S04.E07: Help Is Other People

[steelyis]

4 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:

But it’s not just indecisiveness.  Just like Simone is not just a Condescending  bench.    They are both so unyielding I. It that Chidi made other people’s lives miserable and I am guessing Simone did as well.   They didn’t actually do anything bad bad but Chidi couldn’t even tell a friend his ugly boots looked nice to make him feel better because Chidi can’t lie.   And that itself is kinda selfish.  
 

 

I think what put Chidi in the bad place is he made relatively good people miserable because of his paralyzing anxiousness and indecision. I think what put Simone in the bad place is she has zero problems dehumanizing people she thinks are bad people. It might seem like a normal, even correct reaction on Earth, but I suspect getting into the Good Place requires having Superman-like empathy/morality (and that might not be good enough, either!), which means reaching out your hand to bad people even if they don't deserve it.

It's bold of the show to point a finger at someone like Simone who in most other circumstances would be considered absolutely right for abandoning Brent to his fate, because that's exactly what most people in real life would do--including a lot of the show's audience.

[snarktini]

Worth repeating, though...they are all in the Bad Place because every single human has ended up there for hundreds of years due to the broken points system.

We can debate what their faults are, but ALL of them were going there regardless.

[Paloma]

On 11/14/2019 at 5:53 PM, Chaos Theory said:

They didn’t actually do anything bad bad but Chidi couldn’t even tell a friend his ugly boots looked nice to make him feel better because Chidi can’t lie.   And that itself is kinda selfish.  

That's an interesting point. I'm in a group on Facebook that discusses what is the right thing to do in social situations (not just etiquette), and the question of whether it is OK to lie in order to make people feel better or to get out of a social situation without offending someone has come up a few times. Most people, including me, think it is OK to lie (or white lie) in these cases, as long as the lie itself is not hurting the person you are communicating with or someone else (for example, you shouldn't use your spouse as an excuse for why you don't want to go someplace). But there are some people who think that it is wrong to lie ever, even to make people feel better or to lubricate social situations. If honesty is an important moral value, why should someone who can't or won't lie go to the Bad Place? Of course, there may be other reasons that person deserves to go to the Bad Place, but if the only or main reason the person is being sent there is because he or she is viewed as selfish as a result of valuing honesty too much to lie, that does not seem fair. 

Also, on a much deeper level (which the show is not likely to tackle), if you lie to save lives (for example, hiding Jews from the Nazis), you should be more deserving of the Good Place than someone who can't or won't lie based on an abstract moral value of honesty.

[Chaos Theory]

15 minutes ago, Paloma said:

That's an interesting point. I'm in a group on Facebook that discusses what is the right thing to do in social situations (not just etiquette), and the question of whether it is OK to lie in order to make people feel better or to get out of a social situation without offending someone has come up a few times. Most people, including me, think it is OK to lie (or white lie) in these cases, as long as the lie itself is not hurting the person you are communicating with or someone else (for example, you shouldn't use your spouse as an excuse for why you don't want to go someplace). But there are some people who think that it is wrong to lie ever, even to make people feel better or to lubricate social situations. If honesty is an important moral value, why should someone who can't or won't lie go to the Bad Place? Of course, there may be other reasons that person deserves to go to the Bad Place, but if the only or main reason the person is being sent there is because he or she is viewed as selfish as a result of valuing honesty too much to lie, that does not seem fair. 

I think it’s all about rigidity though.   Both Chidi and Simone are so utterly rigid in their belief that it made Chidi unable to make a simple decision and (in my opinion) it made Simone so unlikable.   I think is also an issue with the point system as well and Gen’s interpretation of them.   It’s so rigid that at a certain point every human is going to fail (that we have long since reached) and that it is far easier to just zap earth an start from scratch.  It may just me a matter of moving the line further up the road and yes have a middle place for actual middle people to either improve or get worse 

Keep Michael’s neighborhood going forever for all the truly middle people to either get better or get worse.

Which is how I actually do think the show is going to end.

Edited November 17, 2019 by Chaos Theory

[possibilities]

The people who DID get into the (not fake) Good Place seem awful, though. They weren't willing to get involved to help save the Earth, they are kind of fake and shallow, they showed up to watch the verdict but were not really caring at all about it, and I'm waiting for the show to say something about THAT, as well.

I think people who would say you like the boots when you don't are a waste of time. That's not friendship. I can't stand it when people bullshit each other. If I ask if you like the boots, I want to know if you like them. I don't want to live in a house of cards. A lie is a shortcut through another person (I didn't make that up, I got it from Adrienne Rich). I think it's cowardly to lie over something so piddly, and if people can't even deal with the small stuff, how can they be trusted with the big stuff?

I think absolutes in general are ill-advised, though. I totally agree that if someone lies to prevent a massacre, that's better than telling someone on a rampage where their preferred targets are hiding.

And maybe that's the flaw in the points system in the first place. It's too absolute, and overly simplistic. Life is more complex than that, and probably always was. And maybe that's why the people who used to get into the Good Place are also miscalculated and not really all that great.

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, possibilities said:

The people who DID get into the (not fake) Good Place seem awful, though. They weren't willing to get involved to help save the Earth, they are kind of fake and shallow, they showed up to watch the verdict but were not really caring at all about it, and I'm waiting for the show to say something about THAT, as well.

I don’t think the Good Place committee members are humans who got in. I believe they are supposed to be the good place equivalent to Shawn and the demons. 

[Bruinsfan]

That sounds right. They seem awfully modern in speech and attitude for people whose most recent cultural contacts with Earth would have been from the Renaissance.

[possibilities]

Okay, but they still function as apathetic bureaucrats, basically the same as the Bad Place demons, but more passive. This world seems to lack balance, We have bad people, apathetic functionaries, and no good people/angels. Except... I think Michael and now Tahani, Chidi, Eleanor, Jason, and the Janets, might qualify.