Utilitarianism: Bibliotheca Webinar 

There is a reason you got 28 likes. :) I agree!

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Well he just said that there is no such thing as British happiness units. The man has never heard of chocolate digestives. 😜

Neo Nazi Gruypers and Antifa SJWs have occasionally landed here. I'm ok with that because I think the only hope for them is education and I don't begrudge them learning something. However, if they are abusive to me or anybody else, (neofascist anti Semites from the right, totalitarian racist anti-capitalists from the left) I inform them that they cannot stay unless they are intellectually housebroken. Either they learn some manners or I ban them.

Bravo 👏🏾

@@dr.michaelsugrue Why the schizm, do you think, Dr. Sugrue?

@@dr.michaelsugrue “The Sophists held no values other than winning and succeeding. They were not true believers in the myths of the Greeks but would use references and quotations from the tales for their own purposes.” This embodies modern day ideologues, I cant stand the virtue signaling from both sides when as a collective neither posses virtue by any stretch of the definition. “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”

@@dr.michaelsugrue I'm without question an anti semite but I don't particularly feel the need to attack or abuse people just for being Jewish. That's not constructive or necessary and it's even redundant since if I honestly believe the things that I do (yes I believe them) then they must already know that about themselves as well if I'm correct, so it serves no real purpose beyond being petty. While I'm sure you don't agree with me I appreciate the nuanced stance and your content anyways.

Huxley's Brave New World

Full on, I thought he was lying down

My health does not allow berserker mode anymore.

@@dr.michaelsugrue ahh i've realized now, well thank you for doing these, what an even greater privilege to continue to listen to you speak!

Excessive force by police is a serious problem, not exclusively racial, that needs to be addressed. This speaks for itself: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VBUUx0jUKxc.html Mass incarceration is also a genuine problem that needs to be addressed. The "War on Drugs" has failed, which is why legalizing and taxing marijuana is long overdue. The problem with BLM is that they are like quack doctors trying to cure a real disease. Much of their overhyped rhetoric is make believe, like the 1619 Project, which is to history what malpractice is to medicine. The fundamental problem of American politics is not war or economics or race, it is our grossly dysfunctional educational system. One of the ancient Jewish Rabbis (I forget which one) said, "if you raise a child so that he does not learn how to make an honest living, it is the same thing as if you were teaching that child to steal". Our ineffective, inefficient, wastefully bureaucratized, dangerously politicized secondary and primary schools are failing to teach far too many students how to make an honest living. Worse still, schools are not the only, or even our primary, underperforming educational institutions. The family is an essential vehicle for educating children. Where else will they learn right and wrong, a work ethic and high expectations for themselves? Where will they learn to respect their elders, self discipline and how to love unselfishly? Even good schools cannot do this because they are not the right tool for these jobs: a perfectly good hammer will not saw wood. Parents teach by example. Mass incarceration is overwhelmingly male and the absence of fathers in the home is deeply harmful to children of any race or class. Once a man has fathered children, his primary moral obligation is to his family, not himself. Every day after work, a father should, all other things being equal, get his butt home to have dinner en famille. He is teaching when he shows respect to the children's mother and when he inquires of the children about how school went today. When I was raising my three daughters, they knew that the first thing out of my mouth at supper was always the same question, "What did you learn today?" and "Nothing" was not an acceptable answer. No learning, no dessert; while the opposite rule "Clever girls get chocolate" was always in effect. I hear too many fathers talk about spending "quality time" with their children sometime in the uncertain future. No good. You must spend "quantity time" with your children and be a part of their daily life. It does not matter if Daddy finds this onerous or time consuming or difficult or a sacrifice. It may be any or all of these things but you are a grown man, not a child and you need to get over your self pity and meet your moral obligations. Grow up. My relevant political beliefs regarding children are "No adult eats until every child is fed" and "Man up, step up and shut up". Like the philosopher Don Corleone said, "A man that doesn't spend time with his family can never really be a man".

Thank you for your response. From what I understand one of the issues about the incarceration rates is that blacks make up around 12% of the total population and yet remarkably account for over 38% of the total prison population (last time I checked it may have changed some). Now why do you think this is? I've heard the main argument from the left being discrimination in our criminal justice system as the primary cause and I've heard from the right everything from their culture to lower IQ rates being the culprit. What's your take on the cause for the discrepancy?

@Metroidfighter90 One of the defects in our political life is that voters demand simple solutions to complicated problems. Nothing this complicated can have a simple single cause. There are multiple causes of the over incarceration of Americans, black Americans in particular. Whatever your beliefs about the main or primary cause, does not mean that alternative accounts are necessarily to be rejected tout court. My view is that the ultimate political question is education and our common political deficiencies, of which the overincarceration of black males and cops that are too quick to use deadly force are just two of many, all stem from our failed educational system. Legislators, judges, politicos of every description overwhelmingly send their children to private schools, and we can expect no progress until their children attend the government sponsored schools that they claim are good enough for our children but not theirs. The same is true of health care. We will never have decent universal health care until politicians are required to use whatever system they provide for us mere voters.

@@dr.michaelsugrue Thanks for answering my question Professor Sugrue. Always like to hear your thoughts.

​@@dr.michaelsugrue It's enligtented to me to see your education principles, because I grew up in a deficient family (deficient in thse educational sense). I know you have passed away early this year, so I can't ask if you want to share more of those education guidelines. Thank you and RIP. (If anyone has any good suggestions, I am more than welcome. )

I have always liked the great boxing referee.

My above proposal might also be able to be framed in a Kantian framework as well--with his whole idea of "all possible worlds"/ idea of "world buildling" or "metaphysics."

I don't think you get either the hypothetical he was describing, or the broad definition of utilitarianism he is operating off of. To be fair, Sugrue goes into greater breadth than Mill did: there was a guy in these comments who thought that utilitarianism and consequentialism were not the same, which is true but not if you look at utilitarianism in a broader long-term sense and if you apply consequentialism socially and universally, as was clearly implied here. In any case, the idea you seem to be driving at is that, psychologically, violence does damage both to the victim and perpetrator and thus cannot benefit anyone. This is clearly wrong if you're dealing with people involved in a zero sum game with high stakes - it is quite possible to overcome trauma, while overcoming dismemberment or death is tricky - but more to the point, I think that Sugrue was speaking of a hypothetical of there being no way to calm people down without the token sacrifice. The leader cannot calm people down, there is no talking sense into them, no way to prove the falsehood of the metaphysics of witchcraft, and it can reasonably be expected that the sacrifice will appease them.

Thats a kind of funny observation, but Jesus chose to sacrifice himself, not another.