The Good Place: The Series That Teaches Us To Accept The Inevitable

Living and dying are the obverse and the reverse of human existence. But why is it so difficult to accept that reverse? How can we accept the inevitable? Each culture faces this dilemma differently; for example, in the Buddhist tradition you live and die at the same time, it is a single experience. In other societies, death has become taboo.

Is there something more inevitable than death? Far from feeling defeated, we could develop more resources and skills to overcome the inherent situations of life. Understanding death does not mean that we have to avoid our grief, but rather familiarize ourselves with a fact as natural as life.

Bertrand Williams, a moral philosopher considered by  The Times “the most important and brilliant moral philosopher of his time,” proposed that if we were immortal we would lose all capacity for surprise. It seems that everything is more satisfactory when there is an ending.

What does the philosophy of accepting the inevitable tell us?

What can we know about death? Nothing or almost nothing, at most euphemisms and periphrasis, perhaps metaphors and allegories. However, every philosophy conscious of its finiteness must ruminate on that matter that distresses us and that confronts us with the threshold of the unthinkable.

We tend to think that death is at the end, but we do not perceive that we die every day. Ramón Andrés, Spanish essayist and poet, said that death is at the center because it can give us meaning and spurs to live. Transcending our vision in life, to accept death, seems a subject reserved for oriental culture.

Perhaps, what we know about the inevitability of death is the value it places on life. What awaits us after death? This is still the question that no one has been able to answer, it may be because this question, in life, is poorly formulated. Accepting the inevitable remains one of humanity’s pending tasks.

The idea of ​​philosophy in the face of death has multiple conceptions. We were born to die, but how we will die and when are easy questions to ask, but impossible to answer.

Every step we take in life leads us on a path that brings us closer to death. Do we choose the path to the imminent end or beginning? These questions intrigue philosophers, who have mostly debated the meaning of life and death. For as Seneca said, nothing is as certain as death.

The paradox of self-awareness of death as the meaning of life

In the series The Good Place they use a different philosophical theory in each episode to show essential moral questions in our lives, although in the series the protagonists are dead. This series brings us closer to one of the most asked questions in the history of humanity: What will we find in the afterlife? 

We can imagine a place where we can write all the wishes that come to mind for eternity. But what would happen if we had such wide limits?  In the series, The good place , if they pose these scenarios resulting in an unsatisfactory nihilism.

The reality, in the series, is that the great minds of the universe have been feeling bored for centuries, losing knowledge, without motivation to do anything but drink cocktails …  The end of the series, without revealing it, is a song of reconciliation with life and death.

Mortality gives meaning to life and morality helps guide that sense, in addition to making us think about what role we play in the world and how our actions affect those around us.

But how do you face the inevitable? This is an imperative and unavoidable question, because everyone at various times in our lives will answer it, in one way or another, and there will be as many answers as there are people facing the inevitable.