Is it better to try to do good and acidentally do harm, or to try to do harm and accidentally do good?

Answer 1

Intentions are meaningless. They only exist inside your own head, and you will never ever be able to demonstrate them significantly to anyone else, except through non-meaningless actions. Allow me to demonstrate:

This is a real event. Hurricane Katrina was rolling in, roads were jammed, and for some patients in intensive care, there were few options. In one facility, there was no apparent way to evacuate patients and it looked as if nothing was done, the loss of power, water, fresh painkillers, and so on would doom them all to slow, agonizing deaths. So a doctor and some nurses decided to spare the patients they cared for this unpleasant end and euthanized them all. In their mind, the patients were doomed anyway, and it was far more merciful not to subject them to the horrors of the aftermath of Katrina.

This is also a real event. In numerous hospitals throughout the eastern U.S. a nurse went through a repetitive cycle. He would get a job at a new hospital, work for a while, but then be asked to leave because numerous patients mysteriously died while he was around. Because of nursing shortages, it wasn't hard for him to get jobs, and because the hospitals were liable and there was little direct evidence, they were inclined to just get rid of him instead of investigating thoroughly. When the nurse was eventually caught, he admitted to euthanizing dozens of people just because he wanted to.

If INTENTION made a difference, these two cases would have been treated very differently. If intention makes no difference and since basically the same thing happened in each case, we would expect them to be treated similarly. It is the latter which is observed - both perpetrators are being prosecuted for their crimes and are roundly vilified by society for what they did, despite the opposite motivations in each of the cases.

How many wars have been started in the name of peace and love? How many hate groups have caused counter-reactionary large-scale changes that benefit their societies? What you are TRYING to do is irrelevant. What you REALLY do is what matters.

Answer 2

Very good question. Put it this way - if you try to do harm but accidentally do good, the good is not to your credit and you shouldn't claim the glory. If you try to do good and accidentally do harm, the fact that you tried to do good should be taken into consideration when people are trying to work out what they think of what you did. If you had no way of knowing that you might do harm, then perhaps they should go easy on you. If you knew that there was a good chance that your actions might do harm but you went ahead and did them anyway, then once again I don't think the fact that you meant well is very important.

From your perspective, of course, it's always better do try to do good, unless you can be pretty sure that your actions will have the opposite outcome to the one that you want - but that doesn't happen very often.

Answer 3

It depends. The person who tries to do good but accidentally does harm seems, in practise, more incompetent than the other person because it would have been better off doing nothing.
There has been a lot of harm caused in the history of the world by people who thought they were doing the good thing but who didn't have the perception and foresight (or the cynicism) to work out the possible bad consequences of their actions.

The person who tries to do harm and accidentally does good is still bad by intent but this situation doesn't give me as much
think about as the above one.

Answer 4

Just a point -- it some states there are laws that REQUIRE a person to stop and give aid (mainly has to do with traffic wrecks). As long as the person does the best of his ability he is protected from liability for any harm he might cause. These are referred to as Good Samaritan Laws.

So if our laws reflect society's standards (yeah right), then it holds that one should try to do the good.

As for doing harm --- any harm is almost certain to be benefitting to someone else (someone torches someone's house, someone gets a job building it back up) (someone murders someone, someone,or the taxman, gets the victim's estate) So it is never an "accident". It is !certain! that whatever you do, it will result in both good and harm.

So as to your question -- it really does not matter!

Answer 5

I am going to go with trying to do good and accidentally do harm because I do that all of the time. Whenever I get the chance to explain my intentions, they are usually well received. I believe that the intention is the action and the cause of that, the reaction. You have no direct control over what happens, only what you TRY to make happen. I hope you understand what I am saying.

Answer 6

You might think, as some of your answerers do, that what counts is what you intend - that if you intend no harm then you can't be blamed if you accidentally do harm. But a little thought will show you that that is false.

There is such a thing as criminal negligence. Someone who behaves without taking reasonable care of how his/her actions might harm others is behaving negligently. The person perhaps does not consciously intend harm to others, but if such harm does actually occur (or even if it does not) the person is behaving immorally and (probably) also criminally.

So, to answer your question, it is *never* good to try to do harm (no matter what the accidental outcome), but even if you don't intend harm your behavior can be immoral if it is careless of doing harm to others.

Answer 7

It is always good to have "good" intentions, with the intent of not doing any harm, even though harm sometimes becomes the consequence. It is the intent, not the results. However with your question, sometimes it's better to leave everything well enough alone.

Answer 8

Remember, God looks at the heart of the person. Of course it's no good doing harm, no matter what cause it may have, but have good thoughts and a heart full of love, then you'll know the answer to your own question.

Answer 9

I think it is better to try to do good and accidentally do harm, because if you are judged afterwards, your intentions will come out stronger than your actions

Answer 10

Every action has a reaction and your soul intention combined with the energy that you project into your action will ultimately determine if the outcome will be "good" or "bad". So, if your intention is to do bad, then if you projected enough negative energy into your action "bad" will happen and the same goes for a good action. If you project enough positive energy into your action and your intentions are truly "good", then good will be the outcome. (That's the why i have experienced life so far anyway)