Monday, 21 March 2022

the means shape the end - i.e., the end does NOT justify the means

Something I have come across in the past is people claiming that “the end justifies the means”.  

Now, if that is interpreted as “great” goals (e.g., trying to end world poverty, or world hunger or thirst, which are both spiritually valid and very, very, very large undertakings) deserve great efforts, that is probably justifiable.  

However, my experience is that many people mean that in the sense that it means sometimes one has to do things that are morally questionable, in order to achieve a goal that is for the benefit of others, and that is an interpretation that I disagree with.  

If I take an example of this from public life, mergers of companies often come with redundancies - sackings, in other words. To those people who lose their work, the merger has been a complete disaster. To the managers who arranged it, however, if the outcome is a more efficient, more profitable company, they will consider the pain they had along the way acceptable - particularly if most shareholders (which is most definitely NOT the general public) say they are happy with the final outcome at the annual general meeting.  

The managers and the happy shareholders would say “the end justified this means”, but a lot of other people directly involved in the situation wouldn’t.  

Let’s consider another example of this second interpretation of “the end justifies the means”, the view that anything necessary should be done to achieve “worthy” goals.  

Let’s say you want to, start a new spiritual organisation - perhaps the Elvis is Alive Mediumship Society. If you go about promoting this group ruthlessly, and perhaps in ways that are quite underhanded, you may gain a large membership, but perhaps at the expense of other, existing spiritual groups.  

Now the question would have to be asked, is that necessarily a bad thing?  

I tend towards loyalty, so my initial reaction would be, yes, that is taking from other groups, and I’d probably chuck in the word “unfairly”.  

But that isn’t necessarily the case.  

IF the Elvis is Alive Mediumship Society actually met the spiritual needs of those people who had changed their memberships more effectively, then perhaps it is not a bad thing … but what if they were coerced, or misled in some way?  

And it is at this point that I would like to introduce the reformulation of that saying, which is that “the means shape the end”.  

To illustrate that, let’s consider the Elvis is Alive Mediumship Society. If the formation of that group involved any coercion, or any underhandedness, perhaps rumours and gossip about existing groups, then no matter how many members it has, or how well it meets their spiritual needs, the group would be tainted by the moral corruption of the methods they had used. Any misdeeds done during the group’s formation, would create a link to the negativity of those misdeeds, and that negative link would undermine, would niggle at, what they are trying to achieve - even if it was spiritually worthy.  

Let’s consider a human rights lobbying group in the 1990s.  

If one wanted to argue that “the end justifies the means”, an example of the risks one could take would be to, perhaps, lobby only one side of politics. The view here would be that getting change was so important, it was best to pick the most likely way to get that change, and just do it.  

The problem with that, back in the 90s, would be that you risk having the other side of politics, at a change of government, repealing the changes you had successfully lobbied for.  

So in this case, what you had seemingly achieved, could be a false thing. On the other hand, if you approached the goal properly, doing things like educating everyone and gently bringing them along with you, then you would be more likely to get a lasting, beneficial, effective change.  

In that case, where everyone had been educated and brought gently along a path of growth, it is likely most people would have said “that end justified the means”, although what had really been applied was the idea that “the means shape the end”. 

The first example I mentioned was that of a companies being merged together. This is something I actually know a fair bit about, as I started working in the water industry in Victoria in the 80s, as the government started to reduce water authorities from over 400 to around 184, which was then further reduced – more drastically – by a subsequent government in the 90s.  

This caused a recession in the water industry, and, at the same time, the company I worked for was bought by another company, which was the first of four takeovers and acquisitions I experienced. In the course of doing that, I saw the best and the worst of how companies can approach this.  

If they approach it thinking only of shareholders and profit, their management of people is generally abysmal. If, on the other hand, they do so openly acknowledging that there will be change, and genuinely committing to helping people deal with that change, the end result is better all round. The goals of improved profit are achieved, but with far less personal stress to many workers.  

Sadly, that doesn’t apply to all the workers caught up in such events, but if they’re surrounded by co-workers who, because they’re not also stressed and worried sick are able to be supportive, well, that’s still better than when everyone is worried sick.  

