Michael Schur on the Virtuous Life and Humor in Philosophy | It’s Pointing Right At You

Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and talks to television producer and writer Michael Schur about the importance of making philosophy accessible, the difficulty of living virtuously without becoming cynical, the power of expressing humor and positivity in entertainment, and more. Michael Schur created the critically acclaimed NBC comedy The Good Place and co-created Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and the Peacock series Rutherford Falls. He is also an executive producer on HBO Max’s Hacks and Netflix’s Master of None. He spent four years as a writer-producer on the Emmy Award-winning NBC hit The Office. His new book How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question is out now. Blinkist takes top nonfiction titles, pulls out the key takeaways and puts them into text and audio explainers called Blinks that give you the most important information in just 15 minutes. Go to Blinkist.com/STOIC to start your free 7 day trial and get 25% off of a Blinkist Premium membership. Shopify has the tools and resources that make it easy for any business to succeed from down the street to around the globe. Go to shopify.com/stoic for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features. DECKED truck bed tool boxes and cargo van storage systems revolutionize organization with a heavy-duty in-vehicle storage system featuring slide out toolboxes. DECKED makes organizing, accessing, protecting, and securing everything you need so much easier. Get your DECKED Drawer System at Decked.com/STOIC and get free shipping. New Relic combines 16 different monitoring products that you’d normally buy separately, so engineering teams can see across their entire software stack in one place. Get access to the whole New Relic platform and 100GB of data free, forever – no credit card required! Sign up at NewRelic.com/stoic. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailySto ic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more. Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Michael Shur: TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 31:44Speaker 0

  Figuring out how to spend the time you have and the resources you have is really hard. And so it's a little bit of a hey, just keep trying. Just keep trying. Just do the best you can and keep trying. And that is the victory.

• 6:07Speaker 1

  I wanted to start with a very important question I've long had about an acting decision that you made, a character choice. Why does Moes run like that?

• 6:18Speaker 0

  You know, you're the second person in like three days to ask me this. Oh no, I thought this was

• 6:23Speaker 1

  an original question.

• 6:24Speaker 0

  Well, the other people who asked me it were Jenna Fisher and Angela Martin from The Office. So

• 6:33Speaker 0

  Mo's a character in the office, if you're not familiar with the show, who was a sort of uh Mennonite or Amish adjacent gentleman who lived on a farm and was sort of a little bit of an odd duck. And the I was basically a sight gag, right? That the writers were writing me into episodes in order to taunt me or haze me, your pick. So the the um the very first episode that I was in, I my the stage direction was that I I sort of like run into a room, and I was sort of I'm not an actor, I don't know how to do it. I'm in awe of actors and their abilities to make choices and to inhabit characters. I'm not any of those things. So I was just like, what is this person? Who am I? And I just decided that he ran weirdly. So I don't know why, but I held my I held my arms out and held my hands straight out and just ran just in a in the weirdest way I could think.

• 7:21Speaker 0

  I was just like, I don't know if this is right or wrong. I'm just gonna make a choice, and I did it. And then because everybody enjoyed it so much in the writer's room, they made me do it in 10,000 other episodes. And so now I was like, well, and now I'm pot committed. I have to run this way every time they want me to run because this is the way this character runs. So very little um, you know, I don't know what you would say. It's not that no thought went into it, it's just that it wasn't carefully considered as a as a choice.

• 7:52Speaker 1

  Well, when I chase my children around, that's how I run just to bother them. And it seems to make them deeply uncomfortable and makes the whole thing a lot more fun.

• 8:00Speaker 0

  Great. I'm glad I'm glad that it could help someone in some way, shape, or form.

• 8:05Speaker 1

  Uh well, I, you know, I've I'm so glad to get the book, and I I loved it. I I read the galley of it. I thought it was fascinating. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go another obscure question. One of my favorite parts of the whole book is your little footnote on Ayn Rand, um, where you talk about it it possibly being a war crime to assign one's staffers to read Ayn Rand. But but it brought up an interesting. I think uh I I've I've also read Ayn Rand. Uh, I think she's fascinating when you're 19 years old, and if you don't grow out of it, there's probably something wrong with you. Um, which is of course uh a slightly unfair characterization. But if you think about what she was trying to do, it's from an artistic standpoint, it's pretty amazing that she writes this long ass book that is basically propaganda for a philosophy or a viewpoint that it works.

• 8:58Speaker 1

  Like it's not the most beautiful work of art, but like millions of people have read it. Like it's it's actually readable, and people read it. It strikes me as you would have a unique appreciation for how impossible that task is doing it essentially on the good place, and then with this book to write about philosophy or big ideas and have them be entertaining and accessible is really, really hard.

• 9:23Speaker 0

  Yeah, I mean, she's arguably the most successful philosopher of the last, I don't know, 150 years or something. I mean, I don't even know who's comparable. So it is a it's a neat trick she pulled because she she buried, like you say, she buried her philosophy in novels. And and people, I think are generally speaking more apt to engage with philosophy through a different artistic medium than a than an intimidating uh philosophy book. Uh and it so she did a really good job. Like she was she's a very effective spokesperson for her own ideas, and she and she laid them out in an in a way that was intended to be more entertainment. I don't find her books entertaining. I find her books soporific and miserable to read. Uh that they you don't like 40 page speeches.

• 10:10Speaker 0

  Yeah. I mean, the other problem is, of course, it's like, you know, in a one of her longest books is about the locomotive industry, which is like that, not a thing that you can really engage with in 2022 or whatever. But um, I I think that there's a lesson there, and and it's part of the reason I wanted to write this book, uh, How to Be Perfect, which is I think that philosophers have so many things to offer us and so much wisdom and so many ideas and just suggestions and um I don't know, uh, just uh they have philosophies, and yet they wrote such intimidating and dull at times uh works that nobody the barrier to entry is so high. You know, I remember thinking when I was doing research for the good place, it's like, man, like these are such good ideas and they're so hard to dig out.

• 10:59Speaker 0

  It's like it's it's like someone had written a recipe for a chocolate chip cookie that was delicious and also somehow healthy, but the recipe was 700 pages long and written in German. And it was like, well, no one's gonna read it if it's 700 pages long and written in German. And so if you could just communicate these ideas in a different way, I think it's what you've tried to do with your books and your podcasts is say, like, there is wisdom here. I know it's ancient. I know it's scary. It's it's Greek and Assyrian and Roman and it's scary, but but the wisdom is real and helpful potentially to people. And so if you can just communicate it in a better way, um, it it will improve the world. That's the bet we're all making, I think.

• 11:45Speaker 1

  It is weird though, because I mean, you talk about uh a lot of ancient philosophers and then sort of the the philosophers right in between as well, like Kant and and and so on. But it is kind of weird that like when you go back and you read the ancients, in some ways they're actually a lot more accessible than the people who came a thousand years later, and way more accessible than the people who are 50 years ago or right now. It's it's a far

• 12:12Speaker 0

  by far. I mean, part of it, I think is that a lot of a lot of ancient Greek philosophy specifically, uh, and a lot of pre-Socratic Greek philosophy is very epigrammatic, right? It's like everything is like a sentence. Um, I think it's part of why Nietzsche was popular because Nietzsche wrote sort of epigrammatically, like his works are often um, well, first of all, they're very entertaining, but they're often just like bullet points. Um, you know, little bits of wisdom that he had an incredible facility with uh with communicating very short, very swiftly. There's a there's a thing in one of his books, I think it's beyond good and evil, where he talks about how he describes humans as looking at the world through frogs' eyes, and it's like a fraud, and what he meant was a frog that pops its head out of a out of a lake and can only see the world from this very low vantage point.

• 13:01Speaker 0

  So it doesn't understand anything that's happening in the big picture. Like that's so evocative. That's so cool and like understandable. And so I think a lot of the ancient Greeks uh had that same instinct, which was we gotta boil this down. Like this is like one sentence at a time, and I think that really helps with the the way they communicate.

