Here we’re confronting a condition I think of as Moral Exhaustion.
Trying to do the right thing all the time is…a huge pain in the ass.
-Michael Schur
How to Be Perfect
This month I will be doing something a bit different. Most of my post will be a book review. Some time after my last post my daughter gave me a book as a Father’s Day present, How to Be Perfec____ _t, by Michael Schur. You may know of Michael Schur as a television writer and creator or cocreator of such shows as Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and most significantly, The Good Place (my favourite television sitcom about moral philosophy).
After I had clumsily defined deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics in my post, I read this book where Michael Schur does a much better job with a great deal of humour. In my defence, he is a professional writer and he did it over the course of three book chapters instead of a short blog post. One thing that I quickly realized that I had really glossed over the topic of virtue ethics. I mentioned Aristotle but should have discussed his ideas of what constitutes a virtue. (Aristotle defines virtues as a balance of too much of some character trait and too little of the same trait. For example, courage as a virtue lies between an excess of courage which would be foolhardiness and a deficiency of courage, or cowardice. The task of a virtuous person is to determine what degree of these traits constitutes a virtue and then to practice these virtues until they become ingrained habits.)
Schur goes on to discuss other systems of moral philosophy such as contractualism and existentialism. He gives many real world examples of moral dilemmas as well as classic theoretical examples such as ‘The Trolley Problem’ and ‘The Free Rider’. His writing style is very easy to read and the level of discussion is great for anyone from a complete novice to someone with a moderate knowledge/interest in ethics. He has clearly done his homework, and despite the lighthearted approach, he clearly cares very much about how one can/should be a ‘good person’.
A term which he uses frequently and claims to have coined is ‘Moral Exhaustion’ which I find to be a useful concept. It seems the more we dig into various ethical questions the more it seems there are no easy answers if, indeed, there are any answers at all. This can lead to a sort of mental paralysis, or as Schur would put it, exhaustion. There comes a time where, if we want to act at all, we have to accept that some short cuts are needed and that we can never be perfect.
There are a number of references in his book to The Good Place and, while it is definitely not a companion to the television program, they will likely appeal to similar audiences. I won’t review The Good Place, but for those who are not familiar with it I will just say that it is a comedy about a woman who is not as good as she might be but is motivated to become so.
In conclusion, for anyone who wants to learn quite a lot about moral philosophy and ethics but doesn’t feel up to diving into Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, I can strongly recommend Michael Schur’s How to Be Percec t.
Wayne
June 2025
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