I have to say that this has been handled well only once in my experience – by an American company, for what it’s worth.  

I’d now like to move this topic out further, to consider some fairly low key everyday life matters.  

Let’s say you do something like … take a car parking space that someone else had been waiting for. You may be in a hurry, perhaps for a toilet, or in need of that space because the disabled parking spaces are all full - possibly of people who don’t have permits - and you can’t walk from the spaces further away.  

If you just dive in, and then treat the person who was waiting dismissively, I would hope that your conscience would bother you. Even if it didn’t, however, you would have both the irritation of that other person, and likely some negative consequences coming back into your life in some way.  

So you got the car park and the convenience, but at what cost? Feeling guilty or stressed? Having someone else do the same, or similar to you at some future time?  

What if you had tried asking – “Hi, I can’t get a disabled space but I’m going to have trouble if I park further out. Would you mind if I took that space instead of you?”  

It might work.  

And on “the means shape the end”, I’d like to mention a saying from the training of another spiritual group, which is: “do not be trifling, even in little things”. There is a whole wealth of reasoning behind that, drawing on several sets of philosophy – including Zen, but in terms of the notion that “the means shape the end”, it is useful. If you do something with loving care and attention, and strive to make it the best you can, then it will be infused with loving energies and, even if it is not perfect, the love is going to help it along the way.  

If you make a cake with love, it will taste – or seem to taste - better than a cake made using the same recipe, but made with resentment or grudgingly.  

In more complicated matters, remembering that “the means shape the end”, rather than trying to use “the end justifies the means” to justify taking a short-cut or approaching things in a dodgy way, may mean doing things in ways that can be tedious, difficult, or downright challenging.  

If we consider the founding of the Elvis is Alive Mediumship Society, then doing it properly would involve talking to a lot of people, letting people know what you’re thinking of doing and working out how to get them to think about the things they have to think about, and doing a lot of travelling, meeting, listening, talking, considering. Maybe, as an outcome, it would lead to joint memberships, and working together to find out who is best suited to which group.  

To broaden our horizons, the problems that can occur from thinking the ends justify the means are also visible in politics, where the distrust caused by the “anything goes” attitudes of power brokers / back room people / “grey” people underlying the Watergate scandal has ultimately contributed to a host of conspiracy fantasy rubbish such as the incredibly dangerous anti-vaxxer nonsense.  

A similar set of issues arise in professional / expert fields, where some experts may have the appalling habit of thinking a pronouncement without explanation or justification is fine - which isn't helped by the rabid financial cut-throatedness of consulting in the neoliberal era, nor by experts in one field thinking they don't need experts in other areas (such as communication), nor by a history of failures such as thalidomide, DDT, the West Gate bridge collapse, Chernobyl, the under-design of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the active resistance to implementing car safety measures and addressing the climate crisis, and so on, all of which leads to distrust and problems trying to implement necessary, justifiable actions – such as addressing the climate crisis, or responding to pandemics.  

Trying to act in accordance with the principle that “the means shape the end” is incredibly difficult at times, but it also leads to a better result – the energy is better, as I’ve discussed, but the skills and knowledge accessed, and the views considered, are also more comprehensive and informative, and it is possible that catastrophic mistakes could be avoided.  

As a final thought for those “big things”: if the goal is something so big, so important, so momentous, that you could possibly consider it justified being unscrupulous, then surely it also justifies being scrupulous.  

 

 

For a few other perspectives on this, see also :  

 

 

For my original writing ONLY on this blog: 

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2025     

NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/   

Links to others works and excerpts from others works are NOT covered by the hereinbefore, and remain subject to the conditions of the original source. 




