Saturday, January 12, 2019
Idea of Paradise
During class, I was thinking about the point we brought up regarding people never being satisfied with what they have. We said if we were given paradise, with roses and beautiful things, we would grow tired of it, and act out in order to change up the routine, which would become a cage. Maybe, then, a true paradise wouldn't be static. Paradise would be able to change based on our current desires and would thus keep us interested in life. Also, this kind of made me think of our world, where we have the power to change things and nothing is static. Not to say this world is paradise, but I just thought it was interesting. I also thought of examples of paradise portrayed in movies and other forms of media. In the TV show called "The Good Place", paradise is a neighborhood tailored to the specific desires and preferences of the people chosen to live there. This would probably not work out well, since it is kind of confined and routine. Its just one neighborhood, with the same people, forever. They do have the ability to ask "Janet" for anything they would like, but even this might get boring. Perhaps not for Chidi, one of the main characters, who could fill his time with learning about the world's endless pool of knowledge and ideas; that provides him with new material everyday.
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3 comments:
This is a really interesting point about The Good Place’s idea of heaven! Across “the Good Place” (where all of the humans who were “good” during their time on Earth go), there are frozen yogurt shops everywhere. While frozen yogurt is pretty delicious (in my opinion) and is meant to reward the people who made it to the Good Place, if you ate it whenever you wanted, it might not be as special after an eternity. I am an avid lover of king cake, and I have to admit, even though I might say that I wish Randazzo’s were open all year round, the month- or two-month-long king cake season probably wouldn’t feel as special. This idea relates back to what Dostoevsky says about suffering and pleasure. If we never suffered, happiness would be meaningless because we would have nothing to which to compare it. Thus, we king cake-lovers must suffer for most of the year, but that makes the king cake we enjoy in January and February that much more sweet!
I hadn't made the connection between what we're discussing and "The Good Place" so I'm so glad you pointed it out!
I think Chidi in particular demonstrates the "disease of consciousness" as he drives himself crazy with his tendency to overthink. When presented with any situation, he is paralyzed, wanting to do the right thing but incapable of being decisive.
WARNING: SPOILERS IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE GOOD PLACE. First off before I start with the meat of my post, I am so glad you brought up the Good Place because it is one of my favorite tv shows. Not to get down to business, it is revealed at the end of the first season of The Good Place that it is not actually the Good Place at all, but is in fact the Bad Place. If we think about it, Michael (the architect and boss of this rendition of the Bad Place) might have put this repetitive aspect into this version of a "Good Place" on purpose as a torture tactic. Throughout the first season, one of the things the main characters struggle with is the feeling of being trapped. Tahani is trapped with a Buddhist monk for a soulmate who has taken a vow of silence and can't do the one thing she loves doing with her: talking. Later, it is revealed that he was a mistake like Elenore (our main character), and so then she is trapped in this feeling that she has no soulmate and spirals down into self. This is just one example of a character in the show feeling trapped by their circumstances, and easily fit into the overall theme of Michael's bad place of being trapped. We as the viewers don't actually know what the Good Place is actually like, so we have nothing to compare it to. But, being trapped for all of eternity in the same patterns, routines, and froyo shops is a form of torture in of itself, and fully supports Dostoevsky's criticism of Utilitarianism and how having the answer to everything and having all your desires met isn't necessarily fulfilling for humans.
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