Museum of Resistance and Resilience

The Good Place

The Good Place is a TV show set in the afterlife, which in this world, consists of The Good Place and The Bad Place. The main characters of the show – Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason – initially are told that they were put in The Good Place, but eventually, they begin see the cracks in this supposed utopia and realize that they have actually been sent to The Bad Place. At first glance, their supposed Good Place society was a utopia – no pain, no fear, no sadness, no anger – the citizens could partake in any activity they desired and live out all their dreams in the afterlife. However, this place was actually a restructured version of The Bad Place, where the characters were meant to emotionally torment each other eternally and their environment was supposed to be just a bit shy of perfection. Later in the fourth season (spoiler alert ahead!), when the characters reach the real Good Place, they realize that despite the eternal happiness promised to them in this utopia, all the residents have become numb from a lack of intellectual and emotional stimulation – after spending such a long time in paradise and living out every dream they ever had, there was nothing left for them to maintain their happiness, so they all fell into an eternal slump of boredom and dissatisfaction. This shows that even if a higher power is not actively suppressing certain groups of people to maintain “utopia”, perfection has an end, as humans are complex beings that will eventually either begin questioning their self-imposed complacency in their attempt to maintain utopia, or begin to torment themselves emotionally by becoming numb and thus, dampening the human experience of feeling. Perfection is not possible, nor is it a productive goal; perhaps, every supposed utopia needs a little dystopia in order to function amicably and inclusively, providing residents with a bit of mental and emotional stimulation to prevent them from becoming numb to perfection.

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