Thoughts on utilitarianism
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I first encountered the word “utilitarianism” in my social sciences and economics class back in high school. I remember memorizing it as if it were something intangible, a simple concept linked to Jeremy Bentham, just to pass my exam. A few years later, during my first semester at McGill, I took a class on Moral Philosophy—again, utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill reappeared, this time accompanied by hypothetical scenarios, entering “experience machines.”.
Now, once again, encountering this concept, it has become tangible—something real, a concept that has had and continues to have a real impact on people. I think what I’m having trouble wrapping my head around is the way too many concepts and themes that are most often presented to us in education (at least in my case in high school) but never to instigate a deeper meaning, to show us how, for example, utilitarians had an actual impact on people's lives, they don’t go beyond what all of these British philosophers actually brought upon with their theories, or at least they pick and choose which history to tell us, from which people.
Mill presents the idea of maximizing happiness, but what exactly is happiness? For whom is it considered happiness, and to what population is it being applied? Sarah Ahmed questions the idea of what is seen as “happy,” “good,” or “bad.” In the eyes of the colonizer, racialized people are very often seen as unhappy and not conforming to the conception of “happiness,” but who fits into this mainstream idea of “happiness.” Ahmed suggests that happiness is simply constructed in a way to fulfill social norms. This idea of "the greatest good for the greatest number" excludes those who don't fit into the mainstream ideas of happiness, which are often shaped by white, heterosexual, or neoliberal values. For instance, melancholic migrants illustrate how assimilating to this happiness and trying to fit into these social norms further alienate and marginalize them. Ahmed’s critique challenges us to reconsider happiness, not as a universal goal we all strive for, but as a political tool used to impose and maintain power structures.