The Vinland Sagas

 Introduction

Opening Passages: From The Saga of the Greenlanders:

Herjolf was the son of Bard Herjolfsson and a kinsman of Ingolf, the settler of Iceland. Ingolf gave to Herjolf the land between Vog and Reykjanes.

At first, Herjolf farmed at Drepostokk. His wife was named Thorgerd and their son was Bjarni; he was a promising young man. While still a youthful age he longed to sail abroad. HE soon earned himself both a good deal of wealth and a good name, and spent his winters alternately abroad and with his father. Soon Bjarni had his own ship making trading voyages.... (p. 3)

From Eirik the Red's Saga:

There was a warrior king named Oleif who was called Oleif the White. He was the son of King Ingjald, who was the son of Helgi, who was son of Olaf, who was son of Gudrod, who was son of Halfdan White-leg, king of the people of Oppland.

Oleif when on Viking expeditions around Britain, conquering the shire of Dublin, over which he declared himself king. As his wife he took Aud the Deep-minded, the daughter of Ketil Flat-nose, son of Bjorn Buna, an excellent man from Norway. Their son was named Thorstein the Red. (p. 25)

Summary: The two Vinland-themed sagas cover roughly the same period, but in some very different ways. In The Saga of the Greenlanders, Bjarni Herjolfsson tries to find his father, who has emigrated to Greenland; Bjarni has never been to Greenland, but he risks the new trip. During the voyage, he is blown off course and sights new land, which he realizes is not Greenland; he eventually does make it to Greenland, but is criticized for not having even stepped off the boat to explore the new lands. Leif Eriksson, son of Eirik the Red, hears of this voyage and buys a ship; the original plan is for Eirik to lead the expedition, but Eirik is getting old and has a mishap in which he falls from his horse and takes it as a bad omen, so Leif leads it instead. Leif and his crew do find and explore new lands, which he names Helluland (Slabland) and Markland (Forestland), and an even better country that he names Vinland (Wineland) because of the grapes found there. (One of the completely accidental sources of entertainment in reading these sagas is how thoroughly unimaginative everyone is in naming things, the one exception being Eirik the Red, mentioned below. In fairness, plain names probably helped a bit with navigation, which has to be done largely by memory and description.) On the trip back, loaded with grapes and wood, Leif manages to rescue shipwrecked sailors and thereafter is known as Leif the Lucky.

Thorvald, Leif's brother, decides that Vinland needs more exploration, and when Leif gives him his ship he sets off to do exactly that. The settle in a truly beautiful place, but it turns out there are natives in the area, which the Scandinavians call Skraelings (we don't know exactly what the word means, but it probably means something like 'pelt-wearers', and we don't know whether they were Inuit or Mi'kmaq), and despite initial promising attempts at trade, things turn very badly due to the skittishness of both sides, and Thorvald is killed. They bury him there and return to Greenland. In Greenland, Thorstein, another of the brothers, decides to retrieve Thorvald's body, leading to the third voyage of the Eirikssons; however, they never make it, Thorstein dies of illness, and from the grave predicts that his wife Gudrid will remarry, and the man will be an Icelander. This she actually does, to a man named Thorfinn Karlsefni. They go on the fourth voyage to Vinland, and stay where Thorvald had camped. They meet the Skraelings again, and again, after an initially promising beginning, their relations degenerate into war; the Norsemen fight them off and then return to Greenland.

The last expedition is taken by Freydis Eiriksdottir; desiring wealth, she makes a deal with two brothers (one that she begins to break on the sly almost immediately). They make it to Vinland, but the two groups are constantly bickering. Freydis, who is cunning and evil, arranges the murders of the entire opposing party and returns home with all the wealth that had been collected by both groups, and thus extraordinarily wealthy. While she tries to keep her deeds secret, she is not entirely successful. Karlsefni and Gudrid eventually make their way to Iceland, and the saga attributes the root of its stories to Karlsefni; the pair will have three famous bishops among their descendants.

