Idk if the video covers this but I always loved how (spoilers) the Good Place ultimately ends up advocating for informative justice over punitive justice. Maybe in real life not all people can be redeemed, but hey: they've got literal etertinity to try, and those who refuse to grow will just bounce around in the reformation system forever, and isn't constant evaluation a hell in of itself?
@@TSDTalks22 ☺️ I read your comment and thought “that’s probably supposed to say reformative,” and just figured spelling error. But then I stopped and thought about it a bit and decided I really liked “informative justice” after all, so… happy accident? I liked the idea that part of what’s happening for everyone is ever-increasing knowledge (information), leading to change, however incremental. The heart’s a win, either way!
I also liked the term informative justice - because they have to rebuild the entire system, including the points that judge if a person I'd supposedly good or bad. They create a justice system that judges based on each individual's personal information (life experiences, opportunities, and other relevant context) and then enables them to change and grow. It's so important to acknowledge that some people have never had the opportunity to learn a different way of being, so many are just trying to survive as best they can. It's such a great show!
What if they try to break that same system because they just reject your notions of what is 'better' or what it means to 'improve', and thus won't see any of them as anything but those who must be put to be reformed?
That sounds quite a lot like the LDS conception of the afterlife where I’m pretty sure those who qualify are tasked with teaching the souls who didn’t so that they can do the same and so on and so forth. They don’t believe in bad place than anyone goes to anyway (There’s outer darkness but as far as I know you have to try to go there) so I guess that’s naturally the best way to go about not needing one.
when I was first watching season 1, I was ok with it potentially being that "if someone makes it into a heaven and they shouldn't be there... then that heaven will warp to include them, if that person isn't ejected" though it was generally a fun ride overall.
My take on it (before I knew the twist - but it still works after the twist), as a Christian I interpreted it as "A heaven without Grace is no heaven at all."
When I first watched season 1, before I saw the twist, my thought was that it was supposed to be a commentary on how too much bureaucracy causes so many problems.
@@DbN-dftba In season 4 the issue seemed to be less about too many layers of bureaucracy and more about _complacency_ -- everyone perpetuating the obviously flawed system (the judge, the accountants, the bad place demons) basically assumed that this was how things _should be_ just because that's how they'd always _been._ There was the part with the good place leaders worrying way too much about following procedure before actually _doing_ anything useful, but even that still seemed more about complacency than anything else. Sure, they _said_ they understood how big of a deal this was, but clearly they didn't _really_ understand, or they'd not have been been so lackluster in their response.
Yeah. Even Michael eventually found out the gang weren't making no progress because they needed one another. If yes, people can be hell, it's the interaction, empathy and connection with people also which makes you a better, more honest person.
"One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life" that is going to stick with me. Is that existentialism?
Essentially, yes. Existentialism makes the individual responsible (and accountable) for their own actions, with everything, even not choosing, being a choice you freely make. Freedom for Sartre was both terrifying and exhilarating, and it meant acting in good faith and being authentic - true to yourself and not some version of how you would like others to see you. Sartre's philosophy was so complex and unsettling that he wrote many plays, essays and novels to illustrate what existentialist freedom meant. You can try reading Being and Nothingness or Existentialism Is a Humanism for the philosophical explanation, or The Roads to Freedom and Les Mains Sales (Dirty Hands) for the novelistic and theatrical treatment.
I'm not one to usually get teary-eyed at a tv show but that last episode of the good place really gets me and when you said that hell may be other people but heaven is too it realy stuck for me. great video all around!
I remember showing my gf season 1 when it was running season 3. She immediately reacted to the good place with "THAT'S NOT FAIR" and I was like "oh jfc. how am I gonna keep this secret all season?"
Reminds me of a saying ive heard. In heaven and hell their is a buffet but everyone is chained to one another. No one can reach their own food. In hell thisbis torture because everyone tries to reach their own food. In heaven they feed each other... The message being that it isnt the circumstances that make something twrrible but how you choose to react to them.
The description of existentialism immediately made me think of a fic I’m writing about Janet and how Jason’s surety of self influenced Janet when she least had a sense of self - Janet’s actions literally are her identity before Jason - acts of service, sure, but acts nonetheless - whereas Jason teaches her her internal life also has value, even though she’s Janet the 26th, barely able to understand her own confusion and not yet Janet the eight-hundredth reboot with a full gamut of emotion, she latched onto that concept immediately and willingly abandons her very programmed purpose (serve the Neighborhood) to stay with him. Janet is an amazing character, especially when paired with Jason imo
In a metaphysical sense, we all only exist through the relationships we build with others, like how Inez sees nothing but an empty room when she looks to the other side. That was my biggest takeaway from No Exit. Whether or not we find ourselves to be in heaven or hell or somewhere in between is a question of how we choose to build those relationships.
I agree. But that's also what I found most frustrating about the ending of The Good Place. The characters become better, happier people through the power of relationships. Of love. But, in the end, the show seems to think there's only meaning if those relationships end. Everybody still dies alone, even if it's a supposedly happy disintegration into the universe after many and Jeremy bearimy's together. I feel like that undercuts everything else the show did.
@@Benjy1128 That nothing can be fulfilling forever is one of the foundational tenants of the show-Michael would’ve never started the first experiment if not for diminishing returns from standard torture-and it seems to me at least a self-evident philosophic truth. Hell, it’s one of the fundamental tenants of secular existentialism, too-death as the source of meaning in life. The show certainly leans into existentialist philosophy throughout its run, and one of its core inspirations is this famous existentialist play, so this seems a perfectly logical place for the show to end up. At the end of the day, it appears simply impossible to lead a continuously fulfilling existence when our brains are so inextricably wired around our short lives.
@@matthewlebo1841 I mean, I can certainly agree that nothing can be fullfilling forever, but that's not really the question we are pondering, is it? While meaning is ephemeral, the ephemeral nature in of itself does not precede meaning - things aren't meaningful simply because they end, nor does something need to end for us to appreciate it; I, much like @Benjy, I reckon, am kind of tired of this trend of what you call "secular existentialism" of needing some bittersweet ending for it to feel "meaningful" - death isn't the source of meaning, if only a motivation for urgency of which, but the meaning, as PoG himself puts it, comes from being able to act and acting, and death is the antithesis of that. There is something to be said about meaning coming from an abstract death, an effort to render the effort in itself moot, from making that relationship, for instance, unnecessary by growing, but that is why we keep on reinventing ourselves and resignifying things, having ends of things as they are without necessarily ending them, but just having an ever-evolving approach .
