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amugoffandoms · 1 year

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THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS: A Little Discussion into the Machiavellian Concept and Its Applications to MILGRAM

Hello there!! Welcome to my discussion into MILGRAM and the Machiavellian concept of the end justifying the means. Apologies in advance if stuff doesn't make sense, I feel like this was a very complicated thing to explain??

enjoy the es headers to divide some of my thoughts lol

I was thinking about something and the phrase "The end justifies the means" popped into my head, especially for Haruka.

Like, I feel like the end (getting his mom's attention) certainly justified the means (murder) in his point of view.

But, such an idea is often frowned upon, as "That snappy justification for everything “sinful and wicked” sounds good on paper at first to some realists, but in practice, it is a slippery slope to despotism and immoral horrors. See Hitler, eugenics, and other horrors like that." (Source)

However, the Machiavellian concept has more nuance to it.

"Machiavelli in all cases is implying that “the means” matter, and “the ends” don’t magically justify them, yet sometimes it is worth accepting all the ramifications of “unjustifiable means,” and the damage they do to one’s reputation, for the end goal.

In other words the ends don’t cancel out the means in every respect, but they may none-the-less justify to some extent the original less-than-virtuous actions needed to secure the ends. . . .

DO THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS? The ends can sometimes justify the means, and the ends are often more important than the means. Sometimes, one must muster up criminal virtue to ensure an end which brings the “greatest happiness,” but one must understand that we are talking about the “greatest happiness” theory here. Thus, people should consider the philosophy of consequentialism and consider the morality of the means as well as the result of the ends, and not just seek their ends by any means without consideration. Machiavelli as a political thinking, virtuous master, and republican would no doubt apply the same sort of reason to the seeking of a perfect happiness theory. Truly, one could argue, that only a tyrant would consider ends to justify means – period…" (Source)*

*The source is from the same link as above.

Now, I'm not calling Haruka a tyrant (he's literally 17 and was neglected as a child, of course he'd do what he could.)

However, Haruka believes in the original idea, that his mother's attention justified killing someone. But, here it states that to some extent, these actions can be justified.

So, Haruka can't entirely justify his actions because of just the end. He begs for his INNOCENT verdict despite what he can and says he will do. There are obvious consequences to these actions and it's not fair to take just the ends into account.

In fact, as I write this, it makes me believe that MILGRAM, underneath all of this, is asking you:

"Does the end justify the means?"

You see this throughout the entire project, either subtly or directly:

Haruka - As aforementioned, does getting his mother's attention justify killing someone?

Yuno - (I'm using the pregnancy entrapment theory here as it's very plausible, but you could use many different theories.) Does getting someone's attention/love justify trapping them in a pregnancy?

Fuuta - (help this one's complicated ^^;;;) Does someone dying justify your mindset of destroying all "evildoers"?

Muu - (See, this one is complicated as well as her murder and why is heavily debated, so I'll go with Muu trying to kill Rei because she wasn't forgiven and also because she wanted the suffering to end. Please let me know if there is a much more nuanced idea.) Does the ending suffering justify killing someone?

Shidou - Does saving a singular person justify all the other people they've killed to save them?

Mahiru - (See, once again, complicated, since we have no idea what her murder is, but I'll try a guess. Once again, please let me know if there is a much more nuanced idea!) Does someone dying justify overwhelming love?

Kazui - Does someone dying justify lying, but telling the truth in the end?

Amane - Does someone dying justify your faith?

Mikoto - Does protecting someone (or in this case, an alter) justify killing someone?

Kotoko - Does serving justice justify possibly killing someone?

One thing I forget to mention in the original posting (and I'd like to thank @inferablossom for this point! Please take a look at their reblog here!) is the application with Es and MILGRAM itself.

In their words, they say, ". . .the treatment of the guilty prisoners. . . that's an important thing to look at. All the prisoners who were voted Guilty had their thoughts rejected in the fork of hearing lots of voices condemning and judging them, something that's been not unfairly called out as psychological torture. We are being asked to judge these prisoners as forgivable or unforgivable. Some of them, people won't find forgivable, and many have stated an intention to forgive them later, but not now, with an intention to make them 'better' in some way. But can we justify essentially subjecting people to psychological torture to achieve this aim? And on the other side, for Kotoko, many people likely voted her forgivable based on her crime, but she also deemed it as accepting her deal and therefore sanctioning her violence against other prisoners. Can we justify actions that could lead to her harming many people?"

As I stated in my reply, I honestly wasn't looking into MILGRAM because I was so focused on the prisoners, but it's a great point!

