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The Good Place—An Introspective View on the World of Virtue Ethics

© Gryphyll

I am not a good person. Or maybe I am not capable or reliable to tell that. Here is what we called the existential crisis on being good or not. The world is taken by storm of controversial debates of philosophical views to have a single definitive answer to that question, or even if that question requires us humans to be concerned. Or if that question even really matters. While I am constantly bombarded with dilemmas and pushed against the edge of problems, studying patterns of the ideal good happens to contribute to these issues, putting myself between choices, difficult choices. It’s a decision for possibilities, like different options of realities asking me to choose them. Oftentimes, I was choosing to be the self I wanted to be or better than that version of self. It’s the very question of choosing between good or bad took form in every single one’s life.

Unsurprisingly, it is a question overwhelmingly as ancient as time was first observed. There were great figures of history that have dramatically changed humankind for their ideas in being good, doing good and acting in and for the good. Several thousand years and few decades of modern age later, not a single idea has ever proven the best theory to find the absolute good and even the most ideal one.

Love. Hope. Will. Values. Wisdom. Purpose. I see us the virtue-seeking being affecting the definition of life on earth one decision at a time. All of our decisions are based in the moral understandings shaped by those ancient-old ideas just to be good, do good, act in and for the good. However, those are being criticized in its own ways that these are too biased to be applied in all walks of life. There is a rational approach that could lead to a long debate in choosing between a genetically modified eggplant and its naturally grown one, choosing the former has consequences or may be called not good. This as simple as harmless problems have taken different forms in our daily lives affecting the entire societies that ethics is not an individualistic, but a sociological dilemma. Humans have struggled devastatingly to this issue of finding the absolute good.

You maybe called a nihilistic when you believe that there’s no way we can be called as good or not. There are no rules, you may say, however there are too much philosophies in life happened to rule time and times that devastatingly changes the course of our fate as humans. Religion and theories have been trading people to wars for the true basis of the good from which a vast space of beliefs and biases has emerged since.

I am living in the most peaceful period of this issue, as I see it that way, a biased view, at least.

©NBC

There is an intelligent sitcom on TV that fuses philosophy and moral ethics with comedy and it’s so brilliantly made to mock this issue of being good. The American show, ‘The Good Place’ in which every season explores if ethics is effective to an unbelievably and incredibly ‘bad’ person wrongly sent to the ‘Good Place’, like the Christian concept of heaven but neutral to all kind, after she died. A bunch of similarly bad but very differently identified persons tried to better her wrongly accused ‘best’ personality while she is being taught by her ‘soulmate’ moral philosophy professor.

It turns out that they are being tortured to eternity by a bunch of ‘demons’ acting like the ‘angels’ of this fake Good Place, as they are in fact the most evil humans ever recorded in the Bad Place, being actually mentally, socially and efficiently tortured by believing they are in the Good Place, as subjects in the ‘new’ approach of torture aside of very usual not-safe-to-imagine ways of torturing bad humans in hell. One of them includes the professor. The second season repeats the entire experiment, erasing the memories of four, the American girl ‘trashbag’ who have committed too much sins in life in several different ways; her Senegal-born French-Australian moral philosophy professor soulmate whose life was no different than a very typical professor that always finds and struggles with the very best and ideal theory of philosophy in life, but caused so much pain to every person he encountered with from each of his indecisions as he knows that no single idea can be the most applicable in life; a gorgeous Pakistani-British elite woman who have the most wealth and fame on earth and have given billions of pounds and dollars of charity to the poor yet being motivated by her issues of being neglected and compared by her parents to her artist sister’s similar fame, not by absolute good will; and, a Filipino-American DJ who is interestingly dumb that suffers from impulse issues, behaving like a child, acting like a child, doing whatever without even thinking about it, or out of morality. These interesting four subjects reflect mostly the trend and issues in ethics in respond to finding the most ideal theory to be applied in real life.

There is an architect or the manager of this fake neighborhood or a fraction of the Good Place who eventually turned to humans that he has been torturing to 800 years. It is because their unpredictability and flaws that always make then found out that they are in the Bad Place. Tired and hiding from his ‘demon boss’ who oversees his experiment, he make them friends out of ‘good’ will, learning ethics and philosophy with them so he can explore how and what to be like a human. Eventually, the demon became ‘good’ as they believe he is, as well as the four, become the better versions of themselves because of doing good and acting in good. This is actually the theory and theme in itself in the show. The creator of the show, Michael Schur, doesn’t present a definitive scenario pushing the humans against circumstances with some of the moral ethics to be the most applicable in reality. Instead, he presents a world of virtue ethics competing for the very best scenario in achieving a single answer to each of those theories. Hence, the show is a form of more than an entertainment, but a metaethics, as been called by the critics and researchers of the show, which basically questions ethics whether it matters or not.

