The Utilitarian philosophy was admitted into the stern company of moral value systems in the latter half of the 19th. Century, where it quickly rose to prominence and became the major contender for the throne held by Immanuel Kant's elegant translation of the spirit of the Commandments into moral imperatives deriving their authority from Reason.
Most famously stated the 2 opposing priciples look like this:
Act only according to the maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law (Kant)
Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure . (John Stuart Mill)
J.S. Mill, who formulated Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism and his father, James Mill, were both economists. This explains their fondness of the new pseudo-philosophy: In its essence Utilitarianism does not introduce a new definition of moral value – it is parasitic on other definitions to tell what constitutes real pleasure or happiness – rather, it is an introduction of the idea of a universal measure of value into all moral value judgments. The early Utilitarians even attempted to work out a calculus, the so-called felicific calculus, to calculate the comparative worth of actions.
The idea that moral value(s) can be measured, compared, calculated on a cost/benefit analysis is the idea of money, the great equalizer of value.
The felicific calculus has been abandoned but the idea lingers. The medical industry is one example of this: In the final analyis, the killing of one patient is considered justified if it saves the lives of two others, yesterday's failures, no matter how great, are stepping stones for tomorrow's even greater successes. And so on ad infinitum.
The medical industry, in addition to cost/benefit analyses, operates with risk/benefit analyses. This is a classical Utilitarian formulation because it creates the illusion that all factors, known as unknown, physical, psychological, spiritual, social, economical, ethical… have been exchanged into one universally accepted currency which makes the analysis a simple matter of adding and subtracting: risk vs. benefit.
Another fundamental dishonesty of the risk/benefit equation is that it pretends to be a function of the ethical rules of patient care. Our next best friend, the good doctor, is the instrument of this deception. If he is truly caring and conscientious, if he is trying his best, according to ability, to make the right decisions, so much the better. He lends a human face to a system which, far from being guided by care, ethics or anything else our species in its self-praises calls 'humane', subsumes these factors in the prior risk/ profit analysis.
This is nothing new. Who will not admit the process is sometimes flawed, that research and development is often misdirected and different factors capable of influencing decisions in 'undesirable' ways? But the admission to imperfection is part of the deception whose function is to ensure the survival of the system itself.
Doctors' or patients' choices not correct? We must become better educated, better informed.- In fact we already are better informed, how else could we be aware of the shortcomings? Funds or research misdirected? Still better than no funds and no research.- Besides corrections are already on the way slowly, responsibly, the way of science. Corrupt trials? We must institute better control mechanisms.- In fact we already have, how else could we have discovered the fraud? A licensed drug found to be more harmful than beneficial? We must renew our risk/benefit assessment.– In fact we already have, how else could we have concluded the initial calculation was wrong?
The system is self-controlling, self-correcting, self-improving, self-proving. Checks and balances are in place, if only managed correctly. Consider the alternative. Would we want to do away with the idea of risk assessment altogether? Or drug development? Or perhaps the scientifc method itself?
But these questions are part of the sustaining deception. They are framed by the Utilitarian mindset and its leveling of all values. They are not meant to have an answer.
The ancients knew that essence becomes form, that form is no accident. Nowadays we say that form is essence. The essence even of the moral checks and balances governing the medical industry is the idea of money. The parameters within which we are conditioned to think and rethink are set by that idea ..
The question not meant to be asked is this: "How do we change the form of something whose essence is already expressed in that form?" This question has an answer.
Claus Jensen is a Dane living in Thailand where
he is able to eke out a meager but sustainable existence as a martial arts instructor primarily because
he is much taller than the average Thai, and can overpower most
ordinarily accomplished Thai boxing teachers provided they are half his size and
twice his age.
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