Michael Schur

From the creator of The Good Place and the cocreator of Parks and Recreation, a hilarious, thought-provoking guide to living an ethical life, drawing on 2,500 years of deep thinking from around the world. Most people think of themselves as “good,” but it’s not always easy to determine what’s “good” or “bad”—especially in a world filled with complicated choices and pitfalls and booby traps and bad advice. Fortunately, many smart philosophers have been pondering this conundrum for millennia and they have guidance for us. With bright wit and deep insight, How to Be Perfect explains concepts like deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism, ubuntu, and more so we can sound cool at parties and become better people. Schur starts off with easy ethical questions like “Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?” (No.) and works his way up to the most complex moral issues we all face. Such as: Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people? How much money should I give to charity? Why bother being good at all when there are no consequences for being bad? And much more. By the time the book is done, we’ll know exactly how to act in every conceivable situation, so as to produce a verifiably maximal amount of moral good. We will be perfect, and all our friends will be jealous. OK, not quite. Instead, we’ll gain fresh, funny, inspiring wisdom on the toughest issues we face every day.

The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

How to Be Perfect

It’s easy to assume when people call out a derogatory or racist phrase—such as that in the team name “Washington R*dskins”—that they are doing so without good reason. For example, if you are unfamiliar with the term and it’s repugnant use, some may naïvely brush it off as an overreaction. This example is clearly offensive once made aware of the background and context but many will not take the time to do their own research; instead shouting, “I will not be censored!” proclaiming their right to say a word is more important than the literal lives of other humans.

Tate Kwiecinski

Note from user: This post contains offensive slurs.

Snyder has often claimed that the name is not racist but rather some kind of "celebration" of Native culture. This, to quote Jeremy Bentham, is nonsense upon stilts. A history of the term in the Washington Post cites this entry: "1863: The Winona (Minn.) Daily Republican features an announcement that uses the term ‘redskin’ as a pejorative: ‘The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.’”

One day you will be called upon to break a big law in the name of justice and rationality. Everything will depend on it…. How are you going to prepare for that day when it really matters? You have to stay "in shape" so that when the big day comes you will be ready. What you need is "anarchist calisthenics." Every day or so break some trivial law that makes no sense, even if it's only jaywalking. Use your own head to judge whether a law is just or reasonable. That way, you'll keep trim; and when the big day comes, you'll be ready.

Quote by Kenyan philosopher and theologian John S. Mbiti

The individual does not and cannot exist alone…. He owes his existence to other people including those of past generations and his contemporaries. He is simply part of the whole.... Whatever happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual. The individual can only say, "I am, because we are; and since we are therefore I am."

Kant holds humans in the highest possible regard and rejects any action that demeans them or turns them into tools used to achieve some other goal.

The more we try to learn and understand the lives being led by other people-the more we search for a golden mean of empathy-the less we will find it permissible to treat them with cruelty.

I rinse my mouth with mouthwash for thirty full seconds, because that's what it says to do on the label. I drive with my hands at "ten and two" on the wheel, because that's what my driving instructor told me to do. I've always seen this behavior as virtuous and written off annoyed reactions to it as unfounded-but after I read Aristotle I understood how an excess of dutifulness can negatively impact the people around me: I am constantly killing everyone's buzz.

Aristotle describes virtues as a balance, e.g. too much generosity can be portrayed similarly to too little

People with a deficiency of anger are those who are not angered by the right things, or in the right way, or at the right times, or towards the right people.... Such a person seems to be insensible and to feel no pain. Since he is not angered, he does not seem to be the sort to defend himself; and such willingness to accept insults to oneself and to overlook insults to one's family and friends is slavish.

Bo Jeanes

Funny and interesting, but didn't really grab me to the extent I hoped. If I could give half ratings, it'd be a 3.5, but it doesn't deserve a 3...

sophia n

ironic that this is titled how to be perfect when the book itself is perfect 🧐🧐🧐

Philip Young

I loved the letter he wrote to his kids at the end. "Know thyself and nothing in excess."

brendan sudol

moral philosophy, but entertaining and accessible!

