[i习作temp] issue 212 欢迎狂拍有拍必回 [复制链接]

雷帝嘎嘎
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电梯直达

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发表于 2010-2-12 00:07:14 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

本帖最后由雷帝嘎嘎于 2010-2-12 07:59 编辑

TOPIC: ISSUE212 - "If a goal is worthy, then any means taken to attain it is justifiable."

The speaker claims that it is proper to take any means aiming at achieve a worthwhile goal. It is common sense that if a goal is worthy, we should take efforts to attain that. However, after clsose scrutiny of the statement, it is hard to define "worthy" and too arbitrary to assert "any means" approaching to the goal is justifiable.

Firstly, it is hard to judge whether a goal is worthy. Before making conclusions about an expectation, we should take many factors into consideration, such as the limitation of laws and ethnics. Possibly the harshest factor could be considering the benefits for the owner and the surroundings. As it is often said that one's meat could be another's poison, it may be difficult on this point to conclude a goal is valuable, considering reverse results may be estimated through opposite perspectives. Take a steel mining corporation planning purchasing a new area full of good quality copper as an instance. Mining copper would be great benefit for the company, bringing large sum of profits and perhaps at the same time establishing its reputation. Unfortunately, the metal mining could be a huge polluter-source without enough measures to preserve the surrounding environment. Polluters are such as industrial waste water, dusts influence the air condition and noises coming from mining machines, which would damage the public's interests of enjoy good environment. So the purchase could bring many negative side facts to the non-owners, which could be so influential that it would cause many confusions. They should seriously be enrolled in the judgment of worthy, adding complexity of judge the worth of a goal.

Granted a goal is worthy, it is too absolute to claim all approaches are justifiable. We should make costs and benefits analysis to decide if it is proper to attain a goal by certain means. Most approaches toward the worthy goal are not easy to cover. It is obvious that we always want to take the easiest one to reach that goal, saving our time and efforts. However, possibly there are situations that even the easiest mean requires much cost. For instance, it is worthy for human to take great efforts to save endangered species, requiring large sum of money and labor forces. Hardly could it be rational to save them at any cost, compared with many other societal problems more urgently waiting for solution, such as territory crisis worldwide and the starvation of the poor. So when decide whether the approaches are justifiable, we should take both the costs and benefits into consideration.

In most cases, we could find certain ways to achieve the goal, which benefits outweigh costs. Under this situation, when we decide an approach to attain the goal, we should concentrate on the goal and spare no effort to reach it. Scientific researches, for example, require huge efforts to accomplish the desired goal. Scientists should spare no efforts to work in the field, regardless of how many times of failures and disappointments, since the accomplishment may be invaluable for the whole society. It is justifiable for these efforts done to get a worthwhile goal.

In sum, the speaker ignores the difficulty to decide whether a goal is worthy and some situations that the approaches' costs outweigh their benefits. Only under careful analysis of a worthiness goal and a way whose costs in exceed of benefits the most, could we say it is justifiable and take efforts to accomplish it.