How to Be Perfect

Written by the venerable Michael Schur, creator of Parks & Recreation and of course, The Good Place.

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• Morality is how we think we should behave on earth

Ethical Dilemma? Ask yourself...

1. What are we doing?
2. Why are we doing it?
3. Is there something we could do that’s better?
4. Why is it better?

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Everything has an ethical undercurrent and everything we do affects somebody

Failure in trying to do the right thing is inevitable

• But trying means we care

Virtue ethics - what makes a person good or bad?

• Aristotle wrestled with this

Brilliant instructors and wise friends are very important

The Golden mean/goldilocks rule is that there is a spectrum that is like a see saw for virtues. If we veer to far towards one extreme, the see saw becomes imbalanced.

• ex. Mildness is the golden mean of anger
• Very challenging to define

An excess of a virtue can harm the people around you

If we don’t take stock of our virtues, we can find ourselves moving towards extremes and these aspects can “calcify.”

As you practice, it becomes effortless - Schur talks about how Steve Carrell & Amy Poehler were like that with their comedy

The closer we get to a golden mean, the easier it is to find others.

• Examples include kindness and generosity

Religious zealots ignore cruelty as it is not a slight against god

Knowledge is how we escape cruelty

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The Trolley Problem

Do you let the trolley kill five workers ahead of you or do you switch to the other track and let one worker die?

Read more here: link

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by Philippa Foot

Quotes

Hope

With enough work, no one is doomed to be forever deprived of magnanimity or courage or any other desirable quality, the way I’m doomed to get lost every time I walk around a parking garage looking for my car.¹

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Samuel Beckett

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

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Philip Pullman

People are too complicated to have simple labels.

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Julia Shklar

[C]ruelty—the willful inflicting of physical pain on a weaker being in order to cause anguish and fear—is a wrong done entirely to another creature.

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Montesquieu

[K]nowledge makes men gentle, just as ignorance hardens us.

Footnotes

1. Schur, Michael. How to Be Perfect: A Foolproof Guide to Making the Correct Moral Decision in Every Situation You Ever Encounter Anywhere on Earth, Forever. First Simon&Schuster hardcover edition, Simon & Schuster, 2022. ↩