THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS ?

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except that which is worth knowing.-Oscar Wilde

There are two common  arguments that people hold to be true, even though they may not be true in many cases.The reason I want to discuss these two here is because, I see they may act as obstacles to our pursuit of Personal freedom.

1. The end justifies the means:  

This statements has the meaning that the desired outcome is the main deciding factor on what you should do. For instance, you can hear someone saying because "I am hungry, I am going to steal", or " I want to pass the exam, so  I am going to cheat in the exam room".

In many cases, making decisions by having the notion " The end justifies the means", result into poor  decision making because we may not care if what we do is wrong or right because what we care is to get what we want.

I think it is better to make decision on what to do, based on the effectiveness and morality of the means rather than focusing on what you want to achieve alone.

2. If many believe so, it is so:

Sometime we get into trap of doing things just because other people are doing. We really don't have time to think critically the correctness, or even their relative importance to our lives.

I met a person who was throwing garbage on the road. When I asked him why he did that, he simply replied " Why you ask, you don't see many people are doing the same".

You see here, what made the person to justify his actions is because there are many other people doing the same thing.

Since, this is a weakness to many of us, our fellows may take advantage of that when creating their arguments in order to gain our attention or our actions.

Wikipedia list few examples on this point:

• One could claim that smoking is a healthy pastime, since millions of people do it. However, knowing the dangers of smoking, we instead say that smoking is not a healthy pastime despite the fact that millions do it.
• One could claim Angelina Jolie is the best-looking woman in the world, because she is regularly voted as such, although the sample she is part of (celebrities) is insufficient, and ideals of beauty are arguably culturally determined and thus arbitrary to a significant degree. For instance, overweight bodies have been considered more beautiful in some cultures because only the wealthy could afford to eat enough to become overweight or obese. By contrast, contemporary high fashion generally involves women who have been criticized for not eating enough.
• One could claim that slavery is morally justified if most people within society support it, or at least do not oppose it. Eugenics, which includes an attempt at a scientific basis for racism, has been debunked by science.