@@hcxpl1 If we’re talking in the most abstract sense, there is no inherent meaning to anything at all, especially under the absurdist framework I have, meaning it is our job to find meaning. The fact that we will all die and could die at any moment provides the urgency to make the most of what little time we have. Without a permanent end, we would still strive to find meaning-billions of people don’t even believe in a permanent end-but death provides greater urgency, and whatever beliefs we develop, whatever meaning we find is universally inextricably rooted in death. The Good Place itself is structured around this belief. In Season 2, for instance, Michael is struggling to grasp the point of human ethics on the basis of his immortality, never having to believe he would die, so Chidi induces an existential crisis with the threat that Michael would be retired if Shawn found out. At multiple points in the show, they reference philosopher Todd May, consultant for the show and author of the book “Death” that Chidi has everyone read after the existential crisis, and Todd May even cameos in the finale. One of the main points he made in Death is that true immortality would be worse than dying-as you agree that nothing can be fulfilling forever, forever is a LONG time to live without finding anything fulfilling anymore, and there are only so many times and ways we can reinvent yourself. Reinvent yourself enough, and you’ve run out of ideas, yet you still have an eternity left to exist. Sartre implicitly endorses this idea in the very structure of the No Exit afterlife, an eternal existence with nothing to do. It’s not a 1:1 match, but the ideas are there.
When I first saw No Exit, I was taken aback by a question: was it that they couldn't stop hurting each other, or that they just wouldn't? I came to believe it was more of a wouldn't than a couldn't. I always thought The Good Place did a great job of asking, what if these people would decide to come together and try to rise above it? I don't think The Good Place was written because we live in such a wonderful equal society where we're free to make as much art as we like. I think it was written because we've realized, as storytellers, that people are have a hard time differentiating satire from genuine commentary. Sartre thought people thought like he did, more or less. Michael Shurr has the internet to show him, no. They do not. For starters, the majority of people do not have the analysis skills people who went to college to write have. That's classically been lost on a lot of writers. TLDR: the internet has shown us that Hell can be other people, and it doesn't have to be. Sartre was an elitist, but he didn't mean to be, and it was not a problem that was even remotely unique to him.
@@PillarofGarbage You can say that for most ideological groups, not just religions. Most people can only give you the cliff notes version of their moral belief system, and odds are they'll make mistakes describing it. Its not something specific to Christianity
@@conorowens8382 but most people who aren't religious don't declare one specific belief system, only vague notions of one according to their personal experiences and culture. Religious people are mostly the ones who claim 1. that they have a set belief system, with structured rules and authority and 2. that they know what that belief system, its rules and its place in our society are/should be. Christianity being the largest and most influential religion in the world right now, it's natural that people immediately think about it to make these critiques. Also, the fact that christianity is more relevant than other religions to the idea of eternal damnation being discussed here lol
@@mariaah3073 nothing you said contradicts me. I said most people can't accurately describe their own morals in detail and would likely make mistakes trying to rationalize it. The fact that secular people don't have a tidy label for their beliefs, like Christianity, is irrelevant to my argument. And the second part of your comment is flat out wrong. Non religious people DO have structured rules and authority when it comes to morals, and they DO have aspirations about what our society should be. It's just based on secular principles, like the judicial system, rather than a higher power.
i love the conclusion they eventually came to. they make people try to be good for all of eternity by making them experience hardships until they become good. And if they don't turn good, they stay there for all of eternity, which is a hell for them because this is made for them to suffer. Two birds with one stone. Good people get good and everyone else has to try until they get it right. A good and a bad place all in one
Thank you for this. Also, it doesn't directly relate to your argument, but the United States was actively fighting a war when the show was produced. I think the perception that it was *largely an era of International peace* says a lot about how war is represented.
I see your point, and it's definitely a point worth making - but I was really just trying to get across that the show was produced in an era with less outright war - especially insofar as the creators of the works in question are concerned. The 2010s weren't a time of world peace, obviously (and the 2020's even less so...) but compared to the global fusterclucks at the start of the 20th or 19th centuries, I think there is a pretty clear distinction.
@@PillarofGarbage that's certainly true, and within the context of the essay it makes sense, but it's also very telling because the creators were living in a country that was actively at war at the time, and I believe Britain was also actively in Afghanistan - though I might be wrong about that. It makes me think of Fahrenheit 451. I didn't bring it up to shame or criticize, but I think there's something worth noting about the culture Industries relationship to war. Also, speech-to-text has steadily been getting worse, and I apologize for any typos in my comment.
@@ianhruday9584 there is still a huge difference between a country being at war on foreign territory, and a country being occupied by a foreign power. Sartre was writing in the latter, and there is simply no comparison to that situation for the writers of The Good Place.
@@inelouw I should be in bed instead of responding to TH-cam comments, but obviously they aren't the same thing. I even acknowledged that what I was saying didn't make a difference for his argument. He said that the good place was largely written in an era of International peace 16:53, but this statement is kind of absurd if you give it a couple seconds of thought. It feels true on an emotional level, but it isn't true, especially for Americans. The scale of conflict is not the same as WWII, but there is and was conflict. There were wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a civil war in Syria (which is causing a refugee crisis in Europe), NATO bombings in Libya, the humdrum murder of Palestinians, and I'm sure there are other conflicts I'm forgetting. I was pointing out that disconnect - the fact that feels emotionally true to talk about an era of peace when it isn't. I think there's a lot to explore here. I think the culture industry has a lot to do with making remarkable levels of violence unremarkable; it made me think of "Fahrenheit 451." A lot of people think that story is about books, but it's not; it's about television.
It's the other way around, I basically found the Good place because of your channel! Sure, I had watched two episodes years ago, but your first video brought it back to my mind and the spoiler waring (was it in the second video?) made me finally sit down and binge the whole thing. Not with a VPN service though, I simply bought all four seasons on my Amazon and can now rewatch whenever I like to do so.
