1. Sarah White
Writing Warm up- Utilitarianism
The ideology of utilitarianismis to maximize happiness and pleasure and to minimize pain and
unhappiness
It can be possible to take the pursuit of pleasure/happiness too far as an individual, and as a
society. If an individual jeopardizes someone else’s happiness to improve their own, then the
pursuit is no longer beneficial to all. In society maximizing happiness and pleasure for all can be
difficult to achieve, because every individual within a society may have different views on what
happiness means to them. If a society is chasing the exact same ideology of what happiness is
then utilitarianismwould be beneficial. But if this is not the case one individual’s happiness
could mean misery for another.
In a society in which government encouraged society to pursue pleasure as the highest good
there might be laws such as having the right to vote for whom the majority of people want as a
leader. Another law that might come into play when trying to achieve pleasure as the highest
priority would be a law that protects and individual’s privacy like private property laws.
To achieve happiness can mean that some pain or unhappiness must occur. Like paying taxes
for example it may cause the richer people in society to be unhappy that some of their money is
being taken from them. But in return that money is used to benefit the society that they live in.
another example of this is being in the army although the soldiers are risking their lives, it
provides comfort and security to many people to know that they are out of harm’s way.

2. Sarah White
I personally believe that the idea of utilitarianism is beneficial in a society as long as one
individual’s happiness is not considered more valuable than another’s. I believe that everyone
has the right to be happy, but sometimes individual sacrifices need to be made in order to
preserve overall happiness in a society.