This writing is in response to things people said today and yesterday.
I wrote something a while ago that purpose doesn’t justify action. This is a really difficult question and I clearly tried to avoid responding to that when I faced questions about that. There are types of answers in politics that keep everyone happy but they are not practical responses. A politician can say I will try to work on plans that make everyone better off. No one can oppose this purpose. People are happy, opponents can’t criticise it so it seems to be a very good public policy. But that’s populism. Hard questions should be answered.
Doctors for example might prescribe that a body part should be removed (for cancer, etc). This will impose enormous difficulty but it can be necessary for survival. What about politics?
I should say that “purpose doesn’t justify action” is an incomplete expression. Everything is based on cost-reward evaluation. The question then is how individuals evaluate costs in different situations. One decision cannot be judged in an isolated environment. The same person who evaluates something worth a specific cost will evaluate other things based on the same system that concludes the first object worth that specific cost. So ” purpose doesn’t justify action ” seems to consider actions as isolated decisions.
As an example, people who enjoy watching fancy movies probably like specific types of colours, etc. all that should be defined in one system which is called personality. The same is true about any system. The vital question any system should provide a clear answer to is how things should be evaluated. If the survival of the current structure of the system costs inf (meaning that absolutely anything is eligible to defend the current structure of the system) then this system will make decisions about different topics in specific ways.
So the question of whether purpose justifies action or not should be rephrased. The question is how the evaluation mechanism of a system functions. The morality of all decisions will be the by-product of that.
So when a system specifies the purpose of building the region, for example, decisions about ways to battle those who want to destroy the region will be evaluated based on the evaluation system provided by that system.
UPDATE 1:
I said before that systems require a mechanism to predict the future so that the system can prepare for it. This is also true in moral issues. Each system should predict how each decision affects the evaluation system. For example, if a leader frantically and savagely removes every possible threat to his/her position, this will totally affect the evaluation system. After a while, the evaluation system will become a distorted malfunctioning system. So predicting how decisions affect the evaluation system in the long run, is a critical part of any system.
I saw a video of Khamenei’s son saying he would pause his online class. He then said whether that is permanent to temporary is “something to be discovered”. Observers interpreted this as a signal that he was being prepared for leadership. He paused his class (that publicly announced he teaches the materials of sufficient level for leadership in Fegh’h) and also that was the first step to publicising him. That was also a gesture that he is willing to restrict the internet for a period, which, at this point, is something to be discovered.
Firstly it shows he is highly unaware of current and possible future trends in technology. So again this sends a signal that the prediction mechanism of the regime is intact and its policies rely on unrealistic predictions. In fact, when the basis of the regime is shaking at its core, the most irrelevant move is to ignore the shaky basis of the regime and replace the piece at the top.
The consequence of replacing a weak yet stable piece at the top (Khamenei) with a weak and unstable piece (his son) will be a total collapse of the system and so huge chaos.