©NBC

The show have put infamous debates in ethics, using Utilitarianism as the most dominant theory in the show, in which it may be presented as the ideal option but only on its statement that the very purpose of life is to be satisfied, in this case, doing good things that caused a person and others to be happy. Other philosophical views, ultimately, depend to the Kantian ethics of acting out of “good will” in order to be good. In this case, humans have to act out of sense of moral obligation or “duty”. Another one is the situational ethics, telling that there is no rules to tell you what is good in situations unless you decide one that situation more beneficial than the other, like breaking a promise.

There is a significant and powerful concept presented in the show against all of those theories. Some philosophers believe that we are doing good, behaving to be good, or basically ‘are’ good, because we believe that we know the good between bad or not bad. It is called ‘moral intuitiveness’. Hence, those concepts may not be applicable to lead the ideal life since we are already capable to judge what is morally right and wrong. At the end of second season, it achingly changes the show by totally erasing their memories once more but this time, they return to their own lives in earth before they have previously died like nothing happened. It is a decision made by an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient ‘universal judge’ to know if their demon-friend is true whether they have really overcome their old and became the better versions of themselves after taking and applying ethics in (after)life even the ‘pointing system’ have already identified them as ‘bad’ persons. The entire third season runs around this theme in which these essential characters have effectively been better even not knowing they studied ethics in afterlife, or it actually didn’t happen.

The third season, ultimately, presented the very problem being ignored in the world of ethics—humans are woven to very complex systems of good and bad that a single choice can no longer be determined as good. Eating a muffin produced by a company accused of labor abuses is a point decreased to your good points in heaven. Buying a stick of fresh rose from a flower shop has caused you more than thousands points because it was delivered by a diesel-fueled truck emitting thick volumes of carbon gases and contributed to the climate change and other several sins have committed before that rose came to your hands just to give happiness to someone. Likewise, reality today is a very complex patterns for an individual to dwell in and it is more difficult to decide for the good every time. It is the new philosophy in the show, as the fourth season unfolds.

The show, very surprisingly, has condensed several criticisms in ethics and philosophy in just a limited time, in 22 to 25 minutes. It is a wonderful show full of actual creativity and imagination but fused with existential question about life and death, morality and how to be essentially good. I have been binge-watching this in free TV and Internet since in my senior year but sadly it will end on its fourth season in 2020.

The judge once questioned that the biggest revelation is that life is complicated. Life is indeed very complicated. We are now at the times that goodness is difficult to define. It doesn’t mean everything we do for good is not good. We are not capable of judging the absolute good in us. The very human thing we can do, is ‘doing’ and acting in good despite knowing it may be enough. Doing good has no requirements. It is not difficult it may seem. Nevertheless, no one can do good to us but ourselves. Spreading goodness is not always an option but a duty we need to do.

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Of Pixels and Spaces

I was once a happy child curious of the world. Finding questions. Seeking joy out of discovery. Sneaking into silent, unknown corners of mind. Transforming scraps into fascinating child’s encounter of knowledge and basic shapes of art. Always eyeing for moments of adventure in some of the most quiet and isolated place. Hearing these little voices once touched the grass, trees, rocks, soil, dirt, materials of knowledge being found. Even I used to play with air by containing it in a small plastic bag and try to sink it in water as if I could drown air just to learn pressure. I used to keep looking for nature to respond. It was innocent. There was always somewhere to fill in. Like a space that I could claim. Safer than the safest behind a close door. The world was open.

Until age came over with a new kind of world. This world is overwhelmingly bigger but hollow, open but crowded where space cannot be safe and be contained or claimed.

I was in early high school when I got fully convinced that I am a “user” even my accounts were born during their beginning of unprecedented domination on my early childhood. I enjoyed MySpace for its side-scrolling home page but it’s just once and I never had the chance to get an account there. I prevented Friendster for everything I’d heard from my childhood friends maliciously enjoying its alleged feature from where they could find anyone with their scandalous “bold” pictures of other persons with their photoshopped heads on it or even videos by searching their names. It was hilariously convincing. But I never had visited the site even up to this day.

The only Social Networking Site of this time was the rocking dominating Yahoo! Messenger. Once in that time, when I decided to stay at my uncle’s friend’s house, I was enjoying her unlimited access to Internet that I could freely open sites anything I knew. She used to join in many chat rooms. She showed me how it works: permission before the group to lead and talk, like there is protocol, they called themselves “DJs”, users could open their microphones and cameras, or just only join in the message conversation. She told me, as I remember, anyone could join in, including users around the world, as I noticed she was talking in English, in mic and in messenger. I just got to discover that this was then simply open but not safe, when one male chatted to the group tagging someone: this is for you, and danced maliciously, beginning to remove his shirt and short. My uncle’s friend turned off her shared view of the group video, but it was till opened for the rest of users who wish to view.

Digital space is open and free that it has been easily invaded by malevolent people who adore to play with fire.