"Hell is other people" was never the main point of No Exit. It's just a very memeable line that happened to be said at the climax of the story. Making this assumption is like thinking "I am Iron Man" must the moral of Avengers: Endgame. There's actually quite a lot of philosophical content in the play, none of which is this. Some of it comes from Sartre's lifelong polyamorous lover Simone de Beauvoir.
This doesn't have anything with The Good Place, but the title also reminded me of CS Lewis' The Great Divorce. In hell, the landscape (at least as seems to the inhabitants - it looks a lot smaller than the heaven-inhabitants' POV) an eternal, never ending landscape that goes on forever. At hell's entry point, the newer inhabitants mingle together, have a society of sorts. Or at least as much of a society as you can get where no one is actually listening to each other and inly trying to use each other to validate themselves. But they interact. They meet up. No one's torturing them or telling them what to do. They're free to go where they want - they can even go to Heaven if they want - they have excursions to visit Heaven (which is very uncomfortable and unpleasant for them but they visit Heaven to visit their old earth eaquaintances that went to heaven) and complain about how the Heaven-dwellers never bother to visit them in Hell. But the bit that this title reminded me of is that those residents who have been in Hell much longer and have wearied of the company of the other Hell-dwellers, well, they have an eternal landscape to get away from the others. The longer they spend in Hell the further and further away they get from their neighbours, to the point where it could take a hundred years to walk from one hell-dweller's house to their nearest neighbour. Hell is choosing self-imposed isolation over the chance for connection, which is preferable to them because they can't break out of their own self-absorption to really understand and know another person who's not them. Meanwhile in heaven, there is still a vast landscape, although a more interesting one than the flat, boring, easy landscape of hell, (more mountains) but they all travel in the same direction as each other - (towards the Creator) instead of further and further away from each other, with only some Heaven-dwellers who still have some hope for their loved ones in Hell will return to the entryway of Hell where they try to urge them to join them on the glorious journey.
I don't think the main difference in world-view between Sartre and the Good Place is pessimism vs optimism. Rather, the Good Place's philosophy is tied to the individualistic-liberal conceptions of T M Scanlon's virtue ethics, whereas Sartre's existentialism is not just about individual choice in a vacuum- it is tied to a revolutionary commitment to collective emancipation. Sartre was part of the Communist Resistance against the Fascists and continued to be committed to the cause of emancipation of workers and the colonized from capitalism. Conversely, the characters of the Good Place just accept the plainly unjust system of the Afterlife, later on only trying to escape it, and only by the end actually trying to change it- by appealing to authority figures to reform the system.
How I got into The Good Place: So a couple years ago, I was at a camp, and I was talking to some kids, and one of them mentioned The Good Place. It sounded very interesting, so I made a mental note to check it out when I got home. After a whole kerfuffle with the camp that's not important to the story, I went home, and the first chance I got, I booted up Netflix, and watched the first episode of The Good Place. I was hooked immediately. Everything about the show was so good. The characters were incredibly engaging and funny, the acting was amazing, its interpretation of the afterlife was so creative and unique, the comedy was absolutely hilarious, and the writing was just SO GOOD! And of course the philosophical themes were interesting and engaging as well. I literally binged the entirety of that show, and it became my new addiction. Unfortunately I accidentally spoiled myself of the season finale twist, but the Jason/Jianu twist genuinely left me shocked. I even watched the little Selection miniseries. And while I am glad that it ended on a perfect note, I still do miss it. Easily one of the best TV series' I've ever seen.
I really enjoyed this video! Thank you for sharing this. I love “The Good Place”. It is so refreshing to see a true look at the themes and philosophy behind all of it.
I prefer the show Lucifer's approach to Hell. Hell isnt other, its your guilt. In that show, when you're in Hell you relive your guilty conscience in a Hell Loop, alone, with demons taking place of other people in your memories until you no longer feel guilt. But they dont tell you that this is how you get out of it. So almost nobody is able to get out of their Hell loop. Misery is guilt and regret and that is the torture, you are your own torture. I agree with this more.
@@PillarofGarbage I probably will. I do want to explore more how The Good Place's message is the exact opposite of No Exit's and is summed up as "heaven is other people"
I finished The Good Place with my fiancé this weekend, first thing I do is watch analysis videos of the show! I’ve been holding off watching your videos, so I know I wouldn’t be spoiled! Great series and incredibly moving ending.
I LOVE this show. I would handle one thing differently, though. Jason is perhaps more simple, genuine and more in-the-moment than the other characters. Of course I don't mean he's flawless. But even from an early point, he shows an ccasional moments of sweeping depth. As the show progresses, though, the others are occasionally dismissive, and even cruelly so. He even occasionally is written as a bit of an imbecile (being given a sparkler or balloon, or being asked to fetch something meaningless in order for him to be eliminated from discussion). The writers might have found ways to preserve his naive purity without casting him as an idiot. In the end his arc is satisfying, but his voyage is perhaps too choppy.
In the Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss universe hells problems come more so like social issues and that Hell is mainly bad because alot of people who get sent there are the type of people willing to step all over one another to achieve what they want or to gain what they desire.
No Exit doesn't quite leave the characters with no actions to be taken. They can leave the room. Most of the play has the characters trapped in the room. There are only 2 points where they had the opprutunity to leave; When they arrived in the first place they could have karate chopped their guide dude and b-line out of there, and at the end of the play when the door inexplicadly opens at the exact moment that none of them no longer have the will to leave, afraid or apathetic about what might lie outside.
Huh. This was really interesting. I stage managed a virtual production of No Exit in the midst of the pandemic, so I got to know the text really well. I never thought about the connection between No Exit and The Good Place (one of my favorite shows) quite like that but it makes a lot of sense.
Your work is so brilliant, I could easily watch a The Good Place video every day!!! Thank you for this. I still love this show so much and your analysis makes me want to watch it for the 20th time.
In my faith, we don't believe in hell as an actual place or anything but we do have this idea that damnation is just a lack of progress, the same way an actual dam stops the progression of a river
Being alone with other people is like being alone with your own thoughts but those thoughts are not your own. Where No Exit may have been an interesting story on how other people can be your torment when they don't want to change or help others unless they know it will help themselves, but being alone with yourself for all eternity with no way to interact with any other person would be just as much if not more hell than other people. I would know, I spent 3 years as a NEET before getting a new job. TH-cam videos and MMOs were the limit of my interaction as I used online shipping to get groceries, spending 0-1 hour a week ever going outside and that ruined my sociability while I spent even longer after trying to regain my original social skills. But I could imagine what happens if I didn't have the internet, didn't have paper or a pencil, nothing to do but sit there in a room where you can't die. The only people that could survive that situation are those who mentally shut down or have voices in their heads that can respond for all eternity so they never completely feel alone.
