If faut casser des oeufs pour faire d'omelette, baby.

The increasing tension between ideology and results is beginning to cause some tension in me.

More and more, or maybe just more apparently to me, the focus of decision-making is on loyalty to an ideology rather than the projected results.

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When decisions based on ideology result unfavorably, causation lines are deftly redrawn to protect the ideology from blame.  That's what suffering is for, if it wasn't meant to be, than it wasn't meant to be.  We even have language to institutionalize the primacy of ideology: "The ends can't justify the means!" is one of my personal favorites.

People who actually do justify the means by at least considering the ends are considered immoral.  We call them "Machiavellian" after a misunderstood Medieval philosopher, meaning that ethics are purely situational - a concept surely threatening to the powerful.

Why is it socially or culturally acceptable to scrutinize the ethics of a process that had positive results and intentions but required bending of rules or questionable tactics?  Or the flip of that question, why are the ethics and intentions of someone who cased harm but "stuck to their guns" beyond reproach?

Surely, the ends can't universally justify the means, but the opposite is also true, the means can't justify the ends, either.

We need a balance and that comes only leadership.  There is an old French saying - you have to break a few eggs if you're going to make an omelette.  For ethics based on ideology to evolve, they have to change and that means at some point, someone, somewhere must break them with positive intentions to gain positive results.