The Inutility of Utilitarianism

Introduction

If you wanted to describe the whole masking/ lockdown v non-masking/ anti-lockdown debate in a concise and meaningful way, I don’t think you could do any better than the single word: incoherent.

The reason the debate is incoherent is because the debate is centered on peripheral and secondary, tertiary, and ancillary issues instead of dealing with what’s really at stake. Because what’s really at stake is our nation’s ability to have a serious dialogue about ethics, and, for what it’s worth, theology. We don’t seem to know HOW to have important conversations, anymore. So, instead of dealing with the very difficult and complex – and theological – issues of ethics, we’ve resorted to sloganeering and conspiracy theorizing. Neither the browbeating condescension of the Left, nor the panicked accusations of the right are useful to the body politic and neither are actually helpful. The smug Liberal and the credulous conservative are actively hurting the country. And I have friends and people I love on both sides. So, in what follows I would like to offer a critique of both sides and try to offer a way forwards so that we can have the wherewithal to have a fruitful national discussion about how to navigate a pandemic.

The Right

I don’t intend to stay in this section for very long, not because my critique is less significant, or because my natural ideological home is on the right. I believe that although the Right is my patria that that makes me all the more invested when I see things propagated by the right that are false and conspiratorial.

So, first and foremost, I need to applaud my conservative brethren and sistren, because they have determined that they are no longer going to pretend that the Mainstream Media is not a propaganda mill for progressivism. The Right has concluded that a few things really are true and they really are serious problems that need dealing with:

1)     There is an ideological uniformitarianism within the old media that is clearly bent on wide-ranging social and political change. This uniformitarianism means that the “News”, Hollywood, Pro-Sports, Big-Tech, the Academy, and others are actively engaged in attempting to change the fundamental structure of our Republic.

2)     There is such a thing as a “deep-state”…at least in the sense that there are career bureaucrats who happen to largely be of the political Left who seek to use their positions to advance a Progressive agenda.

3)     There is a need to stop relying on the old media or hoping that government structures will cease the advance of a socialist take-over.

And I think that these 3, and there are more, points that are worth considering. But these 3 are important because it inculcates a feeling of defensiveness, and even paranoia, among conservatives. The Right has been gaslighted so often and so hard, that they (we) are in danger of becoming like the Dwarves in The Last Battle who refuse to see the truth because we won’t be fooled again!

In essence, the political Right is like a woman who had a series of cheating boyfriends who is certain that her faithful boyfriend is cheating.[1] And more than that the political right tends to have a strong belief in meritocracy. We believe that people come into positions of influence because they are capable. So, when you combine the belief that people in authority or with influence are very talented and you feel persecuted, is it any wonder that conspiracy theories are attractive? I think not.

But that doesn’t change the fact that they are unhelpful. Because lies are never helpful. And it is fundamentally unethical to believe and propagate lies. And as long as the Right keeps buying into conspiracy theories, they there will be no way forwards. Not only about Coronavirus but about anything!

The Left

First, in fairness, I wish to say that I think the majority of people on the Left who are advocating masks and lockdowns really believe that they are for the best – it’s a good faith argument. Now, I think that many of the arguments made are bad (more on that presently) but for MOST I think that the desire for mandatory masking and mandatory vaxxing and mandatory social distancing and down-locking are made in good faith.

But there is a gaping problem with these arguments: they’re bad. Most of the arguments I’ve heard from the Left which advance these broad-based mandatory efforts come from some weird combination of “If it only saves one life”-ism and Utilitarianism. And that’s an extremely dangerous combination. First, if you don’t know what Utilitarianism is, don’t worry, you already know what it is, you just don’t know you already know what it is. In short, it’s the believe that whatever creates the most happiness is the best ethical choice. It is not, as many say, what creates the most good for the most people (at least not in its oldest iterations). It’s simply whatever creates the most happiness – defined as the most pleasure and least pain. And, of course, because it’s philosophy, there are levels of happiness, so it’s a quality AND quantity thing.

There are a few obvious problems with Utilitarianism which should be readily apparent to the careful thinker. First, why should we accept “most pleasure and least pain” as the definition of happiness? And even if you can defend that definition (which I’m not sure you can, at least not without equivocation) why should that be the definition of good – and even if you could sustain that (which I’m pretty certain you couldn’t) – why should this definition of the good outweigh other definitions (a question that cannot be answered)?