I dunno. I'd ponder that if one had literally a ton of time, even the most hardheaded people would eventually do the reasonable thing and just sit down and talk. Reflect. Ponder. Change, grow, and start to understand one another. One can only have so many temper tantrums in the face of some rather galactic scale news that they are dead and stuck in limbo meant to be each other's torturers, before reality comes crashing in. With everyone being already dead, it ain't like they can exterminatus someone they don't like either to solve it. So at the end of the day, all that there is to do is talk. People do have a remarkable capacity for change, even if some do choose to be very stubborn and hardheaded about it. It wouldn't take eons, or decades. Probably wouldn't be more than weeks, and at most months, before pride cracks and crumbles away bit by bit. Especially if some olive branches are extended.
Noting here, though, were I to end up in this unfortunate situation with some folk I certainly would not like to share a space with, I would in all likelihood get a snide kick out of seeing their self-righteous in lives selves have a panic episode over the reality of going down under rather than rising to more shining abodes. Probably would slow peace negotiations by a while, though. I'm only human, after all. I'd probably find it a more curious state of affairs at first than anything to end up in such a state, though I'd imagine the novelty would wear off pretty quick. At least it would provide ample food for thought on the nature of things, and give some pretty interesting answers.
There's an interview that Sartre had in 1971, where he says the other side of the coin to "Hell is other people": "Heaven is each other". The Good Place only gets resolved because the characters work with each other and find empathy and care, which pulls themselves out.
i know this is completely beside the point, but GAY PEOPLE (inez) IN A 1944 PLAY?????????????????? i love it edit: i do realize the hays code exists and homophobia and all that and i'm sure inez is supposed to be a very clear bad person bc she's attracted to women bc classic 1940s, but damn i was not expecting it and it threw me for a loop
Right - today's culture war bollocks tries so hard to paint queer existence as some newfangled thing, which is a narrative that falls apart instantly if you, y'know, read stuff from the past
Man I took one existentialism class in college and it helped me appreciate this show so much more. When the “reveal” happened I screeched “HELL IS OTHER PEOPLEEEE”
Very nice commentary. Thank you! It seems to me that No Exit is a harbinger of postmodernism, whereas our contemporary culture is moving beyond that mindset. We can believe in characters that are flawed but ernest and we can enjoy them without irony. This wasn't possible in postmodernism, for the contextual reasons you cited.
This might not be connected to morality but if our goal as a individual is to act truthfully to the way we perceive ourselves and the world. Then does that mean that what hitler chose to do based on his perceptions is a good thing? Is it morally good to be true to yourself in all circumstances?
No Exit isn’t Sartre’s whole philosophy - it’s just a window into one small corner of it, a window I’ve simplified further for this video. The gloss I’ve given here for Sartre’s ‘bad faith’ is only part of it - in a nutshell, it’s not just about ‘being true to yourself’, it’s about making sure that your idea of ‘yourself’ you’re trying to be true to is built on reason, not passion. To Sartre, you can’t be ‘truthful’ to yourself if you’re antisemitic, because antisemitism isn’t a truthful way of being in the first place. For a clearer + more comprehensive explanation I recommend reading Sartre’s essay ‘Portrait of an Antisemite’
in the real world it takes a sacrifice on the part of the person with the superiority complex unfortunately. it's never quite a heaven even if it does become less of a hell.
Social media is just people without face to face interaction, depriving everyone of the ability to use empathy. It’s corporations sorting people into categories, trying to dig out as many declarations and reactions as possible. Mining for every data point they can to manipulate people into buying things while creating a massive experiment with everyone responding to their phones like Pavlov dogs.
I disagree about only one thing, the US in 2016-2020 wasn't reflective of a time of world peace. Even if American libs could feel that way personally under Obama or something, under Trump they were actually pitting that feeling of hope against some real fears.
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Idk if the video covers this but I always loved how (spoilers) the Good Place ultimately ends up advocating for informative justice over punitive justice. Maybe in real life not all people can be redeemed, but hey: they've got literal etertinity to try, and those who refuse to grow will just bounce around in the reformation system forever, and isn't constant evaluation a hell in of itself?
Reformative**** I made a few spelling errors but it's been hearted so no turning back now
@@TSDTalks22 ☺️ I read your comment and thought “that’s probably supposed to say reformative,” and just figured spelling error. But then I stopped and thought about it a bit and decided I really liked “informative justice” after all, so… happy accident? I liked the idea that part of what’s happening for everyone is ever-increasing knowledge (information), leading to change, however incremental. The heart’s a win, either way!
I also liked the term informative justice - because they have to rebuild the entire system, including the points that judge if a person I'd supposedly good or bad.
They create a justice system that judges based on each individual's personal information (life experiences, opportunities, and other relevant context) and then enables them to change and grow. It's so important to acknowledge that some people have never had the opportunity to learn a different way of being, so many are just trying to survive as best they can. It's such a great show!
What if they try to break that same system because they just reject your notions of what is 'better' or what it means to 'improve', and thus won't see any of them as anything but those who must be put to be reformed?
That sounds quite a lot like the LDS conception of the afterlife where I’m pretty sure those who qualify are tasked with teaching the souls who didn’t so that they can do the same and so on and so forth.
They don’t believe in bad place than anyone goes to anyway (There’s outer darkness but as far as I know you have to try to go there) so I guess that’s naturally the best way to go about not needing one.
Love this show. My biggest problem on first watch was “this isn’t heaven. They’re all miserable. This isn’t heaven.” That reveal was so sweet.
when I was first watching season 1, I was ok with it potentially being that "if someone makes it into a heaven and they shouldn't be there... then that heaven will warp to include them, if that person isn't ejected"
though it was generally a fun ride overall.
My take on it (before I knew the twist - but it still works after the twist), as a Christian I interpreted it as "A heaven without Grace is no heaven at all."
