Ends and Means

From El Criticón, Baltasar Gracián

CRISI NONA. Moral anatomía del Hombre

Eternizaron con letras de oro los antiguos en las paredes de Delfos, y mucho más con caracteres de estimación en los ánimos de los sabios, aquel célebre sentimiento de Biante: Conócete a ti mismo. Ninguna de todas las cosas criadas yerra su fin, sino el hombre; él sólo desatina, ocasionándole este achaque la misma nobleza de su albedrío.

The Ancients eternalized that famous sentiment of Biante with golden letters on the walls of Delphos and much more so on the souls of the wise: Know thyself. None of creation errs in its end save for man, only he mistakes it, the nobility of his own will causing him this injury.

So because of our own impetuous will we often do things out of caprice that make a joke of our humanity. We don't want limits, we want to be gods, you know. But man is not a god. And even if we will God's death and try to absorb his power we just end up destroying our own humanity in the process. Enter the gene factory. (i.e.Never underestimate our ability to make complet monsters of ourselves.) Notice that in contemporary society you never hear talk of the final end of man as such. What is man and what is his purpose? These questions are never even answered not to mention addressed.

CRISI DÉCIMA. El mal paso del salteo

Vulgar desorden es entre los hombres hacer (de los fines) medios y de los medios hacer fines: lo que ha de ser de paso toman de asiento y del camino hacen descanso; comienzan por donde han de acabar, y acaban por el principio.

A common disorder among men is to make means of ends and ends of means. What should be passing they take for permanent. What should be on-going they take for settled. They start where they should have ended and end whence they should have begun.

Now in order to make something a complete and utter waste of time there's nothing better than taking it as the end all and be all without reference to a final purpose or goal. Now you've not only destroyed the thing you thought you valued you've rendered the world utter meaningless as such.

And yet there's more. To the modern mind there really are no ends as such, only means to other means ad infinitum. Without final causality or an ultimate horizon, then everything consists merely in a path to another path on a circuitous route to nowhere.
Why do we get a job? To make money. Why make money? To pay the bills. Why pay the bills? To eat and to have some warm place to stay. Why all that? To live. Why live? Here the modern playbook becomes tricky.
Or we could answer to the job question: find purpose in life. Why find purpose in life? Here again we are at an impasse.
Why follow professional ambitions in your job? To become well known and respected. Why become well known or respected? To satisfy my own ego at the expense of others.
Why satisfy my own ego? To make an end, professional advancement, a means so I can ignore any final ends.
This mismatch between means and ends is a result of sin, wherein our motives are disordered at the expense of any finality that could limit our activity as agents.