If a goal is worthy then any means taken to attain it are justifiable

I used to think that people could leverage any kind of means to achieve worthy goals since the feats would help most people. Although the value of goals would be beneficial to societies, now I believe that all means cannot become justifiable although some groups assert the goals are “valuable”.

In history, many assertions said that their targets were to enhance people’s well-being. However, the “well-being” was a kind of rhetorical words, and the result from their assertions only served for some groups of people. The “segregated but equal” doctrine, which was established by Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in 1896, also had its merits to promote people’s well-being. The advocates of the doctrine maintained that each ethnic group could preserve and enjoy its culture in its segregated places, so using powers of the government was a right way to enhance citizen’s lives. Their claim would be superficially reasonable, but the aftermaths of the doctrine – for example, different school quality and accessibility to social infra – eventually exacerbated the inequality between ethnic groups. Therefore, since the merits of goals would be only for them, some people could not easily say its means are justifiable, which could be violations to other people.

Some detractors assert that means could be justifiable if related groups could agree their measures. The detractors said that if every member who participates in discussions agrees with their decision, the decision and its post-actions would be not unjustifiable since all members affected by the decision also attended whole processes of decisions. They point out that a decision to restrict to expolit Amazon river was justifiable since the decision was made by the US in which Brazil, which belongs most of the Amazon area, also participated the discussion and agreed the UN’s decision. However, these decision processes also cause problems since oftenly the participants are not exactly the same with people who are affected by the decisions. Although the Brazilian government agreed to the decision, the citizens who lived in the Amazon area could not make their voice about the decision properly, and even the Brazilian government did not give proper rewards.

Therefore, I believe that although a goal is “apparently” worthy, any means could not be justifiable. I acknowledge that agreements could be a solution to justify their measures. Although participating related meetings seems to rationalize the effect of the meeting to the participants, given that there could be victims ignored by the representative participants, the merits of the goals could not be absolute answers making every means justifiable.