“It is sometimes necessary to do things you know are wrong in order to achieve an important goal.” -REVISED

      Us, teenagers, have idealistic minds that still think that the world can be perfect. “It is sometimes necessary to do things you know are wrong in order to achieve an important goal.” As a teenager, inexperienced and yet to be exposed to the dark realm of the world, it is fairly easy for me to simply disagree with this statement. Unfortunately, the reality is that wrongdoings occur every day with the purpose to fulfill great visions, as well as personal desires. Although both reasons cause harm, the former is justified, while the latter is not.

        It is inevitable that extreme measures are taken to achieve goals. Some of them involve the benefit of lots of people. In these cases, especially, there is (are) an “antagonist(s)” who is (are) “stealing” from others. The antagonist is stealing the rights, freedom, or other things from the majority. A famous example of this situation  is the French revolution. The few members of the upper class and the nobility were seizing all the power and forcing the middle-lower class people, the majority, to endure hard lives. Lots of reformers had goals to convert France into a democratic government. In this case, it was virtually impossible to do the "right thing" to reach the goal, even though it had good intentions. There was no choice but to fight poison with poison – to achieve peace by rebellion. English philosopher John Locke once said that if a government is not governing correctly, people are responsible to overthrow it. Although rebellion or war may be morally incorrect, it is necessary for the greater good.

        In some situations, there is no choice but to do the wrong thing in order to reach the right goal. However, in other situations - situations that we deal with everyday, we do have a choice. In our daily lives, we constantly compete with others for personal goals or desires. The repetitive occurrence of this throughout our relatively long life finally led us to think that it is sometimes easier to take the shortcut. Take this into consideration: two people are in a company with the same experience and seniority. A space is open for one person to get promoted. Each person works very hard to win the employer’s attention until one day, one person found out that there was a way that would ensure his promotion. He goes about in the company and spreads some bad rumors about the other person. As a result, the employer favoured him, and he got promoted. What he did was wrong, but he still reached his goal. In real life, out in the world, this is happening excessively, leading people into believing that “if I don’t step over others, others will step over me.” To achieve goals that involve selfish desires, it is not necessary or justified to do wrong things. Unfortunately, it is the reality, and it is not going to stop or change.

        As living creatures, we follow the concept of “the survival of the fittest”. We do anything to survive, to live better, even if it means to act against our morals. However, as humans, we are unique in a way that we accommodate the disadvantages of others. We care for each other and unite to accomplish certain goals, goals that serve for the greater cause. Sometimes, it is necessary to carry out extreme measures for this reason, but  it is justified, as the world is imperfect and sacrifice is inevitable. As a teenager with an idealistic mind, I would dare to write, that one day, the world might just be free of these dark realities. Alas, in order to achieve that goal, lots of lines separating good and bad would have to be crossed, over and over…