 

 


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Monday, 14 February 2022

LGBTQIASB+

PPS - see also:   

“Transgender and nonbinary youth whose pronouns are respected attempt suicide less: report”   https://www.advocate.com/exclusives/pronoun-respect-transgender-suicide-attempts   

“Post No. 2,965 - How many LGBTQIASB+ people are there in Australia?”   https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2024/12/post-no-2965-how-many-lgbtqiasb-people.html   which comments on ABS estimates released in December, 2024      

“Hmm ... TGD (and other) protection in Australia - including in workplaces”   https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2022/05/hmm-tgd-protection-in-australian.html      and   “A major win for trans+ rights”   https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2024/08/a-major-win-for-trans-rights.html      

“Lakota Spirituality 7 Genders”   https://youtube.com/shorts/tumAUKbyBvg     

“The Most Harmful Spiritual Myth: Gendered Energy”   https://leftbrainmystic.substack.com/p/the-most-harmful-spiritual-myth-gendered   “Why there is no such thing as the divine feminine or the divine masculine”    

For Australian use, I have changed the acronym to LGBTQIASB+, per the recommendations in https://theconversation.com/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-people-must-be-at-the-centre-not-the-margins-of-lgbtqia-plans-and-policies-209221.  

 

The original version of the above diagram (which is more applicable outside of Australia) is: 


From https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2022/05/hmm-tgd-protection-in-australian.html:

On TGD rights in the workplace (in Australia), I have just come across this: 

https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/Information%20sheet%20on%20new%20protections%20in%20the%20Sex%20Discrimination%20Act%20-%20FINAL.pdf

which also includes: 

From 1 August 2013 it will be unlawful under federal law to discriminate against a person on
the grounds of their: 

  • sexual orientation
  • gender identity 
  • intersex status 

Same-sex couples are now also protected from discrimination under the new definition of ‘marital or relationship status’ (this was previously ‘marital status’). 

The Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Status) Act 2013 (Cth) (SDA Amendment Act) inserts the new grounds into the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) (SDA).

and 

The SDA provides protection from discrimination for people who identify as men, women and neither male nor female. It does not matter what sex the person was assigned at birth, or whether the person has undergone any medical intervention. 

Direct discrimination could occur if a shop-assistant refused to serve a person who identifies and presents as a woman but has a deep masculine sounding voice because she felt uncomfortable about that person’s gender identity.  

Indirect - it may be indirect discrimination if an organisation’s human resources policies do not permit changes to an employee’s records. Such a policy may require a transgender woman to continually disclose information about her gender identity in order to explain discrepancies in personal details.

A couple of other links on cisgender women who are also 

More commentary will come in due course.

In the meantime, I have touched on LGBTIQA+ matters in the following posts: 


I also specifically want to add some links regarding queerness and Indigeneity, beginning with the following: 

  • Sandy O'Sullivan, Professor, ARC Future Fellow, Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University   https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/sandy-osullivan   , which includes information on the following papers (which I cannot access, but academics no doubt can):   
    • “F__king up, fixing up, and standing up (to the colonial project of gender and sexuality)”   https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/fucking-up-fixing-up-and-standing-up-to-the-colonial-project-of-g   Abstract:   “As a Wiradjuri person living on stolen Kabi Kabi Land, I begin this article by framing Yindyamarra Winhanganha as an ethos of my life, and therefore of the research I conduct. Yindyamarra Winhanganha is a complex Wiradjuri philosophy of designing a world that is made better through our actions. It forms the starting point of my relationality and centres my aspirations as a researcher. Wiradjuri is my Aboriginal language group and community, located in the colonial state of New South Wales, Australia, which constitutes a landmass larger than Portugal. In the Wiradjuri lands, there is a colonially disrupted archaeological record of occupation dating back at least 60,000 years. Relationality and connectedness underpin the conduct of my research, and—as is appropriate according to Yindyamarra—I reflect on how this approach has allowed growth, recalibration, and ethical conduct. If this article seems to only peripherally touch on anthropology, you can thank me later.”     
    • “Colonial histories and artefacts: which way gender?”   https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/colonial-histories-and-artefacts-which-way-gender   Abstract:   “This chapter explores the ways in which genders and bodies are assumed and assigned in the colonial museum, and by extension understanding the deployment of these decisions across the colonised world. The approaches by which museums interpret deep histories are not fixed; they change over time with approaches to museums practice, and also in relation to the broader world. In this way they are not devoid of contemporary understandings; they are of the world, as curators and archivists guide contemporary visitors through assigned meaning and context. This chapter explores why and how gendering of bodies of the past is interpreted to the museum visitor, with a focus on the colonial imposition of gender, and with suggestions for change through relationality and a grounding in anti-colonial approaches to understanding recall and commemoration.”    
  • “Miriam Margolyes meets sistergirls in the NT”   https://youtu.be/Fc-WPnNH55c   Margolyes is corrected on some key points      