• 12:43Speaker 1

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• 13:20Speaker 0

  101. Yeah, you

• 13:21Speaker 1

  think about uh like a metaphor like Plato's Cave or the an allegory like Plato's Cave, and you're just like, man, that holds up like super well. That's incredible.

• 13:31Speaker 0

  Yeah, yes. And then you read some contemporary philosophy, and it's just this endless web of discursive, you know, like people trying to get at um get at ideas by summarizing 10,000 other ideas and then formulating their theory out of those ideas. And granted, it's like it's a little bit like I don't know if you're watching that Beatles documentary get back that's on um Disney Plus now, but like there, I think I have two thoughts when I when I watch that Beatles documentary. One is um, God, these they were just so good. They were just such great songwriters. And then the second thought, which is linked, is like also no one else had been writing songs yet. So they they had the advantage of getting there first in a lot of these ways, and also they were geniuses. And I think that probably applies to philosophy too, right?

• 14:17Speaker 0

  There's probably a little bit of like, we're the first people who are putting down these thoughts or trying to understand the world in this way. And so they could be a little more precise and basic in their approach as opposed to now, where if you're a philosophy professor, you have to sift through thousands of years of stuff and summarize it and and uh analyze it in order to get out whatever you're trying to get out.

• 14:41Speaker 1

  Well, it's kind of like the Simpsons did it thing, where it's like they did it for so long, so early that they took all the low-hanging fruit and a lot of the the high fruit, but they took all the uh Aristotle's like uh yeah, it's it's all wide open space, and he's just claiming all of it.

• 14:58Speaker 0

  Well, I used to write it Saturday Night Live, and this and this is this is 20 almost 25 years ago now, but you would come up with an idea for a sketch, and you'd be like, Oh, this is good, this is gonna be really good, and then you'd be like, Oh, this has been done, but Jack Handy did this. Already, or or Jim Downey did this already. And eventually what you have to do, and maybe there's an analogy here for philosophers is you have to say, like, okay, this is not a new idea because this idea has already been explored. But if you only like engage with brand new ideas, you're never going to write anything. And so you just have to say, like, I'm going to put my spin on it or my take on it, or my execution of it will be different. And that, and that will be the reason it's worth engaging with and exploring. It's instead of just like, I can only write something if no one has ever written it before.

• 15:46Speaker 1

  I think that's right. Although I would argue that like if you take like Plato and these sort of analogies or or sort of thought experiments that he comes up with, the fundamental difference between what he's doing and what it seems like a lot of philosophers have tried to do in the more modern era is like it feels like he's trying to get to clarity and they're trying to get to like let me blow your mind with this. So like the allegory of the cave is his thing, but it basically says, like, look, you have an obligation to go back and try to help people once you experience truth. I feel like the trolley problem, which you talk a lot about in the book, it's sort of like, yeah, you're like fucked either way. There's just nothing you can do about it. Or like, how do we know we're not living in a computer simulation? That's an interesting philosophical question, but what am I supposed to do with this information?

• 16:34Speaker 1

  So it almost feels like the ancients were trying to like get you clarity about the meaning of life or what you're supposed to do as a human being in a complex world. And it feels like a lot of philosophy today is like, let me just muddy the waters so much that you're just like, I don't know.

• 16:50Speaker 0

  Yeah, I think you're right. I think that there is a um, there is a here's what matters thing that the ancients were doing, right? What matters? Okay, well, here are the here are the things that matters to the Stoics. Here are the things that matter to Socrates or whoever. And now, like the Charlie problem is a perfect example because, like you say, baked into the equation is someone dies, right? You're you're just screwed because someone is going to die, and you are going to be the one who is standing at the front of the trolley making the decision. And it's that it's fascinating because someone is going to die. So the stakes of it in the in the writing world, we would say the stakes of this problem are enormous. It's life or death. And so that is a good way to tease out the differences in moral decision making when you know that in the best case scenario, one person's gonna be smushed by a trolley.

• 17:41Speaker 0

  Like, all right, let's let's ride, let's figure this out. So there's a there's obviously a fundamental difference between trying to lay out for people, here is what matters in life, and then much later laying out for people, here are the terrible decisions, the terrible choices that we have to make on a day-to-day basis. How do we make the best ones we can? That's like a huge difference. And

• 18:03Speaker 1

  I wonder if part of that is the ancient philosophers actually did stuff, right? Like they were thinking about this philosophically, but then they had jobs. Like, you know, even Socrates is like is in the army, right? And and then is, you know, sort of faced with this life or death trial at the end of his life, contrasted with, I think the more academic philosopher whose job is just to think about complex things. So, like you talk about this guy in one of the footnotes who's looking at the trolley problem, I think, and he's basically like, no, you can't kill anyone for any reason because they all value their lives, whatever. And and it's like that is interesting, but I guarantee you, like middle of the pandemic, if you're like, hey, should we give the shots to older people first or younger people? That guy would then have an answer, right?

• 18:49Speaker 1

  But it's like sort of academically, you can come up with a reason why the question is infinitely complex or can be reduced down to this black and white thing. But if you're actually a politician or a teacher, or you're uh you're creating a show and you have to make character decisions, like you have to cut through all the abstractions and just like get to real life.

• 19:09Speaker 0

  Yes, and it's a key aspect of a successful philosophy to me, that it has practical application. I don't much, I don't care that much about theory because I the goal of this book and the goal of like my own goal for myself and engaging with this stuff is like what can I practically do on a day-to-day basis when I'm forced with all these decisions. So the guy you're talking about is this philosopher named John Torik who wrote a piece called uh do the numbers matter. And what he essentially says is that, like you said, everyone's life is maximally valuable to him or herself, which means if you are the I think that at one point in his paper, there's a thing where you're you're the you're the captain of a boat and you're off the uh coast of an island, and in the middle of the island is a volcano, and at the north end is one person at the south end is like 50 people and the volcano erupts and everyone's gonna die, and you have to choose do I go to the north end to save one person or the south end to save 50 people?

• 20:08Speaker 0

  And his thing is you flip a coin because you cannot, the sum total of people's lives does not matter. What matters is that each person's life is maximally valuable to him or herself. So you can't just you can't just add them together, right? So where that takes him if you extrapolate is one person needs a million doses of a life-saving medicine to save him from a disease, and a million people need only one dose of that medicine. You're still supposed to flip a coin. Like, that's not a practical decision. Like

• 20:38Speaker 1

  put

• 20:39Speaker 0

  John Torek in that decision and see what he does. And I don't think he's gonna say, yeah, let's flip a coin and let a million people potentially die. So what I am goes

• 20:49Speaker 1

  to Kant, right? Would you want to live in a world where everyone acted that way? Of course not. You the world would cease to exist. The world would cease to exist almost immediately because no one would ever make any uh decision that maximizes for outcome and we'd all go to war and die like very quickly.

• 21:07Speaker 0

  Right. And and also, you know, you're you're you're in if there's any practical version of that situation, it's some kind of decision like the trolley problem where you look at where you are and you say, all right, I've got two choices, and they both kind of suck. And so I'm gonna go with the one that I think is better, knowing that I'm still causing harm. And the philosophies I'm most interested in are the ones that say, here are all the tools you can use to analyze the decision and to say, like, yes, this is gonna be a this is a 5545 situation. It's not black and white, it's not up or down, but here are all the tools you can make to make sure that you get the best understanding of the of what the 55% is, you know.

• 21:50Speaker 1

  Yeah, and to me, that's where where Rand fails, particularly bad, is it's like so. The idea is like because successful brilliant people aren't appreciated enough by society, they're just gonna take their ball and go home. Like, it's just preposterous. Like, like I just it's so childish and so absurd that like it's almost like you get to the end of the book and you're like, is this really your argument? Are you 11? What are you talking about?

• 22:18Speaker 0

  Yes, and that's the reason why, as you said, it's a thing a lot of people engage with and and admire in like high school when the world of ideas is opening up and the kind of you're you're you're feeling like a like you're a kid playing dress up as an adult, right? You're feeling very I remember when I was in high school, um, my dad was a philosophy major in college, and he had all his old philosophy books lying around, and I started reading them and I didn't understand them. But I loved the idea of being a high school kid who read philosophy. So I would walk around with Nietzsche or or Heidegger or something in my bag and like or Kierkegaard and I had being and nothingness, and I would like leaf through it. And I didn't understand a word I was saying or reading, but I love the idea of being the kind of person who did that.

