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Decades of research have taught us that when government reform and policy goals are not achieved, the problem is often a mismatch between ends and means. We have come to understand and appreciate the 1941 words of Albert Einstein,1still true today:
“What hopes and fears does the scientific method imply for humankind? I do not think that this is the right way to put the question. Whatever this tool in the hand of man and woman will produce depends entirely on the nature of the goals alive in this humankind. Once these goals exist, the scientific method furnishes means to realize them. Yet it cannot furnish the very goals. . . .
“Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem—in my opinion—to characterize our age. If we desire sincerely and passionately the safety, the welfare, and the free development of the talents of all people, we shall not be in want of the means to approach such a state.”
In the government arena, “confusion of goals” occurs when we speak about policy objectives without clearly specifying what we mean. Consider the goals of fair taxation, good schools, and an end to racism:
• What makes a tax fair—its impact on private decisions about buying or investing, its relationship to each taxpayer’s income, how the money it raises is spent, the thing or activity that it taxes, the amount of record-keeping it requires, the type and complexity of filing requirements, the total amount of revenue it takes relative to total gross national (or state or local) product, or some other elements?
• What makes a school good—the geographic population it enrolls, the mix of learning styles and abilities among its students, the methods by which it defines student progress, the practical classroom ability of its teachers, the formal credentials of its teachers, extracurricular activities, the attitudes of administrators toward teachers and teachers toward students, how it handles disciplinary matters, or some other elements?
• What makes a society free of racism—absence of police violence against people of color, integrated schools, integrated housing, ability of every person to walk with equal safety on any street, widespread ethnic quotas for people in decision-making and other positions, complete absence of quotas but willingness by everyone to hear and respect the voice of everyone else, guaranteed annual incomes or some other program that decisively cuts across ethnic lines and eliminates poverty, free higher education, or some other elements?
These are just three issues, and within each issue just a sampling of possible answers to the question of what we, as a society, might really want for ourselves and each other. Only after we make the effort clearly to state the right questions and understand the answers can we devise effective strategies for reaching the goal and evaluate progress toward that goal.
With the goal defined, we can think about how to get there. The end will determine our means—nothing else can, which is why we must understand it so clearly—and we must carefully evaluate means because each mean carries within itself its own end. Sometimes the end popularly ascribed to a means is not the principal or only end it points toward, possibly making it inappropriate or even counter-productive.
Ending racism. Consider the goal of ending racism, so prominent in our national consciousness at this time. What, precisely, is the goal? . . . and let us begin thinking of it as a journey.
To successfully complete a trip, travelers must not only want to leave where they are now but also know where they want to go. Studying deficiencies of the current location and understanding reasons to leave it—whether temporarily for a vacation or permanently as a migrant—may get the planning started, but a much larger fraction of the total effort is spent on looking for a destination and finding routes to get there.
In this analogy, the journey away from racism is more like migration than a vacation. We want definitively to leave something behind and not plan a return.
The place we are leaving is a mindset, a way of thinking. The destination, therefore, must be a new mindset. This is not to deny the dynamic relationship between institutions and thought patterns, and that institutions affect thought as well as the other way around, but the primary and essential goal is a new way of thinking.
Talking about a destination requires a name, and it is not clear to us that there is yet any widespread agreement on the name for a society without racism. We suggest that one name for our destination is an “amicably engaged society.”
• Engagement is the process by which people share with each other not only their own experiences and perspectives, but also their hopes and expectations both for themselves and for the others. Engagement is necessary because everyone has different perspectives based on their unique experiences.
• The engagement we seek is amicable—the type of engagement that occurs among people who genuinely wish the best for each other, even if at times they may agree to disagree. Even when they begin or end with a disagreement, they do it as friends, always intending continued engagement and retaining the hope of reaching agreement in the near future.
An amicably engaged society is a society in which, among other things, people act from the assumptions that
• everyone has something useful that they must contribute to the community, 2 and
• everyone has something they can, on the one hand, teach to and, on the other hand, learn from everyone else.
