some pain, and they’ll quickly come around. Happiness is therefore the only thing good in itself, and it is the ultimate good toward which we strive. So happiness, not dignity, will be the metric against which we evaluate our actions. But notice, this means happiness is good, not just my happiness. The goal then is to generate as much net happiness in the world as possible. So if now a Tree-Spider, Zinn-a-Zu Bird, and his wife and her uncle want to ride, so be it. The more the merrier. Their happiness counts in the equation as well, and if we are trying to maximize happiness in the world, it being the ultimate good, then we should try to maximize it wherever we find it. “The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness [pleasure], wrong as they tend to promote the reverse of happiness.”11 Moral assessments thus proceed as a kind of pro/con analysis whereby for any action we look at the potential good or pleasure that it will produce, the potential harm or pain it may lead to, weigh them against each other, and should the predicted or probable good outweigh the predicted or probable bad the action is the right thing to do. This seems like common sense. We do this all the time. Should I wake up and go to class or sleep in? Should I scrimp and save or should I just go out and buy that new thing-a-ma-jigg? Should I lie to Gertrude about the attractiveness of her one droopy-droop feather or tell her my real opinion, that she looks dull and lackluster? We often come to a decision based not on respect or duty as Kant would hope but on the amount of pleasure, ours and others, that a considered action is likely to produce. Often we even make these decisions not based on producing pleasure but simply avoiding pain, as in lying to Gertrude. If she asked us what we thought of her dull behind, most of us would probably respond as did good Uncle Dake: “Your tail is just right for your kind of bird” (McFuzz). Even if we didn’t believe this to be so, even if we thought her tail was an abomination, we would lie or otherwise avoid the truth and deceive Gertrude in order to spare her feelings. Gertrude’s spared feelings count more than whatever might motivate our desire to tell her exactly what we think. In fact, if we told her the brute, honest truth, as we saw it, and caused her great pain and body image issues, her friends and ours would probably think we had acted callously or even sadistically. Our appeal to the categorical imperative and the duty to always tell the truth and thus act in a consistent and dignified manner would not spare us their harsh assessments. So Mill is onto something. But it’s not quite as simple as just finding more pros than cons for any moral problem with which we’re faced.
Calculating possible pleasures and pains is a tricky matter. Are all pleasures of equal importance? How much does each weigh? And according to whose scale? According to Mill, some pleasures are of greater value. Mill differentiated between pleasures by calling those of greater importance the higher pleasures and those of lesser importance the lower pleasures. Higher pleasures emphasize special characteristics unique to humanity, ones that ought to be promoted above the base and bestial. As Mill claims, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”12 Both eating a chocolate sundae and getting a college degree produce some pleasure in us. But one produces a sustained pleasure unique to humans; the other a short-lived animalistic pleasure, one a human wouldn’t be fit to define her life by. Some pleasures are more befitting a human life and produce a greater deal more pleasure in terms of quantity and quality. This seems right. Some pleasures do seem more potent and durable than others, and if we are maximizing pleasure in general, then although we don’t want to ignore lower pleasures like food, sleep, and sex, we should aim toward the higher