• 23:04Speaker 0

  And I think that's a lot of what Ayn Rand appeals to is like, this is a big idea. I'm filling your head with big ideas, and you get so swelled up with pride because you understand them and they and they're like, Yes, of course, I am powerful. I am, I can do this. I'm I'm on my own. I am an adult now. And then when you are 23 and you read it again, hopefully you say, like, well, this is absurd. Like the world can't function this way. This is ridiculous. So yeah, I again, it's it's a little distressing, like I say in my book, it's a little distressing that she is the most successful idea relator of the last hundred years, but I don't think it's really in dispute.

• 23:40Speaker 1

  Yeah, no, it's like it makes sense if you have as a rested a worldview as Dwight Schroot, but like if you're an functioning adult in society, like the holes are so obvious that you what do you do?

• 23:52Speaker 0

  Yeah, exactly. Yes, there is there is a certain kind of person who still has a uh admiration for that for her philosophy. And that kind of person is a person who, in my opinion, just isn't thinking enough about other people or about the world or about society or about the town they live in, or just the concept of like otherness is just lost on people who are fans of her work. Well,

• 24:16Speaker 1

  it's funny because the book is called How to Be Perfect, but I think actually the central question of the book is what you just said. It's really like, what do we owe each other? That's really to me, the central thrust of the book, but also of most philosophy is just like what are what are our obligations to the right thing to uh other people to justice? Like, what are we actually allowed to do versus shouldn't do versus uh could get away with but aren't gonna do anyway?

• 24:49Speaker 0

  Yeah, that's the goal, right? Is to find I think of it as the ceiling and the floor, right? There's a there's a floor for how little we are allowed to help other people or to care about other people or other groups of people near us, around us here, uh Peter Singer would say, either here or over there. How what's the what's the minimum in any situation that you're required more? Morally to care. And then there's also a ceiling. There's like a, there's a, there's a danger in only caring about other people over there or nearby or whatever, because then you're not living a sort of full invertant life yourself. You're not flourishing yourself, as Aristotle would say. And so the goal is to find the range and to just stay within that range, right?

• 25:34Speaker 0

  It's like if if you do things where you're like, man, this is a really selfish act. And I have, I am, I am uh denying my responsibility to other people or denying what I owe to other people. That's bad. And if you get so lost in the concept of only caring about morality, then as Susan Wolfe would say, you're not like, you know, reading books yourself or practicing the your tennis game or cooking or spending time with your family, and then you're not really a person. So it's it's there is a range somewhere in the middle there, and our goal is to find that range and really try to nail it.

• 26:10Speaker 1

  That's what I'm I'm writing about now. I'm doing this book on temperance, uh, because I'm doing a series on the four cardinal virtues. And I found it to be a very difficult book to write about because it's such an unsexy topic. Like to say, like, no, like you can't do it, or to say, like, yes, do it, chase as much of it as you can. That's very simple. But the idea is like some, but not too much, is like the perfect amount of unsexiness that it's hard to talk about, hard to get people excited about, and also hard to define. It's a moving target.

• 26:42Speaker 0

  It's an absolutely moving target, as all the virtues are, right? The mean of every virtue is a moving target. And one of my favorite things about Aristotle specifically is that he says to you, okay, here's the deal. There is a mean, and there's a perfect amount of every virtue that you need to attain, and you know, courage or temperance or mildness or whatever it is, there's a perfect amount. And if you go too high, that's bad. And if you go too low, that's bad. And our goal is to spend our entire lives, every waking minute of our lives finding, chasing and finding that perfect amount. And then he says, what is that perfect amount? Nobody really knows. So, like, so he's uh, and there's something kind of beautiful about it to me, because he's basically saying all of life is trial and error, right?

• 27:30Speaker 0

  Everything about your life is you make a choice, you see the results, you analyze how it went wrong, you maybe adjust, you make another choice, and you're and you just get closer and closer and closer, asymptotically closer to these means. And the fact that he kind of can't really actually tell you, because nobody can what that mean is, it's just very human to me. Like it really feels very human and very um kind of uh lovely in its in its in its it's essentially a flawed philosophy because there's he can't Kant can tell you like here's what you do, right? Do this. If you do this, you win. And utilitarians can do that too. They can say, like, more good than bad. If you do more good than bad, you win the ethics contest. But Aristotle is kind of saying, like, all of the human existence is trial and error.

• 28:19Speaker 0

  And I'm telling you, you'll never you're essentially never gonna get there because I don't even know where there is. And that's I I don't know. There's something kind of beautiful about that to me.

• 28:31Speaker 1

  I to me, I actually think it makes it more perfect be or more of a usable philosophy because it's like, welcome, welcome to reality. It's complicated, right? Like I feel like Zen Buddhism does this well, where they're like, sometimes do this, sometimes do the opposite of this. You'll know when, you know. Like, yeah, like because if you try if you actually think you can be like, here is the rule or law, follow this in your behavior always, you lose the ability to actually function in the real world and where things are complicated or confusing, or you have imperfect amounts of information. Like, I love the way the Stoics cut through this is they're like, okay, nothing that's not in our control is good or bad, right? Um, so we're we're indifferent.

• 29:17Speaker 1

  And but then Seneca goes, but aren't there such thing as indifference you would prefer, right? So he's like, he's like, obviously, if you're tall or short, you know, you'll be fine either way, but it is better to be tall, right? Like if you, or he's like, if I if you had to choose between being rich or poor, not that either one of those says anything about you as a person, it's obviously better to have more than less. And so I just like it's like cheating, but it also makes perfect sense that like, yeah, like too much money is obviously a problem. Not enough money is a problem. Split the difference, some amount of money is good, but on generally, you'd rather have more than less. Like, that's just life.

• 30:02Speaker 0

  Yeah, I know. And that, and I also can't help but think about the differences in the in the life that Zeno or Seneca was leading and the life that we're leading now, right? Because the difference between when you say like some amount of money is right. Well, that is an enormous range, right? Some amount of money is $35,000 a year versus $780,000 a year, the lives being led by those two people are enormously different in a number of ways, not just in what they have or what they can do, but the daily stresses that they're under because of the amount of money they have. And so sometimes those philosophies do a little bit break down when the when you're talking about a sort of generalized, hey, you you'll just feel it out.

• 30:49Speaker 0

  You know, if you you'll you'll kind of know one way or the other, like how will you know whether you should trade a job that where you're making 412,000 a year for one where you have to move to a different city to make 468,000 a year. Like that's uh like if if if it's just it, and that's why I think I admire the rough edges of something like virtue ethics. It's because even 2400 years ago, there's an acknowledgement, I think, or there's a tacit acknowledgement that this is really hard. It's just hard. These decisions are hard, life is hard. Figuring out how to exist as a as a as a citizen, as a as a wife or husband or mother or father or son or daughter, uh, and and being a and an employee and a student and a traveler and uh and an enthusiast and a number of different hobbies, like figuring out how to spend the time you have and the resources you have is really hard.

• 31:46Speaker 0

  And so it's a little bit of a, hey, just keep trying, just keep trying, just do the best you can and keep trying, and that is the victory.

• 31:55Speaker 1

  Well, I think the money one is interesting too, because it's like, what if you're just really good at what you do, and therefore, and you happen to be randomly in a very high paid profession. Should one stop doing that because money is not a good, right? Like, should should one give it all away? Uh, should one run in the opposite direction? It's it's a I and I think again, the stoics are fascinating because like they like there is something about being the Socrates or the Diogenes, the Cynics, or the Zen monk that sort of like I renounce all of this, and I'm go, you know, I I am interested, like even Kierkegaard is this like weird asocial person who's not able to function in the world, right? He's like your delicate flower artist type who's brilliant, but like, you know, the newspapers write something mean about him and he's like destroyed.

