In Joss Whedon’s feature film directorial debut Serenity, a conclusion to the prematurely-cancelled TV show Firefly, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays The Operative, a government assassin/agent whose job is to locate and retrieve, by any means necessary, a young girl who escaped from a secret government facility, after being experimented on and mind-controlled, all with the purpose of turning her into a psychic weapon.
The Operative: I'm sorry. If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to. You should have taken my offer. Or did you think none of this was your fault?
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: I don't murder children.
The Operative: I do. If I have to.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Why? Do you even know why they sent you?
The Operative: It's not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: So me and mine gotta lay down and die... so you can live in your better world?
The Operative: I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there... any more than there is for you. Malcolm... I'm a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.
This film is among those pieces of art that manage to tell a very libertarian truth even though created by a socialist/liberal/statist (another great example is the TV show The Wire).
The Operative is a damaged man, who deeply believes in the mission and justifies his evil acts by his pursuit of a “noble goal” - a better world.
He combines his delusion (that he CAN CREATE a better world through evil) with incredible clarity (that an evil man can have NO PLACE in this better world).
Chiwetel Ejiofor portrays The Operative as a man who dances wildly between introspection, philosophy (albeit a very twisted one) and delusions of grandeur and arrogance. He is in essence two men: one who believes himself to be a bad man, and the other who believes his ends are just.
We are all heroes in our own stories and the greatest heroes are the very best and worst of people. We are all driven by our personal story and the bad man cannot survive without the man whose ends are just.
People who believe that the ends justify the means may have many different origin stories and reasons for their twisted beliefs, but the most basic reason is FEAR.
Fear Is The Foundation Of Government
Fear is the basis of government, the drive behind controlling/domineering people and the main distorter of truth and perception.
Fear of other people, fear of circumstance and unpredictability, fear of loss, that is what leads people to do bad things. This is what blinds them from the truth. But, in order for fear to push you into action, it needs a story.
The story of a better world, if only we kill all the people who disagree with us.
The story of a just world, if only we eliminate private property and rich people.
The story of a happier world, if we ban desire and individuality.
Means = Ends
The means cannot justify the ends, because they cannot be different than the ends. The utopia is the delusion, and the means you employ to get there ARE the world you are creating.
When we understand that thoughts and actions cannot be separated, when we examine them under the microscope of our hearts, we will know what kind of a world we are creating - the means we use will feel like the ends in themselves.
The means are everything.
The means ARE the ends.