As I said, Eirik the Red's Saga covers the same period but in a different way, and it is immensely interesting to see the similarities and differences. There is no Bjarni. We start with Eirik the Red, which is why it gets its modern title, although Eirik is barely in it. (The original title of it seems to have been Thorfinn Karlsefni's Saga.) Eirik has to flee Norway because he murders a man; he ends up in Iceland, which he also has to flee because of a violent dispute; and that is how our heroes end up at the edge of the world in glacier-covered Greenland, which Eirik, in an unusual bit of Scandinavian marketing strategy, calls 'Greenland' because he thinks it will make it sound more attractive to potential settlers than a more accurate name would. Eirik's son Leif goes on travels, eventually ending up in Norway in the court of King Olaf Tryggvason, who gives him the mission of converting Greenland to Christianity. On his return, however, he is blown off course in a storm and discovers a new land rich with vines and wheat, which he calls Vinland. On the voyage from Vinland to Greenland, he rescues some sailors from shipwreck, showing his kind character. Back in Greenland, he converts the country and is afterward called Leif the Lucky. 

There is interest in returning to the lands Leif discovered, and this is done by Thorstein Leifsson. Eirik goes along with them, although he has a mishap on the way in which he falls from his horse and hurts himself. Nonetheless, he goes, but they never make it instead being blown the wrong direction by storm.

When they return to England, Thorstein marries a woman named Gudrid. Thorstein dies of illness, but from beyond the grave, and while he makes no predictions, he warns them to engage in more Christian funerary practices and also warns Gudrid against marrying anyone from Greenland. Because of this Gudrid marries an Icelandic merchant, Thorfinn Karlsefni. Karlsefni and his partners plan a large expedition to Vinland, and after visiting a number of other lands along the way, eventually make it. There they meet the Skraelings; after an initially promising beginning in trading red cloth for pelts, relations between the two degenerate into war. The Skraelings have a catapult-like device for throwing stones and the ability to create the illusion of greater numbers than they have. The Norsemen are forced back. During the battle, Freydis Eiriksdottir, a clever and courageous woman, despite being pregnant manages to scare off a group of Skraelings that surround her by seizing a sword from a dead man's head and slapping it against her breast.

The Norsemen begin sailing back to Greenland, but still have a few obstacles to overcome; at one point they are assaulted by a strange, fast-moving man-like uniped creature that kills one of their men and then speeds away before they can catch it. They also meet another group of Skraelings; the adults escape by vanishing underground, but two children are captured and taught the Norse language. They tell the Norsemen stories of two kingdoms, one a nation that lives entirely in caves, and another a nation that dresses in white, which the Scandinavians take to be the White Men mentioned in one of the tales of St. Brendan the Navigator. A significant portion of the expedition never returns at all, but Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudrid eventually make it to Iceland, where three of their descendants become famous bishops.

Favorite Passages: From The Saga of the Greenlanders:

After a while he spoke in Norse: 'I had gone only a bit farther than the rest of you. But I have news to tell you: I found grapevines and grapes.'

'Are you really sure of this, foster-father?' Leif said.

'I'm absolutely sure,' he replied, 'because where I was born there was no lack of grapevines and grapes.'

They went to sleep after that, and the following morning Leif spoke to his crew: 'We'll divide our time between two tasks, taking one day for one task and one day for the other, picking grapes or cutting vines and felling the trees to make a load for my ship.' They agreed on this course.

It is said that that boat which was drawn behind the ship was filled with grapes. (p. 8)

From Eirik the Red's Saga:

Leif fell in love with a woman named Thorgunna. She was of very good family, and Leif realized that she knew a thing or two.

When Leif was leaving Thorgunna asked to go with him. Leif asked whether her kinsmen were of any mind to agree to this, and she declared she did not care. Leif said he was reluctant to abduct a woman of such high birth from a foreign country -- 'there are so few of us'.

