Root of all unethical behaviour in the world!4 min read

Everyday/Mango examples:

• If I am hungry and I need to get to a ‘burger’ – then getting into the car to get the burger is the ‘mean’ and the ‘burger’ is the end. If I really want to meet a friend, I invite him to this burger place, then meeting the friend is the ‘end’ and now the burger is the ‘means.
• Lying is wrong because you are misleading another person’s conscious behaviour in order to achieve your own goal. You are therefore treating that person as a means to your own end. Therefore, lying is unethical.

Let us dig a little deeper than our convenient/superficial existence:

• If you go to places of worship (depending on faith) that people will applaud/like/praise and give social respect to you rather than meeting/connecting with your creator – the religious compliance is a ‘means’ and the self-importance/aggrandisement is the ‘end’
• If you show care/affection to your husband to get a new ‘LV’ bag, then the care/affection is the ‘means’ to the ‘LV’ bag end. Vice versa, if a husband does acts of service/kindness/affection (equitable contribution to home chores/respect/equality in decisions) to get intimate with her or get her to praise to her family/friends how ‘grounded/best husband title’ then the act of service/kindness/ affections are a ‘means’ to the quite shallow transactional ‘end’ aka an overcompensation for your insecurities/fantasies.
• If you want your children to be happy, healthy (physically, mentally, and emotionally) and contributing individuals to the society and want them to get titles/accolades (e.g. doctor/engineer/NASA scientist) /fame/social importance to validate you being a ‘good parent’/your parents did the same (cultural conditioning) or brag to your family/friends then you’re using your children as a ‘means’ to your non-Instagram dopamine high ladened flawed ‘end’
• If you explicitly state to public that you want to enhance their self-confidence, want them to be more fulfilled, courageous, fabulous, less stigmatised to sell your gym membership/make-up/diet-plan/FAIR & LOVELY/any marketing campaign under the sun without actually ‘meaning’ and scientifically exhibiting the claims to sell your products – then the public is a ‘means’ to your commercial function to sell more ‘ends’. There’s actually insane research on this topic – How your insecurities are bought and sold!

The worse of them all, using YOURSELF as a MEAN rather than an END. Example?

• Exhibit A = Addition: Kant believed that, first, over-indulgence was fundamentally the act of being immoral to oneself, the harm it did to others was merely collateral damage. It was a failure to confront the reality of one’s own mind and own consciousness and this failure is akin to lying to oneself or CHEATING ONESELF out of precious life POTENTIAL. And to Kant, LYING TO YOURSELF is just as UNETHICAL AS LYING TO OTHERS.
• Exhibit B/P – People Pleasing & Seeking Approval: Isn’t being really nice to people and making them happy an ethical thing to do? Not necessarily. Seeking approval and people pleasing forces you to alter your actions and speech to no longer reflect what you actually think or feel. So, right there, YOU’RE ALREADY TREATING YOURSELF AS A MEANS rather than an end. BUT, it gets worse. Because if you alter your speech or behaviour in order to MAKE OTHERS LIKE YOU, then you are also TREATING THEM AS A MEANS TO YOUR END. You are altering and manipulating their perceptions of you in order to garner a pleasant response from them.