• 32:48Speaker 1

  I I like that I like the philosophers that were like, you know, just like in the mix of life, you know?

• 32:55Speaker 0

  Yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah. And that's that's sort of sort of what I mean by practicality. It's like I I trust the people more who were living a life of engagement, of civic engagement and societal engagement, then the sort of like I'm gonna go off into a little corner and just imagine use that's why Kant doesn't appeal to me personally. Kant's thing is like a situation arises and he is sort of asking you to like press pause on the world, go into like a solitary confinement chamber, discern a rule using only your own brain and your ability to reason, come up with a maxim that then follows that universalizable rule, and then go back, hit play on life, and then say, I am choosing to do X, Y, and Z. And it's just like, all right, man, like, yeah, in in theory, that's that's great.

• 33:42Speaker 0

  Um, because you if you have if you have a clicker that you where you can pause everything all the time and and spend the resources to really figure out, tease out what the right maxim is, great. Most of us don't have that ability. In fact, no one really has that ability. So instead, it's a little bit like, you know, Aristotle says, like, all right, try get angry, but not so angry, you know, don't get too angry. Just get this, uh, get the right amount of anger at the right people for the right reasons, and then you'll be okay. And sort of by extension, he then says, like, afterwards, think about what you did. Think about the choice you made. Did you get too angry? Did you not get angry enough? Next time, modulate and get and try to get closer to whatever that right amount of anger is.

• 34:29Speaker 0

  And it's, you know, Kant is offering you this um this foolproof guide, right? He's offering you a like, these are the notes for the test you're gonna take. And if you study the notes and you memorize everything I'm telling you to memorize, you'll get an A on the test. You'll nail every question. But the actual test is your entire life, and it involves a lot of other people who are who have other demands and other issues going on, and there isn't always, in fact, there very frequently is not ever the opportunity to really spend the time thinking about stuff that he wants you to spend.

• 35:05Speaker 1

  Well, that that is an interesting other part of the book, which is I think you talk about it pretty early on. We're like, you know, we hem and haw about these things, we're not. Sure, what's the right amount? Should I do this? Should I do that? And then you're like, but some people don't think about this at all.

• 35:19Speaker 0

  Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I it's that that's one of the biggest problems, I think, in the world is that like you can spend as much time as you want mulling these decisions and choices and coming up with different theories of how to behave based on different great writers and philosophers and everything else. And then you'll encounter mostly people who just don't care in the slightest bit about what happens. And the newspapers are full of people, very powerful people in every realm of society, who either don't care at all, or have read and thought about this stuff and have decided to actively fight it and like and and thwart it at every opportunity. And then so it's like, well, what do you do? And this is actually the stoic. This is where it comes back to the stoic idea, I think.

• 36:05Speaker 0

  Is like, well, you can't control them, right? You can't control that. You control what you do. And it's a it's very like the thing I like about the stoics is it's it's almost like the way I talk to my kids. It's like, don't worry about him. Don't worry about this thing you can't control. You you prepare, you do what you need to do, and then one way or the other, you'll know that you did your best. That is a that's a very um simple parental child uh bit of wisdom that is also a sort of stoic bit of wisdom, I think.

• 36:36Speaker 1

  I think where we struggle with it though, is that it feels so unfair, you know. You're like, but they they're getting away with this, and you're telling me I have to pass up on this, or I have to delay gratification, or I have to willingly uh, you know, I have to willingly comply, even though no one would actually force me to. I think we struggle with the society with the idea that like it's all voluntary at the end of the day. There, like I think this is largely where the idea of God comes from. It's like, well, God's gonna make you do it, right? Or you'll be punished at the end of your life. You just have to trust me, but there will be justice or karma for you at the end. That's how I think how we tell ourselves that they're not really getting away with it.

• 37:23Speaker 0

  And by the way, not just punished, but rewarded for the people who do the good thing, right? It's like that it is it is a thing that people on earth, human beings invented in order to answer the question of why is everything so unfair. And it's like, well, don't worry at the end, there will be a reckoning, right? And and so there that is a uh that's a tough thing to hold on to, especially if you're not a religious person. I'm not particularly religious. I wasn't raised in any religious tradition. And so I've never had the feeling personally that my life will be either rewarded or punished in the afterlife, which is odd because I made a whole TV show about it. But that um that feeling, I can un a hundred percent understand the comfort in it, because it is incredibly unfair what happens in the world.

• 38:15Speaker 0

  You see people all the time, again, in positions of power, whether in politics or business or anything else, who are doing outrageously immoral things on a daily basis and are never punished for it, ever. They never, there is no comeuppance, there's no justice, there's no retribution at all. People, one thing I've been thinking about recently, and I know this is a topic of of some political discourse right now is why does any American politician allow to own any stock in any single US company ever? It it is absolutely absurd to think that the people that we elect to represent us have specific personal financial stake in specific companies because the government spends trillions of dollars a year, and that money can so easily be misappropriated and allocated to companies that enrich them and they're supposed to be protecting us, not the other way around.

• 39:11Speaker 0

  And there, and yet you see all the time senators and representatives who steer our money, my money and your money toward companies that they profit from. That's an obvious ethical lapse at the highest level, and those people are never punished. And so when you are when you're faced in a on a daily basis with uh stories and images of people benefiting from a lack of caring about ethics, not just like they don't care, but they the fact that they don't care is better for them. They're winning the race. It's an adaptive

• 39:45Speaker 1

  advantage.

• 39:46Speaker 0

  Yes, exactly. They are they have figured it out and they are winning the race, and you know that nothing bad will ever happen to them. It becomes very hard, even harder to care about being ethical yourself. And it's that's why it's like you just gotta put your nose to the grindstone and double down and and just know that somehow or other it is better to care than to not care.

• 40:08Speaker 1

  I mean, the the Christian argument is like, yeah, you'll be rewarded in heaven or punished in hell. I think I've always said that the stoic argument is um, whether or not those things exist, you will live in hell now, or you will live in like your life will be hell. If you like it's not sin because God will be angry, sin because it will punish you. I think that's I mean, obviously, that's why I I believe it's why I try to tell myself, and then yeah, you watch, I don't know, Michael Scott or you watch Donald Trump, and the the question is like, are is it fun to be them? Like, are they getting away with it? Right. It's I'm not it's it sometimes it feels like it's the answer is obvious, and then sometimes you're not so sure.

• 40:50Speaker 0

  Yeah. I mean, we this is a very frequent writer's room debate, I'll tell you in Hollywood. A writer's room debate is would it better? This was a question that was posed to our to a writer's room six, seven years ago. Would you rather be who you are or Rob Gronkowski of the then New England Patriots and now Tampa Bay Buccaneers? So Rob Gronkowski, if you don't know, is a six foot six inch tall, just happy go lucky. He's uh basically a golden retriever that like a bolt of lightning hit him and he turned into a football player.

• 41:20Speaker 1

  Yeah,

• 41:21Speaker 0

  he's just a rambunctious kind of ding dong who just runs around and chugs beers and plays football and he's really rich and he's a he's a total uh idiot and in the in the best possible way. In

• 41:34Speaker 1

  the Michael Scott sense of the word,

• 41:35Speaker 0

  yeah, like lovable idiot, just an absolute ding-dong. And and everyone, uh everyone's like, oh, I'd rather be me. Like that guy is, I mean, first of all, forget about the injuries sustained playing football, whatever, but like it's unclear whether he can string three sentences together without uh getting a headache, right? But then a lot of people are like, no, it's better to be Rob Gronkowski. It just is like he because what he is not tortured by anything, he does not appear to be um uh conflicted or tortured or upset by the world. And the the process of engaging with the world and of caring about the world means you are bound to be on a daily basis upset by it. You're all of the injustice and all of the problems and and the and the seeming lack of interest on the beh on behalf of all the Rob Gronkowski's in like fixing anything means that you suffer a kind of pain that is outside of your control, that there's nothing you can do about.

• 42:33Speaker 0

  And I I mean, I I chose to be myself and not imagine myself as Rob Gronkowski, but I by the end of the argument, I was firmly I firmly understood the argument that it is better to be Rob Gronkowski.

