I realized tonight that in one of the comments I had left, I had applied Utilitarianism without thinking about it. I had known a little about it before and briefly read some more tonight. Briefly mind you, so nuances will be missing. What I would like from my readers is a little assistance in my research, so comments are greatly appreciated.

The concept of Utilitarianism as an ethical theory has been around in some form since the Greeks, but it is really Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill that developed it in the form that we know today. Mill’s theories are used in economics.

The simple definition of Utilitarianism is “The greatest happiness for the greatest number.” There is also negative Utilitarianism, which is the promotion of the least harm, or preventing the greatest harm to the greatest number. Utilitarianism is also divided into Act and Rule – Bentham being considered the originator of modern Act Utilitarianism and Mill of Rule. Since my research was rather brief, I am going to deal mainly with Act.

Here is an example from wikipedia:

“A surgeon has six patients: one needs a liver, one needs a pancreas, one needs a gall bladder, and two need kidneys. The sixth just came in to have his appendix removed. Should the surgeon kill the sixth man and pass his organs around to the others? This would obviously violate the rights of the sixth man, but act utilitarianism seems to imply that, given a purely binary choice between (1) killing the man and distributing his organs or (2) not doing so and the other five dying, violating his rights is exactly what we ought to do”.

That is an example of Act Utilitarianism. The greatest good for the greatest number.

Now some questions for you:

You have a business decision to make and it will cost 5 people their jobs. This decision however will increase the wages and job security for 50 people. What do you do?

You are fighting a war against guerilla fighters and the local population is aiding them. If the war continues, 20,000 civilians will die – women and children. You can choke off the enemy’s supplies by committing an act. That act entails going in to a village where the population has been aiding your enemy, burning the village and killing every single soul in it – 500 people. This act prevents the other villages from supporting the enemy and the war ends sooner. You can save the lives of 20,000 innocents by killing 500. What do you do?

Let’s put that into a real world (although the above scenario is real) with a concrete example – Iraq:

For those fighting the Americans the hatred outweighs the fear. They will not stop until the fear outweighs the hatred. Every day innocent Iraqis are killed by car bombs, cross fires and mistakes. How do you make fear the most powerful motivator and end the war? Destroy the insurgents in a brutal, vicious and very public way. Take captured insurgents into the street and cut them open for all to see. Fill the hearts of the enemy with the fear of Satan and send them running. You have just ended the suffering of countless Iraqi children. What would you do?

Think on your answer before reading the next paragraph.

Now, after that a little bit about Rule Utilitarianism:

By conducting warfare in such a manner and as the single most powerful nation on Earth, you have just declared that torture and massacres are acceptable since you are trying to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number in that particular situation. Now as we all know, different cultures have different ideas of what is the greatest good. Every nation and every militia in the world can conduct warfare in such a way and you have no moral or legal precedent to stop them. Now the suffering in the whole of society has been increased. The Rule says that conducting warfare in such a manner is the wrong thing to do since taken outside of that particular situation the suffering throughout the world’s population is increased.

Aren’t ethics fun class? You see what happens to me? I start on one subject that leads me to another that leads me to another. Now I want to compare Buddhist teachings of relieving suffering against Utilitarianism. If a Buddhist is supposed to cause no harm to another, yet his goal is to reduce the suffering of all, is it right to cause suffering to one to prevent suffering to many? And – Buddhism versus Existentialism. Buddhism versus Gnosticism. The list goes on.

Number 1 on my “I want” list.

Wikipedia

utilitarianism.com - Mill’s book Utilitarianism via the web. It doesn’t feel like a book, it doesn’t smell like a book, but it’s free.

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Aleister Crowley

Let me first say that this statement has been taken to mean a few things. One of those that left a comment put it quite well “A specious veneer on lawlessness.” - Chateau_Yquem. Let me explain though. Let’s start with the origin of the statement and who said it.

Aleister Crowley was named “The Wickedest Man Alive”, and he quite enjoyed that (in 2002 he was listed as 73 on the BBC’s 100 Greatest Britons). He also called himself The Beast, as in 666. Finding good information on Crowley is difficult although much has been written about him. He is either completely insane, depraved and the incarnation of evil according some or he is a genius and one of the greatest thinkers of all time. So whatever you read, you always have to consider the source and their motives. Rotten dot com actually had a brief interesting piece on him – I’ll provide the link below with a MAJOR warning.

Crowley was among other things, self professed sex fiend and drug addict – he had a heroin addiction until the day he died. He was involved in several occult and hermetic organizations, Magick (yes the “k” is supposed to be there) and various forms of spirituality.

