fly my pretties, fly

Rob asked if I designed a mobile phone that was bad for the environment how I would justify it. If the end was to have a high selling product then and it was compared to an environmentally friendly phone which had sold the same amount, then obviously the environmentally friendly phone would be better, or would it? Because then we are projecting our own values onto it. For someone else it might be bad because it is expensive to make. If the bad one was cheaper we have two end results. If you have two end results that may be enough to work something out.

Some groups or individuals I believe have strong streak of dissent, but the problem is that my views, opinions and beliefs have been shaped by other people and I have no control over them. I remember in grade six how substitute teachers were amazed at how no boy in our class would admit to liking Hanson or the Spice Girls. Even that long ago we were already being taught that real men didn’t like manufactured pop.

Saying that the end justifies the means is a pretty strong statement and I felt that must qualify it ]. Initially this little adventure started as an attempt to work out how to classify the unclassifiable. So, first you create a category, and then you see if something fits it. You are disregarding everything except for things relating directly to the category. That is how categories work. But the human brain is so large and complex that it creates many multi categories, which contain a kind of map of information which the brain deems relevant. If the categories create multiple ends which create a false sense of knowing of the whole then we have the appearance of an understanding and form an opinion. It is impossible to know every “means” leading to and end- we almost digitize the information, taking snapshots which become mini “ends”.

I believe that the means in between do not matter as long as the end is reached. Eg: getting from point A to B, no one needs to know that rather then walking you took a taxi and stopped off at the pub.
It’s all down to what people believe and our responsibility to them. We cannot say we have a responsibility to give them what they want, or to make sure they’re not hurt, so there is no defined thing which we can’t do.
Most musicians wouldn’t want to disappoint their fans, but some just don’t care. It depends on your morals and what you want from it.

Joe Strummer from the CLASH said in a post- clash interview that they wanted to start a revolution, but not before they got their hair gel. In the bigger picture they realized that their style was a means to their revolutionary ends or perhaps more cynically their manager Bernie Rhodes realized revolution was a means to his scheming ends.