It is the championship game. Nobody cares that you were the underdog, the unwanted, the last pick, the worst player — none of that matters anymore. It comes down to the final seconds, and you win the game, propelling you from a small town nobody to a hometown hero in a split second. You bask in the glory for the next two weeks, feeling incredible, on top of the world even. That is, until you get busted for illegal performance enhancing drugs.

 Just because a cause is worthy, that doesn’t give you the green light. If, in the process of achieving a goal, you cheat your way to the finish line, that win means nothing. The achievement of your goal becomes void. You forfeit the feeling of fulfillment, because that fulfillment is not genuinely earned.

Also, a goal that you think is worthy, may not be as worthy as you believe. After all, worthy is a subjective term. What is worthy to one person is filthy to another person. Adolf Hitler took any means necessary to achieve his “worthy” goal of total world domination, and went down in history as a murderous dictator and one of the most brutal and relentless leaders of all time. The end does not — and cannot — justify the means, or life would get sketchy.

Yet twenty four states allow deadly force to be used, without penalty, on an intruder, and almost all states allow a force to be used that is equivalent to the intruder’s. How can we allow this when we have decided that the ends can not justify the process? Yet this seems to be the case when it comes to all aspects of safety. Take any means necessary to protect yourself and anyone around you: your family, friends, pets, and even strangers. We take safety as a worthy priority, leading us to justify the means with the end, and thus contradicting the previous paradigm.

This is evident in the way we handle our national security. We send soldiers off to war in a foreign country, and reward them with medals of bravery and honor for killing enemy personnel. We praise Seal Team Six for the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Superheroes are glorified and extolled by the public for taking out a threat to mankind’s existence, even though they wipe out half the population and destroy billions of dollars of infrastructure in the process. This is not bad, only necessary. Safety is of paramount concern, and sometimes, we have to do the dirty work to preserve it.

Not only do we turn a blind eye to the horrors that are committed to keep us safe, but also for anything of priority. If getting good grades is important, we might justify cheating as a way to get those good grades. If winning the Olympics is important, we might take some drugs to make us run faster or jump higher. Part of this is due to our insecurities about our ability. If you could get good grades on your own, why would you cheat? Our fear of not being enough leads to a justification of our processes to achieve success.

The pressure to succeed in our society today also causes us to justify our cheating. We feel such a need to succeed that we will do whatever it takes — it doesn’t matter whether we believe our methods are right or not, we choose to do them anyway. This fact, combined with our insecurities, produce a feeling that we need to cheat to succeed, and that if we do not succeed, everyone will hate us. If the pressure to be the best in everything we do was lifted, we would see a decrease in cheating. People would start to realize that all that is asked of them is simply their best effort. When taking on an onus, they would try as hard as they can, and if they didn’t measure up, they would accept it and move on.

This does not condone the horrible things done for a worthy goal, but it does not eliminate the usefulness of them either. Sometimes, the end justifies the means, because nothing is ever straight black and white. This experience we call life is ambiguous — everything has two sides, and everyone has a different perspective. What is acceptable to one is unacceptable to another, creating an endless debate whether the ends should justify the means.