Can You Be a Good Person in 2019?

2019-11-06 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:58 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Pop culture) · mode: Personal essay · tags: calendar ritual, timely hook

Hank uses season three of The Good Place, where everyone now goes to the Bad Place, to argue that the modern world's complexity makes being good harder; moral point-counting of every choice is a flawed, individualist tool, so we should seek complex truths without judging ourselves or others as if our accounting were accurate.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The Good Place season three: everyone goes to the Bad Place; Hank half believes it

★★ Hank says The Good Place is a good show about four not very good people in a bizarre afterlife, which in its first two seasons explored deep, age-old human questions. — 00:00:00
★★ Hank says season three swerves: the show stops being about how to be a good person and becomes about how to be a good person in 2019. — 00:00:13
★★ In season three everyone goes to the Bad Place, even rule-following Doug Forcett: the modern world is so messed up you can't live in it without being bad, and no one has earned the Good Place in 521 years. (fiction) — 00:00:29
★★★ Hank says this is rough to hear because he kind of believes it: every day the world gets a little more complicated and being a good person gets a little harder. (hedged) — 00:00:51

00:00:58 — Engaging with complexity: nothing is all the way good; how to weigh small ethical choices

★★★ Hank says engaging with the world's complexity, a central theme of the channel for over ten years, shows not that everything is bad but that nothing is all the way good. — 00:01:05 · Vlogbrothers

“what you find isn't that everything's bad, it's just that nothing's all the way good”
★★ Hank gives examples: a beloved book written by a misogynist, terrible things done in the name of religion, the historical atrocities society rests on, even a chicken sandwich whose purchase signals hating gay people. — 00:01:20
★★ Unlike Jason's friend Big Noodle, Hank says, he has time to work out whether oat milk is better for the world than almond milk, and it is. (playful) — 00:01:40
★★ Hank asks what 'better' means and on what scale: how bad is drinking almond milk for the taste, compared with being mean to a friend or putting Sprite in a McDonald's water cup? — 00:01:50

00:02:04 — The show's accounting department and why its cold math fails in our universe

★★ Hank says the show's answer is an accounting department that scores every action and sends those below a threshold to the Bad Place; its math may be cold and airtight there, but not in our universe. — 00:02:04
★★ Hank says the internet has been good at showing some people the many ways unintended harm is done, while insulating others from it, as if it amplifies your worldview. — 00:02:22

00:02:33 — Internet, utilitarianism and pop moral judgement; four lessons; sign-off

★★★ For people open to complexity, Hank says, reality is far too complicated for the accounting departments of our brains to handle. — 00:02:33
★★★ Hank says utilitarianism relies on a hyper-individualist worldview that doesn't reflect reality: individuals do make decisions, but some are much harder and costlier than others. — 00:02:40
★★★ Hank says season three highlights that consumerism-fuelled pop utilitarianism mostly isn't a tool for improving the world but a way to judge ourselves and each other quickly and inaccurately. — 00:03:02
★★ Lesson one: not everyone has the capacity to weigh every choice they make, and that does not make them bad people. — 00:03:20
★★ Lesson two: being the kind of person who seeks complex truths rather than retreating into simple lies is also better. — 00:03:32
★★ Lesson three: morality should be only one part of that curiosity, because if it is only about morality you see the world only through the lens of judgment. — 00:03:37
★★★ Lesson four: our moral accounting departments will always be flawed, so we should not judge ourselves or others as if they were not. — 00:03:45

In the description and comments

★★ In the description Hank says people like him also have a real interest in just finding reasons things are bad, a cognitive bias toward 'the world sucks' that he hates, strongest in backlash to popularity. — video description
★★ The description says tearing things down for fun delegitimizes real problems and lets people who see things simply dismiss it as liberals hating everything. — video description
★★ The description says we need to do more than hate and see the world through more than the lens of judgement and objectivism. — video description

Threads in this video

first on record · Can a person be good in the modern world, where every choice has hidden harms? — Hank says this is rough to hear because he kind of believes it: every day the world gets a little more complicated and being a good person gets a little harder. (00:00:51)
restate · Is the internet, including social media, good for people? — Hank says the internet has been good at showing some people the many ways unintended harm is done, while insulating others from it, as if it amplifies your worldview. (00:02:22)
restate · Is outrage useful? — The description says tearing things down for fun delegitimizes real problems and lets people who see things simply dismiss it as liberals hating everything. (video description)

Mentioned

Central: The Good Place

Also: Chick-fil-A · consumerism · Doug Forcett · McDonald's · Sprite · utilitarianism

Only in the description or credits: cognitive bias

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