Does the end justify the means?

Written originally December 1999

This is the last piece I shall write this century, and I want to take a parting look at the century, and somehow try to sum it up. I have been alive, and able to understand properly what was going on in it, for more than half of it. My father was born in 1902, so I have a close connection with nearly all of it.

What best characterises the moral temperament of the century? Quot homines, tot sententiae, no doubt. (However many people, that many opinions). My personal selection is the question I have put at the head of this page. An affirmative answer has been part of the philosophy of the two most influential (in terms of their effect on the world) state leaders of the twentieth century - Stalin and Hitler. Both were certain that the answer is 'yes'. Perhaps the verdict of history will be that dictators who believed that the end always justified the means is the characteristic of the twentieth century. Europe has had four, in Italy, Spain, Germany and Russia. Africa more than four. South and Central America, Asia, the count goes on. As we reach the end of the century one would be hard put to count the total there has been, and still are, of heads of state, effectively unchallenged in power, who hold firmly to this view. Do not forget that rarely does a person gain unchallenged power without widespread support at a certain point of this climb to power. To begin with they are nearly always leaders of a crusade of some sort or other. They appeal to need, to a problem they offer to solve. But do not examine the means too closely.

It is an age old question, and a very important one. It affects good people and bad people, and it may be that the answer a person gives to it is part of the way we discover whether they are good or bad.

Before I attempt an answer, some foundation laying is appropriate. Here is an important assumption I will base my answer on. It is the presumption of human fallibility. I believe we are all capable of making mistakes of judgment. We will never perfectly predict the outcome of our actions. This is part of human fallibility. Also, as a different sort of fallibility, I believe we are all morally flawed, to a greater or lesser extent. We cannot ever be perfectly sure of the singularity of our motives. Usually they are mixed. It is rarely possible to do some known good, for instance, without also, consciously or unconsciously, hoping for approval. Soon we may be more driven by the desire of approval than anything else.

Singleness of purpose, or purity, or holiness, to use more Biblical language, is what we are to strive for, but must let others judge how far we are attaining it. Most of us are in for some nasty surprises.

One of the most dangerous positions to be in, morally, is to be engaged in a crusade against evil. Here we can so easily convince ourselves that because our intentions are so obviously right, we can shade our perception of method a little. If the end is good, how can any means be bad? That is a position it is so easy to drift into. And more to the point, in some cases, the question we most need to ask is, can we be sure that our chosen means will actually deliver the hoped for end? Or will we be tripped up on the way by the Law of Unintended Outcomes.

Since these pages are directed at the aficionados of the Internet, let us talk about evil on the Internet. Most people immediately think of pornography as the great evil of the Internet. I think this is a mistake.

Pornography is the supply method for a demand. It has progressed over the ages, and we meet the pornography of former times in art galleries, libraries, and museums. Today's pornography is cheaper to produce, and easier to distribute, but essentially little has changed. The supply side is fuelled by greed, and the demand side by the strength of our sexual drive, and the difficulty of finding a safe outlet. Politicians who make marriage and the raising of children within marriage increasingly more difficult are probably doing more to contribute to the demand for pornography than any other group of people. Pornography would wither if demand could be influenced, and here is where energies may well best be focused. Meanwhile the reality we are faced with is the combination of profitable supply and a moral climate that fans the flames of demand.

But let us take as given that we want to reduce the evil of pornography on the Internet. How?

I would like every site that wishes to distribute pornographic images simply to have to provide a method of recognition of this fact, and that the duty of ensuring this be imposed on the owner of the server it resides on. Then all the means available for regulating access can be put in place by conscientious parents to protect their children from finding their way to such sites by chance (or intent). The trouble is the industry is in such a state of infancy that there is no agreed standard for this, and about half a dozen different methods have been defined by well meaning - but sadly competing - individuals and bodies. Progress towards fewer, eventually even a single global standard, would achieve much. The person who thought about the first proposal, and produced an improved second, intended good. So did the person who thought about the first two, and developed a third. A greater good was intended. Now with six or so to choose from, and no standard yet emerging, if you actually wanted to enhance the production of pornography it would be quite smart to invent yet another new and different method of controlling pornography. This would almost certainly defer control even further.

Next let us pass on to a greater evil, the entrapment and exploitation of the young. Messages in newsgroups are apparently totally beyond control, since their source cannot be identified. And it is in the newsgroups that predators lurk. A process does exist for moderating newsgroups, and this must surely be the path towards, if not control, then at least some equivalent of a rating system equivalent to the rating of sites. Chat rooms are like other sites, and should be required to advertise their intended content or focus, so that avoidance can be achieved in the same way as with ordinary sites. Responsibility for enforcing this should rest on the owner of the server where the chat room resides.

What does cause me concern is the known fact that some who wish to police the Internet engage in the practice of posing as minors (or potential victims), so that those intent on seeking an encounter with such a victim, having used the Internet to set the meeting up, will be lured into revealing themselves.

This is fighting exploitation (a very serious evil) with deception (an apparently less serious evil).

Few would condemn this, and most applaud it. But I have my doubts. The up side is obvious: some evil people will be caught and locked away, for the protection of society. But there is a down side. Some people, teetering on the brink of giving in to exploitation may be lured into it, may have their appetite for it stimulated by the very presence of the deceitful messages. For every exploiter caught, two may be drawn into exploitation by the very method used to catch that one, who would not otherwise have become exploiters.

This brings me back to human fallibility and the Law of Unintended Outcomes. It is so pervasive, but rarely recognised in anything but retrospect. I think it is possible that it may be recognised eventually that there is a better method than deceit. As humans we are notably bad at predicting the outcome of our actions. If we shade our natural reluctance with regard to, for example, deception, we may be relying too much on our ability to predict the good outcome we are hoping we will achieve. If we have been guilty of deception, we will have committed a known evil, nonetheless.

Do we simply expose evil then? Yes, most of the time. But we must come back to our own human fallibility. We will not always reliably recognise evil. We must remember that we have been warned about judging others, 'that you be not judged'. We will sometimes (if we are very good people), and often (if we are merely ordinarily good), makes mistakes about other people, and their motives. So our exposing must be honest, and open, and without deceit, and must be done in such a way as to leave room for the possibility that we are mistaken.

I pray for the Internet to be a place where the young and innocent can safely tread, and not have unpleasant and indecent images presented to them, or be exposed to the risk of exploitation. I acknowledge that as a medium it is capable of being used for deeply evil things as well as beautiful and good things. The responsibility rests which each one of us, who uses the Internet, to use it wisely and well. We will need to act with great wisdom to help this young communications medium to a better maturity, and a greater force for good rather than evil. Whatever means we use to achieve all these good ends, let them be beyond reproach, or else we are adding to the sum of evil, not reducing it. The end does not justify the means. And this us true of every aspect of life, not just the content and use of the Internet. I have chosen examples from the Internet, but the big picture, the principles, are far more important.

In fact in the larger picture of our total lives as human beings, in the 'real' world outside the Internet, we need even more to translate these principles. From history it can be learnt that the greater the apparent good (such as purity of doctrine) the greater the enormity (such as torture) that can be justified. It is a stark lesson, and an important reminder of how dangerous good causes potentially can be. I write these thoughts at the close of the second millennium, and after a century of almost constant warfare, much of which was defended as having the best possible intentions. Has the human race not yet learnt this fundamental lesson? The goodness of our intentions is best judged by the goodness of our methods of achieving them. And to goodness we will have to add wisdom as well, if we are to achieve good ends.

So I will be entering the new year/century/millennium with a simple enough resolution: not to forget my own fallibility and imperfections. Care to join me?