A General Rejection of Utility

Utility is something nearly all high school graduates know something about. It is usually introduced to us in economics classes. It is defined in Wikipedia (an incredibly useful source, even though you must check its facts) as "a measure of the happiness or satisfaction gained by consuming goods and services." Now, I taught high school economics for a semester and taught about utility. When dealing with rather mundane examples, such as the number of twinkies a person eats and how that relates to utility, this is a good teaching concept. However, utility is increasingly being applied wholesale to our world to great detriment.

In the past two weeks, we've seen two different school shootings involving men who either sexually assaulted girls or seemed to intend to prior to turning thr guns on them. Those men saw those children as goods to be consumed for their satisfaction, pure and simple. They may have had other serious mental/spiritual problems, but their treatment of others is clearly utilitarian.

While less bloody or high profile, we've also seen an increase in this sort of thinking toward the elderly, infirm, and unborn over the past 30 years or so. Repeatedly, we hear reasoning related to mercy killings, euthanasia, and abortion couched in terms like "quality of life" and "contribution to society." People have been increasingly reduced to what they are able to provide to the great ME our society seems to worship.

This can be thought of directly in terms of utility. Person A (an elderly mother, for example) provides Person B (son) with steadily decreasing utility because A no longer makes an income and requires constant care from both family and medical workers. In this way of thinking, when the utility derived falls below an acceptable level, B no longer has the responsibility to provide for A. In fact, some are arguing that A should be pressured, or even forced, to go ahead and put an end to her life so everyone else can maximize their utility.

And the examples abound.

We must reject this sort of utilitarian view of the world in favor of a Christian view that upholds the value of every human life as a sacred thing treasured by God. If we allow utilitarianism to become the main way of thinking, we will be left with a world in which a sexual predator is no longer doing anything wrong, since those children provide him with utility.