Think of a circle -- like a pie -- cut into three equal segments.

One is RED and looks to the GOOD of the COMMUNITY.
One is GOLD and looks to the RIGHTS of PERSONS.
One is GREEN and looks to developing GOOD HABITS OF MIND AND HEART.

                            RED                                                GOLD

                GOOD of the COMMUNITY                                 RIGHTS of PERSONS
                  (GOOD for the WHOLE)                         (FAIR to the PARTICIPANT-PARTS)
 

                                                    GREEN
                                            (RESPONSIBILITY / VIRTUES)

For more, see my enrichment piece on minimal ethics vs. aspirational ethics.
                                                (Then hit "back" to return to this page)
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Part One: Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarian Approach to Ethics

       A) The Structure of Bentham’s Social Ethics

        Jeremy Bentham’s approach to ethics was GOAL-DIRECTED
(or teleological --from telos = end or goal; also called "consequentialist" for focus on consequences).
Think of him as an early developer of "cost-benefit" analysis.

                            Hence, he is called a Utilitarian.

Bentham wanted to simplify & quantify as much as possible so he defined happiness
                in terms of physical pleasure over physical pain.

Next step, he defined an action of an individual or a policy of an institution or a nation  as "good or right "
insofar as it promotes on balance the greatest happiness of the greatest number,
insofar as its consequences produce more good than bad, more pleasure than pain.

One other feature: Bentham sees society more or less on a billiard ball model:
                                            each individual counts as one;
                                            society is simply a sum of individuals.
            Therefore all that is needed is to sum up the pleasure/pain for each unit.
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    B) Some Objections To Bentham’s Brand Of Utilitarianism:

     Objection 1: Is happiness all that matters?
                            (Rachels' example of the piano player who loses her hand) or

                            An alternate way to make the point:  the way Bentham defines "happiness"
                            (seen in quantitative pleaseure/ pain terms) is not a big enough category.

                            It does not allow place for what Maynard Adams called higher human values.
 
         Professor Adams puts it this way:  As human beings, we not only have material needs but also higher value needs.   We need social/cultural conditions to grow, need to respect others & be respected, to know & be known, to love & be loved, to develop our capacities, to contribute to others, to participate in social arrangements and to maintain, enhance, reform them, to know our place in history and nature, to discover the good, the true and the beautiful, to respond to the call of the spiritual (or the world in its widest and deepest unfolding), etc. Think here also of cultivating the precepts as five mindfulness trainings.  Bentham' s "pleasure and pain" calculus is not textured enough to capture such higher value needs.

 
    Recall Adams' Prime Responsibility of Persons.  To be found in the enrichment section on the Gold of the Traffic Light Model      (Then hit "back" to return to this page)

John Stuart Mill asked:  "Which would you rather be -- a discontented Socrates or a contented pig?" This is a strong way of pointing out that elementary pleasure/pain is not a big enough conceptual framework to do justice to our sense of life at its fullest.  Mill sought to broaden the notion of good to include the good of character and in general the various virtues.

(e.g. suppose by enslaving 10% of the population, we make 90% better off
or suppose by torturing one person on a TV show, we give more pleasure than pain to millions, still -- ask Kant would say, this is NOT right to do. )

                An act utilitarianism says for each proposed act calculate the consequeces of all the options and that act is right that produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number.  But to do such a calculus of EVERY act clearly seems to ask too much.

                A rule utilitarianism says that in making our choices we can use rules (such as "Don't steal.")  or conrete principles (such as " Rape is wrong because it treats a person as a thing.")  However, to justify the rules we have to look at the options  -- this rule or that one or another or no rule on this matter -- and calculate which option produces the most benefit and the least harm.

   Objection 4: Rachels asks: Should we be equally concerned for everyone?

            In Bentham, each person (or being capable of experiencing pleasure/ pain is to count tfor one.  That is each participant in the whole must have his or her "quantum" of pleasure/pain calculated into the summation.  But Rachels points out that we do have special relationships -- with family or firiends -- and we certainly believe that we are acting rightly to do more for these people than we feel obliged to do for strangers.

    Objection 5:  Society is more complex than Bentham made it.

       Institutions are not simply a collection of objects.  Institutions are solutions to particular kinds of pronblems -- namely those that  institutions are a group of subjects organized according to rules, roles and routines, structured by power, policies, procedures.  Think of institutions and culture (my institutional and cultural domains) Think of the difference between prejudice and racism.

See my enrichment piece on The Seven Domains as well as my enrichment piece on The Nature of Institutions and Racism, Sexism, etc. (Then hit "back" to return to this page)

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John Stuart Mill became aware of these and other limits of Bentham’s cost-benefit analysis.

