Realm of Truth

Realm of Truth

What does brother Abdul-Haqq mean by utilitarianism?

Honestly, I don't see a consistent ethical system at work in the West; I think we would all be better off if there were one at work. At the level of control decisions are made according to cost-benefit analysis where the over-riding concern is profit, power, or both. This is not utilitarianism in the classical sense, in which the potential harms and benefits to all those affected by a decision are taken into account. This is shere Machiavellianism and not of the type that Machiavelli would have approved.

At the level of individual citizens, there is a hodgepod; most people act either on a vague 'feeling' or intuition of morally correct behavior or on a code (partially religious, partially social in origin) internalized during childhood. A minority work out their ethical beliefs according to a number of different frameworks (consequentialism [including utilitarianism], deontological ethics, virtue ethics, etc.) and then act on them according to their degree of personal integrity. While freedom is not the foundation of any of these systems (although deontologists tend to value autonomy as a characteristic imparting moral worth) it is generally recognized as a good worthy of preserving. Ethical systems which egregiously and unneccesarily restrict
(or eliminate) freedom are generally judged to have failed in preserving a key human good.