Making a choice without regard of the consequences and making a conscious decision with an understanding and acceptance of said consequences bares a world of difference. The difference can be staged in the light of a child and an adult, a fool and a wise man, beginner and master, so on and so forth. You can’t really minimalize an action but intent behind any action is arguably more important than the action itself. This would then imply that intent, in some cases, is elevated above the action in a moral or ethical way. In the same breath, I will say that the intent can also be elevated above the action in a morally or ethically condemnable way.
We are constantly, from the day we are born, being rewarded and punished based on this very principle in an evolving way as our understanding grows. This is why the absolutes about how to conduct ourselves evolve as we start to understand the underlying intents behind these actions or inactions. “Do not ever hit anyone” becomes “Do not ever hit anyone unless …” is just one of many examples that embodies this kind of intellectual and emotional growth.
Why is it then that society has lost all perspective on this to the point of intellectual and emotion regression? When did we live in a world of absolutes and turn away circumstance or variables to a situation? Nobody wants to understand a situation, they want a situation to fit their regressed understanding.