• 42:48Speaker 1

  Yeah, it's like nature is very merciful in this in the same way that like if you your arm got bitten off by a shark, your body would go in this, you know, insane state of shock. So you would feel nothing. Um, but when you get a paper cut, you don't get it. It's like when you are stupid or selfish or awful, you nature, it's like, well, I'm also gonna pluck away the self-awareness that would make you have like if like uh there's that that scene in the office where Daryl says, you know, like you're the bravest one in the office because you you wake up every day and you're Michael Scott. But the reality is it actually probably doesn't require any bravery because he can't conceive of being anything other than himself.

• 43:36Speaker 1

  So by lacking the self-awareness, you know, he probably never gets the shame or the self-consciousness.

• 43:43Speaker 0

  Well, that's a really interesting uh point to make specifically in light of that show, because the premise of that show is that an unobserved group of people is suddenly observed by a camera crew. And we used to talk all the time in the writer's room there about when the characters looked to the camera and why, right? So very frequently on that show, if you've seen it, um, something would happen, and then one of the characters would glance at the camera, and they all had different relationships with the camera. Like Jim would look to the camera like he was saying, uh, you're my friend, and you you you and I are on the same page. You see how how ridiculous this place is, right? And Dwight would look to the camera like, yes, I'm awesome, and I just did something really awesome. But Michael would often look to the camera like, uh oh, I just said something embarrassing or dumb or racist or whatever, and I just remembered, oh my God, there's someone looking at me.

• 44:38Speaker 0

  And then he would quickly try to backtrack or or undo whatever he had done. And it's an interesting psychological experiment to say, like, well, what happens when a person who is selfish or uh obnoxious or whatever, put it what if we put cameras on all those people? And that's in a weird way, that is what's happening in our world, right? Is like that now there's a camera on everybody all the time. The question is do you, if you played back for people, their some of their behavior and some of their um decisions, would it matter? And obviously, I think in some cases, as we've seen. The last couple of years, like people go into a taco bell and they're not wearing a mask, and someone politely asks them to put on a mask and they lose their minds and they scream and yell and they stomp their feet and they break things and they talk about uh Nazis.

• 45:25Speaker 0

  And I don't think that those people, if you played the video of them doing that that someone took on their iPhone, would go, like, oh boy. I really I don't think they would have an Aristotelian. I think I got too angry there. I don't think that would occur to them. But I think there probably are some people who aren't totally aware of what they look like or sound like when they make decisions like that. And it's like kind of an interesting thing to think about if you could make a documentary about every living human being, like how many of us would change our behavior. I think a lot of us probably would.

• 45:59Speaker 1

  Yeah, no, totally. I mean, it it does feel like I you you talk about that briefly in the book, and it is, I think, the part that's been most baffling to me

• 46:09Speaker 0

  uh in the pandemic.

• 46:11Speaker 1

  Like it really hit me rereading Marcus Aurelius, uh, realizing like, oh, wait, he wrote this during a plague that he probably died of, right? Um, that killed like millions of people. But he he talks about how there's two kinds of plagues. There's the one that takes your life and the one that affects your character. And it does feel like watching a lot of people who are filmed or or unsolicitedly put these things on the internet themselves. People really do struggle with what you call like the bare minimum, doing like even the most bare minimum for other people. And they have like, it's not just like they're like, oh, I never thought about it, and I'm not gonna think about it. It's almost like they really have thought about it. They're like, here's why I should not be inconvenienced, even in the slightest way to help other people because like I was talking to someone, I was like, there who's very Christian.

• 47:01Speaker 1

  I'm like, look, love thy neighbor, right? Like, that's the most basic premise of Christian thought. And you're just like, well, I'm healthy, why should I get vaccinated or wear a mask? And it's like the like I was trying to walk them through that contradiction, and they were just like, yeah, but I don't, I don't need it. Like this kept saying this over and over again. Like they could, I just couldn't get them to compute that they had an obligation

• 47:26Speaker 0

  to another person. Right. And you see that with whenever anyone with that attitude tries to draw an analogy, it's always the most revealing thing because it's like, hey, you know, a hundred thousand people die in car crashes every year. Why that we still we still wear uh, you know, we still let people drive. And it's like, well, yeah, car crashes aren't contagious. I don't know what to tell you. Like you getting into a car crash doesn't then potentially cause me uh halfway around the world to get into a car crash. Or it's like

• 47:55Speaker 1

  but also speeding is illegal, uh, driving while drunk is illegal, all the ways that it could unnecessary, you know, hitting a pedestrians have the right of way. All there are there are like so many laws that limit what you're allowed to do to so there's not negative externality.

• 48:10Speaker 0

  And also, like, even though you know, we we also still require you to wear a seatbelt. We still make it safe as safe as it can. Lauren Boebird, who's a congresswoman from Colorado just tweeted out a thing the other day that was like this many people die from cancer every year. And it's like, again, if you get cancer, it doesn't cause potentially me to get cancer if you and I eat in a restaurant together. And it, but like those arguments are always thrown back at them immediately, and never once has any one of them gone like, oh, good point. Like that's the thing that the thing that the internet age has has gotten rid of most effectively is the sentence, oh, that's a good point. Like you just never ever oops, sorry. Yeah, I I revise my opinion. Like that that you just never see people take puts put an idea into the world with that level of stridency, receive new information, or or have an argument come back at them that they maybe hadn't considered, and then say, like, you know what, you're totally right, and I I rescind my comment.

• 49:07Speaker 0

  Like, that's if we could get better at that as a society, that would go a long way toward I think curing a lot of what ails us.

• 49:14Speaker 1

  No, I think that's right. And it's like if there's a thought experiment, so it's like, yeah, let's say 300,000 people die a year uh of of cancer, and like everyone had, but if everyone wore glasses, it would cut that number by 25% or 10%. So 30,000 people. Well, wearing glasses is not fun, it's not cheap. Most of us don't need glasses. But if somehow everyone wearing glasses, even when it was dark outside, even when they fogged up in the in the steam or whatever, that 30,000 people would would survive. I mean, like most people, if it in not in a politicized environment would be like, easy, let's do that right now. But for whatever reason, in the pandemic, and I think this is what Marcus was saying about something that infects your character.

• 50:05Speaker 1

  We've we've decided, like, no, this is different. I specifically don't give a shit about this thing or who it affects.

• 50:14Speaker 0

  My friend Megan Amram, who's a writer I've worked with a lot, said the smartest thing about COVID, which is basically it's a it's a black light. It's a thing that was turned on and revealed all of these ugly stains that are all over the country and the world, really. And that's the biggest one to me is that what it really revealed was this bubbling sense of I don't care. Like you're in trouble, I don't care. The the woman, the old woman next to me who lives next to me might die if I don't do this. I don't care. And the the analogy that I draw in the book is like, you know, you you're going to like a strip mall, the there's pharmacy to pick up a prescription and you park and it's really hot outside and it's annoying and the crosswalk is a block away. And so you look both ways, you're an adult, we're all adults here.

• 51:02Speaker 0

  I can jaywalk. Now, technically, yes, it's a crime, but it's the most probably arguably the most minor crime, right? And so you just jog across the street and you pick up your prescription and it's fine. If I told you that, hey, instead of jaywalking, if you just walk a block south, use the crosswalk and then walk a block north to get your prescription, 750,000 people might not die. I don't know why, but that's the case. We could save three quarters of a million people if we all agree to just go even, I know it's a hot day. I know you're late. I know that this is a you just want to jog across the street. But if you just do this slightly inconvenient thing, we could save three quarters of a million people. To say no to that is just the most callous and awful decision.

• 51:48Speaker 0

  And I and that, and yet wearing a mask is roughly speaking to me as inconvenient as walking a block south and then a block north to the CBS. So it's just so much.

• 51:59Speaker 1

  The weirdest part is you add on top of that. It's it's not like you're like, ah, but if no one's looking, I'm still gonna, I'm still gonna uh sneak across the street because like not everyone has to do it, right? If you're like 10% can still get away, you still, but then so you're like, okay, maybe I get that. Uh, but then you're like, no, no, no. My position is not only am I gonna do that, I'm then going to actively try to convince as many people as possible to also do it with me. Right. Because I not only don't care, I just want to watch the world burn.

