Ego is Latin for I. Sigmund Freud describes the ego as the conscious and unconscious effort to govern action in a biological organism. The end or goal of the ego in any dramatic context is to change the perceptions of the ego in the dramatic context. The ego might feel intense pleasure and make efforts to persist that pleasure. Or the ego might feel intense pain and make efforts to eliminate or moderate or attenuate that pain. The end or goal of the ego is to change ego perceptions. The means to the end is the effort of the ego to govern action in the sensory context. This is why you are having trouble with means and ends in the context of human desire it is always the biological ego or conscious I making efforts to modify its own perceptions. Think about the effort to change the world it is both possible for the self to modify one's own perceptions and impossible for the self to change most anything else given that others are trying to change the world too and the world is generated by all those efforts!

Ego is Latin for I. Sigmund Freud describes the ego as the conscious and unconscious effort to govern action in a biological organism. The end or goal of the ego in any dramatic context is to change the perceptions of the ego in the dramatic context. The ego might feel intense pleasure and make efforts to persist that pleasure. Or the ego might feel intense pain and make efforts to eliminate or moderate or attenuate that pain. The end or goal of the ego is to persist or change ego perceptions. The means to the end is the effort of the ego to govern action in the sensory context. This is why you are having trouble with means and ends in the context of human desire: the biological ego or conscious I only makes efforts to modify its own perceptions. The change of ego perceptions is the ends. The efforts of the ego are means to the ends.

The ego wants to change the world and makes efforts to accomplish that end or goal. But every other ego makes similar efforts. The world is the interaction, cooperation, and conflict generated by all those individual efforts to change the world.

I would say that ends or goals really exist; and means to those ends really exist; but they are related by the desires, perceptions, memories, talents, and efforts of the biological organism.