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+Title: "The good place" vs. the ethics of society
+Category: Blog
+Date: 2020-09-20
+Tags: culture, politics, philosophy
+
+A few months ago I was bored and I decided to watch "The good place".
+It's a show that had been introduced to me before, and I even watched
+about half of the first season, before I kinda forgot about it.  It
+had left me feeling mostly irritated, and uninterested, and so I moved
+on with my life.  Up to the point where I felt _really_ bored, and I
+started watching it again.
+
+I don't really wanna talk about the show from an art criticism
+perspective.  It's quite fun to watch at times, the premise is quirky
+and all the characters have something to set them apart that makes
+them recognisable for someone who's bad at differentiating people.
+But it's a comedy at it's core, and most of the "humour" left me
+feeling kinda cold.  It didn't so much have jokes as much as just
+vague references at jokes.
+
+Really, the show wasn't special, funny, or even bad enough for me to
+really care about it too much.  There was however something in the
+moral text, and subtext of the show that bothered me, that I've kept
+thinking about.  And that's what this post is going to be about.
+
+
+## Good vs Evil
+
+The main premise of the show is centred around the idea of "good
+people" vs "bad people" (the good place vs the bad place).  It mirrors
+heaven and hell, without putting a precise theological term on it,
+because this concept has existed in various faiths throughout the
+ages.
+
+The story follows a woman who gets sent to the good place even though
+she's a horrible person.  Most of the first season is dedicated to
+this mystery.  At first she thinks this is a mistake, until it becomes
+apparent, that bad people being put into a fake "good place" is part
+of a weird psychological punishment system in the bad place.  They are
+in fact in the bad place.  When they find out about this, their
+memories get wiped, and it starts from the beginning, with slight
+alterations.  But the group figures out that they aren't in their
+personal paradise again and again, and so their memories get wiped
+again, and again.
+
+The show wants to demonstrate that people can get better, seeing as a
+group of "bad people" were sent to a fake "good place", and improved
+as people.  The permanence of "good people" and "bad people" is called
+into question.  Some stuff happens, and the group of four people, and
+one daemon who started taking a liking to them end up on the run.
+
+Throughout the plot it becomes apparent that the system is broken in
+more subtle ways too: nobody gets to go to the good place anymore.
+Nobody is good enough; too high are the standards of what counts as a
+"good person".  Furthermore, when they manage to get into the good
+place, it becomes clear that eternal bliss with no ups and downs, and
+no end in sight is just a different type of hell.
+
+The show concludes by restructuring the system, making the "bad place"
+not into a torturous nightmare, but a place where your actions and
+emotions are being tested, and called into question.  The idea being
+that there is no such thing as a "bad person", and that everybody
+could go to the "good place", if they accepted that they have flaws,
+and worked on them.
+
+They also mildly restructure the "good place" to have "an end", which
+is death.  Isn't that nice, everybody gets to live their perfect life
+in heaven, then they die.
+
+
+## Good people & bad people?
+
+So that was the plot.  As I said, I'm not gonna criticise the show for
+it's scene-to-scene writing, or even the overarching plot.  It mostly
+tries (and manages) to be wholesome.  Although it has issues
+throughout, that are rooted in a very flawed understanding of
+philosophy and morality.
+
+The moral compass of the show is a character called Chidi, a professor
+of moral philosophy who died and was sent to the "bad place".  He was
+deemed a bad person because of his indecisiveness.  It is shown that
+he tried to be a good person, but got too caught up in the details of
+what that meant, which caused great pain to the people around him (and
+which got him killed).
+
+Throughout the show he quotes Kant a lot, with some other racist white
+men from history sprinkled in there.  His understanding of philosophy
+isn't very deep, or nuanced.  Either he was supposed to be bad at his
+job, at which point the show didn't really take the time to develop
+this enough to be poignant, or it just demonstrates that the show was
+written by people with basically no knowledge in this field.
+
+I argue that the way that "the good place" portrays philosophy and
+moral choices in philosophical frameworks is very representative of
+how our society works, and how people think about "good vs bad".
+
+But let's back up a bit.  For most of the show (if you watched it/
+will) the thoughts it is trying the hardest to communicate are
+"there's no bad people", "hell is a bad concept", etc.  This becomes
+pretty obvious.  However, the larger system of afterlife remains
+pretty much entirely un-examined.  Why is there an afterlife, and why
+do we need one, these are questions the show never asks, or attempts
+to answer.  Any critism against the system is phrased in a coy way,
+that will lead to reform of it, not abolishment, i.e. changing what
+the "good place" and "bad place" means, not their existence.
+
+
+## Moral individualism
+
+I said the show is representative of how people think about morality,
+and this doesn't just start and end at "what is a good person".  It
+also applies to how the show deals with individualism.
+
+What is individualism you may ask?  I'm glad you did (not really, now
+this post has to be longer...).  Individualism is one of the axiomatic
+philosophies that the western world is built on.  It's the idea that
+each individual is responsible for their own destiny, and identity.