• 52:32Speaker 0

  Yeah, you're gonna, I'm gonna call the people who decide to go use the crosswalk, Nazis and fascists, and uh and I'm gonna decide that they're the real problem here. Yeah, that is it's truly um, it's truly disheartening. I I really I I find it uh to be the most disheartening part of this to have it revealed through this pandemic, the percentage of people in America and in the world who who not only don't care, but actively want to do the opposite of what a caring person would do. That's really been a hard thing for me to internalize.

• 53:09Speaker 1

  Yeah. So when we talk about virtue, then I think this is something I've just been struggling with. Like, so how do you continue to want to do the right? Like, how do you not just go, fuck it? I'm a nihilist, right? Or like, you know, like how do you how do you not give up on people when people are giving you every reason to give there? They're not only saying, like, yeah, uh, you can give up on me if you want. They're like, no, no, no, I'm irredeemable. Let me show you how irredeemable I am. To me, I think that's the pressing problem of our time. It's like how all these ideas of like love thy neighbor or or serve the common good, or or like how do you keep how do you hold on to those things when you have unlimited access to, as you said, the documentary of how awful everyone is, or how many how awful a lot of people are.

• 54:03Speaker 0

  Yeah, it's not easy. And and that's part of the impetus of writing this book for me, at least. Um, there's a quote from Bernard Williams, who's a British philosopher that I quite like, where he points out that we are specially responsible for what we do rather than what other people do. It's what it was an attack on utilitarianism, where he said, like that that basically a lot of the a lot of the attacks on utilitarianism, it basically that it doesn't differentiate, it doesn't take seriously, as John Rawls said, the difference among people. It it sort of coagulates all people into the just like little cogs in a machine who are creating good or bad, and you want to activate more cogs that create good than more than the ones that create bad. And Bernard Williams says, look, we are specially responsible.

• 54:52Speaker 0

  We are uniquely responsible for what we do, and and more so than what other people do. And that really is a very simple way of saying, like, okay, there are all these other people, and you're looking around and they're doing various shitty things, and it's really disheartening. But the answer can't be, I guess I should do those shitty things. Like it just that can't be the right answer. Like you have to remember that you. Are more responsible for what you do than for what other people do. And as long as you keep that in mind, you I hope you can't get to a point where even as tempting as it is to just to do whatever everybody else is doing that sucks and is giving them some potentially set like a head start in the race, or is uh helping them in some way financially or socially or whatever, that it just can't be the answer to say, I know that thing is bad that that person is doing, but I'm going to also do it in order to attain whatever that person is attaining.

• 55:50Speaker 0

  And I and part of that, by the way, I think is also keeping in mind, and this is obviously a stoic idea is that as well as that this is an Eastern idea, there's a lot of philosophy that talks about how if you are um it's very Buddhist, right? If you are attached to things, if you are if you have the wrong kinds of attachments or you care too much about attaining certain things, you're on the wrong path, right? So if if you're saying, if I'm looking at someone in a position of power who is um using his or her political influence to steer money towards a company that he or she owns stock in to gain financial wealth, and I say, well, I guess I'm gonna do the same thing because if they don't care, why should I care? The the root of that is the idea that the thing that they're gaining matters, right?

• 56:38Speaker 0

  That it's like, oh, that extra 23,000 dollars in stock appreciation is something that I should care about. And so if you don't

• 56:47Speaker 1

  giving up

• 56:47Speaker 0

  to

• 56:47Speaker 1

  get

• 56:48Speaker 0

  yes, that the price of your soul is is that extra money. And so if you if you start from a position where I'm gonna make sure that I am attached to the right things to the to caring about that I'm mindful, that I'm focused on what actually does matter, you will start to see that the things that they're the parts of their souls they're selling aren't worth it to because they're the thing they're trying to attain is not something you should even care about attaining. And that's hard. Like it's hard to say that to people. It's hard to say to people money doesn't matter or a bigger house or a nicer car doesn't matter. Like it's hard to to believe in that sometimes, but that's uh that's the deal. You gotta, you gotta start from that position, I think, and then go from there.

• 57:34Speaker 1

  So changing your slightly can philosophy be fun or or funny, like uh they've they seem like they would be very different. I just curious your take.

• 57:45Speaker 0

  Um, can philosophy as a discipline be fun? Is that the question?

• 57:49Speaker 1

  I think I just the idea of comedy and philosophy, one might think they're complete opposite ends of the spectrum. Certainly, people who are not interested in philosophy probably have that view.

• 57:59Speaker 0

  Yeah, I mean, I find it very funny personally, and that could be just because I was a comedy writer first, and so I I tend to like try to find whatever's funny about anything I'm doing. I think the trolley problem itself is deeply hilarious. There's nothing on paper funny about it. It was written in 1967 as an investigation of the doctrine of double effect, which goes back to St. Thomas Aquinas and the paper that Philip of Foot wrote about was specifically about the problem of abortion, not funny topics, right? But the situation she puts you in is objectively hilarious to me at least. It's like the everything about it is funny, and everything about it leads to a funny conclusion. And when you actually picture yourself on a barreling train with no brakes and having a lever and making the life or death decisions, I find it to be, and that's why we did a whole episode of The Good Place about it.

• 58:53Speaker 0

  I find it to be a funny situation. A lot of the thought experiments that philosophers have come up with to talk about philosophy, I think are very funny. The discipline itself, is it funny? I don't think it is. Like it's it's not intended to be, at least. And what's funny about it is often in the margins or in the if you take a step back and you imagine the the people really living their lives, uh living the lives that they have laid out as how one ought to live one's life, it often becomes funnier reaches you can reach some very funny conclusions about what it means to be a pure Kantian or utilitarian. Um, but I you know, the the good place was my attempt to say, like, let's take this fairly unfunny, dry thing and try to explain it through humor, which I think means it's gonna be a lot easier for people to engage with it.

• 59:43Speaker 1

  It does feel like like almost from an improv standpoint, like on the the trolley problem, there's a an element of like, well, how can I just keep escalating the stakes to make it funnier? Like the and then you throw a fat guy off the bridge in front, you know, on top. And it's just like, how could

• 59:58Speaker 0

  it get more

• 59:58Speaker 1

  ridiculous as a premise?

• 1:00:00Speaker 0

  Yeah, there's there's certainly, I mean, the trolley problem is like I say in the book, it's it's been the most talked about problem in philosophy for 50 years, and most academic philosophers are sick of it and they they're so bored. I compare it in the book to Stairway to Heaven. It's basically the stairway to heaven of philosophy because it's like, yes, I recognize that it's a piece of genius, but also God, I don't want to hear it again. We have to hear this again, like right. So but what's good about something like the trolley problem is that there has been a continual conversation about it for 50 years. People have been responding to it. There's whole books on it you can read. There have been TV shows like mine and others that have engaged with it. That it's a it's a it's like a a very fast growing mold that that has a lot of dimension and a lot of different aspects to it that now can be analyzed and discussed.

• 1:00:51Speaker 0

  And some of them are woof, some of them are really hard to understand. It's now we're you get into at the far end of the spectrum, you get into like you get into a lot of math. There's a lot of math that comes into philosophy that is just beyond my capacity for understanding. But what I what I preferred on in the show and in the book to focus on was just the nuts and bolts. Like, what is like what is what is this getting at? Like, what is what is this problem trying to get at and in terms of how we can just practically speaking make decisions that make us a little bit better than we were yesterday?

• 1:01:26Speaker 1

  Yeah, I was gonna uh I don't know if you know the story of Chrysippus, the stoic philosopher and how he died.

• 1:01:32Speaker 0

  No, I don't I know Seneca, I know how Seneca did. I don't know how Chrisippus does

• 1:01:36Speaker 1

  Seneca's death is is pretty epic, and there's almost a comedy to it, like he keeps trying to kill himself and none of it's working for Seneca,

• 1:01:43Speaker 0

  yeah.

