Published 23:49 Sunday, June 7th, 2009 by yeer 604 views
ISSUE 212
212、"If a goal is worthy, then any means taken to attain it is justifiable."
The speaker asserts that any means can be taken to attain a goal if it is worthy, while he or she fails to take into account the cost caused by means taken to realize the goal. If adverse consequences derived from the pursuit of certain goals outweigh benefits we expect, then the means we take should not be considered to be justifiable.
To obtain personal economic success is well acknowledged and encouraged in modern society. Various means are available for reaching this goal. For example, you could choose to try your best to become an excellent businessman like Bill Gates. In this case, your success in terms of business not only realizes your dream–being a rich man, but also benefits lots of consumers due to your innovative products with high quality and sets up a typical example inspiring other young people. On the other hand, for an extreme case, stealing and bank robbery are another choices. While you can be rich over night, your “success” is based on the damage of interests of others, which is illegal, let alone justifiable.
The criterion for determining whether a means is justifiable also applies to a country and a society. Some countries rich of forest, for example, those in Amazon area, see deforestation and exports of timber as a main source of national revenue irrespective of the negative influence by doing this. As a matter of fact, large scale deforestation without sufficient restoration contributes largely to Green effect, aridity and desertification, posing a grave threat to the domestic people as well as the whole human being. Another relevant example is about China. As Chinese government intend to achieve instant improvement regarding the quality of Chinese people, the development of education especially in high level has been accelerated during recent years. More and more students are admitted with loosen standards in college and university. Nevertheless, more graduates find it is difficult to get jobs while lots of employers complain for the shortage of skillful mechanic who should be trained in vocational schools rather than institution of higher learning. Furthermore, high tuition fee forces many rural families into deep debt.
Moreover, we should pay very attention to the definition of a worthy goal. The term worthy is quite subjective and varies a lot as far as different persons are concerned. Although a “good” goal does not necessarily require good means, an evil goal undoubtedly means the need of evil means. Hitler framed heinous ethnic massacre policy towards Jews to demonstrate racial superiority of German. What’s more, terrorists revenge against society by the means of suicide bombings, killing both themselves and innocent citizens. So the standard of a worthy goal lies at least in the precondition of doing no harm to most of people and violating no laws.
In summary, a full evaluation should be made on whether a goal is really worthy and outcome caused by possible means before taking concrete actions, whether for an individual or a country.
Tags:AW GRE ISSUE
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