+
+Used in a (mostly) harmless way it's used to sell things to people
+that can be "customised" to fit your "own personal style" (without
+_really_ giving you any autonomy), whereas on a higher and more
+sinister level it is used to justify the horrors of society.  As an
+out of context Margaret Thatcher would say "there's no such thing as
+society, only people".  After all, society is just men, women and
+those damn enbies, that all make their own free choices, and if
+society is bad, then that's just a representation of how people are
+bad.
+
+This is an over-simplification of course, but it digs at the core of
+what individualism means to us.  It's a way to absolve society of
+guilt, up to refusing the existence of it all together.  Individualism
+touches many, if not all aspects of society, and it would take too
+long to really examine them all here.  Instead, I want to focus on
+what this means for "the good place".
+
+
+## There is no society in "the good place"
+
+I don't know if the word "society" is ever used in the script, but it
+is certainly not a subject of conversation in any of the episodes.
+None of the characters will acknowledge that there is a human society
+or what it looks like.  The focus is on individuals.  After all, the
+fact that the world is bad is the result of just a few bad people,
+that need to become better.
+
+This is where the view that "there is no bad people" the show tries to
+hammer into you falls flat.  Because it's a lie.
+
+Human society is structured in a way that a few select people at the
+top have a lot of wealth and power, while the rest of us live in
+varying degrees of poverty by comparison.  I grew up in Germany so I'm
+gonna say I don't live in luxury and peace by comparison to others,
+but we _all_ suffer under the ruling class.  This is a reality the
+show refuses to acknowledge and it makes it's arguments about moral
+philosophy feel almost dystopian.
+
+Maybe this is controversial, but there are bad people.  If it is your
+job to harass homeless people, you are a bad person.  If it is your
+job to enforce the "war on drugs" that overwhelmingly affects black
+people, you are a bad person.  If you are a billionaire, you are a bad
+person.  You are in a position where you _could_ change society for
+the better. You _could_ give all your wealth away, and actually help
+people.  But you don't.  And no, I don't mean the fake philanthropy
+that rich people indulge in because those are usually just schemes to
+pay less taxes and massage on their public image.  No billionaire ever
+gives away so much money that they stop being a billionaire.
+
+The ending of the good place is framed as a beautiful thing where
+everybody gets to live a life in heaven in the end, if they manage to
+work on themselves to become better people.  And sure, there are "bad
+people" like sexists and racists, and they'll just get stuck in these
+tests forever that they won't escape until they become better people.
+It doesn't matter how much suffering you've caused others, you get to
+go to the good place if you manage to accept that you were bad.
+
+
+## Why an afterlife?
+
+So I mentioned that in the show, the existence of an afterlife is
+never explained, rationalised or called into question.  It exists in a
+vacuum, the same way that people in it live in a vacuum.
+
+The ending of "the good place" is framed in a way that is meant to
+make you feel happy and hopeful, but all it makes me feel is wonder
+why we needed to wait until the afterlife for people to deserve
+happiness.
+
+The world is an awful place because of people, sure, but it's the
+system that makes people into monsters.  Not only will it corrupt
+people going in with good intentions, it will turn people with bad
+intentions into powerful rulers.
+
+"The good place" fails to or refuses to understand that society
+exists, and portrays a moral system in which all actions are
+unconnected from the bigger picture.  If you were a nice person to
+people in person, and generally tried to be `g o o d` then it doesn't
+matter if your employees need to pee into bottles, or if your company
+is burning the rainforest to ash.
+
+Hell, the ruthless business lady in the "medium place" was sent there
+because she saved someone in her _last_ moment.  But the "bad things"
+she did???  SHE WAS RUDE TO PEOPLE.  Don't worry the exploitation
+through the capitalist machine, that's all fine.
+
+
+## The shape of art & paradise
+
+To wrap up this article I want to at least mention why I'm writing
+about this.  Because I said earlier that I didn't find the show
+special, funny, or intentionally bad enough to really engage with it.
+And now here I am, writing upwards of 2000 words about it :)
+
+The media we consume as people shapes us, and influences us in quite
+profound ways.  The way we tell stories is symptomatic of how society
+perceives itself, and how people see themselves in society.  Media
+that doesn't acknowledge the existence of society then and the
+suffering it brings will inevitably white-wash reality, and push this
+influence on anyone consuming it.
+
+At this point I would have liked to mention a better show or movie, or
+even book, but none really come to mind.  I guess it's hard to point
+to any text and demand it delivers a coherent world philosophy, while
+also being a story with characters and plot.
+
+As a society we need to grow the fuck up.  The stories we tell each
+other of heroes and villains, the balance between good and evil
+hanging in the balance, all while these actors exist outside of
+anything that could be called a power hierarchy, needs to end.  Only
+when we grow up from this world view can we realise that paradise is
+within us, and that collectively we can create it here on earth.
+
+Not gonna lie though, trains that go through space are pretty cool.