• 1:01:43Speaker 1

  And then and then uh he's like trying to bully his wife into doing it, and they're like, What are you doing? Uh, but but no, the Chrysippus is uh he's like one of the most serious, one of the most academic, sort of one of the most like uh like ardent defenders of stoicism. So you wouldn't expect he'd go out this way, but he's an old man and he's sitting on his porch and a donkey walks up and starts eating the figs out of his garden, uh, and he starts laughing, and then he supposedly says something like, Does does he need some wine to wash down those figs? And then laughing so hard at his own joke for an extended period of time, he drops over dead.

• 1:02:21Speaker 0

  That's a great death. Good. I

• 1:02:23Speaker 1

  think so too. Uh I mean,

• 1:02:25Speaker 0

  I I think Socrates' death is extremely funny when you read the account of it because it's unintentionally so. But when you read the account of it, it's like, you know, he's on trial in Athens, basically for just being annoying. They basically put him on trial because he was annoying. And they're in they they say, you know, here's the crime you're uh accused of, or whatever. And he gives this long and beautiful and eloquent speech about why he refuses exile and and uh and why he doesn't think he should be killed. And it's goes on for page after page after page. And then in the text, it's like, you know, they vote and he's gonna be killed. And he's like, okay, but before you kill me, just consider this long eloquent speech, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's why it did this and this and then blah, blah, blah, blah. They take another vote, he's gonna be killed.

• 1:03:10Speaker 0

  And he's like, but hold on for a second. And he just keeps like making these long, beautiful, famous speeches about why he believes that he's innocent. And then it's just like and doesn't he

• 1:03:20Speaker 1

  propose that he be rewarded instead of punished. Like,

• 1:03:24Speaker 0

  he does. It's a very ballsy move. He's like, What about this? What if you give me a plaque? Basically, so yeah, that I mean, uh, there are certainly um look, all philosophers are human beings, and human beings are hilarious, like by their nature, we are flawed, ridiculous, absurd creatures whose lives are wildly varied, have massive ups and downs and unexpected twists and turns, who do ridiculous things that are indefensible by any ethical theory and also are capable of unbelievable generosity and kindness, and all of those things are true about all people. And so as a result, there I mean, Seneca was a money lender in in England. He was he uh I he was like a wealthy man who uh who had was like a multi, multi-millionaire by by the day's standards.

• 1:04:11Speaker 0

  And when he died, didn't he say something like, I leave, I leave to you. He was trying to work out his will, and he was like, and I couldn't get it done in time because they were like, you gotta go, man. And eventually he was like, he said to his wife something like, 'I leave to you something greater than money,' which is the the image of like a noble and and perfect life. And meanwhile, he's been screwing people out of money in England for decades. Like, and he has the gall, like 30 seconds before he dies, they go, like, just be like me. I mean, that's amazing. Yeah, but what should we

• 1:04:49Speaker 1

  do with the money? Like, but the money, what do we do with the money?

• 1:04:52Speaker 0

  Yeah. Yeah, there's a legal question here, buddy. So I what is what I think is beautiful and frustrating and wonderful and annoying about people in general, is that we are all, we all contain these multitudes. We are all capable of of the greatest uh achievements and the kindest gestures, and also the most callous and selfish and awful decisions. Decisions, they're all inside all of us. And so the theories that I love are the ones that basically say, like, yeah, we all suck, man. We're all imperfect. We're all monsters. We're all also potentially great. Let's just try to like minimize the bad stuff and emphasize the good stuff. And that is one way or the other. That's what they were all getting at. Like, that's what the utilitarians wanted. It's what it's what Kant wanted to nail exactly.

• 1:05:38Speaker 0

  It's what the virtue ethicists wanted. It's what Tim Scanlin, who wrote uh what do we owe to what we owe to each other? It's what they're all after. Derek Parfitt, the the contemporary philosopher described all of the schools of philosophy as scaling the same mountain from different faces of the of the peak, right? It's like utilitarians are coming up on the east face and the Kantians are coming up on the north face and the ever. And that's I love that image because it really is the more you read from different eras and of different people, the more you realize they're all after the same thing. It's just like, what do we do? What the hell do we do? Where this is so hard. Life is so hard and complicated. What do we do? How do we try to get better at this, you know?

• 1:06:22Speaker 1

  Yeah, no, I think like obviously Gladiator is a drama, but there is a humor to it where it's like you have the the only philosopher king ever in history, and he just raises the shittiest kid. Like he's just like so bad, like the worst kid of all time. There's something just hilarious and also fitting and like human about that.

• 1:06:43Speaker 0

  Yeah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 1

  I love it.

• 1:06:45Speaker 0

  Yeah, I mean, it's what like succession is about too, right? At some level, it's like this guy's a monster, and he raised three monstrous, four monstrous children, and there's like a battle for their soul going on in every episode of like, do they're slavishly devoted to him? Is any of them gonna break free? Like, and every time they start to, he like draws them back, and like and it's what the Sopranos was about, right? The Sopranos is about the uh a or the Trumps in real life. Yes, it's like these like the the depictions, it's what breaking bad was about, right? It's like this good guy who has a monster inside him, and it the whole show is a battle for his soul. Does he does it does he win or does he lose? Uh and it's in the Sopranos, it's through therapy. It's like I'm I have there's a potential that he can see the light here, but he's also so steeped in this awful behavior, it's unclear whether he's ever gonna break free.

• 1:07:35Speaker 0

  Like once you start thinking about the once once philosophy gets into your into your brain and into your soul, you start seeing it everywhere. You start seeing the depictions of characters and movies and TV shows and people around you, you see everything as a collection of philosophical decisions.

• 1:07:52Speaker 1

  So uh, and I'm sure you have to run. So my last question for you would be like speaking of the stuff we're talking about in the world, and then uh obviously the the TV shows we're talking about. I have found that like lately, like all I can really watch are like reruns of the office or you know, like parks and rack or like I can like it's I I can watch like Law and Order because Law and Order is like so self-contained,

• 1:08:17Speaker 0

  but like

• 1:08:17Speaker 1

  I just found like I can't do these like 40 hour Netflix dramas or even like great stuff, like anything like basically post breaking the bad. I'm I like I just don't I I feel like I don't have the emotional or the cognitive uh ability to just like put up with more like another awful world. So I just returned to like the same shows over and over again. What is that?

• 1:08:42Speaker 0

  Well, I it's probably a couple things. Um the pandemic, I think, was a uh was like the the global equivalent of like uh a cold rainy day, where a lot of people's impulse was like, I have to be in my house, I can't leave my house because it's cold and rainy, and I want to eat a big bowl of mac and cheese and watch friends. That's what I want to do on a cold rainy day. Like I I think that the fear and the and the unknowability of the world, I think caused a lot of people to go back and just revisit things that bring them comfort and joy, which I think is uh completely understandable and and frankly probably healthy. Um, I think there's also the global political situation, the the existential threats that we face from things like global warming and and Russia massing forces on the Ukrainian border and all of the depressing stuff that you read every day and the and the gerrymandering of the US congressional districts and the impending doom of the midterms and all that sort of stuff.

• 1:09:43Speaker 0

  I think all of those things have led us, at least I'll speak personally. They've led me to try to draw a line between the engagement that I have in the world, which I think is a civic duty that we all share, and my personal private life. And in my personal and private life, what I want to do is sit on the couch with my wife and watch something that's entertaining. And I I have found the same difficulty with grappling with dark sad, downbeat depictions of human beings. Um, because I think I'm trying to get away from the reality of the dark and and brutal depiction of human beings that we see in the real world every day. So I it's some combination of those factors. It's also probably just I don't know how old you are. I'm 46.

• 1:10:28Speaker 0

  You get to a certain point in your life, and you think you start doing triage in your mind. Like, how many, how many days, months, weeks, years do I have left? How do I want to spend them? And I mostly want to spend them being happy, if I can possibly, and and that doesn't mean, by the way, that there isn't happiness and joy to be found in a brilliant depiction of Tony Soprano or Walter White. Like, of course there is. Like, that's a specific kind of joy. And I hope that I never get so afraid of of dealing with like human psychology on through entertainment that I don't that someone says, like, this show is incredible and I run away from it because I don't want to engage with that kind of depiction. But I also think that the more the older you get, the greater your impulse is to just try to share in a joyful experience with other people.

