“No one should attempt to describe a utopia unless he‘s recently reread, for example, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Rabelais and Dostoevsky to remind himself how different people are. (It will also serve to remind him how complex they are.)
Lifted weights today for the first time in way too long and it didn‘t go so well, so I‘m back to safer activities like reading.
A random reference to the author smoking pot isn‘t something you expect to find reading a book of heavy philosophy.
“Utilitarian theory is embarrassed by the possibility of utility monsters who get enormously greater gains in utility from any sacrifice of others than these others lose. For, unacceptably, the theory seems to require that we all be sacrificed in the monster‘s maw, in order to increase total utility.”
Capitalism rewards and hence encourages “not individualists like Thoreau who go about their own lives, but people who are occupied with serving others and winning them as customers.”
“Utilitarian theory is embarrassed by the possibility of utility monsters who get enormously greater gains in utility from any sacrifice of others than these others lose. For, unaccountably, the theory seems to require that we all be sacrificed in the monster‘s maw, in order to increase total utility.”
Class is over for the week, my wife is out of town, and the baby is down for the night. Time for some...anarchy. #bookhaul
Anarchy, State, and Utopia | 