As a toddler, I was addictive to playing simulation and sandbox games such as CityVille (occasionally, FarmVille). It was a time when PSP, GameBoy and DS were replaced by easily accessible Internet, especially Facebook. There were players I encountered cursing and sending senseless messages to insult people during the game, as well as in most of the games on the site. I was often bullied in my childhood. Bullying would extend to using my ignorance of the Internet. My computer illiteracy had made me vulnerable for making me ignorant to malicious sites. That time when I’m with my uncle’s friend, that’s even the first time I had opened a porn site because I trusted suggestions of my classmates when I asked for popular gaming sites, like Friv, Y3, Y8, Y100, etc. We were Grade 4. 

‘Pisonet’ then popped up rampantly around the town. It was the cheap alternative of ‘comshops’ (computer shop/rent shops), but both are then used interchangeably. In the worst case of machoistic culture of Filipinos, playing Counter-Strike or Special Forces require boys to be mocked and questioned if you are gay or straight to play the game. So I was stuck playing children games that were likely more appropriate for my age that did not fit for their masculinity. Bullying was the line between these classes of younger users. Of those games, DOTA became the very toxic game for children playing in comshops, where there would be inescapable influences of gambling, bullying, bad behavior and attitude, cigarettes, alcoholics, and even drugs from adult costumers of these shops. At that time, managers could not help but tolerate this behavior of children and adults alike as they generate the most of their income.

 Mostly, these irresponsible shops contribute to the worsening situation of Internet use in the Philippines. When CCTVs were not prevalent before, younger users had no direct guidance in using the Internet as renting it became it as their personal territory where they were free to visit malicious sites. Oftentimes, I would see children watching porn and, much worse, aware adults just ignored those kids.

It was a horror for parents that they have to ban their children from these shops or pushed shops to act. Implementing strict and stricter rules to maintain discipline in playing games and using the Internet.

These risks were even not resolved even to this day of high level of security and management in Internet. Children also turned to higher means of escaping restrictions with the rise of VPN and uncrackable levels of anonymity. Total control was not even the cure.

As a teenager, Facebook is the staple. Early on high school, it was posting updates that broke personalities of the Filipino teenager. Everyone has to have a Facebook account otherwise you will look like the uncivilized.

Internet is breaking free from limitations of humanity with digital space had begun to be the playground for crimes at the turn of the 21st century.

As you know, Internet is the greatest democracy in history. That how miracle was the EDSA revolution came with technology, was the very power made as the advancement of Internet created revolutions around the world, affecting the actual physical world. By turning into hashtag activism in Twitter. Fighting against ignorance on Facebook. Sharing educational videos, evidences for protest from YouTube. Googling knowledge at the entire immeasurable catalogues of information. Hiding in the corners of this ever-expanding space. Or even deeper than the surface, the world protest for the crisis of truth and false information have used the Deep(er), Dark(er) layers of the Web and to declare history must never forget the power of Internet. 

[jdlmpo]

21st Century Social Studies Teacher

At the turn of the century, there has been new approaches in education emerging from the rising advancement of technology. Education has turned to modern strategies that integrate information and communication technology (ICT) practices as the new generation of learners are rapidly adapting to these changes, significantly, by the impending domination of the Internet. Hence, the term 21st Century learners was born. Computer literacy has seen exponential rates on last two decade. Along with this, we have seen the worst issues on the crisis on cybercrimes as well as countless issues of false information at the ubiquity of ‘fake news’ that here I called it the turning point of crisis on truth. Especially, Internet has been overwhelming abused for ‘historical revisionism’ in which so called ‘millennials’ and the frontier generation have been misled by flooding misinformation and popular culture of politics. Displaced from the space of scientific, data-driven, highly systematic and righteous kind of discourse and debate on historical facts and even facts of the present. Confused by irrational and inacccurate information taken from the Internet.

It adds to major problems in Social Studies education, where the most crucial learning has been obstructed by indestructible biases and fake news contributing to a long period of miseducation in the country. This comes the need of more than just effective teacher to qualify into the most efficient one with the worsening situation of Social Studies education.

The Department of Education has incorporated the idea of equipping the learners with fundamental skills in adapting the changes in the twenty-first century. These include skills in media, information and technology, in communication, learning and innovation skills, and life and career skills. These skills serve as the core basis of the curriculum in our educational system.

The most pressing issue here is the student's tendency to believe faithfully to the unguided information brought from the Internet.

Then, media and information literacy has since been introduced in education, requiring teachers to teach ethics in the cyberspace. Teachers have to train students the appropriate computer skills in using the information from the Internet, while behaving as human, himself per se, not an alter digital ego.

Anonymity, seen as an advantage of Internet for the politically biased, libelists, distortionists and revisionists, makes the Internet unreliable, unpredictable and tremendous tool to use in education.

A teacher, more importantly, has to adapt to these changes, and must equip the same requirements to meet the needs of time. Teaching strategies do not change over time but the approaches or creative ways must fit to these needs, to the technology and to the rapidly changing culture of the generation.

Internet is an open, accessible and borderless territory for an individual without any personal requirement to own. It is mostly unrestricted but even with the most preventive measures, it is not secured for an individual to dwell in, as if his or her actual physical space.

There's a generation converting this space into the very counterpart of life's main playground.

Teachers need to educate them to evade from Internet's control of their mind and self.