I do broadly align with utilitarian/consequentialist ideas, and I particularly like the formulation Richard Y Chappell calls Beneficentrism, which is simply the claim that one very important thing in life is to try to help others, including those who are very different or distant from ourselves.
I think that in that formulation, you address in one fell swoop 95 percent of what trips people up about utilitarianism. You can take special care of your friends and family. You can care more about citizens of your country than you care about people on the other side of the world. But you should care some about the general welfare. This is in fact pretty important and you should be doing something about it. How much? Probably more than you are doing. Probably more than I am doing.
Here is the full (gated) post, mostly about other matters.
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