Thorgunna spoke: 'I'm not sure you'll like the alternative better.'

'I'll take my chances on that,' Leif said.

'Then I will tell you,' Thorgunna said, 'that I am with child, and that his child is yours. It's my guess that I will give birth to a boy, in due course. And even though you ignore him, I will raise the boy and send him to you in Greenland as soon as he is of an age to travel with others. But it's my guess that he will serve you as well as you have served me now with your departure. I intend to come to Greenland myself before it's all over.' (p. 34)

Recommendation: Both Recommended.

***

The Vinland Sagas, Keneva Kunz, tr., Penguin (New York: 2008).

Invisible Intelligent Power

Tiddy Smith last year published an interesting article, "The Common Consent Argument for the Existence of Nature Spirits", in which he argued that a common consent argument for theism fails for reasons that nonetheless don't rule out the success of a common consent argument for nature spirits. The article doesn't seem to be easily available online, but there's a nice nontechnical summary of some features of it here. Perry Hendricks had a recent response, "How to Debunk Animism" (DOCX).

Strictly speaking, neither Smith nor Hendricks gets common consent arguments quite right; they both misunderstand them as being arguments from at least nearly universal belief that X exists to its being probably true that X exists; this has not been how people putting forward common consent arguments have generally understood them. In general, common consent draws on the fact that one's fellow beings are rational beings, and that while individuals can be led astray from individual quirks, the tendency of reason can more easily be discerned by looking at the whole population of reasoners, to the extent that it is possible to do so. (I've discussed some of this point here: I, II.) Common consent arguments in general are also not arguments that the conclusion is probably true, but (in weak forms) that it is reasonable and (in strong forms) that it is so reasonable as to be at least morally certain.

In any case, Smith rejects the probabilistic argument from widespread agreement for theism (which would be a more accurate label for the argument considered, and which I will abbreviate as PAWA-Theism) on the grounds that (A) agreement for theism is imposed, although Smith seems often to confuse coercive imposition with cultural diffusion and education, all of which are very different things, and (B) agreement for theism does not arise independently in each individual or each subpopulation. (Both the confusion of imposition with diffusion and the concern with independence would in and of themselves be evidence that Smith is not actually working with real common consent arguments, which are always about the greater power of human reason when it is not merely individual reason but common reason.) Neither of these problems arise if we consider a PAWA for animism. There is excellent evidence that animism arises or at least is found in 'separate knowledge communities' that are very isolated from each other and not under any identifiable regime of coercion. So, if (A) and (B) are problems for PAWA-Theism, they are not so for PAWA-Animism. 

Hendricks considers whether countervailing considerations can 'neutralize' this argument even if one takes its premises (i.e., that there is such widespread agreement among independent communities and that such widespread agreement makes the agreed-upon probably true) as true. He attempts to argue this on the basis of a 'problem of animistic hiddenness'. This is based on "the current widespread lack of belief in nature spirits". While this is based on comments by Smith himself, however, it, I think, is already a weakness in Hendricks's argument. First, part of the problem is an ambiguity never really properly eliminated by Smith over the meaning of 'animism', which can just mean belief in nature spirits of some kind, but can also mean a religious position in opposition to theism, in which one believes in nature spirits and not God. It is in fact quite common for there to be theists who do believe in some nature spirits; we wouldn't usually call them 'animists' but 'theists', but believing in God does not automatically mean one disbelieves the existence of nature spirits. (Indeed, historically, most theists have probably also believed in nature spirits of some kind.) Second, while bare animism is rare, and no doubt belief in nature spirits is relatively rare in academic circles, it's simply false to say that belief in nature spirits is unpopular. It varies in how specific and detailed the articulation of it is -- Icelanders have very specific ideas about how elves work, for instance, whereas (outside Native American communities) Americans who believe in nature spirits might not get any more specific than the generic belief in some kind of spirit of the land or waters. This is important because Hendricks wants to build his counter-argument on the basis that animism is not widespread at all times. But while it's true that bare animism is not widespread, belief in nature spirits of some kind has, in fact, been widespread at all times, and is widespread in our own.

