What I mean is, do you essentially picture your vision of an ideal society, and then work backwards and ask what rules or principles would be necessary to make that the outcome? Or do you imagine your ideas of right and wrong, the role of government, the role of social norms, etc first, and then 'press play' on them in a sense, and see what society comes out and just accept the result as the byproduct of those principles?
Are right and wrong, the role of the State, the role of cultures, the responsibilities of the individual, and so on ideas you can imagine in their ideal form in abstract, independent from any specific implementation, or are they tools one uses to get the outcome they want, and if they do not achieve that outcome, you change or modify the tools so that you do get the outcome you want?
I don't think I can subscribe to such a strict dichotomy. I lean very heavily towards principles first but I'm also enough of a pragmatist to realize that those principles are ultimately a luxury only afforded to those who have first won the power necessary to enact/enforce them.
What worries me about the outcome first approach is that it comes with the very real danger of forfeiting one's principles entirely in order to achieve victory and without a sufficiently strong commitment to said principles it is possible they end up never returning. You can see this already playing out in attitudes surrounding freedom of expression.