Part 3

Part 3
Introduction to Utilitarianism and Mill’s Ideas on Utilitarianism:
John Stuart Mill explains the theory of Utilitarianism in his novel, Utilitarianism, which states, “…actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Mill). His theory is about happiness and how it affects our lives. To him, happiness means feelings pleasure and not feeling pain. If your goal in life is to be happy, then you will be happy. The pleasure that you feel can vary in many different qualities and quantities, and it is different for every person. Some people try to obtain the highest level of happiness and some people just try to be generally happy. The people that try to obtain the highest level of happiness are often sad because they can’t reach that higher level of happiness. Except when they do they are extremely happy. Those people that just try to be generally happy are usually always happy, but don’t usually reach that higher level of happiness. Higher level happiness should be more vital to life than general happiness because it is happiness to the extreme level. The ultimate happiness is the happiness that most human beings want to obtain. These pleasures should be held with a higher standard than general pleasures because they are the ultimate type of happiness. These different types of happiness greatly affect our decision making process because we do things and will take consequences or pain just to obtain higher levels of happiness/the happiness that we want to obtain. People that obtain these higher levels of pleasure are generally less happy because they understand the limitations of the world better than those that don’t obtain higher levels of happiness. People also make sacrifices for others to make them content or people make sacrifices to make themselves happy. A key to his theory is that you can’t value your happiness over the happiness of others. It can make people angry and frustrated if they can’t be happy or can’t obtain the higher level of happiness. He also states that people’s achievements should count as happiness because people go through pain and suffering to achieve their goal, which turns into happiness. Another important idea in his theory is that if someone doesn’t see the point of a law or rule in society, then that person won’t think it’s important and won’t follow that rule. People’s morals also come greatly into play when it comes to obtaining happiness in life. Your morals guide your happiness and decisions in life based off of happiness. If you know you did something morally wrong, then you will feel guilty inside your mind. Most things that people want in life and things that people want to achieve are because they want happiness as the end result. Good actions made by someone result in happiness and bad actions by someone result in sadness. People do things to be happy.
How Utilitarianism Answers My Questions:
Mill agrees with my questions: What is the role of interpersonal communication in our lives? How does technology shape society and transform the future (good or bad)? Why do we have relationships with others? To what extent do we need them? What do our relationships with others say about who we are? What rules or morals guide what we say to other people? How important is it to think about how others see and think of us? How does that shape how we think of ourselves? Mill focuses the most on happiness in his novel, but it connects to all of my questions. We use technology, have relationships, communicate with others, and choose what we say to others, what we say to certain people, how others think of us, and how we think of others. All of those topics relate directly to happiness and how we live our lives.
Humans communicate and have relationships with one another in many different ways. People communicate with one another because humans enjoy having interactions with one another. It makes us feel happy. We love to tell jokes to one another, laugh with one another, etc. We also have relationships with one another because we enjoy interacting with different people. This why we hang out with friends and have girlfriends. We love to laugh and have fun with friends. Mill believes this to be the result of happiness which, “…is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness” (Mill). Having a deep relationship with a girl or just having a great group of friends creates happiness within us. It might even activate that higher level of pleasure because we love hanging out with our friends and love hanging out with our girlfriend. It’s just human nature. Mill states that higher, “...nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but my mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favorable to keeping the higher capacity in exercise” (Mill). Mill explains that obtaining higher level pleasures is hard to do and then keeping those higher pleasures within you for a period time is even harder. These higher levels of happiness can easily go away and change to sadness or just plain happiness, but not super levels of happiness. This directly relates to my questions about relationships. One day we might be really happy about our relationships in our lives (friends, girlfriend, etc.). We might obtain higher levels of happiness from our relationships, but then the next day we might lose those higher levels of pleasure and be mad and sad about our relationships. It changes extremely often due to nature, our mood/feelings, influences due to society, and other reasons as well. It also relates to my question about how our morals guide what we say to one another. Our morals affect what we say to one another because we choose what we say to difference people, depending on their role in society. For example, if someone gives you a compliment, it makes you feel good about yourself. If someone tells you a joke, it makes you laugh. Both of these examples could make you reach higher levels of happiness. However, if someone gives you an insult, it could ruin your happiness and make you lose those higher levels of pleasure.
Mill explains the idea of aspirations and how they can be lost or affected by society. For example, “Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying” (Mill). If people have really high aspirations, they can lose them due to loss in interest to that aspiration to work hard. They might mot have time to work hard on that goal or they might not feel good anymore after they work hard to reach it, so it may be pointless to them now. If you don’t feel pleasure after working hard to obtain something, then there is no point anymore. This causes people to stop working hard towards that goal. They might not be able to obtain that goal anymore as well. This causes people to obtain lower goals, so people go towards these now even if it doesn’t create as much happiness as the higher level goal. This quote illustrates my questions on technology and relationships. It refers to technology because if people have access to Facebook, Twitter, TV, the Internet, or their cell phone, then they will use their technology to their advantage because it would help them achieve their goal/find what they are looking for. If they don’t have access to updated technology, then they will obtain lower levels or older versions of technology to obtain their information, like newspapers or magazines. It also refers to relationships because if someone has a crush on a really hot girl, then they will go for that girl. However, if that person can’t get with that girl/if the girl doesn’t like them back, then that person will go for not as hot of a girl because he will think that that girl will be easier to get with because she isn’t as cute and doesn’t have as high of an ego/reputation. This is because if a girl is super hot, then a lot of guys will go for her, but if a girl isn’t as hot, then she will be easier to get with.
People love hanging out with friends and people love participating in activities with friends because it gives people pleasure. This is because most people enjoy doing activities with friends, instead of doing them by themselves. Mill refers to this when he talks about, “The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure...” (Mill). This relates to my questions on relationships and interpersonal communication. People obtain higher levels of happiness when they participate in activities with friends because it makes them happier when they can have fun, joke around, and just talk with their friends while participating in an activity. People also enjoy communicating with friends while participating in an activity as to doing an activity alone because if you do it alone, then you don’t have anyone to talk to, joke around with, or have fun with.
Mill’s novel, Utilitarianism, explained how his theory of happiness relates to humans’ lives. He also explained how their are different levels of happiness, and he explained how their are different qualities and quantities of pleasure. His novel greatly related to my questions on technology, interpersonal communication, relationships, and how our morals guide what we say to one another because his novel answered all of my questions in some way, and his novel helped me discover the answers to my questions by interpreting his text.