Thus Hendricks's argument fails completely, although in fairness it's partly because of confusions introduced into the discussion by Smith. The disagreement in any case is somewhat pointless, because the question of animism vs. non-animism is too specific for this kind of argument. Most people have no idea what animism is, and thus are not actually believing 'animism' even if they are animists -- it's an extrinsic description. This is one reason why putting it in terms of nature spirits is better than putting it in terms of animism. But even this is not really adequate, because the real argument should be at a level more general. Hume was exactly right that the right level of analysis is the generic "invisible intelligent power", which may be nature spirits (like the animists Smith has in mind), or ghosts (like those for which the Mohists argued), or gods, or any number of other things. If we're simply trying to establish existence, we don't want to already be prejudging whether they should be kami or gods or elves or vengeful ghosts or what have you; we need to allow for the possibility that people could be right about their existence but misinterpret the details of their nature (e.g., by confusing one kind of spirit with another); and in this argument we'd need to consider the matter at a generic level that is suitable for discussing widespread agreements. Hume's 'invisible intelligent power' (IIP) meets these quite well. So, if we are considering PAWA's, the best one to consider is PAWA-IIP:

(1) Near enough everyone, both across nations and across eras, agrees that there are IIPs of some kind. 

(2) Whatever near enough everyone agrees is probably true. 

(3) Therefore, it is probable that there are IIPs of some kind.

As a PAWA, this is of course not a demonstrative argument (and also not a real consensus gentium argument, as it stands), but none of the problems for PAWAs considered by Smith and Hendricks apply to it: (A) and (B) are not problems for it, for much the same reason they are not problems for PAWA-Animism; and Hendricks's unpopularity problem is not a problem for it, because in fact belief in IIPs of some kind has always been extremely popular at all times, and still is today. Premise (1) is far more plausible for IIPs than for anything more specific (that there are kinds of intelligent causes other than living human beings is one of the most common beliefs in the world); so the only question that would be relevant would be whether (2) is actually true, either in general (i.e. whether there are reasons to accept it as a general guideline) or in this kind of case (i.e., whether there are any relevant defeaters). Which is perhaps as it should be.

All Is Cold Beauty

On Visiting The Tomb Of Burns
by John Keats

The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun,
The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem,
Though beautiful, cold -- strange -- as in a dream
I dreamed long ago, now new begun.
The short-liv'd, paly summer is but won
From winter's ague for one hour's gleam;
Through sapphire warm their stars do never beam:
All is cold Beauty; pain is never done.
For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise,
The real of Beauty, free from that dead hue
Sickly imagination and sick pride
Cast wan upon it? Burns! with honour due
I oft have honour'd thee. Great shadow, hide
Thy face; I sin against thy native skies.

Keats seems to have visited Burns's tomb at Dumfries and written this poem on July 2, 1818.

Two Poem Re-Drafts

Neoplatonism

I saw the beauty of your face,
an emblem born of higher grace;
I heard the beauty of your song,
for harmony my heart then longed.

Your eyes in vision ravish me
as signs of truth's eternity;
I am undone by glancing stars
and rise through them to splendors far.

All things of sense must shadows be
of things more real, of hopes more free,
and those who gaze with seeing eyes
know higher truths and thoughts more wise.

The eye of vice, so dark and proud,
is covered over by a cloud;
who would the good and splendid know
must good and splendid surely grow.

All beauty wakes the heart's desire
and flames it ardent; searing fire
then rises higher, above the earth,
to brightest light and purest worth.

Everything Flows to the Sea

Rise up my darling, come dancing with me;
like the wave of your hair, let your spirit float free;
I wish this sweet moment would evermore be,
but everything flows to the sea.

All is in motion and nothing is still,
nor can we stay it by power of will;
we cascade through life and tumble until
everything flows to the sea.