When I first watched season 1, before I saw the twist, my thought was that it was supposed to be a commentary on how too much bureaucracy causes so many problems.
@@Lucky10279which funny enough does become an issue that's explored in later seasons
@@DbN-dftba In season 4 the issue seemed to be less about too many layers of bureaucracy and more about _complacency_ -- everyone perpetuating the obviously flawed system (the judge, the accountants, the bad place demons) basically assumed that this was how things _should be_ just because that's how they'd always _been._ There was the part with the good place leaders worrying way too much about following procedure before actually _doing_ anything useful, but even that still seemed more about complacency than anything else. Sure, they _said_ they understood how big of a deal this was, but clearly they didn't _really_ understand, or they'd not have been been so lackluster in their response.
One of the most clever things about The Good Place is that they took the premise of No Exit and completely flipped it on its head.
Yeah. Even Michael eventually found out the gang weren't making no progress because they needed one another. If yes, people can be hell, it's the interaction, empathy and connection with people also which makes you a better, more honest person.
@deannal.newton9772 jason is the key to salvation
@@Yoseqlo1 Yeah, people socialize each other.
"One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life" that is going to stick with me. Is that existentialism?
Essentially, yes. Existentialism makes the individual responsible (and accountable) for their own actions, with everything, even not choosing, being a choice you freely make. Freedom for Sartre was both terrifying and exhilarating, and it meant acting in good faith and being authentic - true to yourself and not some version of how you would like others to see you. Sartre's philosophy was so complex and unsettling that he wrote many plays, essays and novels to illustrate what existentialist freedom meant. You can try reading Being and Nothingness or Existentialism Is a Humanism for the philosophical explanation, or The Roads to Freedom and Les Mains Sales (Dirty Hands) for the novelistic and theatrical treatment.
They foreshadow the 'experiment' when Eleanor say the best torment for her parents would be to have them spend eternity together.
Great Show!
I'm not one to usually get teary-eyed at a tv show but that last episode of the good place really gets me and when you said that hell may be other people but heaven is too it realy stuck for me. great video all around!
The phrase that I kind of live my life by is
"Hell is other people, but so is heaven"
I remember showing my gf season 1 when it was running season 3.
She immediately reacted to the good place with "THAT'S NOT FAIR" and I was like "oh jfc. how am I gonna keep this secret all season?"
Reminds me of a saying ive heard.
In heaven and hell their is a buffet but everyone is chained to one another. No one can reach their own food.
In hell thisbis torture because everyone tries to reach their own food.
In heaven they feed each other...
The message being that it isnt the circumstances that make something twrrible but how you choose to react to them.
Janet is the greatest character in the history of television.
@@kshamwhizzle6544 I had a bit of a crush on Chidi-Janet!
She would probably say "Not a character!"
The description of existentialism immediately made me think of a fic I’m writing about Janet and how Jason’s surety of self influenced Janet when she least had a sense of self - Janet’s actions literally are her identity before Jason - acts of service, sure, but acts nonetheless - whereas Jason teaches her her internal life also has value, even though she’s Janet the 26th, barely able to understand her own confusion and not yet Janet the eight-hundredth reboot with a full gamut of emotion, she latched onto that concept immediately and willingly abandons her very programmed purpose (serve the Neighborhood) to stay with him. Janet is an amazing character, especially when paired with Jason imo
I just binged the entire show for the first time and LOVED it.
It's fantastic!
Favorite part of it?
Tahani being Eleanor’s soulmate in one of the reruns is the funniest crap to me
that version of Eleanor must've been very pleased considering how hot she was for Tahani even when Chidi was her soulmate 💀💀
In a metaphysical sense, we all only exist through the relationships we build with others, like how Inez sees nothing but an empty room when she looks to the other side. That was my biggest takeaway from No Exit. Whether or not we find ourselves to be in heaven or hell or somewhere in between is a question of how we choose to build those relationships.
I agree. But that's also what I found most frustrating about the ending of The Good Place. The characters become better, happier people through the power of relationships. Of love.
But, in the end, the show seems to think there's only meaning if those relationships end. Everybody still dies alone, even if it's a supposedly happy disintegration into the universe after many and Jeremy bearimy's together. I feel like that undercuts everything else the show did.
@@Benjy1128 That nothing can be fulfilling forever is one of the foundational tenants of the show-Michael would’ve never started the first experiment if not for diminishing returns from standard torture-and it seems to me at least a self-evident philosophic truth.
Hell, it’s one of the fundamental tenants of secular existentialism, too-death as the source of meaning in life. The show certainly leans into existentialist philosophy throughout its run, and one of its core inspirations is this famous existentialist play, so this seems a perfectly logical place for the show to end up. At the end of the day, it appears simply impossible to lead a continuously fulfilling existence when our brains are so inextricably wired around our short lives.
@@matthewlebo1841 I guess it's just one of the ways in which I fundamentally disagree with existentialism
@@matthewlebo1841 I mean, I can certainly agree that nothing can be fullfilling forever, but that's not really the question we are pondering, is it? While meaning is ephemeral, the ephemeral nature in of itself does not precede meaning - things aren't meaningful simply because they end, nor does something need to end for us to appreciate it; I, much like @Benjy, I reckon, am kind of tired of this trend of what you call "secular existentialism" of needing some bittersweet ending for it to feel "meaningful" - death isn't the source of meaning, if only a motivation for urgency of which, but the meaning, as PoG himself puts it, comes from being able to act and acting, and death is the antithesis of that.
There is something to be said about meaning coming from an abstract death, an effort to render the effort in itself moot, from making that relationship, for instance, unnecessary by growing, but that is why we keep on reinventing ourselves and resignifying things, having ends of things as they are without necessarily ending them, but just having an ever-evolving approach .
@@hcxpl1 If we’re talking in the most abstract sense, there is no inherent meaning to anything at all, especially under the absurdist framework I have, meaning it is our job to find meaning. The fact that we will all die and could die at any moment provides the urgency to make the most of what little time we have. Without a permanent end, we would still strive to find meaning-billions of people don’t even believe in a permanent end-but death provides greater urgency, and whatever beliefs we develop, whatever meaning we find is universally inextricably rooted in death.
