What a Good Place Can Teach You About Morality
Despite its quirky humor and overly lit scenery, Nice Place manages to address some of the greatest moral quandaries life has to offer in every episode, while teaching lessons with a very real philosophy. As I watch it, I can’t help but feel that the show provides an excellent, albeit basic, introduction to a lesson in moral philosophy. Here are some examples of important concepts you’ll learn from the show.
Being “good” is what you learn and must practice
What does it mean to be “good”? Are some people just born with bad seeds? I’m going to screw up the premise of the first episode for you, but no big deal, Netflix’s description does the same thing. Essentially, Eleanor (Kristen Bell) dies and wakes up in the afterlife. She was told that she had lived an ethically impeccable life and that she had ended up in a “Good Place.” But there is a problem: Eleanor was mistaken for someone else and she has no place. She was a terrible person in life and belongs to the so-called “bad place”. She tries to act out this, but soon realizes that she needs to come up with a plan, otherwise everyone will know that she is an impostor.
Fortunately, she finds help in her assigned soulmate Chidi, who was a professor of moral ethics during her lifetime. Through private lessons, Eleanor begins to learn what everyone should know: being “good” is your choice. As Aristotle put it, your character is voluntary, so no one is born “good” or “bad.” You have to decide who you want to be. Chidi explains that not only can you shake your selfish and inattentive nature, you can also change your ways and put others ahead of you. Of course, change cannot happen overnight, but learning to be “good” is possible – if you practice. Being kind to others is as much a habit as any other, and practice is what helps you strive for excellence (although you never will).
“Good” deeds do not necessarily make you a good person.
In Good Place, the version of the afterlife you find yourself in is based on a complex scoring system. Doing “good” deeds earns you a certain number of positive points, and “bad” deeds deduct them. Where you go depends on your number of points after death. Seems fair, right?
Even though life seems like a point-based video game in The Good Place , we quickly realize that morality isn’t as black and white as the positive and negative. At one point, Eleanor tries to score points by holding doors for people; an action costs 3 points for each action. In comparison, her score is -4.008, and she needs to score an average of 1,222,821 points. It will take her a long time to get there, but this is one way to do it. At least it would be if it worked. After a while, she quickly realizes that she hasn’t earned any points because she’s not really trying to be nice to people. Her only goal is to score points so that she can stay in the Nice Place, which is inherently a selfish reason. The situation begs the pertinent question: Are “good” deeds done for selfish reasons still “good”?
I don’t want to spoil too much, but as the series progresses, we see this question being asked over and over again by each of its characters. Chidi may have devoted his life to the study of moral ethics, but does knowing everything about striving for “good” mean that this is so? Tahani has been doing charity work all her life, but she did it all for the sake of a dubious desire to finally outshine her almost ideal sister. She did a lot of good things, but “is she good?” This is something to consider in your daily life. Try to do “good” deeds, but ask yourself from time to time who the “good” deeds are for.
Moral is ambiguous
You may have noticed that I put quotation marks around the words “good” and “bad” all the time (this is probably driving you crazy). This is because “good” and “bad” are subjective, so it is almost impossible to define them. Many things that you think are “good” may actually be considered “bad” for someone else who has a different point of view. A good place always refers to this line, and this is an important question to be resolved, especially for those who are told that there is a certain version of right and wrong. As you watch, you gradually begin to realize that morality is a collective social decision, and it can vary depending on which social circle you are in.
As Chidi often explains, much of ethical morality falls into a “gray zone” where intention, script, and other variables can change people’s attitudes toward things. At some point, Chidi is forced to literally try to conduct the famous “thought experiment with a cart,” in which he must decide whether or not to kill one person in order to save five. The common answer “great good” is to change the path so that only one person dies and five people stay alive. But in the real world, there are always variables. What if it’s a child? What if five people are dressed like Nazis? What if you know someone from the people? Or, what if you sit down and do nothing? Is it “good” to be an outside observer? Once the experiment becomes real, Chidi, a man who has studied moral ethics all his life, falls apart. There is no morally sound answer to thought experiment. In fact, in the real world, there are very rarely, if ever, morally sound answers.
I’m sure some of you are thinking, “No, some things just aren’t right. Killing is wrong! “But if so, then you are missing the point. Discussing morality the way The Good Place does is not about redefining basic moral tendencies, as we see in law and religion, but about learning to look at them from the outside. Through clever jokes and silly plot twists, the show gives you a better understanding of the true ambiguity of morality, as well as subtly teaches you to understand why something is as it is.