              Mill expanded the approach and made it more complex and subtle.

        He was born in 1806. His father James Mill, met the 60 year-old Jeremy Bentham two years later. [Bentham 1748-1832] James Mill decided to raise his son as a strict Benthamite.

        At the age of twenty John Stuart Mill suffered a mental crisis. Something was missing from this "reason alone" mode of life. Where was there a place for poetry, for love, for nobility of character, for honor, and such? He discovered poets like Coleridge and Wordsworth.

Love and poetry don’t seem to fit into a one-dimensional Benthamite world!

           Mill published                                                      Marx and Engels published the

           Principles of Political Economy                                     Communist Manifesto.

                                Mill also married his love, Harriet Taylor.
 

Toward the end of the 1850's,

        Mill published On Liberty.                                       Darwin published The Origin of Species.

                                                    Also Mill’s wife Harriet died.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the 1860’s, the time of the American Civil War:

Mill served in Parliament for two years. He published

            Utilitarianism       and         On the Subjection of Women.

                    Mill died in Avignon, France on May 7th, 1873.

J.S. Mill defended liberty, racial equality, women’s liberation, ecological concern, no-growth economics and humanistic religion --
all this curiously in England’s greatest time of Empire.

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At the present time -- most sophisticated ethical systems combine

        a) assessment of consequences in terms of social utility plus

        b) a set of human rights grounded in the deep nature of persons.

1)  One of the best examples of a theory that combines both utilitarian and Kantian features is that of
        John Rawls in his highly sophisticated work A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
        University Press, 1971).

2) In simpler form, my Star of David Model for making policy decisions also combines

Kant Fairness Tests (Step 4) with

Bentham-Mill Consequentialist Tests (Steps 5 & 6).

                                [RED]  Good for the Whole and [GOLD] Fair to each Person (or Participant-Part).

        In addition, this model has a place for [GREEN] Responsibility/  and  a Virtue-Centered Approach.
 

        On the outer side, we can sum up ethics in six words:

                   Actions have consequences;      persons have rights.*

                                                                            *perhaps all beings have rights,
                                                                              but we start with persons as
                                                                                                 equal, rational and free.
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Part Three:     TOWARD DEEPENING OUR SENSE OF COMMUNITY

COMING FROM SEPARATION

   A) MANIPULATION         ---------------------------     SINGLE SATISFACTION

                            Paternalism --- A Halfway House

    B) COOPERATION       -----------------------------     DOUBLE SATISFACTION
                                                                                        [mutual gain; win-win]

COMING FROM INTERCONNECTION:

    C) COLLABORATION  -----------------------------       TRIPLE SATISFACTION
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A) MANIPULATION --- SINGLE SATISFACTION

       Manipulation is a form of persuasion with certain characteristics:

            I manipulate another person
                    when I persuade the other to do what I want --

In this view there are two main styles of Manipulator:

                            AGGRESSIVE, BULLYING STYLE
                                TOPDOG MANIPULATOR
                            uses coercion or threat of coercion
 

                                 DECEPTIVE, "POOR ME"
                        EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL STYLE
                                UNDERDOG MANIPULATOR
                        uses type of deception (e.g. hidden agenda)

Gestalt Therapist Frederick "Fritz" Perls and his student Everett Shostrum
    deal in greater detail with these types.
            See Perls' book Gestalt Therapy Verbatim
            See Shostrum's book  Man the Manipulator
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  B) COOPERATION ---------------------------- DOUBLE SATISFACTION

High
*****************************************************************
C .                                                   *                                           *
O                                           *                                           *
N                LOSE/WIN            *                WIN-WIN                    *
S                                                     *                                                      *
I                  I will lose in               *              Mutual Gain                 *
D                  in order for you       *                                                    *
E                          to win                *                                                    *
R  ***************************************************************
A                     LOSE/LOSE           *                 WIN/LOSE               *
T                                            *                                           *
I                                                       *                 I will win                   *
O                                           *           even at your               *
N                                                      *                     expense               *
******************************************************************
Low                                                                             High
                        C O U R A G E

High Consideration + Low Courage = Lose-Win   I will lose for you to win.

Low Consideration + Low Courage = Lose-Lose     Both parties lose through ineptness

Low Consideration + High Courage = Win-Lose      I will win even at your expense.  (Recall MP)

High Consideration + High Courage = Win-Win       We seek a solution that allows both to gain.

    For more see Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
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Is there a model beyond Win-Win?