The Good Place itself is structured around this belief. In Season 2, for instance, Michael is struggling to grasp the point of human ethics on the basis of his immortality, never having to believe he would die, so Chidi induces an existential crisis with the threat that Michael would be retired if Shawn found out. At multiple points in the show, they reference philosopher Todd May, consultant for the show and author of the book “Death” that Chidi has everyone read after the existential crisis, and Todd May even cameos in the finale. One of the main points he made in Death is that true immortality would be worse than dying-as you agree that nothing can be fulfilling forever, forever is a LONG time to live without finding anything fulfilling anymore, and there are only so many times and ways we can reinvent yourself. Reinvent yourself enough, and you’ve run out of ideas, yet you still have an eternity left to exist. Sartre implicitly endorses this idea in the very structure of the No Exit afterlife, an eternal existence with nothing to do. It’s not a 1:1 match, but the ideas are there.
When I first saw No Exit, I was taken aback by a question: was it that they couldn't stop hurting each other, or that they just wouldn't? I came to believe it was more of a wouldn't than a couldn't. I always thought The Good Place did a great job of asking, what if these people would decide to come together and try to rise above it? I don't think The Good Place was written because we live in such a wonderful equal society where we're free to make as much art as we like. I think it was written because we've realized, as storytellers, that people are have a hard time differentiating satire from genuine commentary. Sartre thought people thought like he did, more or less. Michael Shurr has the internet to show him, no. They do not. For starters, the majority of people do not have the analysis skills people who went to college to write have. That's classically been lost on a lot of writers.
TLDR: the internet has shown us that Hell can be other people, and it doesn't have to be. Sartre was an elitist, but he didn't mean to be, and it was not a problem that was even remotely unique to him.
Most Christians don't seem to know that their notion of Hell doesn't come from the Wholly Fables aka the Bible but it comes from Dante's Inferno.
You could fill several books with all the things most Christians don’t know about Christianity
Edit: they did, actually, it’s called the Bible lmao
@@PillarofGarbage You can say that for most ideological groups, not just religions.
Most people can only give you the cliff notes version of their moral belief system, and odds are they'll make mistakes describing it. Its not something specific to Christianity
@@conorowens8382 but most people who aren't religious don't declare one specific belief system, only vague notions of one according to their personal experiences and culture. Religious people are mostly the ones who claim 1. that they have a set belief system, with structured rules and authority and 2. that they know what that belief system, its rules and its place in our society are/should be. Christianity being the largest and most influential religion in the world right now, it's natural that people immediately think about it to make these critiques.
Also, the fact that christianity is more relevant than other religions to the idea of eternal damnation being discussed here lol
@@mariaah3073 nothing you said contradicts me. I said most people can't accurately describe their own morals in detail and would likely make mistakes trying to rationalize it. The fact that secular people don't have a tidy label for their beliefs, like Christianity, is irrelevant to my argument.
And the second part of your comment is flat out wrong. Non religious people DO have structured rules and authority when it comes to morals, and they DO have aspirations about what our society should be. It's just based on secular principles, like the judicial system, rather than a higher power.
Why did you spell holy like that
We all hate traffic, but we are traffic.
i love the conclusion they eventually came to. they make people try to be good for all of eternity by making them experience hardships until they become good. And if they don't turn good, they stay there for all of eternity, which is a hell for them because this is made for them to suffer. Two birds with one stone. Good people get good and everyone else has to try until they get it right. A good and a bad place all in one
Thank you for this.
Also, it doesn't directly relate to your argument, but the United States was actively fighting a war when the show was produced. I think the perception that it was *largely an era of International peace* says a lot about how war is represented.
I see your point, and it's definitely a point worth making - but I was really just trying to get across that
the show was produced in an era with less outright war - especially insofar as the creators of the works in question are concerned.
The 2010s weren't a time of world peace, obviously (and the 2020's even less so...) but compared to the global fusterclucks at the start of the 20th or 19th centuries, I think there is a pretty clear distinction.
@@PillarofGarbage that's certainly true, and within the context of the essay it makes sense, but it's also very telling because the creators were living in a country that was actively at war at the time, and I believe Britain was also actively in Afghanistan - though I might be wrong about that. It makes me think of Fahrenheit 451.
I didn't bring it up to shame or criticize, but I think there's something worth noting about the culture Industries relationship to war.
Also, speech-to-text has steadily been getting worse, and I apologize for any typos in my comment.
@@ianhruday9584 there is still a huge difference between a country being at war on foreign territory, and a country being occupied by a foreign power. Sartre was writing in the latter, and there is simply no comparison to that situation for the writers of The Good Place.
@@inelouw I should be in bed instead of responding to TH-cam comments, but obviously they aren't the same thing. I even acknowledged that what I was saying didn't make a difference for his argument. He said that the good place was largely written in an era of International peace 16:53, but this statement is kind of absurd if you give it a couple seconds of thought. It feels true on an emotional level, but it isn't true, especially for Americans.
The scale of conflict is not the same as WWII, but there is and was conflict. There were wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a civil war in Syria (which is causing a refugee crisis in Europe), NATO bombings in Libya, the humdrum murder of Palestinians, and I'm sure there are other conflicts I'm forgetting.
I was pointing out that disconnect - the fact that feels emotionally true to talk about an era of peace when it isn't. I think there's a lot to explore here. I think the culture industry has a lot to do with making remarkable levels of violence unremarkable; it made me think of "Fahrenheit 451." A lot of people think that story is about books, but it's not; it's about television.
It's the other way around, I basically found the Good place because of your channel! Sure, I had watched two episodes years ago, but your first video brought it back to my mind and the spoiler waring (was it in the second video?) made me finally sit down and binge the whole thing. Not with a VPN service though, I simply bought all four seasons on my Amazon and can now rewatch whenever I like to do so.
:D
I just finished binging the good place
now im watching a bunch of video essays about it!
"Hell is other people" was never the main point of No Exit. It's just a very memeable line that happened to be said at the climax of the story. Making this assumption is like thinking "I am Iron Man" must the moral of Avengers: Endgame. There's actually quite a lot of philosophical content in the play, none of which is this. Some of it comes from Sartre's lifelong polyamorous lover Simone de Beauvoir.
This doesn't have anything with The Good Place, but the title also reminded me of CS Lewis' The Great Divorce.
