Philosophy 301:

Your worth as a human being is how much utility you produce, in yourself and in others.

There is some magic number out there, which is the exact utility points of your existence, always keeping tab on your score. You are completely interchangeable with another being of equal or greater utility points. You are not special. Only your score matters, and only insofar as that score is high. If aliens are higher utility than humans, and decide they need this planet for themselves, then they are perfectly justified in seizing it from us -- just as whites were justified in seizing the Americas from the Amerindians, because we had higher utility scores than them.

Utility always occurs inside the brain, there is nothing innate about the universe that is good, good occurs only when a higher order brain thinks it so. Perception is reality. This is why there is no way to distinguish virtual realities and reality. If a brain experiences utility while thinking about imaginary things, that utility is just as real as if he had experienced it while thinking about 'real' things. The best excuse for real experience gathering is it helps us empathize with a greater array of imaginary existences/events in the future, thus making those later experiences more powerful than if we had never encountered them personally in reality.

Utility is packaged in three modes of thinking: Affirming, Understanding, and Appreciating. They can also be described as Love, Truth, and Beauty. All three modes of thinking are related, as all thought is related, but they aren't totally equivalent, so it's useful to keep them as a triumverate. Any thoughts outside these three are worthless dross, distractions that arise from the lower brain, manacles that must be thrown off as soon as possible.

Beauty is generally found in art, but it can also be found in insightful science or philosophy, or in aesthetically pleasing scenery, sounds, creatures, etc. Beauty is an activity, your brain must actively perceive it to be beautiful for something to be beautiful. An unappreciated work of art isn't beautiful, it has no utility, the brain on the receiving side must transform it from dead matter to living utility. An artist and an audience are partners in the creation of utility, it's around half and half responsible. In this way, it's possible for people who appreciate art to have higher utility than the artists themselves, since they're creating more beauty inside their brains than ever originally existed in the artwork in front of them.

Truth is hard to describe. It's whatever comes about from thinking in a clear-headed, logical matter from accurate premises. In science, it's deriving the laws that predict the behavior of objects/forces after carefully observing their before and after states. Various rules of logic can allow us, without any doubt, to know things in addition to our initial premise, if the initial premise is true. These laws have been worked out by various luminaries like Aristotle and Bertrand Russell, and really don't admit any room for error. Strangely enough, however, no one follows these rules in their daily lives, despite everyone knowing the rules are correct and must be followed to arrive at truth. The only conclusion is that most people aren't interested in truth and are therefore null entities.

Why is truth so valuable? Because the alternative is a nightmare. As Bertrand Russell said, 'give me one lie, and I can prove anything.' The incoherence of a single false fact or logical fallacy can lead to any false conclusion, most of which are monstrous, but all of which render thinking into a muddled, incoherent mass of noise. Just as a clear Hd image on a TV is better than static, and just as a song is better than screeching nails on a chalkboard, truth is better than lies. The brain cannot even operate, as a brain, without the truth as input. At that point we may as well return to being plants, because no further thought is possible. Truth is the only path that allows humans to even exist, as sapient, intelligent beings. It isn't a delicacy, it is a necessity. The inability to discriminate between false and true beliefs, false and true values, false and true logic, false and true facts, makes people at best puppets of deceivers and at worst insane midgets. It is like entropy scrambling humpty dumpty up, such that it can never be put together again. You went from sense to nonsense, and now there is nothing left to think about.

One of the greatest things about Truth is that it allows us to perceive Beauty more clearly. Even when beauty is entirely fictional, it does not obscure truth, because it preserves a beautiful internal consistency that we can follow from beginning to end. Since all worlds exist solely in our heads, so long as a world is self-consistent, it's still part of the sensible, intelligible world of Truth.

Love is another tough to grasp concept in utilitarianism. Love is meant to be an inordinate attachment to a particular subjective relationship, despite the fact that their utility points may be no higher than anyone else's. The objectivism prized by utilitarianism seems to rule out love as a positive emotion, or at best would reduce all love to worship of some central figure, like Michael Phelps if our utility were swimming speed. But this isn't true. This is because love is good in itself, and therefore justifies itself, without reference to any other part of the utility equation.

Let's explain. It's been found that a single person who deeply cares about you, understands you completely, accepts you even after you've revealed your full thoughts and feelings to them, etc, is more valuable than a million 'fans' who respect your accomplishments and a billion 'well-wishers' who, at best, will give you some money. We treasure these relationships more highly than anything we 'earned' via our utility, because they are more truthful, enduring, and irreplaceable than any other bond. The moment love is reduced back to an ulterior motive, like how attractive you are, how happy you make the other person, etc, it becomes worthless again, because any of those things can change. But love, like beauty and truth, is eternal and cannot change. Romantic love is just one form of love. Any love that fully affirms another person, from friendship to family, has just as strong a footing. Any love that 'ends' never existed in the first place, despite what people claim to have felt. Love conquers all. Therefore if love ever fails, it wasn't love.