• 1:11:21Speaker 0

  Um, and and to have that be the thing that you that you pass your time with, you know.

• 1:11:26Speaker 1

  I think that's why Ted Lasso's worked for sure.

• 1:11:29Speaker 0

  Sure. Yeah, I think that's a perfect example. Like that Ted Lasso coming along at that moment in the pandemic, like it's exactly what everyone wanted. They just wanted radiating positivity and joy, and it and it really uh hit a nerve.

• 1:11:44Speaker 1

  Did you did you see that question? It was this was on Twitter a couple months. Uh, this is I guess in 2020, but it was like, what beloved television character would have voted for Trump? And so you had to like you had to ruin them. I what beloved character in your universe do you think would be like one of the anti-vaxxers, anti-maxers that were maskers that we're talking about?

• 1:12:06Speaker 0

  F from a show I have actually worked on, you're saying,

• 1:12:09Speaker 1

  yeah.

• 1:12:09Speaker 0

  Uh boy. Um, because like I was gonna say, well, you know, Archie Bunker obviously would have voted for Trump, but uh of

• 1:12:16Speaker 1

  course.

• 1:12:16Speaker 0

  Uh I'm not that old. I didn't work on all the family. Um that's a good question. Uh, I mean, well, Jeremy Jam was uh a character on on Parks and Recreation, played by John Glazer, who was a city councilman who was also a dentist, and he had moved to the town of Pawnee, Indiana because he was a dentist in Pawnee, uh Pawnee's biggest industry was a candy factory, and they didn't flo put fluoride in their water. Yeah, so he was like jackpot, right? And so his his sole intention was to profit from his position as a city council person. There's no qu he would have been campaigning for Trump. I mean, he would have been he would have yard signs and and float in a boat around a lake. Um he's the first one that comes to mind. I don't know that any of the good

• 1:12:58Speaker 1

  one.

• 1:12:58Speaker 0

  Yeah, I don't know if any of the good place characters would have. I mean, even some sometimes you get into the situation where you're like when you with a question like that, where you say, like, well, what about Eleanor, Kristen Bell's character, which she voted for Trump? And my answer usually is sort of like, well, she probably didn't vote. Like, she doesn't care. Like, she doesn't tear one way or the other. Like, she probably thought Trump was funny, but she was also like, he's gross. I don't want to, like, she would just wouldn't vote in the election, you know. So I don't know. There's I'm sure there were more, but Jeremy Jam is the is basically is he's Donald Trump Jr. essentially in the in the show before Donald Trump Jr. was a thing.

• 1:13:32Speaker 1

  No, that's a great one. Yeah, and he'd he'd have a no-mask policy at the dentist's office for sure. 100%,

• 1:13:38Speaker 0

  yeah. Yeah, he wouldn't even wear a mask, and then he would he would there's no question that Jeremy Jam was infected with COVID early on and also passed it on to like 700 other people.

• 1:13:53Speaker 1

  No, and I I gotta imagine what uh Dwight's probably going down uh a pretty dark internet rabbit hole, and then uh Ron Swanson. That that's the big danger there.

• 1:14:03Speaker 0

  Well, Ron Ron, uh a couple of people asked me what who I thought Ron would vote for. And Ron is a libertarian. Um, but he's an actual libertarian. Like he he's a 19th century libertarian. He lives on his own farm and he he hunts his own meat. He he's not a fake contemporary American political libertarian. And I think that the things that he admired above all other characteristics were things like integrity and honesty, and I can't imagine he would have voted for Trump. He wouldn't have voted for Biden, certainly, but he wouldn't have voted, he would have written in like Teddy Roosevelt or something, you know, like he wouldn't, but he wouldn't have voted for Trump. And Dwight's possible because Dwight was very clan ish, and he was very um impressed by wealth and status.

• 1:14:49Speaker 0

  And I think that there's it's possible that that Trump's whole deal would have sort of appealed to him. Um you're definitely right. He was also something of a conspiracy theorist. So there's he's taken

• 1:15:01Speaker 1

  horse dewormer for sure.

• 1:15:03Speaker 0

  Yeah, but he was taking it also 10 years ago before long before he was rubbing it on his gums for some completely unrelated reason. So he thinks he's inoculated against it because he's been eating Ivermectin for since he was a child, you know. Um Um, but so yeah, there's there's definitely a dark potential path for Dwight Schroute through contemporary America. Uh, I hope as someone who has affection for him as a character, I hope he didn't go down that path. That would be depressing if he were at like a cute QAnon guy or something.

• 1:15:32Speaker 1

  Well, no, I think to connect to where we are in the world and the issue, the moral philosophy you're talking about in the book, that's really been the hardest part is you watch people who you know deep down have good hearts, who you are fond of, who would like I I live in rural Texas. These are people who would uh, you know, rebuild my house if it burned down or change my tire, or or you know, come pull my truck out when it gets stuck. But then, you know, even of the Ron Swansons of the world, you you can watch how easily a person can become susceptible to misinformation, can be radicalized, can be can be deceived, almost it's almost using the identity. Like we see this with with mass and vaccines, where it's like they had this idea of courage. So resistance feels like courage, but if you're resisting the wrong thing, you're missing the point.

• 1:16:23Speaker 1

  And you can watch how good people can end up doing profoundly immoral things and still maintain their identity as a moral person.

• 1:16:31Speaker 0

  Yes, there's a there is a default setting amongst a significant part of America. And the default setting is no. Like if when when asked to engage in something or to be a part of something or to make a sacrifice, the default is no. And it and it takes a lot to get those people to say yes. And that is a that's deeply baked in the history of the country, into the settling of the country, into the frontier celebration of the country, into the cowboy imagery that we all uh that everybody grew up on. The default setting is take care of yourself, defend your land, sit on the sit on a uh your porch with a shotgun and make sure nobody takes your stuff. Right. And that, and I I spend a lot of time in Texas. My grandparents lived in Texas my whole life. And that it is a it is truly wild because you they Texans, in my experience, are the friendliest people I have ever met.

• 1:17:22Speaker 0

  I have never once had a bad interaction with a Texan, really, in any in a grocery store in a in a on a my grandfather used to play golf at his uh retirement uh country club, and everybody was kind and generous, and they would remember your name and they would pat you on the head, and guys used to slip me a quarter and say, go, you know, go get yourself a gumball. And uh, and it it is one of my favorite places in the world to visit is Texas. I love Texas. I if if the subject of politics came up, I would never be invited back. And so there it is, it's hard. It's a it's a real um, it's just a lot of cognitive dissonance between the kindness and the essential goodness, what I see as the essential goodness of people, not just in Texas, but all over the country.

• 1:18:08Speaker 0

  And like you said, the generosity, like you're you're you're there's a flood or there's an earthquake, or there's something, there's any kind of problem. Communities rally around and they help each other out. And this is no different. Like wearing a mask is no different than helping someone bail out water out of their basement. It's the same exact thing, but it has been politicized to the point where it where it is received as different. It and that's a real bummer because it's not different. Bailing water out of your out of your neighbor's basement after a flood is no different in its essential instinct from wearing a mask, and yet people think of them as different.

• 1:18:48Speaker 1

  Very well said. Well, Michael, I I absolutely love the book. It's great. Uh this will go up uh when it's out. And uh I really appreciate you writing it. And uh I hope the sequel has more stoicism in it.

• 1:19:01Speaker 0

  Yes. I know when I was uh coming on here, I was like, oh shit, I should have written more about the stoics. We we got

• 1:19:07Speaker 1

  what we got one footnote. Uh you

• 1:19:09Speaker 0

  did, you did about Kant. Yeah, I remember. Well, thank you for having me on. This was really fun. I really enjoyed the I really love your podcast and uh and I really uh enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for having me.