In hell, the landscape (at least as seems to the inhabitants - it looks a lot smaller than the heaven-inhabitants' POV) an eternal, never ending landscape that goes on forever.
At hell's entry point, the newer inhabitants mingle together, have a society of sorts. Or at least as much of a society as you can get where no one is actually listening to each other and inly trying to use each other to validate themselves. But they interact. They meet up. No one's torturing them or telling them what to do. They're free to go where they want - they can even go to Heaven if they want - they have excursions to visit Heaven (which is very uncomfortable and unpleasant for them but they visit Heaven to visit their old earth eaquaintances that went to heaven) and complain about how the Heaven-dwellers never bother to visit them in Hell.
But the bit that this title reminded me of is that those residents who have been in Hell much longer and have wearied of the company of the other Hell-dwellers, well, they have an eternal landscape to get away from the others. The longer they spend in Hell the further and further away they get from their neighbours, to the point where it could take a hundred years to walk from one hell-dweller's house to their nearest neighbour. Hell is choosing self-imposed isolation over the chance for connection, which is preferable to them because they can't break out of their own self-absorption to really understand and know another person who's not them.
Meanwhile in heaven, there is still a vast landscape, although a more interesting one than the flat, boring, easy landscape of hell, (more mountains) but they all travel in the same direction as each other - (towards the Creator) instead of further and further away from each other, with only some Heaven-dwellers who still have some hope for their loved ones in Hell will return to the entryway of Hell where they try to urge them to join them on the glorious journey.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing!
it is insane how underrated you are, you made me go through a video about a show that i dont care for and made it interesting, keep up the good work
I don't think the main difference in world-view between Sartre and the Good Place is pessimism vs optimism. Rather, the Good Place's philosophy is tied to the individualistic-liberal conceptions of T M Scanlon's virtue ethics, whereas Sartre's existentialism is not just about individual choice in a vacuum- it is tied to a revolutionary commitment to collective emancipation. Sartre was part of the Communist Resistance against the Fascists and continued to be committed to the cause of emancipation of workers and the colonized from capitalism. Conversely, the characters of the Good Place just accept the plainly unjust system of the Afterlife, later on only trying to escape it, and only by the end actually trying to change it- by appealing to authority figures to reform the system.
How I got into The Good Place:
So a couple years ago, I was at a camp, and I was talking to some kids, and one of them mentioned The Good Place. It sounded very interesting, so I made a mental note to check it out when I got home. After a whole kerfuffle with the camp that's not important to the story, I went home, and the first chance I got, I booted up Netflix, and watched the first episode of The Good Place. I was hooked immediately. Everything about the show was so good. The characters were incredibly engaging and funny, the acting was amazing, its interpretation of the afterlife was so creative and unique, the comedy was absolutely hilarious, and the writing was just SO GOOD! And of course the philosophical themes were interesting and engaging as well. I literally binged the entirety of that show, and it became my new addiction. Unfortunately I accidentally spoiled myself of the season finale twist, but the Jason/Jianu twist genuinely left me shocked. I even watched the little Selection miniseries. And while I am glad that it ended on a perfect note, I still do miss it. Easily one of the best TV series' I've ever seen.
I really enjoyed this video! Thank you for sharing this. I love “The Good Place”. It is so refreshing to see a true look at the themes and philosophy behind all of it.
I prefer the show Lucifer's approach to Hell. Hell isnt other, its your guilt. In that show, when you're in Hell you relive your guilty conscience in a Hell Loop, alone, with demons taking place of other people in your memories until you no longer feel guilt. But they dont tell you that this is how you get out of it. So almost nobody is able to get out of their Hell loop. Misery is guilt and regret and that is the torture, you are your own torture. I agree with this more.
I had the same idea of comparing No Exit and The Good Place 😭😭
do it anyway 😈
@@PillarofGarbage I probably will. I do want to explore more how The Good Place's message is the exact opposite of No Exit's and is summed up as "heaven is other people"
I finished The Good Place with my fiancé this weekend, first thing I do is watch analysis videos of the show! I’ve been holding off watching your videos, so I know I wouldn’t be spoiled!
Great series and incredibly moving ending.
I love that last line
Just started rewatching The Good Place, perfect timing
I LOVE this show. I would handle one thing differently, though. Jason is perhaps more simple, genuine and more in-the-moment than the other characters. Of course I don't mean he's flawless. But even from an early point, he shows an ccasional moments of sweeping depth. As the show progresses, though, the others are occasionally dismissive, and even cruelly so. He even occasionally is written as a bit of an imbecile (being given a sparkler or balloon, or being asked to fetch something meaningless in order for him to be eliminated from discussion). The writers might have found ways to preserve his naive purity without casting him as an idiot. In the end his arc is satisfying, but his voyage is perhaps too choppy.
They canonically gave him an intellectual disability - the IQ of a seven year old in his twenty-somethings.
In the Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss universe hells problems come more so like social issues and that Hell is mainly bad because alot of people who get sent there are the type of people willing to step all over one another to achieve what they want or to gain what they desire.
No Exit doesn't quite leave the characters with no actions to be taken.
They can leave the room.
Most of the play has the characters trapped in the room. There are only 2 points where they had the opprutunity to leave; When they arrived in the first place they could have karate chopped their guide dude and b-line out of there, and at the end of the play when the door inexplicadly opens at the exact moment that none of them no longer have the will to leave, afraid or apathetic about what might lie outside.
Huh. This was really interesting. I stage managed a virtual production of No Exit in the midst of the pandemic, so I got to know the text really well. I never thought about the connection between No Exit and The Good Place (one of my favorite shows) quite like that but it makes a lot of sense.
I still like the Harvey Danger lyric "Hell is Other people but thanks for your concern"
Your work is so brilliant, I could easily watch a The Good Place video every day!!! Thank you for this. I still love this show so much and your analysis makes me want to watch it for the 20th time.
In my faith, we don't believe in hell as an actual place or anything but we do have this idea that damnation is just a lack of progress, the same way an actual dam stops the progression of a river
Really great video about an excellent series.
Being alone with other people is like being alone with your own thoughts but those thoughts are not your own. Where No Exit may have been an interesting story on how other people can be your torment when they don't want to change or help others unless they know it will help themselves, but being alone with yourself for all eternity with no way to interact with any other person would be just as much if not more hell than other people.
