love Is. . ." every day, and it makes their lives more bearable. In other words, even if you keep doing the same mediocre thing over and over again, you will develop a fanbase of people who are looking for consistency. You can't lose.
Unless, of course, you don't try. This I take as a personal affront, because you've stolen from me by not using your talent - by hoarding your monopoly on the inside of your head. So if you're worried that people might think less of you for something "inferior" you create, rest assured that I will think less of you for not creating at all. And, you know, I'm evil and have a vast criminal empire that is surveiling you at this very moment. That sound in the bushes? That's one of my guys, and he's jumpy. As a matter of fact, everyone you know is secretly working for me. That's just how devious I am.
What it all boils down to is this: even if questionable means lead to a good end, you can't be certain it was a causal relationship, nor can you know the same thing wouldn't have happened without your actions. Certainly, it isn't healthy to harbor regret for past, unchangeable actions, but that's a far cry from backwards-justifying. After all, how can you know that this end is the end? Time is still moving forward.
By the same token - time moving forward - you can't know that any given piece of art is your best work, or any given year is your pinacle year. It's ridiculous to assume that life is a bell curve, and that eventually you'll fall as far as you've risen. Bell curves don't use time as an x-axis! They describle populations, not the progress of a single person. There is no "over the hill" because there is no hill. Look at the pattern of anyone's life; that's not the way it works. That would be like saying that success causes failure, that there's some kind of balance between the two. Life doesn't have some gravitic force working upon it, pulling down whatever you put up.
Stop comparing where you are and what you're doing to where you have been in the past, or where you may be in the future. Do what seems right now and do it the best you can. If you make something that's good enough, but you know you can do better, then do better . . . but that doesn't make the "good enough" thing any less inherently good. You can never see your own progress clearly anyway; there's a certain lack of perspective involved in not having enough distance, and there's a better than even chance that you're not looking at all the data.
Ultimately, when it comes to art, what people like is not neccessarily the stuff that is the best, or the most profound. People like the things that resonate with them, that express something they need or want to feel. If you give yourself the opportunity to mess up occasionally, you give yourself the right to experiment -- and one of those experiments might be what someone needs to see, even if everyone else rejects it. Moreover, through seeing what did and didn't work, even on a subconscious level, you give yourself more tools with which to improve. Practice and experimentation are neccessary. By definition, you can't innovate without trying something new. Great Art Takes Risks. And even repetitive, safe art can make people happy - witness the success of fast food restraunts, boy bands, and Thomas Kinkaid. There are people who read "Love Is. . ." every day, and it makes their lives more bearable. In other words, even if you keep doing the same mediocre thing over and over again, you will develop a fanbase of people who are looking for consistency. You can't lose.
Unless, of course, you don't try. This I take as a personal affront, because you've stolen from me by not using your talent - by hoarding your monopoly on the inside of your head. So if you're worried that people might think less of you for something "inferior" you create, rest assured that I will think less of you for not creating at all. And, you know, I'm evil and have a vast criminal empire that is surveiling you at this very moment. That sound in the bushes? That's one of my guys, and he's jumpy. As a matter of fact, everyone you know is secretly working for me. That's just how devious I am.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-22 08:49 pm (UTC)As to direct action . . . It's entirely possible that you're justified in taking direct action against bad insitutions. I agree with you 100% about the school of the Americas, although the approach I would take would be to try to sabotage its funding. However, the distinction I'm making is. . . Okay, you're saying that you accept that sometimes you have to do vaguely immoral things in order to increase the likelihood of a certain future. What you're not saying is that those things are moral as a result. Some people do. I would also posit that while you're willing to view slashing someone's tires as a form of communication, like forming a picket line or having a heated conversation, you would not bomb the building while people were there. You would not write off janitors as an acceptible loss because in the end you may have saved some people. You would also be smart enough to realize that a similar training school, (like the one run by al qaida [I think I'm spelling that wrong]) might very well open somewhere else.
In short, the important part of what you said is that even if the direct action didn't work, it was an action in and of itself for which you would not be ashamed. The important part of what I said was that can't know whether it was your direct action methods that had an effect, or a letter-writing campaign. (Incidentally, I know we're talking about a hypothetical "you" here - your solution tends to be getting involved in politics and just generally talking to people, which is cool.) Also realize that most of the ends/means people I know are theoretically willing to murder bystanders if they saw solid enough evidence that it served the cause.
-R
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-22 08:59 pm (UTC)Additionally, yes, I do disgree with the creation of revolutionary conditions, etc, or means being moral because of their ends. That said, I don't think that they are really wrong, but no one except someone who agreed with the person taking those actions would ever agree, and therefore they are unjustifiable. More to the point, I think that conditions can be created naturally if the system/person/etc is bad enough, and therefore immoral actions like you mentioned and some people advocate are not required, and therefore they are wrong because of their inherently immoral nature, whatever their justification (i love run ons).
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-22 09:14 pm (UTC)The other thing is - and this should have occurred to me immediately - you clearly *do* agree that the ends don't justify the means. I mean, that's why you think the School of the Americas is awful - it's the *pinacle* of ends-justify-means thinking. "Say, let's train people to do horrible violence so they can maybe set up oppressive regimes that are nevertheless friendly to our administration!" And even though some people choose to turn those weapons against *us*, and even though there are tons of human rights violations, ends-justify-means people say "well, that's not our fault, because it was right when we were doing it since we thought it would lead to a good end." Perfect example.
-R
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-22 09:29 pm (UTC)