Word: utilitarians
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...this effort is utilitarian. Concern even about the long-range effects of low voter turnout on a democratic society notwithstanding, both political parties are keenly aware of the impact a rise in the amount of voters could have on the election...
...HAVE THE great Zionist hopes of Theodore Herzl and Chaim Weizman been tainted with so much bloodshed? In utilitarian terms, has the end justified the means? Here, Oz lets another bombshell drop. This time, it is calculated to offend, for he dabbles in the realm of the irrational--religion. Israelis are different from Jews in the rest of the world, he argues. The Diaspora is the "museum civilization." If any spiritual existence remains at all, he says, it has degenerated into the interpretation of the meaning of the interpretations, "until finally all that is left is to polish the artifacts...
Where do you draw the line between the sacred and the profane; between what can be engineered and what is off limits? If you believe that life has no intrinsic value, that living things are subject to utilitarian goals to satisfy greed, then you have no purpose which must be accepted and nurtured, then it is impossible to accept [this engineering]on any level...
...dispassionate reason--the attitude engrained in students who have taken moral reasoning courses--but our arguments no doubt were perceived as left-liberal moralism--the sloppy idealism of youth. Some of the conservative members of the Committee know only the language of cost-benefit analysis. In their strictly utilitarian calculations secure profits often weighed equally with considerations of simple justice. Other conservative members favored casting the issue in terms of revolution versus gradual change. Debates on the ACSR, then, often became fruitless clashes between incompatible moral jargons...
...Sullivan waxes eloquent about the structure's "post-modernist statement." It uses, he adds, "traditional shapes and forms, putting them together in a much different way." Gund says, "The reason for some of the detail is to make it not look like a toll booth, not make it look utilitarian...