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." (Maya Angelou)

"Try again. Fail again. Fail better." (Samuel Beckett)

“Quoting the great Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu, she tells us that ‘knowledge makes men gentle,’ just as ignorance hardens us.”

Kordian Brzeziński 

Funny, honest and unpretentious exploration into how the hell should we live our lives. In each chapter, the author looks at a different kind of ethical problem, like "Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?" or "Should I return a shopping cart?". It's amusing how these seemingly silly questions can open a whole discussion about our moral compasses. On a daily basis, we don't really think about that - we rather go with the flow and for most of us it turns out more or less fine. You probably don't punch your friends in the face for no reason and you don't need any sophisticated philosophical code to explain why. But what this book tells you, among other things, is that it's good to think about things like that - our behavior, choices and thought processes. And it does so in a very entertaining, simple way.

Three philosophies serve as kind of a basis for author's reflections - virtue ethics, categorical imperative and utilitarianism. There are more systems mentioned, but these are most important and are brought up in various contexts throughout the whole book. The writer doesn't favor any of them particulary, but rather tries to tackle each problem with all of them. One of the things you can take out of this book is that no moral code is truly universal and perhaps we just need to melt them all together sometimes.

It's a light and funny read. Really, I assumed this book will be filled with bad jokes and anecdotes, but it turned out to be hilarious many times. If you are looking for something entertaining, but also valuable in terms of what-should-i-do-how-should-i-behave, then it may be something you'd like.

Ken Yuen

I don't often think about revisiting books or movies, but I definitely feel like it'd be worth rereading this in the future when I don't know what to do or if I need to be appreciative again for the things I have.

Written by the creator of the show "The Good Place", the book is funny, but also insightful, approachable, and actually darn applicable to anyone who struggles daily to be a good person. Not only does it cover philosophical viewpoints on morality, there is discussion of how these concepts apply to our real lives.

Also it makes fun of Ayn Rand! Very important.

Annabelle Kortum

Carmen Clinch

Saad Hasnain

Leila Somani-Davis

Jennifer

Tiff Brunson

Mike Schur

* From the writer and executive producer of the award-winning Netflix series The Good Place that made moral philosophy fun: a foolproof guide to making the correct moral decision in every situation you ever encounter, anywhere on earth, forever * How can we live a more ethical life? This question has plagued people for thousands of years, but it's never been tougher to answer than it is now, thanks to challenges great and small that flood our day-to-day lives and threaten to overwhelm us with impossible decisions and complicated results with unintended consequences. Plus, being anything close to an 'ethical person' requires daily thought and introspection and hard work; we have to think about how we can be good not, you know, once a month, but literally all the time. To make it a little less overwhelming, this fascinating, accessible and funny book by one of our generation's best writers and adept minds in television comedy, Michael Schur, boils down the whole confusing morass with real life dilemmas (from 'should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?' to 'can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people?'), so that we know how to deal with ethical dilemmas. Much as Chidi used humour and philosophy to make Eleanor a less selfish person, Schur takes us on a journey through the 2,500-year discussion of ethics, sketching a roadmap for how we ought to act along the way. By the time the book is done, we'll know exactly how to act in every conceivable situation, so as to produce a verifiably maximal amount of moral good. We will be perfect, and all our friends will be jealous. OK, not quite. Instead, we'll gain fresh, funny, inspiring wisdom on the toughest issues we face every day With contributions from Professor Todd May of Clemson University, who served as an advisor on The Good Place, this is a brilliant, clever and hugely entertaining book about one of the most important topics in the world. 'The problem is, if all you care about in the world is the velvet rope, you will always be unhappy, no matter which side you're on.' - Tahani Al-Jamil, The Good Place

How to Be Perfect The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

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