As the wind through the grass
will rejoice and then pass,
so everything flows to the sea.

As the earth ever turns
and the wood swiftly burns,
so everything flows to the sea.

As the day turns to night
and all dreams take to flight,
so everything flows to the sea.

Cast off your shoes and leap lightly along,
fill all your days with the splendor of song;
one day in darkness you'll join the great throng,
for everything flows to the sea.

Sing with me now, my love, sing with me:
Everything flows to the sea.

That the Kings May Fear Him

 The previous post, on the necessity of higher law and social pluralism to oppose totalitarianism, reminds me of a poem by Voltaire, which gives what is perhaps his most famous line. A book had been anonymously published called The Three Imposters; the 'three imposters' of the title are Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad, and it unimaginatively (but very frankly) gives the standard early modern freethinking account of religion as an 'empire of falsehood'  based on fear and encouraged by nefarious priests. Voltaire, no fan of organized religion himself, nonetheless regarded it as an odious book, saying of it, "This book of the Three Imposters is a very bad work, full of a coarse, mindless, and unphilosophical atheism." He wrote a poem against it, in which he turns on its head the argument that God is invented out of human fear and tries to differentiate his own view from that of the book being criticized. The poem insists vigorously on the need for higher law against tyranny, but as Voltaire does not, as far as I know, accept any kind of social pluralism, he would count as a poseur by my test. It's interesting how badly Voltaire's prophecy for the Enlightenment fails, which is linked, I think, to the naivete of the program, in which elimination of religious tests for office and the fading of religious rules will become a utopia of toleration. In reality, it's difficult to see what the particular sort of interreligious toleration he envisages would be, beyond a voluntary surrender by religious communities of every ability by which they could resist persecution, oppression, and harassment by the state. Ceasing to be robust and distinctive, they cease to be checks on usurpers of power. (Contrast, for instance, his comment about Jews giving up kosher laws with the argument of IV Maccabees, in which Jewish law, including particularly kosher law, is a form by which virtue can resist tyranny.)

Letter to the Author of the Three Imposters
by Voltaire

Insipid writer, who pretends for his readers
to draw the portrait of the Three Imposters,
how is it that, mindless, you become the fourth?
Because, poor enemy of the supreme being,
do you not confuse Mohammad with God,
and the works of man with God, his author?
Correct the servant but respect the master.
God ought not suffer for the stupidities of the priest;
recognize God, even when very badly served.

Of lizards and rats my house is full,
but the architect exists, and whoever denies it
under the guise of wisdom is touched with madness.
Ask Zoroaster, and Minos, and Solon,
and the martyr Socrates, and the great Cicero:
they all adore one master, one judge, one father.
This sublime system is necessary to men.
It is the sacred bond of society,
the first foundation of holy equity,
the bridle on the wicked, the hope for the just.

If the heavens, stripped of his august imprint,
were ever to stop manifesting him,
if God did not exist, we would have to invent him.
Let the wise proclaim him that the kings may fear him.
Kings, if you oppress me, if your majesties disdain
the tears of the innocent that you make to flow,
my avenger is in heaven: learn to tremble.
Such is at least the fruit of a useful belief.

But you, false reasoner, whose sad imprudence
establishes them on the path of crime,
what fruit can you draw from your pretty arguments?
Will your children be more docile to your voice?
Your friends, in your need, more sure and useful?
Your wife more faithful? And your tenant,
will he pay you better for not believing in God?
Ah, leave mankind their fear and their hope!

