Hi,
I want to talk about The Good Place this week.
For those who haven’t seen it yet:
The show’s version of an afterlife is divided by moral merit: the Good Place is a faux-utopia where those who scored enough ‘good’ points live eternity in bliss with nothing to want for, and the Bad Place is, as you can imagine, an eternity of torturous existence. Our protagonists are four morally imperfect humans trying to navigate what it means to be a ‘good person’ whilst being experimented upon by an otherworldly (yet extremely human) Ted Danson.
It was philosophical, it was hilarious and incredibly heartbreaking to binge watch at my ripe age of 20. It also got me reading a lot of difficult texts about moral philosophy.
While I have struggled to grapple with these difficult, provocative concepts of how to, in laymen’s terms, ‘live life good’, this show and all the subsequent readings have significantly shaped the choices I make in life.
“I don’t owe you shit.”
This is a phrase that I’ve seen and heard many times in my life. I’ve said it a few times too, to my instant guilt.
There is, undeniably, hurt behind the phrase. Being wronged by another person in any way can make us retract into ourselves, turning to self-reliance and expecting the same from others. It’s ironically mutualistic - if I don’t owe you anything, neither do you. And we can live on, not bothering each other.
But T.M Scanlon, the author of “What We Owe to Each Other” poses a different perspective.
T.M Scanlon’s theory of contractualism states that to act morally is to live life with rules that no one can reasonably reject. He asserts that a good life depends on “the positive value of a way of living with others,” and that the search for how to find said rules will “go on forever”.
Chidi : All right, let's see what's on the menu. Literally anything you can possibly imagine. Hmm. What are you thinking?
Eleanor : "Working out the terms of moral justification is an unending task." That's what I was thinking about. That sentence.
Chidi : You want to eat that sentence for dinner? Can we eat words? 'Cause I asked Janet about this and... .
Eleanor : No, no, it's the last line of Scanlon's book. Remember?
Chidi : Ah.
Eleanor : The whole book is about how we should try to find rules other people can't reasonably reject, and then he ends it by saying, "The search for how to find these rules will go on forever." I proposed a rule that Chidis shouldn't be allowed to leave because it would make Eleanors sad. And I could do this forever, zip you around the universe showing you cool stuff... and I'd still never find the justification for getting you to stay. Because it's a selfish rule. I owe it to you to let you go.
The Good Place Season 4, Episode 13.
Essentially, contractualism states that we owe it to other people to treat them in accordance with their value as living, human beings.
And the way I interpret it, it is a lesson in empathy that goes two-fold. Be empathetic to others (put yourself in their shoes), and be empathetic to yourself (choose to be kind to yourself everyday).
It is both simple and difficult, and we will most likely be working on this forever with no concrete, universal rule that makes everyone fully happy.
I’m not sure what particular strain of moral philosophy I live my life by.
I also don’t fully understand what Scanlon is truly talking about in his book.
What I do know is that the book doesn’t question whether we owe things to each other as humans, but what.
We as a community owe one another everything.
We deserve to be treated with dignity. We deserve to be fulfilled in our needs and wants. We deserve compassion and care. We owe this to the people around us, and we are owed just as much.
But empathy without boundaries is self destruction. Empathy, if it does not include self compassion, does nothing but harm, intentional or not.
So while we should strive to decenter ourselves, to fight harmful, hyper-individualistic attitudes and behaviours in favour of community, we also need to be able to choose ourselves and treat ourselves well, with the same amount of kindness and love.
And if I cannot justify my want for you to stay when you are, in fact, ready to move on, the rules that I posit are not reasonably agreeable.
I owe it to you to let you move on.
(I owe it to me to get my shit together without depending on others, for once.)