Love doesn't just make people happy. It has the ability to make people suffer and die for the sake of their love. It has the ability to connect two different feelings or ideas and unite them into a greater, cohesive whole. It transcends selfishness and the animal instincts. What people previously couldn't imagine doing on their own behalf, they find themselves easily capable of for the one they love, greatly multiplying the power of every loving brain in every other field. Therefore, it is a higher order thinking activity, on par with art and science. And the only way to reach it is for people to form mutual bonds of loyalty, constant interchange of thoughts and experiences, and a long accumulation of shared memories. A single person, even a very loving one, is probably maxed out at around one hundred such bonds. After that point, they simply can't spend enough time with someone, treat them as special and important enough, or understand and affirm so many disparate souls fully. This means that for the utility of love to be maximized, which everyone confesses to desire to the highest degree, we must break people up into small groups that can exchange affections, and not simply all fall in love with the nearest high-ranking utility member in our midst. Thus it is that families are the fires that fuel the utility lines of love. A culture that turns its back on cohesive, stable families has lost all hope of ever being good.

If one person builds a bridge that gives everyone a more efficient and convenient route to work, and that bridge serves a million people a million times, that's still nothing compared to a single person showing the slightest glimmer of love to another person who needs it. That one person will be more grateful, more touched, more changed, by that small ray of light, than all the millions of bridge crossers who give thanks to their bridge maker combined. This is why materialism is so pathetic in the face of utilitarianism. It's not even a contest. There's simply no comparison between the good done in these two stories.

If any of these three utilities is reduced to zero, it multiplies with the other two forces and the end result is zero. If someone is insane, they cannot perceive beauty because they can't keep any clear image of what beauty would be in their head, and they cannot be loved because they aren't a clear identity that can ever be understood and accepted. If someone is unloved, they will cast a dark interpretation on everything, not perceiving the world clearly or liking anything about it. If someone prefers their animal pleasures over aesthetic and spiritual delights, they will sacrifice truth and love in an instant for more instant gratification. Everything is related. A high utility person must possess all three traits in abundance.

The fact that only utility matters can clearly be discerned by various thought experiments. Suppose everyone enjoyed freedom, ie, there were no laws and people could do whatever they pleased, except do damage to other people's bodies or property. But suppose what people preferred to do all day was drink, then have sex, then go back to sleep. Now suppose one fellow looked with pity at his neighbor and thought to himself, "if only they knew the Truth, they would know that there's much more to this world than what they live by." Suppose this person could whip the others into shape in a matter of weeks, and once they were introduced to this better, alternative lifestyle, they themselves would never go back to the old ways. Are we really to believe that it would be wrong to go whip them because of their oh so valuable freedom?

Now suppose a second thought experiment. Suppose these people could never be whipped into shape, but they did have property rights to 99% of the land. They used all of this property to get drunk, laid, and sleep, experiencing nothing else in life. Now this single noble man is constrained to his tiny corner of land, no bigger than anyone else's (because in egalitarian utopias everyone's equal, right?). No matter what he says to them, they just make some drunken grunting and then go back to their pig lives. However, his own children are more shining examples of manhood, full of grace, beauty, love, intelligence, and charm. His company with them is the most satisfying feeling on Earth. He thinks to himself, if only my children could have grandchildren, and they could have great-grandchildren, we could slowly and steadily fix the entire world, because they would all be trained, and all are genetically responsive to said training, in the arts of civilization. But he can't do anything, his population can never rise above five people, no matter how frugal, because he cannot infringe on the property rights of his neighbors.

Are we to believe that he could not just walk over and club his pig neighbors in the head and take the land for his grandchildren? Are we to believe he could not steadily conquer the whole world for his own progeny and begin again, just like God did with Noah's flood? On what basis? On what sheer folly must we consign ourselves to such a barbaric, useless, hopeless world?

Property belongs to whoever can use it best. Property should be distributed in such a way that maximizes marginal utility. This isn't evenly, and it isn't based on supply and demand curves, monopoly powers, marketing abilities, hard work, or any other capitalist system either. In short it's complicated, and comes down to trial and error. It must be done in a legal, pre-understood, safe manner, so that people don't feel afraid or threatened all the time. IE, we need state power to have a set-in-place legal system of taxing and spending and property rights, in such a way that the community produces the most utility possible, regardless of who is producing the wealth. It must also be done in a society that values utility ahead of time -- ie it must be taught in schools and on Mother's lap at home -- such that no one resents losing property they 'earned' or whines about their 'rights,' but are all glad to give away that which can uplift the community.

People must all have enough money that they can afford to start a family, be of good health and cheer, and have as much leisure time as possible to enjoy beauty and educate themselves in the truth. This is the minimum standard of living. If said minimum standard of living cannot be achieved for the great mass of men without working 70 hour weeks at a nickel an hour, then the world is overpopulated and must change.

The only serious jobs in the world are artists, scientists, engineers, and teachers. These jobs should be supported with however many funds are necessary for them to continue their work. If it's not quite true yet that everyone else can be fired and replaced by machine labor, it will be true soon enough. No one else is producing any utility, and therefore no one from any other field has any right to arrogant self-approval, regardless of how much money their job makes them. They are corrupt cogs in a corrupt system and someday their sneers will be wiped off their faces.