Second, and this is more important, Utilitarianism obviously justifies acts of horrendous evil and injustice. If you could eliminate racial problems in America and all you had to do is kill one person, would you do it? What about killing one black man? What about killing all native Americans? What about killing all minorities? I mean, over a long-enough time frame, a nation without racial strife will probably redound to more overall happiness and less anxiety, and stress, and racially charged violence – granted it would have to be over a VERY long period of time, but Utilitarianism isn’t really bound by time constraints.

Now, obviously, I think genocide is a bad thing. I don’t think it would be good to exterminate the Indians or black people. I think it would be bad. But I can say that because I have an ethical system which relies on God’s decrees.[2]

Now, combine a system that cannot be defended, which is logically required to commit acts of injustice in certain situations, with the argument that the greatest happiness comes from not losing a single life – and I think you get the picture. It means that anything and everything you want to do to fight the ‘Rona is justified and justifiable.

The Impasse

So obviously you see why we’re at an ethical impasse. The Liberal is willing to overrun any and all civil rights in the foolish idea that their utilitarian structure will work out for the “greater good”. The Conservative is becoming utterly unreasonable because they fear that giving even an inch to the Left is an inch they’ll never get back…and neither side is right and neither side is entirely wrong.

Maybe utilitarian calculus would be helpful in determining policies. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t inform our decision-making – they should. The problem is that we have to recognize that just “saving lives” is the most weak-sauce form of Utilitarianism imaginable. John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham would have laughed in your face for such things…Philippa Foot may have just pushed you in front of a trolley. The problem that Conservatives point out, and fairly, is just prolonging the lives of those most susceptible to SARS-COV-2 has consequences (all policies do!) at the cost of economic depression, lost jobs, lost businesses, disenfranchisement, loss of civil rights,  lost educations, and so on make the cure worse than the disease. And there are ways to calculate this. QALYs [https://www.physio-pedia.com/Quality-Adjusted_Life_Year] are one way! There are others. This is what insurance actuaries and people in government do a lot. They look at costs and benefits.

Maybe you disagree with the QALY idea. OK. Fine. But if you’re married to Utilitarianism, then you’re going to have to come up with an alternative measurement that can guide public policy. And “if it just saves one life” is dumb. You need a better system.

And of course, conservatives are so busy shouting and shaking their fists at MSNBC and Dominion that they aren’t forcing the issue. So, what happens? Liberals hear Conservatives talk about tracking devices in the vaccine and they dismiss them and so the Left doesn’t feel the need to deign to talk to the credulous country cousins.

And of course, the Right has literally zero trust for the left, scalded dogs that we are, so we write the left off as Statist-Socialists and we don’t force the conversation.

The Proposal

I have opinions on Covid policies. But that’s not important right now. Right now, I call on my friends on the right and on the left to sit down and have an actual conversation about ethics. We need a way forwards. We need to find ways to have ethical and theological conversations that won’t devolve into name-calling and bias-affirming.

The Right needs to get real and actually meaningfully engage with the philosophies and theologies behind the Left’s policies. Because I believe we have better answers. But we need to do so with the recognition that the Left, at least most of them, draw their conclusions in good faith and really only want to do what’s right. They may be wrong but they want to be right…and that’s an entre to further discussion and perhaps ever progress.

The Left needs to get real and recognize that all the social institutions of power are arrayed against Conservatives (with very few exceptions) and that attempting to insult and harangue everyone on the right into wearing a mask and not going to work is not only going to not work it’s going to be counter-productive and lead to further polarization and division.

Both right and left need to be open and explicit about what ethical system we want to use and what our basis for measuring our system’s effectiveness actually is. Then and only then will we be able to get somewhere.

 


[1] Although, to be fair, people who are serially cheated-on, it seems to me, have something pathological about their own personality which is why they keep ignoring the signs that they’re getting involved with a cheater. I’m not victim blaming, I’m just saying if you keep getting mugged you should maybe avoid dark alleys. It might not be your fault that you look like a mark…but, I mean…if you do…

[2] There are, of course, God’s commands to exterminate the Canaanites. But this issue is far too big to cover in this blog. I would recommend the book Is God a Moral Monster, by Paul Copan.