Utilitarianism: Useful and Dangerous

Although useful, I feel Ulitarianism is a dangerous philosophy to follow blindly. It does serve its purpose to allow individuals or governments to make decisions to give the greatest benefit to the most about of people, however as Colin Griffin stated on the Ning, it "falls apart when it is assessed in the context of death and one's own existence." If one could sacrifice a random stranger to save two others, is it right to do so? If you were forced to make that decision, and you chose the single individual, you are essentially killing another person. If one takes no stance, and the two die, you are simply letting fate run its course. Would you be able to sleep at night, knowing someone died because of your decision? Or would the comfort that two lives were saved let you rest assured you had made the moral decision. Personally, this is why I don't want to go into a field where these decisions are in my hands, i fear the ethical considerations would paralyze me from decisive action.

When one begins to look at a human as anything other than what they are, a human life, they lose sight what makes humanity so sacred. To say there is a value greater than one life is purely subjective, as value is an idea conceived by humanity, that didn't exist before it was thought up. Can we make decisions based off of something that could differ to vastly from person to person, individual to individual? I think instead we must take each decision carefully and not create numerical values, but use reason and logic to see what is right.