#293 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Tuesday March 8)
Good morning,
I’ve been thinking a lot about the debate I’ve been having with several friends over a series of recent Musings regarding the nature of man. Is man basically good? Is man basically evil? Is man simply self-interested? And then I recalled a philosophical experiment offered on television…
THE GOOD PLACE
I watched The Good Place a few years ago. It is one of my favorite shows. The premise is that four random people die under strange circumstances and find themselves at what they believe is the “good place.” They realize by the end of the first season that they are, in fact, in the “bad place,” set up to torture each other for eternity due to their respective shortcomings. Over the course of four seasons, the characters visit the good place and the bad place, returning from time to time back to earth, all the time exploring human behaviors, the meaning of life, and moral philosophy.
Given all there is to read and watch, it rarely makes sense to reread a book or rewatch a show. Yet, here I am rewatching this show. It is as fresh and interesting as ever. Set aside the comedic aspects and that Kristen Bell and Ted Danson are on top of their game—this is a remarkable experiment in providing a lesson in moral philosophy through the vehicle of a situational comedy. The humor has the potential to please everyone or the potential to discourage some. If you’re looking for serious discussions of great moral dilemmas, you might be distracted by the hysterical comedy. If you want comedy, you’ll be forced to think.
The series addresses the questions of how we develop goodness and virtue. How do people “make it to the good place”? And if we’re not so good, can we get better? The premise of being sent to the “good” or the “bad” place is that our positive and negative deeds throughout life are scored. If one dies with a positive score, one gets to the “good” place. I wonder whether people stop to consider their daily contributions to the “good” in the world…
The series explores three basic explanations for how man develops morals. Does it come from one’s virtues, as Aristotle suggests? Or are behaviors to be evaluated their consequences and their positive effect on the maximum number of people, as consequentialists and utilitarians believe? Or are ethics that are immutable “right and wrong,” as Kant and deontologists believe? Beyond these basic concepts, the series explores John Rawls and Scanlon’s monumental What We Owe to Each Other. Scanlon suggests that there is no purpose in the end for why we should behave well. Rather, we should behave well because of our bonds to other people.
What this show does is provide a class on philosophy through “stealth.” It just sort of happens. One such lesson is, of course, the “trolley problem.” The trolley problem, in its most basic incarnation, is that there is a trolley aimed at five innocent people who most certainly will die. But you have the power to pull the switch, saving those five but killing one innocent person. A consequentialist would say this is an easy decision—perform the action that would save the most lives. But a deontologist, exercising Kantian logic, would say that it is NEVER right to kill an innocent person. There are permutations of this problem, which make it “easier” or “harder” to reach the decision to act. Do you have to witness the result? Do you know the individual being saved? What if, instead of simply pulling a switch, you must shoot the individual to save the others? It seems that the situation often will lead a person to different decisions, though the result doesn’t change. The act you’re being asked to perform, and your connection to the characters vary but, in the end, aren’t you morally culpable for the result each time, regardless of the justification?
We learn that the way to the good place is based upon learning what is right and wrong—tackling the issues of right and wrong—and what we owe each other—and actually trying to apply that learning to being better.
MODERN LIFE IS TOO COMPLICATED
What the characters on The Good Place eventually learn is that making moral decisions is hard—and they have gotten harder with time. It isn’t always easy to do the right thing—and actually it often is difficult even to ascertain what the “right thing” might be. What happens in the world of The Good Place is that it has become nearly impossible for a modern human to make it into the “good place,” because there are so many impediments in today’s society to doing the right thing. There often is little moral clarity for decisions that are being made. By way of example, whereas it once might have been moral to bring a dozen flowers to one’s grandmother, these days even the simplest decision comes with real negative effects. To buy those roses today encourages exploitation of underpaid laborers, necessitates the cost of transporting the flowers and the pollution generated thereby, etc., etc. One of the morals of the story is that it is much more difficult to “do the right thing” in today’s complicated world.
As Dylan Matthews explains in Vox, “The Good Place has laid out a moral vision that’s surprisingly sophisticated and deeply informed by academic philosophy — a vision that puts learning, and trying, to do good front and center...”
Among the various meta jokes in the series was when Ted Danson, as an eternal being, appears as a bartender on earth, dishing out advice to one of the protagonists, trying to help them find the right path. Just like in Cheers…
GOOD OR EVIL?
I return to the basic question of whether man is basically good or evil. I think that’s the wrong question. The question is not whether one is good or evil. The questions are twofold: What does man WANT to be? And then, how does man ACT in order to be closer to being good? The average person wants to be good. They don’t want to be evil. They may have a propensity to do evil things—but those things are more about self-interest (which I conclude is selfish, but not really evil). We don’t choose to be bad. Most people TRY to be better people and that’s the message of The Good Place’s meditation on man. We achieve our better selves in our bonds with others, as Scanlon says. That’s the message of this show and, I suspect, the lesson we all have been taught by this pandemic.
Have a great day,
Glenn
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