You object to me in vain the hypocritical insolence
of fierce charlatans raised to honors,
nourished by our works, watered by our tears,
of Caesars tainted by usurped greatness,
a priest on the Capitoline where Pompey triumphed,
of these sandaled wretches, excrement of humanity,
washing their detestable hands in our blood,
a hundred towns at their word ruined,
and the horrible mornings of blooded Paris.
I know better than you these awful monuments;
I have exposed them with my pen for fifty years.
But as the implacable enemy of this fanaticism
I adored God when I vanquished the devil.
I have always distinguished religion
from the evils that support superstition.
Europe has thanked me; twenty crowned heads
deigned to cheer my fortunate works
when Patouillet insulted me in vain.
I have done more in my time than Luther or Calvin.
They were seen to oppose, by fatal mistake,
abuse to abuse and scandal to scandal;
eager to throw themselves into faction,
they condemned the Pope and wanted to imitate him.
By them Europe was long desolated;
they troubled the earth, but I have comforted it.
I said to the disputants as they hounded each other:
"Stop, impertinent ones; stop, unfortunate ones;
foolish children of God, cherish your brothers
and stop biting each other over absurd chimeras."
Good people have believed me; the evil, crushed,
have hurled replies that are scorned by the wise,
and in Europe at last a happy toleration
has become the catechism of well-ordered minds.

I see coming in the distance those times, peaceful days,
when philosophy, enlightening mankind,
will bring them in peace to the foot of a common master;
fierce fanaticism will tremble to appear there:
there will be less dogma with more virtue.

If someone wants to enter office,
he will no longer bring the two witnesses
to testify to his faith but to swear to his conduct.

The attractive sister of a major cleric
a Huguenot swain will be able to marry,
we will see poverty clothed and nourished
with the treasures of Loreto, amassed for Mary;
the children of Sarah, whom we now treat like dogs,
will eat ham cured by Christians.
The Turk, without wondering whether the imam will pardon him,
will drink with abbé Tamponet at the Sorbonne.
My nephews will dine happily and without rancor
with the descendants of the Pompignan brothers.
They will be able to pardon this harsh La Bleterie
for having cut short the course of my life.
Among beautiful minds there will be true union.
But who will ever be able to dine with Freron?

My translation. The last part of the poem deals with Voltaire's enemies -- it's Voltaire, you don't think he would be able to resist a jab at his enemies, do you? (Note, for that matter, how he quickly gets the business of God out of the way to talk about himself; although, in fairness, he does give God the courtesy of first billing in the fight against tyranny. It's a sign of how seriously Voltaire takes his theism that he is willing to take second place to God.) But it's interesting how differently his enemies fare. The Marquis de Pompignan was known as the enemy of Voltaire; they had an ongoing literary and philosophical feud, and the Marquis's brother was Archbishop of Vienne, and wrote a book Voltaire satirized. But apparently Voltaire thought they gave as good as they got, because he treats their descendants well in his imaginary future, with no need even for pardon; La Bleterie, a major historian whose works were criticized by Voltaire, and who quipped that Voltaire forgot to have himself buried (a quip that seems to have both stung and impressed Voltaire), needs pardon, but will receive it (one day in the future, at least); but still nobody will like Freron, who repeatedly attacked Voltaire's character (and became one of Voltaire's favorite butts of insult). It's an unusual scale of merit, based not on religion but on the ability to skewer without scurrility.

Real Resistance to Totalitarianism

 There's been a lot of talk about resisting totalitarianism or fascism the past few years; most of it is transparent nonsense. But what does real resistance to totalitarianism look like?

Totalitarianism is the approach to politics that treats the state's authority as not limited by anything but itself; as the saying goes, it is an approach governed by the principle that everything is within the gambit of state power, nothing is outside it, and nothing is against it. Thus the only possible ground of resistance to totalitarianism as such (rather than just preferring your own flavor of totalitarianism to another) has to oppose this. There are only two ways something could fall outside of state authority: you need there to  be some authority either above that of the state or outside it.

(1) Above it: One of the things that is opposed to totalitarianism is the position that there is a higher law. What law can be higher than human law? It has to be either divine positive law, or natural law, or something similar, like a system of rights inherent to human nature or a providential moral order involving moral principles. If the state is not the highest authority, there must be a higher authority than the state, and this must actually be expressed; thus a higher law in some sense.