PS - see also: 

  • “When You're Trans and Autistic”   https://youtu.be/wk0tOe83__g?si=TgkbSZKUyjjnGdue   “I got out of my grade school years unscathed only to have grown ass adults with social media poisoning and too much time on their hands take up the mantle of insecure adolescents who build their identities around harming others. I’m talking about gender criticals, by the way . . . And members of the gender critical cult like to call upon the combined forces of cultural transphobia to . . . dismiss gender incongruence expressed by autistic people as fixation or confusion, particularly in trans people who were assumed female at birth. What they never seem to do is ask us about our experiences or speak to the experts who have . . . because . . . [g]ender  criticals don't actually care about child welfare, human well-being, or medical ethics” . . .  they are trying to Trojan Horse their agenda into social relevance by relying on cis, allistic people to have not done the internal work”   Gender criticals are the genocidal  flat earthers of the sex and gender world    Also from this channel:   “I was a victim of Gender Ideology”   https://youtu.be/iKZq5z7M4ds?si=vzrFKTUppbaMbCWz   and   “Autism, Ableism, and Missouri's Attack on Trans Rights”   https://youtu.be/J50N7pKAHdg?si=PMVLf87GvUBaEFWM   
  • “Why TERFs shouldn’t be Witches - Starhawk Maiden Mother Crone Ecofascism White Feminism JK Rowling”   https://youtu.be/tKHdon3HSys   This has outstanding analysis - including historical , social, human rights, and political. The following are also relevant to this:  

And also note the following: 

  • “Three months after transitioning, in March 2013, she killed herself. Ascribing a single cause to any suicide is both dangerous and disingenuous. Lucy Meadows, like many of us, struggled under multiple burdens. But it is also true that the coroner who investigated her death, Michael Singleton, believed that the press had played a role. Speaking at the inquest, he said: ‘Lucy Meadows was not somebody who had thrust herself into the public limelight. She was not a celebrity. She had done nothing wrong. Her only crime was to be different. Not by choice but by some trick of nature. And yet the press saw fit to treat her in the way that they did.’ Finishing his statement, he turned to the gathered reporters and said: ‘And to you the press, I say shame, shame on all of you.’”   and   “In one of the question and answer sessions musicologist Melanie Marshall put forward an answer that clarified not only this problem, but which also explained to me so much about popular knowledge and general confusion over gender issues. Referencing the work of Nancy Tuana, Marshall described the concept and process of the production of ignorance: it is not just the absence of knowledge that keeps a truth from being widely known and accepted, it is also the active production of ignorance that suppresses that truth. It is not only that we are unaware of the many women composers throughout history: we are actively taught that there were none, or certainly none worth bothering about. Similarly, it is not that trans people are ignored entirely, but that what we are taught as fact can often obscure and distort the truth in a way that even silence could not.”   (from "Trans Like Me: A Journey for All of Us" by CN Lester)  
  • The following is, when shifted to the context of transwomen, the perfect reason that transwomen with deeper voices should be able to record such details with banks and the like - rather than being subjected to extra questions (and being told lies that those extra questions are compelled by national legislation, when it is, in fact, the banks' interpretation of that legislation):    "The intrusion failed in part because the attackers slipped up and because a Digital Bond researcher was alert. The e-mail was signed “Peterson.” But the security researchers knew that their boss uses his first name on e-mail, not his last." (from "Zero Day: The Threat In Cyberspace" by The Washington Post, Robert O'Harrow; Amazon) 


 

For my original writing ONLY on this blog: 

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2025     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/   

Links to others works and excerpts from others works are NOT covered by the hereinbefore, and remain subject to the conditions of the original source. 






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