Gandhi
The means are the seed
However you win is what you get
Hind Swaraj, 1909
If the cause is right, can the method be rough? He closed the question in 1909 with a single image.
What actually happened?
In Hind Swaraj a reader asks Gandhi what is wrong with violence if it gets the British out. His answer is a comparison: the means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree, and the connection between means and end is as inviolable as the one between seed and tree. Sow a poisonous seed and no rose comes up. He follows it through. An India taken by force will be governed by people who are good at force, and that, he says, is English rule without the Englishman.
How you won gets written into what you won
The method does not retire on the day it succeeds. It becomes the organising material of whatever comes next. Whatever capability won the fight is the capability the winners admire, and reward and promotion follow it from then on.
A team that got there on faked numbers makes faked numbers the internal currency. Next round the same weapon comes out, only pointed inward.
Just this once has no once
Adopting a method is a one-way door. Once it has worked it is in the toolbox, and things in the toolbox come out by themselves at the next difficult moment. Only this time is, in practice, a long-stay visa issued to the method.
Break the contract floor once to keep a large customer, and every later negotiation starts from the new floor. The exception happens once; the precedent is permanent.
The test of the end is applied to the means
Stated ends cannot be checked, because everybody claims to want justice. The means are the only observable part of a purpose. A movement that promises freedom and cannot tolerate dissent inside itself has already shown you what it will build.
Assessing a partner, ignore the vision and watch how they treat suppliers and people who have left. Your future is being rehearsed on somebody else.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: a method that would get you there quickly is available, and it is not clean.
Ask first: if this becomes one of our standard weapons from now on, do you accept that?
Where it goes wrong: using the rightness of the end to sterilise the means; or turning fastidiousness about method into a permanent reason never to act.
Lines to keep
The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree.
As is the means, so is the end.
We want English rule without the Englishman.
Same situation, other people are asking
If this is wrong, is there a way back?It starts on Monday and I'm bracing myself. Is that the problem?I think I know them well enough. Do I know my own side?There is no undo on this one. How long should I stand at the edge?A decision I can't undo · all 11 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.