Crowley came up with a philosophy, religion, school of thought or call it what you may that he called Thelema. Thelema is Greek for “will”. Well, maybe he didn’t come up with it – his claim was that it was dictated to him by a being named Aiwass who was speaking for the god Horus. The Law of Thelema has been described as libertine to put it mildly. Then came “Do what thou wilt…”

That statement has been attacked many times as an excuse to behave in an immoral way, but Crowley himself said that wasn’t the meaning of it. Some think that Crowley was just saying that, but from what I have seen he didn’t seem the type to temper his beliefs to make them more palatable for others. He stated that people should discover their true wills and act on them.

Now, why did Crowley’s law come to me the other day? It has to do with morality and free will. I was in a situation that brought about a moral dilemma, or at least should have. As it applied to me, I had no problem with it, even though it could cause problems for me. I could choose to do it. The problem is the effect it would have on the other person directly involved. Now, I am not a sociopath or psychopath, and I do have a conscience. However, if you have noticed from reading previous entries of mine, I do have the ability to step away from morality and look at a situation merely using cold facts. The situation, and the way I felt about it, left me with the firm belief that there is no such thing as “absolute morality”, there is no internal guiding force which leads us to right. It is through my own free will that I choose to be moral. I can choose to be immoral so long as I am prepared for the consequences. That is how I look at Crowley’s statement of his law.

You can look at Locke or Hobbes and their theories of morality and the nature of humans. Hobbes believed that we were inherently bad. Locke thought we were born with a mind that was a “tablua rosa” – a soft tablet, with no such things as innate ideas. This makes sense – for if we are naturally good, why would we need moral teachings or religion? Look at the first recorded words of human history – they are laws, rules and moral stories. We form a society with agreed upon rules for self preservation – “I don’t want it to happen to me therefor I won’t do it to you.”

The only natural law that governs humans is, other than the biological, the law of free will, and Calvin be damned. To me, that is the meaning of “Do what thou wilt shall be the only Law”.

Here are some links:

skepdic.com

wikipedia.org

WARNING!!rotten dot com This link goes to the text I read and the text only - should you venture to other parts of rotten, you will find pictures that are incredibly disturbing, some are downright revolting.

Blupete.com - Locke

Blupete.com - Hobbes

I think I actually now know what that statement truly means.

http://www.crystalinks.com/merovingian.html

Just a little something to make your mind turn over.  First, I have to say that I have been baptised, had first communion and been confirmed in the Roman Church.  I have also not been to mass (except for funerals), confessed or taken communion in a very, very long time.  I do believe in God, or Higher Power etc, I proved it to myself using the Laws of Physics (I know, I'm a little different).  Now on with the heresy:

Many people know about the Holy Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The  main current view of the Trinity was confirmed at the Council of Bishops at Nicea in 325, stating that all three were one.  This caused a bit of a problem, mainly with a Bishop named Arius, who thought that Jesus was subordinate to God, and that making a man borne of woman divine diminished the divinity of God.  This became known as the Arian Heresy and he was excommunicated for it.  This in turn led to the bishop of Rome aligning himself with the Merovingian kings of the Franks, who in turn did battle with the kings who supported Arius.  This in turn, led to the spread of the Roman Catholic Church as the supreme Christian church.  A good book on this is The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours.

Now, the concept of triangles and trinities was around much longer that Christianity.  The Egyptians built pyramids.  Three Greek temples  - the temple on the Acropolis, the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion and the Temple of Afaia on the island of Aegina form an a perfect isosceles triangle, hundreds of miles apart.  There is also the Triskel.

The Triskel is an ancient symbol, see my photos for some examples.  It was used widely across Europe.  The three points of the Triskel represent Nature, Humanity and Divinity.  Nature = Holy Spirit? Humanity = The Son?  Divinity = The Holy Father?  Look at the Celtic and Templar crosses in the photos, notice what is on them?

Just a little more - what happens within the same week as the day we have determined to be Christmas?  The winter solstice.  When does Easter take place?  In the spring, a time of rebirth and renewal.  Compare the birth of Heracles in Greek mythology to the Immaculate Conception.

From this you can see that one of my favourite quotes is from Goethe's Faust:

"Whoever struggles in ceaseless toil, him we may grant redemption."  Spoken by the angels to Mephisto as they carry Faust's soul to Heaven after Mephisto thought he had beaten God for Faust's soul.

oh, and I just checked my storage space..I am using, get this, this is hilarious (or is it creepy?)....6.6666666667% of my total storage space.

Home | Profile | Blog | Photos | Lists   Customize Settings Space Settings | Blog Settings | Permissions | E-mail Publishing Storage Statistics

  Storage  

6.66666666666667%   You are using 2 MB of your 30 MB storage