Word Vomit: Chidi Anagonye’s Fatal Flaw
I had a gummy and spent some time with my thoughts about The Good Place.
At the end of every therapy session, my therapist likes to remind me that knowing that I have (or should have) a specific feeling is very different from having that feeling. It’s a fun - and kind of annoying reminder - that being aware is simply not enough to process and cope with my daily life and my various mental illnesses.
With this in mind, I’ve been thinking a lot about The Good Place, not just because every time it comes up, I am reminded that I dropped my philosophy minor. I've been thinking a lot about it because for the last two years, I have been terrified that I would become Eleanor Shellstrop, but like, before she became a good person. I felt her flaws deep inside me and would legitimately cry at flashback episodes to her life on earth. Am I bad? Am I an introvert, or am I scared of vulnerability? Am I ever going to find my people, or will I have to wait until I end up in The Bad Place (because let’s be honest, I’ll probably end up in The Bad Place)?
That said, between therapy and my recent OCD diagnosis, I have been seeing a lot more of myself in Chidi. Indecision. A desire to do what I think is right because others see it as the “good” thing to do. An awareness of what I should do without the ability to do it.
In The Good Place, Chidi is sent to The Bad Place because his inability to choose made the people around him (and himself) miserable. Despite his strict commitment to moral philosophy, his impact on the world was more negative than it was positive, earning himself a point total too low to be sent to The Good Place. But I think it may go deeper than that, and I believe that the character of Chidi’s biggest flaw was his failure to understand that knowing about ethics and being an ethical - or good person - are two completely different things.
Most often, when we see Chidi struggling with moral quandaries (or any choice), he picks a Kantian approach. However, as a professor of moral philosophy, Chidi would know all of the flaws that come with Kant’s approach to ethics. And while there are certainly arguments to Kant’s principles, a reasonable person knows that a life that strictly follows Kantian ethics is neither a good life nor a hugely beneficial one. I won’t bore you with the philosophy; you can use Google. Chidi’s focus on Scanlon’s work and the idea of contractualism would mean that he knows what it means to live ethically in a society where people have varying moral and ethical approaches. Again, these are things you can Google. I’m just word vomiting.
I love to rewatch TV shows for a lot of reasons. First, I have severe anxiety, and we live in an unpredictable world; of course, it makes me feel safe to watch something when I know how it ends. But, as an aspiring TV writer, rewatching shows like The Good Place helps me learn how to form three-dimensional characters and plots. The Good Place is so… good because there’s always more to learn about the characters, philosophy, and the world.
Maybe, the lesson we are supposed to take from Chidi is less about being decisive and is more about understanding that being principled does not make you good or ethical. We know that Chidi’s rigid code hurt his chances of getting into The Good Place, and yet, it’s still hard to apply this to our lives, especially when we (I) struggle with mental health issues that rely on rigid codes.
Now that I have been staring at this for, like, twenty minutes, I realize that there's no conclusion to this. But, I make the rules here, and not every essay needs an ending.
*Word Vomit installations to “A Little Unfiltered” are things that I write and like, but that aren’t always comedy or that I think are worth publishing. They’re fun little extras!