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Title: "The good place" vs. the ethics of society
Category: Blog
Date: 2020-09-20
Tags: culture, politics, philosophy
Status: Draft
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 stopped. It had left me kind
of cold, and uninterested, and I mostly forget about it's existence.
But now I was sufficiently bored and so, I watched it again.
I don't really wanna talk about the show from the perspective of art
critism. 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 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,
at least for me.
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
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 actually bad people being put into a fake "good place"
is part of a weird psychological punishment. When they find out about
this, their memories get wiped, and it starts over. This happens over
and over 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
against the system.
Throughout the plot it becomes apparent that the system is broken in
less obvious 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 a just different type of hell.
The show concludes by restructuring the system, making the "bad place"
not into a torterous nightmare, but a place where your actions and
emotions are being tested, and questioned. 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 means, that he 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 time to develop this
point enough to be poignant, or it just demonstrates that the show was
written by someone with basically no knowledge in this field.
I argue that the way that "the good place" portraits 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 watching the show (if you did/
will) the thought it is trying the hardest to communicate is "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 attepmts 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 core existence.
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