Ends justify the means? Means justify the ends?

A simple question: "If a loved one is dying from hunger, is it ok to steal food?"

This is a very delicate question. Imagine a person that you love deeply is suffering from hunger. Because you don't have money, you cannot buy food. Now you're in a dilemma; to watch your loved one die, or to commit a crime and steal food. What should you do?

When a large group was asked, many people replied that IT IS OK to steal food. Their justification were something like these: "A life versus food. What is more important? Of course, a life." "If you love someone, you should be able to anything for them, especially to save their life." "Stealing a piece of bread or something like that won't make a difference. It's just food."

I asked myself what the world would be like if everyone lived by this philosophy. A person stealing a piece of bread, when another person steals the bread from that same person who stole the bread just 3 minutes ago... Society would be in a chaos and common order would lose its place. Often people seem to neglect that when they do something like this for their loved one, they are hurting someone else's loved one. What if, the question asked was not regarding food, but regarding a medicine? "If a loved one is dying from hunger, is it ok to steal medicine?" If you steal medicine, the medicine that may be going to another person is not available. Your loved one may have survived, but because you stole that medicine, another person's loved one died.

Within the innocence of the answers to the question, I found purity and greediness at the same time. People are willing to commit crimes for who they love, yet at the same time, harm another that they do not know. It seems like poverty is the real crime, but deep within the honesty of this question, I seem to find the true image of a human being; that humans, who themselves consider to be so high and mighty, are really weak imperfect animals.

When I was asked this question, I for one said "No, I would not steal." I later got into a huge fight with my girlfriend, who happened to be with me at the time. Life is hard...