I'm basically restating my reply here, but:

Can we justify putting prisoners through "psychological torture" to ensure "betterment"? Can you forgive someone terrible to save someone else?

For example, Haruka and Muu. After Haruka made that threat in his 2nd VD, people must have seriously been considering voting for Muu's innocence to stop him from committing suicide. However, we all automatically went to a guilty verdict.

Voting for Kotoko's innocence caused her to beat up the other prisoners. So, are you able to justify these actions that can lead to more?

As an audience, we must see if the ends justify our means, see if violence can justify forgiveness, and if "betterment" (or in what Alice said in their tags, harm mitigation) can justify psychological torture.

This is very reminiscent of Fuuta's 2nd MV, where he yells at Es for being just like him. Es, and I suppose us as well, justify their actions by saying this is MILGRAM and they must find the truth.

(Can finding the truth behind someone justify psychological and physical suffering?)

It also reminds me of Amane's voting! Everyone wanted her to realize her murder, but it caused her to become more "stuck" with her beliefs. Can betterment justify a guilty verdict, causing psychological torture, to realize one's murder?

If we were to judge ourselves, would it be fair to say we'd give ourselves a GUILTY verdict?

Quick Side Topic: In voting in MILGRAM, I like to take into a few factors: personality (it is not affected as much, but depending on the situation, it does help), actions, and the crime itself.

I'm not saying anyone who voted certain prisoners the opposite way is wrong to vote that way, but I like to think of these factors to fairly judge, as if I was part of a jury in a trial.

For example, since her voting period ended last month, Muu. I voted her guilty because of her disregard for Haruka's threat and guilty prisoners' wellbeing, saying they deserved it, no? (In my eyes, no one deserves such a fate unless they have done something EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY wrong. I'm not justifying murder, but I'm saying the actions done to them were wrong.) Her personality didn't really swing my vote any way. Her murder, however, did. In my eyes, it seemed like she was trying to get retribution for her bullying (I have this whole theory that one of Rei's friends were being bullied, killed herself, and Rei called her out on this.)

Back on track...

Once again, there is so much more nuance to each of these characters than DOES THE END JUSTIFY THE MEANS? Haruka is certainly more than wanting his mother's attention; Yuno more than trying to get pregnant from someone; Fuuta more than his mindset; Muu more than her suffering; Shidou more than his dead patients; Mahiru more than her boyfriend; Kazui more than his lies; Amane more than her faith; Mikoto more than his DID (Can't recall if this is the right term.); and Kotoko more than serving justice.

But, that's what some of their ideals and murder itself boils down to, can you justify murder? Can you look at why they did it (motive/goal), what happened (murder/means), and your own morality and decide if you can forgive someone?

Can you look into yourself and truly find that there is a justification for murder?

In the words of Es in former English subs for UNDERCOVER, "You get to know them and tie them with their EGO? Can you really judge them? Is it really okay to be done with deciding with just your EGO? Will you be able to forgive them after listening to their sins?"

Can you look past the less-than-virtuous means to justify the end?

In the words of the new English subs, "Shouldn't you look beyond your EGO, before it all ends?"

Can the ends justify murder?

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading my little discussion into this topic. Once again, I apologize for any confusing parts in this. I myself am still trying to grasp the concept, but my thoughts are now in writing.

I'm not well versed into some of these characters, so I am willing to edit this to fix any mistakes I've made in their little analysis of them! Thank you for your help if you do!

I think the first thought of this concept and how it was comparable to Haruka and it started snowballing.

When I realized I had my thoughts down in a whole essay/discussion, I realized it would probably be best to divide this up into easier to read chunks??

MILGRAM is an amazing music video project and considering the release of I Love You is soon, I'm excited to see what is in store. If I recall correctly, they said this was an intense trial, so oh dear! ^^;;

Here's to more amazing songs to analyze!