    I think so but to find it we have to reverse the assumption of separateness and introduce the assumption of interconnection.
 

 C) COMING FROM INTERCONNECTION:

                COLLABORATION --- TRIPLE SATISFACTION

        The key to this third possiblity is to see each individual as also an "embeddual" -- embedded in friendships, family relationships, work relationships, etc.  In other words, to see persons as relational beings through and through.

        More generally, it is to start with a view of all things as interrelated --the mystery of the manny arising from the one, next to take a view of nature as the web of life -- what poet Gary Synder calls the Great Family.  Then to see all humankind as embedded in the story of the human race.  These are the great commonalities that unite us.

       Again, on this view we see the relationship itself -- whether friendship, or family relationship or work role -- as having a history and a nature.  For example, though the relationship of marriage may have many forms, still there are some features of this relationship that show up in poetry across the ages.  So we partly discover and partly co-create the relationships in which we stand.  And as with a garden, the relationship will need tending as well as the people in it.  The relationship like the garden can be thought of as  setting up conditions favorable for growth or conditions hostile to growth.  Triple satisfaction means we seek to notice how the relationship can be raised to a partnership (a true collaboration) -- what in the relational conditions needs to be consciously raised up.  For example, what is the mission of this partnership?  What needs acknowledging?  What all expectations and stories need to be let go?  What listening and learning needs to be present?  What options and small steps might be taken?  What is to be appreciated about the relationship?  What needs nourishment? Etc.

    The idea is to tend the conditions for partnership -- the relationship itself -- and to tend the two persons within the relationship.  Triple rather than double satisfaction.
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Here are some images to help you think about "what joins us together."

Image 1: The Tree of Interconnection

                     in the branches -- 3 kinds of nests

                                family relationships

      friendships                                         work relationships
 
 
 

                                                at the
                                                base,
                                                3 sets
                                                   of
                                       roots:
            the deep interconnection with all humankind

            the deep interconnection of the web of all life

            the Mystery as a Oneness with many names
(God, Tao, Dharma, Nature, the Pattern that connects, etc.)

Thus, partnerships at work -- e.g. teacher-student -- are themselves embedded in institutions -- e.g. a college.  Colleges are embedded in a culture which is itself a part of the unfolding story of humankind.  And humans are embedded in the web of all life -- the plants and animals that maintain the conditions for life on earth to continue.

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        THINK PARTNERSHIP FIRST AND THEN YOU AND ME

Bowl, boat and garden plus "kingdom" I see
Think Partnership First and then you and me.

Held by a vastness as deep as the sea
Think Partnership First and then you and me.

Naming our union, its nature we see
Think Partnership First and then you and me.

Roots and the branches, the wonderful tree
Think Partnership First and then you and me.

      1) tend what joins us together
                                [esp. the relationship / potential partnership]

              2) tend the other, and

                            3) tend yourself.

Coming from separation the best we can achieve is

                        Cooperation

            a process whereby several people join together
                    to achieve a shared task or goal
            for the sake of their individual self-interests.

                    (The key unit is still the individual self.)

                                            ***********
Coming from interconnection allows a new possibility

                        Collaboration

            a process whereby several people join together
                        to achieve a shared task or goal
        for the sake of a unit larger than any individual self.

        (The orientation is toward a true "WE," not simply reducible
                        to several self-interests.)

1) Such an approach echoes

            Kohlberg’s stage 3:
                    (Ideal Role Maintaining and Enhancing -- IRME)

                     and looks forward to

            Kohlberg’s stage 4:
                    (Ideal System Maintaining and Enhancing -- ISME)

And yet it starts very much from PRIOR CONNECTION

                                the Bowl itself and the partners
                                               resting on
                        "Human Family, Great Family, Mystery"
                                            ECO-CONNECTION

2) Such an approach echoes

                    Covey’s notion of the Emotional Bank Account

        Making Deposits                                 Making Withdrawals

        Keeping Commitments                                 Failing to keep Commitments
        Showing Integrity                                         Failing to show Integrity
        Clarifying Expectations                                Failing to clarify expectations
        Letting go of "Being Right"                        Failing to let go of "Being Right"
        Listening deeply                                            Failing to Listen deeply
        Doing simple acts                                          Failing to do simple acts
            of kindness                                                         of kindness

                                    for the sake of the partnership
                                        and the parties in it
                                    and all that the partnership serves

                                      Again, see Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
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I have compared a partnership to a bowl, a boat, a garden and a mini-kingdom or commonwealth.
            We might also think of a partnership as a house.

Here is a prayer that speaks to this new way of Coming from Interconnection.

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