by Jishi Santos

Created on: July 11, 2009

'Maximum happiness and minimum unhappiness for the greatest number of people'. Utilitarianism in a nutshell. I am sure that is what our Maker would have wanted for us. But with the gift of personal freedom, both positive and negative, this is a balancing act. It is rather like a set of scales and watching which way they balance. They say Libra, the sign of the scales in the horoscope, don't like conflict or friction. I guess successive governments all over the planet from time immemorial have tried to achieve this parity, but in the end have succumbed to decisions to maintain their grip on power. It would be a state of 'nirvana' to get somewhere near to a utilitarianistic approach to living.

Let us say that you tried the communal approach to living at sometime in your life. It all sounds very idealistic and the hope would be that utilitarianism would flourish. In reality egos rise to the surface and rather than the maximum happiness for all, leaders emerge who want to satisfy their own ends in this loose community. No body is happy all the time, for those attempting this new way of life have expectations and if these are not satisfied then they become disillusioned and unhappy.

Try living on twenty or so acres with just your family and see how that works as a microcosm of the original idea of world wide utilitarianism. This could work with the right family, but as the age differences demand varied activities all will not be happy at the same time . On a world wide basis it seems this notion would be hard to achieve with so many variables interfering. Why different nations, customs, languages and so on, all auger for conflict and that has been proved by world history to date.

Maybe like an early king in Hawaii we can learn an approach to this idealistic state. He will,remain nameless because of his modesty, but whoever heard of a ruler inviting the homeless into his palace and feeding them. Not only that but he went looking for them all the time. Such benevolence would be unheard of today where money is the catalyst that divides rulers from the proletariat. It seems that Heaven, as we term the trouble free afterlife, would be the only arena that this sort of earthly philosophical notion could work and survive. But as we no nothing of this state, we can only hope in our tired old age, when we need death to ease our pain, that this sort of destination awaits us.

If one were a government then certain steps could be taken to come near to this

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