I would know, I spent 3 years as a NEET before getting a new job. TH-cam videos and MMOs were the limit of my interaction as I used online shipping to get groceries, spending 0-1 hour a week ever going outside and that ruined my sociability while I spent even longer after trying to regain my original social skills. But I could imagine what happens if I didn't have the internet, didn't have paper or a pencil, nothing to do but sit there in a room where you can't die.
The only people that could survive that situation are those who mentally shut down or have voices in their heads that can respond for all eternity so they never completely feel alone.
See, this is where I want the Beetlejuice sequel to go-explore the Neitherworld and how people can change if they choose to.
I dunno. I'd ponder that if one had literally a ton of time, even the most hardheaded people would eventually do the reasonable thing and just sit down and talk. Reflect. Ponder. Change, grow, and start to understand one another. One can only have so many temper tantrums in the face of some rather galactic scale news that they are dead and stuck in limbo meant to be each other's torturers, before reality comes crashing in. With everyone being already dead, it ain't like they can exterminatus someone they don't like either to solve it. So at the end of the day, all that there is to do is talk. People do have a remarkable capacity for change, even if some do choose to be very stubborn and hardheaded about it. It wouldn't take eons, or decades. Probably wouldn't be more than weeks, and at most months, before pride cracks and crumbles away bit by bit. Especially if some olive branches are extended.
Noting here, though, were I to end up in this unfortunate situation with some folk I certainly would not like to share a space with, I would in all likelihood get a snide kick out of seeing their self-righteous in lives selves have a panic episode over the reality of going down under rather than rising to more shining abodes. Probably would slow peace negotiations by a while, though. I'm only human, after all. I'd probably find it a more curious state of affairs at first than anything to end up in such a state, though I'd imagine the novelty would wear off pretty quick. At least it would provide ample food for thought on the nature of things, and give some pretty interesting answers.
Humanity is simultaneously both beautiful and a mistake.
That’s the most apt description I’ve ever heard of the human condition.
There's an interview that Sartre had in 1971, where he says the other side of the coin to "Hell is other people": "Heaven is each other". The Good Place only gets resolved because the characters work with each other and find empathy and care, which pulls themselves out.
Great video PG
Thank you!
This is my first video to watch on your channel and I really enjoyed it. You’ve got a new fan.
Loved it! I just found your channel today and I'm already a fan ...😊
i know this is completely beside the point, but GAY PEOPLE (inez) IN A 1944 PLAY?????????????????? i love it
edit: i do realize the hays code exists and homophobia and all that and i'm sure inez is supposed to be a very clear bad person bc she's attracted to women bc classic 1940s, but damn i was not expecting it and it threw me for a loop
Right - today's culture war bollocks tries so hard to paint queer existence as some newfangled thing, which is a narrative that falls apart instantly if you, y'know, read stuff from the past
Boy, I sure do love the casual villification of queer women in my deep philosophy plays /s
Explicit details. Thank You.
Man I took one existentialism class in college and it helped me appreciate this show so much more. When the “reveal” happened I screeched “HELL IS OTHER PEOPLEEEE”
this video is gold
Dude, I would love more good place videos. Definitely one of my favorite comedy shows for its poignant messages in an otherwise abstract topic
Very nice commentary. Thank you!
It seems to me that No Exit is a harbinger of postmodernism, whereas our contemporary culture is moving beyond that mindset. We can believe in characters that are flawed but ernest and we can enjoy them without irony. This wasn't possible in postmodernism, for the contextual reasons you cited.
This might not be connected to morality but if our goal as a individual is to act truthfully to the way we perceive ourselves and the world. Then does that mean that what hitler chose to do based on his perceptions is a good thing? Is it morally good to be true to yourself in all circumstances?
No Exit isn’t Sartre’s whole philosophy - it’s just a window into one small corner of it, a window I’ve simplified further for this video. The gloss I’ve given here for Sartre’s ‘bad faith’ is only part of it - in a nutshell, it’s not just about ‘being true to yourself’, it’s about making sure that your idea of ‘yourself’ you’re trying to be true to is built on reason, not passion. To Sartre, you can’t be ‘truthful’ to yourself if you’re antisemitic, because antisemitism isn’t a truthful way of being in the first place.
For a clearer + more comprehensive explanation I recommend reading Sartre’s essay ‘Portrait of an Antisemite’
Time to rewatch the good place
She would be so pissed knowing that more Spider-Man movies came out.
Someone went to hell for… deserting war? -_-
more delicious, nutritious garbage
fresh from the Pillar!
No Exit seems to be missing a Chidi.....What's a Chidi you ask?
Ahhhh… I needed some new good place content..thank you
Brago, any possibility Fujitora ends up fleet admiral at the end of the story? What do you think?
What does this say about "Good" Eleanor's place in the bad place, were other people her hell and thats why she was there?
Ive mostly seen your superhero content but I'm really glad to see you branch out. good stuff
We are social creatures and we cannot escape that fact
in the real world it takes a sacrifice on the part of the person with the superiority complex unfortunately. it's never quite a heaven even if it does become less of a hell.
tl;dr
No Exit: Vichy France
The Good Place: D-Day Allies.
…?
I'm just going to stick with hell is other people
nord vpn? don't they produce hit british detective series Nobleberry?
I love the show. But no, hell is not other people. It is what you clutch to and refuse to let go.
If he’ll is other people, what does that make Social Media???
The negativity and positivity from social media comes from people and systems
Social media is just people without face to face interaction, depriving everyone of the ability to use empathy. It’s corporations sorting people into categories, trying to dig out as many declarations and reactions as possible. Mining for every data point they can to manipulate people into buying things while creating a massive experiment with everyone responding to their phones like Pavlov dogs.
My upstairs neighbors prove that INDEED HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE.
Yes, it is. 😅
People that don't Like, Comment, Subscribe will meet Other People.
Life is hell, we all know this
I like life 🌞
Hell is me
I disagree about only one thing, the US in 2016-2020 wasn't reflective of a time of world peace. Even if American libs could feel that way personally under Obama or something, under Trump they were actually pitting that feeling of hope against some real fears.
Hell is other people... that think they belong in a better place than another for petty reasons, lol
My xhusband was Hell! 😊❤