upsurge of interest in Bentham's 'Principle of Utility' in 1950s changes arc of '60s activism?

Okay, civil disobedience like in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s asks a whole lot. It asks that you be all in, body, soul, and mind. And maybe it promises too much. Yes, undeserved suffering can have redemptive power. It can certainly win over third party supporters, and sometimes even members of the opposition group. But it doesn't always work, nothing does, human beings are just too complicated! And people who dislike you in the beginning are usually pretty good at finding new reasons to dislike you.

Utilitarianism might have been a pretty good alternate thread in the tapestry, so to speak. It's more akin to volunteer work. Maybe at the beginning, only a couple of hours a months. But if it's an area you find yourself really getting into, over time this might become 10 hours a week. And not as some kind of self-imposed obligation which is dry as dust, but as something you look forward to and as something which you really have to hold yourself back from spending even more time on. And perhaps the general advice is to visit and lightly participate with a number of volunteer activities, at least in the beginning.

And maybe you will find something which moves you so strongly that you're all in. But that's not a requirement. It's just one potential path.
 
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youtube: Nick Bostrom: Humanity's biggest problems aren't what you think they are

1) Death. If we consider each person to have the skills and life experience of one book, which is of course an underestimation, we lose the equivalent of three Libraries of Congress each year.

2) Existential risk to the human species and the human project. For example, he lists a couple of guys saying we only have a 50% chance to make it through the next century. Wow, yes, this is a big problem. And what could be lost is many, many worthwhile lives as we spread through, at least tendrils of the Milky Way Galaxy shall we say.

3) And just like other sentient species may not understand or appreciate music, there may be values we could seek and find as we basically move through a multi-dimensionally space of possibility, including things like brain uploads and other scary stuff. Important to do it right. I say, clearly the method is medium step and feedback. That is, to the value of transparency, we also add rapid-cycle feedback.
 


The point-counterpoint.

Dr. Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1968).

Yes, having a more developed theory of utilitarianism available as part of the debate, might have significantly affected popular attitudes, activism, politics and elections, etc.
 
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