Although this is not a complete list of all the thought patterns in an amicably engaged society, we believe these two assumptions capture the main elements and that almost everything else we might want flows from them. For example, one conclusion from the assumptions is that diversity is a benefit.3 Whenever decisions are to be made, the more different experiences and perspectives we can bring to the table, the better the final decision will be.
In an amicably engaged society, ethnicity will have no more significance for forming preconceptions about a person than the color of their clothing. We will focus on who people are, rather than on what we assume them to be. The journey requires leaving something—old thinking—behind, so that our prejudices and bigotry are replaced by openness and empathy.
Means to achieve the goal. Everyone finds change more or less difficult. Learning, in particular, requires passage through intellectual dissonance as the mind parts with what we thought we knew and begins to internalize previously unfamiliar or even rejected concepts.
Furthermore, the desire to change and the best of intentions are not, by themselves, enough. We also need the proper knowledge. To construct a road, one needs not only a destination and the money to pay for it, but also knowledgeable workers who understand how to prepare the roadbed, weather that the road will need to endure, the available roadbuilding materials, the operation of construction machinery, how to build necessary bridges, and so on. And these people must all cooperate.
Similarly, after enough of us agree on the foundational assumptions underlying the mindset of an amicably engaged society, building that mindset will require not only commitment to the destination but also the cooperation of many partners: community activists who understand mass mobilization, educators, public relations experts, media professionals, and so on. If we give these specialists a clear and well-defined destination, they will get us there, but the direction must come from us.
Thinking more about the destination, one practical outcome of the worldview and decision-making in an amicably engaged society will be significantly restructured institutions—schools, public safety agencies, and other. At this time, no one can completely describe these new institutions because, for example, we cannot fully envision what internal police regulations would be and how individual officers would behave if the vast majority of people—from the mayor to the police chief to the newest police recruit to the community members being policed—began their day from the assumptions that each person is valuable and we all have something to contribute to each other.
Nevertheless, even now, before the destination is reached, while one set of advocates is promoting the indispensable conceptual background and support structure for the creation and maintenance of these new institutions, other advocates can begin shaping the institutions based on our current and evolving understandings. Advocacy groups—as long as they appreciate the goal, remain flexible in the face of evolving understandings, and have easy access to the requisite technical knowledge—can lay the groundwork for community-sensitive and equity-focused police departments, schools, corporate work environments, and so forth.
If enough people band together and work in this way, we can reach the goal . . . but only if we first clearly define and embrace the goal, concentrating on what we want to achieve rather than what we seek to eliminate. Eliminating an undesirable practice, unless we simultaneously also replace the mindset that created it and offer alternative positive practices, leaves a vacuum that is too easily filled by other but still undesirable practices. We believe advocates—employing the same money and energy as now—would achieve greater success if they adopted the analytic approach outlined above: clearly define the desired state of affairs following reform, and then devise strategies specifically designed to achieve that particular outcome.
Summary
• Ends and means must be carefully matched. The end justifies the means—nothing else can—but every means carries within itself its own ends.
• Therefore, effective strategies to reach a goal can be devised only after the goal is clearly stated and understood. Advocates must identify, to the extent possible with current knowledge, the state of affairs that is desired after the goal is reached.
• Eliminating an undesirable practice is insufficient as a reform. Advocates must simultaneously both replace the mindset that created the practice and offer alternative positive behaviors, or else a vacuum results that is too easily filled by other but still undesirable practices.
• Good intentions alone do not achieve a goal and can even be harmful if not properly guided. Advocates need good technical knowledge about relevant methodologies.
• We applied this analytic approach to the goal of eliminating racism. Eliminating racism is equivalent to establishing an amicably engaged society in which people live according to certain assumptions about the benefits of diversity and the contributions that everyone must make to the whole.
• Creating this new mindset requires that many people change their current way of thinking. Developing strategies to change a mindset requires the active involvement of people with skills in, among other subjects, education, public relations, and use of the mass media.
• Simultaneously with development of this new mindset, advocates can work to reform key social institutions—such as law enforcement and schools—but the institutions are unlikely actually to become and remain reformed until and unless the new mindset is achieved.
Copyright © 2020, by Jason Hardy and Arthur Lyons. We allow you to reprint or adapt this document, under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, with credit to CEPA and the original authors.4
