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Tuesday, November 21, 2017

What The Good Place Can Teach You About Morality

Patrick Allan
Lifehacker.com
Originally posted November 6, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Doing “Good” Things Doesn’t Necessarily Make You a Good Person

In The Good Place, the version of the afterlife you get sent to is based on a complicated point system. Doing “good” deeds earns you a certain number of positive points, and doing “bad” things will subtract them. Your point total when you die is what decides where you’ll go. Seems fair, right?

Despite the fact The Good Place makes life feel like a point-based videogame, we quickly learn morality isn’t as black and white as positive points and negative points. At one point, Eleanor tries to rack up points by holding doors for people; an action worth 3 points a pop. To put that in perspective, her score is -4,008 and she needs to meet the average of 1,222,821. It would take her a long time to get there but it’s one way to do it. At least, it would be if it worked. She quickly learns after awhile that she didn’t earn any points because she’s not actually trying to be nice to people. Her only goal is to rack up points so she can stay in The Good Place, which is an inherently selfish reason. The situation brings up a valid question: are “good” things done for selfish reasons still “good” things?

I don’t want to spoil too much, but as the series goes on, we see this question asked time and time again with each of its characters. Chidi may have spent his life studying moral ethics, but does knowing everything about pursuing “good” mean you are? Tahani spent her entire life as a charitable philanthropist, but she did it all for the questionable pursuit of finally outshining her near-perfect sister. She did a lot of good, but is she “good?” It’s something to consider yourself as you go about your day. Try to do “good” things, but ask yourself every once in awhile who those “good” things are really for.

The article is here.

Note: I really enjoy watching The Good Place.  Very clever. 

My spoiler: I think Michael is supposed to be in The Good Place too, not really the architect.