Utilitarianism In My Projects!

My theory of ethics was utilitarianism. It might sound very complicated but it’s as simple as knowing that there is one and only one supreme moral principle, which is that we should seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number; in other words, maximise happiness. Even though, there isn’t one concret definition of happiness in this scenario, we must do what will please other people in order to succeed in our plans and action. Regarding our cas project, it involves many people meaning that utilitarianism can be taken into action whenever we have to make decisions or plan activities. Therefore, as Melanie and I organized a Dodgeball tournament to raise money for the Yearbook project, we used this theory of ethics in certain moments. First of all, we had to make sure that everyone who wanted to participate was able to, even if money was a problem. We needed to make sure that if there was any student that was not going to be able to pay, that he would be able to participate, so we had to decide on helping them with the money or just letting them be part of the tournament for free. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t going to make us happy the fact that we wouldn’t be making money, because we had to think on the greater mass and how happy they would be to participate in this fun activity. At the same time, we had to make another decision which was to establish the cost of the entrance to the tournament. As this is fundraiser for our own project, we would for sure wanted to make as much money as possible, but we can’t just think of what us two want. We had to make sure that the price of the entrance was accessible for most of the students and that it was an amount that they would be happy to pay for. If we had a really high price, then it was most likely that the students wouldn’t be happy, meaning that they would have not participated in our activity. This same thing happened when we were planning the candy grams; we had to choose prices for the options that would be accessible and not overwhelming for our “customers”. Overall, we use utilitarianism in this project for the making and the selling of the yearbooks. This is a project that is mostly for the student community, which means that we must do what makes them happy, in order for us to succeed and create one of the best yearbooks. This can apply to the theme we choose and even again the money. We must work extremely hard to be able to lower the prices, making everyone happy and able to get one yearbook. If there is still students that can’t pay the yearbook, we would have to again, pay for theirs in order for them to also get one and feel happy, which means that Melanie and I would have to raise a lot of money and working really hard along the yearbook committee. In conclusion, I feel that we were able to successfully develop this activity for the community to have a fun, active and entertaining time. It made us think and always have plans for certain circumstances in which we would have to be utilitarians to make a decision, where ethics were involved. Lastly, this theory of ethics can also be applied to the Boston Exchange project because this is an experience where we talk a lot about ethics in relation to the students that would be going to Boston. We must learn how to take decisions and have plans that would makes these students happy and not have them feel like they need to be like the people from this new culture for them. It’s not an experience for them to feel inferior than anyone else, much less for them to feel like they want to have the life of other people. It’s an experience for them to go and see new things and have an opportunity that they might not be privileged to have.