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cassatine · 7 years

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wow The Man in the High Castle discourse seems wild

hahahahahahahaha - ahem yes. not that it’s surprising? long answer under cut sorry you probably didn’t ask for that but urgh

it’s 1) a show with nazis, 2) a show in which most nazis characters are not Unequivocally Evil 24/24, 7/7, without holidays, 3) a show in which even the good guys do bad things or take terrible decisions, 4) a show in which even the good guys do bad things, without being excused by the narrative.

imo most of the backslash has more to do with the fact that it’s not clear-cut black and white and as audiences we’re, hum, getting unused to that ; that we’re used to nazis being the Standard for Evil and that being reminded they were all real people and not literal monsters in human skin is a tad jarring ; and finally, the sci-fi aspects. they were more present in the second season, and well, i suppose for some, the mix of very serious (because it is) fiction about nazis and sci-fi (how could that be serious) is… i don’t know, let’s go with inadvisable.

as to the tumblr discourse, i, huh, i’ve seen a bit. let’s just say, i’ve since taken to just avoid text posts.

anyway, because it’s one my side interests, more rambles: it’s interesting to note that a lot of alternate histories, novels and short stories, have their turning point in WW2 / WW2 related, tho (if you look at the wikipedia list, it’s quite impressive,although the list is not by any means complete). And among those, there’s a respectable number of works set in universes in which the Axis won (or, all periods considered, another authoritarian / fascist/ what have you entity).

I think, when it’s done seriously and not for The Sensationalism, it’s… important fiction? It forces you to think, to see the dark inside you. We all like to think of ourselves as good people.

Story time: I’m french. We talk a lot about the war in history classes. Once, i was in high school, we had a class discussion about what we’d have done. What we would do in similar circumstances.

I’d have joined the Resistance, was the consensus. No collaborators in the room, of course.

I don’t know, I said, perplexed.

That was terrifying. The abyss opening before me.

How could any of you know, I then thought, which didn’t made me feel any better.

So I’m very much of the opinion that fiction that does the same - fiction that makes you stare back at the abyss, that makes you confront yourself? It’s all good. Here is the real darkness; here is how one recognizes it.

And imo, to fight something, you have to know it; the real deal, not the caricature on the screen.

I’m gonna finish by quoting Ian R. MacLeod who wrote The Summer Isles. One of those alt history books in which Something Bad has won. A great book, btw. It’s from the introduction:

The Summer Isles explores the undeniable fact that we humans are pack animals. That, most of the time, we keep in with the crowd and do what seems to be expected of us. This process—our ability to enter the mind-set and attitudes of the culture we find ourselves in—is vital to our survival as a species. After all, if every decision and precept were continually challenged, life and society would soon grind to a halt. We live and comply each day with innumerable petty demands, hierarchies and regulations. In any other direction lies chaos and madness. But this instinct to comply runs far deeper than our willingness to pay parking good, and what we think of as evil.

Sometimes, an entire society can become so skewed in the standards it sets itself that to find an understanding of the things which are done in its name can seem, in retrospect, barely possible. But the instances in history of such events happening are worryingly many. There’s the Terror during the French Revolution. There’s the mechanised slaughter in the trenches during World War One. There’s Nazi Germany.

When I set out to write The Summer Isles, I wasn’t so specifically concerned to mirror any particular episode of what might be called social madness as to make a general exploration of it. The necessary choice of a time and place, however, dictated that some parallels were more obvious than others. If England had suffered what Germany suffered in the 1920s and 30s, it seemed to me not so much plausible as inevitable that the so-called certainties which we English still merrily cling to would drift and darken towards some form of fascism.

But the politics was incidental. Fascism, when you attempt to analyse it, is a will-of-a-wisp of meaningless prejudices and hopeless aspirations in any case. What I really wanted to show was that, like the participants in Milgram’s famous experiment, people will mostly do what they are told, even when the things they are told to do, or witness, or conspire in or turn their backs from, are terrible. And I wanted to show how ordinary our compliance would feel—and then, being an Englishman, just how English.

Prejudice exists. People condemn and dislike and persecute. You see it in the news. You encounter it when to talk to otherwise charming people at parties. You’ll also find it in your own heart, if you’re prepared to look deeply enough. So much of what happens in The Summer Isles, and many of the things which are said by its characters, is simply a reportage and reflection not of some oddly twisted alternative universe, but of the way things really are.

You scarcely have to look far in this current world of ours to see similar horrors and stupidities. It seems to me that deep certainty, especially moral certainty, whether it is bolstered by religion or some political philosophy, is the best breeding ground for this kind of social madness. It exists, plainly, in the minds of many terrorists and so-called freedom fighters, but it still also exists amid nations. The terminology is irrelevant. Fascism sticks out to us now only because it is currently seen as laughably outdated. Terrible things have been done in the name of such nebulous concepts as the will of the people, or of God, and in the name of science, and of freedom, and even of democracy.

History, even alternate history, has never yet stopped repeating itself. Let’s just hope, now, that it’s time for a change.

#the dick course #so much discourse #alternate histories #meta #i guess #i bet you didn't expect *that*#sorry nonnie #the man in the high castle #anon #ask

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