(2) Outside it: For there to be something outside the authority of the state there has to be some relevant community that is independent of the state and therefore has its own authority. That is, the same people have to be members of multiple independent communities or societies at the same time, in a pluralism of societies. These societies can be various -- families, churches, and the like are the most common ones that people name -- but if you are not members of other societies that have authority and within which you have rights upon which the state cannot trespass, then really, as far as you are concerned, the totalitarian is right about there being nothing outside the state.

Each of these, higher law and social pluralism, is in some way inconsistent with totalitarianism. Strictly speaking, you could accept just one or the other. But there are reasons why you should accept them both if you accept either. If you try to hold that there is a higher law, but no pluralism of societies, then the state is not the highest authority, but there is still nothing outside the state; you seem to still hold that the highest human authority in every matter is the state, so that you are left just demanding that the state enforce the higher law on itself. This is an empty demand; nothing short of God or whatever the higher authority is would really have the authority to say that the state is enforcing it incorrectly. On the other hand, if you accept social pluralism but no higher law, it seems that you have no explanation for why these other societies do not fall under the authority of the state; you are treating it as if it were just a brute fact that they do not.

All modern-style states tend to exhibit totalitarian tendencies, the all-devouring maw of expanding power. The states that do best in resisting this slide are those that at least acknowledge, in at least some practice as well as symbolically, that there is a higher authority than themselves and that other societies of some kind, operating within their jurisdiction, have a right and an authority that is beyond their reach. All others just slide in a totalitarian direction.

Therefore it seems that any real anti-totalitarian position has to acknowledge both a higher law of some kind and a social pluralism of some kind, and any real resistance to totalitarianism would require people actually trying to live their lives on the basis of these. People who claim to offer a serious resistance to totalitarianism while accepting only one of these principles are poseurs; people who claim to do so while accepting neither are outright liars, being (at best) totalitarians of a different stripe.

The Posterior Partiality of Utilitarianism

 Utilitarianism is officially an impartial approach to ethics; early utilitarians in particular make a big deal of this, although it continues to be important to the structure of the approach. However, when this is discussed, it is always prior impartiality that is considered, that is, prior to assessment of overall happiness; after this point, utilitarianism is not ever impartial. This posterior partiality is a significant issue arising from the fact that people are never positioned equally to contribute to overall happiness. In practice, the rich are better positioned than the poor, the powerful than the powerless, the educated than the uneducated, majority groups than minority groups.

That is to say, utilitarianism by its very nature cannot directly affect happiness; it is concerned with means to happiness (that is, effectively, what a utility is), causes of happiness. If the goal is to maximize overall happiness, this means that your primary focus will be on causes of happiness that can most affect that goal. Majorities, the rich, people in power, usually have larger effects on overall happiness than minorities, the poor, and people out of power, because they have larger effects, period. It is true that utilitarians will insist that their greater force should be directed in the direction of increasing happiness overall, which will necessarily require that they benefit the less fortunate; but for the same reason it will always be reasonable to establish special incentives to benefit rich people, powerful people, and majorities who do in fact act in this way. You establish stable, longterm trends by creating incentive structures that benefit those who tend in that direction, and if your goal is maximizing happiness, you will therefore generally want to give greater encouragement to those who can have the greatest impact in that direction. And those will be people with power and influence. If your standard is getting results, of whatever kind, the most powerful causes will in the long run always matter more.

Consequentialisms can be rigged up in all sorts of different ways, and utilitarianism is no exception to this, so conceivably there are particular versions that could tweak exactly how 'greatest happiness' is understood to avoid this. But by and large, utilitarian partiality for particular high-impact groups is only to be expected, and most forms of utilitarianism don't avoid it; after all, for much of its history, utilitarianism was more or less the Official Ethics of Colonial Empire -- certainly the classical utilitarians contributed more than their share to justifying imperial expansion and constructing colonial policies.