Pros And Cons Of Utilitarianism

Is it possible for human beings to act from an apathetically objective point of view? People often attempt to create distance from their subjectivity to achieve goals within the world, but they cannot achieve true objectiveness. Engineers, natural scientists, judges and researchers all put aside their own biases to a degree in order to accomplish their fields, however they are not and cannot be entirely objective. Scientists—being the most publicly perceived objective figure—have human biases defined by their culture, history and language which they cannot separate themselves from. Even if they could separate from such things the pressures of career through competition and livelihood in the need to provide for themselves and loved ones creates
an environment of external pressure on them. Those pressures mentioned are only a few examples of how a person relates to the world around them and is in turn affected by the world. Ultimately the scientist and every human are units related to other units in a massive network of units. The relationships between these units cannot be removed for objectivitys sake without also fundamentally altering them. Removing a unit from its network would leave it disoriented without any frame of reference to its surroundings, lost, without capacity to distinguish one thing from another. In feigning objectivity a person still must view the given problem from somewhere. That somewhere will inevitably have relationships with the world. There is no outside place to look in on from. Utilitarianism claims to be a normative moral theory, one that supposedly provides an unbiased way to determine what a person should do in any circumstance.
In the framework of human politics utilitarianism loses its normative fundamentals. Yes, on an abstract level utilitarianism is objective, unbiased and neutral. But when humans apply it as a tool they corrupt it with their innate biases passed onto them by their environmental influences no matter how much they attempt to separate themselves from
them. To utilitarianism humans are hedonistic mathematical units and everything else in the world is reduced entirely to objects only valuable for their human use. Abstractly this might work. On the ground though humans are not hedonistic mathematical units and a utilitarian understanding of their nature and the reality in which they reside is not accurate. Humans are unique and each individual irreplaceable. The experiences that constitute a given individual, their friends, interactions with their community and how they as individuals form that community with others based on predilections of justice and cultural morals are not dilutable to a binary on and off switch composed of a persons happiness. Humans often maintain a life of utter misery for the majority of their existence yet carry on due to a chasing a higher purpose—where a higher purpose is the pursuit of something impossible—they perceive (consciously or unconsciously) and ascribe to. Throughout human history that purpose has taken the form of the veneration of god in chase of a salvation that never comes, or the self in chase of a transcendence that never arrives, or the state in chase of security that can never make one truly secure, or as in modern times capital—of which no person can ever have enough. Whether or not that purpose actually exists on a cosmic scale is irrelevant to the human experiencing it, and their actions stemming from that experience are very real even if the reasoning behind them may be abstractly bankrupt. At no point in human—homo sapians—history have humans ever separated themselves from religious behavior—the pursuit of a higher meaning. Religious behavior in homo sapians is traceable back to the middle paleolithic period of the stone age (300,000 B.C.E) which conveniently is when anatomically modern humans appeared. Religious behavior, no matter what the particular practicing human believes—or pretends not to believe as in the case of the atheist unconsciously worshiping capital in consumerist cultures—they are in some capacity worshiping some higher purpose. Even in the case of the nihilist who disavows the very idea of meaning and value must worship the destruction of these concepts to bring them about. They must have the higher purpose to destroy all higher purposes in order to attempt the act. This act of worship is inseparable from the human experience and due to its existence humans cannot accurately be compacted into a pleasure-pain binary. That is not to say that a mechanical interpretation of humankind is not possible, but rather that a binary interpretation is not possible. Modern capitalist societies wholly embrace utilitarianism because it atomizes the human experience into a pleasure-pain binary. A consumerist culture valuing profit over improvement of the human condition benefits greatly by substituting the living thinking human with a pleasure maximization machine. This culture embraces patchwork mechanical solutions to problems over understanding human condition and applying that understanding. It glorifies calculable process over ethical dialectics. In the political context of European colonialism a grim past shines on utilitarian thought with the advent of Hobbesian thought. To Hobbes, humans are deconstructable, measurable and quantifiable like machines. The advantage of this is that once humans are thought of as pleasure-seeking measurable machines, all the pieces necessary to make calculations on what actions realize the most pleasure and least pain surface. In a modern context, feeding that data into a computer that could draw conclusions from it is the utilitarian dream. Pulling that historical European colonial perspective back into view. Picture a small group of extremely wealthy individuals that accumulated their wealth through expropriation of the commons and exploitation of human labour. (Where the commons are natural resources necessary for the thriving of all, that are socially understood to be held in common—and human labour is the labour of average working people.) How might this group safeguard their shadily acquired wealth expropriated over the needs of the many? The best way would be to legitimize their holdings and justify their position on a political and ethical stage. In this case it makes sense to turn to Hobbsian thought as he attempts to unify theories on morals and human nature around utilitarianism.
He also venerates the political sovereign as civilized and able to reign over the savage human with utilitarian based calculable action. This picture of a 1600s sovereign draws parallels to the hyper-rich neoliberal cabal of politicians and corporations, the military dictator and the fascist personality. The neutral normative nature of utilitarianism is what makes it so applicable to authoritarians and disgusting to anyone valuing aesthetics, justice or basic human dignity. In tandem with a utilitarian geared social contract where a primitivist theory ascribing humans as fearful, selfish pleasure seekers that are willing to cede their sovereignty to a political sovereign for security is present, authoritarians are able to exploit the relationship. Whether a totalitarian bureaucracy or a capitalist autocracy the sovereign has no obligation or desire to value virtues like benevolence or things such as justice, rather they value cost-benefit analyses and efficiency. An example of utilitarianism in the contemporary political sphere are the incessant calculations on candidate popularity in elections which are the result of data polls on the public perception of political issues. This data is then used by the politicians and their patrons to asses the environment so they can take action that best serves their own self
interest. Assessments of data are irreplaceable to a culture engrossed by fear and distrust and also motivated by efficiency and selfishness. When the topics of environmentalism, human health, rights or dignity are broached utilitarian happiness calculations have the floor fall from beneath them. It becomes apparent that contrary to the aim of being a neutral moral theory utilitarianism finds itself and amoral justification for wanton consumption of the planet without regard for future generations, declarations of war, chattel slavery, conflict mines and genocide. Utilitarianism accommodates the policies of totalitarian governments in the eyes of the “consenting” populace and their beloved leaders. To the dispossessed masses exploited by the wealthy a utilitarian calculation justifies turning to authoritarians under the guise that those authoritarians could empower them. The utilitarian everyman finds themselves ceding power to the authoritarian as they believe the action to promotes a greater welfare for all. On the opposite end of the power dynamic leaders justify their amoral behavior as necessary and ethical while brutalizing, murdering and imprisoning protesters, supposed terrorists and perceived enemies in self-justified defense of the good of the many in the name of calculable pleasure-pain analysis. Utilitarianism does not invoke objectivity in its followers, but instead provides them a moral shield enabling them to escape accountability for their selfish actions and eliminates the pressure to evaluate and criticize their own actions because they can claim them as objective calculated conclusions not personal decisions.