This is the way I came to believe Utilitarianism is correct, and why even though morality, and why I strive for it is in the end just to gain social status because that is how we have evolved, I believe that despite that, utilitarianism is fundamentally correct, and humankind and myself just happened to have evolved in a way that discovered it. I do not mean to offend anyone who believes differently than me with this post.
We are all just collections of atoms. There is no reason we are here. Eventually, atoms came together in specific ways to make life that reproduced and made offspring with the same genetic code, which carried instructions to the next organism. Sometimes, those instructions got changed slightly through a mistake; a mutation. After huge spans of time, longer than anyone can even comprehend, organisms mutated in a way that made a creature that had some cells which fired electrical signals in such a way that when something happened that lowered its chances of passing on its DNA, it somehow felt something inherently bad. It felt pain. And because of this, it found some way to make the pain stop. I do not know how electrical signals firing gives rise to consciousness. But that creature, despite the fact that it was stupid beyond comparison to us, it knew that what it was feeling was bad. So it made it stop. And when it did something that helped it pass on its genetic code, it felt happiness. Something inherently good. I cannot explain why pain is bad; if I am stabbed, I try to get the knife out. Why? Because it hurts. Happiness and suffering are the end of reasoning. They are the reason we do everything.
So why don't I just go and maximize my own happiness? Well, to answer that I first need to define the question, and to define it I need to define what my own happiness is. But we are all just collections of atoms; I cannot define myself. The self is an illusion. So why should I maximize "my" own happiness, if there is no "me"? All I can do is maximize all happiness. Because there is no "me", when I maximize the happiness of others, "I" will be maximizing "my own" happiness because there is no "I", and the happiness is not "my own". It is just happiness and suffering, and I need to maximize it because it is the only reason everything is bad and good.
So that is why I am a utilitarian; because happiness and suffering must be maximized. If I were to maximize happiness for "myself", that would not be selfish; it would be stupid. Because the pain that others will feel if I let them die to help myself is real, and it will be felt. It will not be felt by anyone, it will just be felt. I am not a utilitarian because I am a hero; I am a utilitarian because pain feels bad and joy feels good.
