Michael Schur - How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

So brilliant and funny and warmly written you dont realize youre becoming a better person just by reading it.

Mindy Kaling

How to Be Perfect

The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

Michael Schur

Creator of The Good Place

Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2022 by Michael Schur

Photo of Peter Singer on Keith Morris / Hay Ffotos / Alamy Stock Photo

Photo of Albert Camus on Hayk Shalunts / Alamy Stock Photo

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition January 2022

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Interior design by Carly Loman

Jacket design by Michael Nagin

Jacket photograph by Stuart Westmorland/Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schur, Michael, 1975- author.

Title: How to be perfect : the correct answer to every moral question / Michael Schur.

Description: First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021031127 (print) | LCCN 2021031128 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982159313 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982159320 (paperback) | ISBN 9781982159337 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Conduct of lifeHumor.

Classification: LCC PN6231.C6142 S357 2022 (print) | LCC PN6231.C6142 (ebook) | DDC 818/.602dc23/eng/20211028

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031127

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031128

ISBN 978-1-9821-5931-3

ISBN 978-1-9821-5933-7 (ebook)

This business is everybodys business.

ALBERT CAMUS , The Plague

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

MAYA ANGELOU

Tens of thousands of years ago, after primitive humans had finished the basic work of evolving and inventing fire and fighting off tigers and stuff, some group of them began to talk about morality. They devoted part of their precious time and energy to thinking about why people do things, and tried to figure out ways for them to do those things better, more justly, and more fairly. Before those people died, the things they said were picked up and discussed by other people, and then by other people, and so on and so on all the way to this very momentwhich means that for the last few dozen millennia, people the world over have been having one very long unbroken conversation about ethics.

Most of the people whove devoted their lives to that conversation didnt do it for money, or fame, or gloryacademia (and more specifically, philosophy) is not the best route, if thats what youre after. They just did it because they believed that morality matters. That the basic questions of how we should behave on earth are worth talking about, in order to discover and describe a better path for all of us. This book is dedicated, with my extreme gratitude, to all those who have engaged in that remarkable and deeply human conversation.

Its also dedicated to J.J., William, and Ivy, who matter the most, to me.

Today, youve decided to be a good person.

You dont know why, reallyyou just woke up this morning full of vim and vigor and optimism, despite a world that often seems hell-bent on bumming you out, and you hopped out of bed determined to be a little bit better today than you were yesterday.

This shouldnt be that hard, right? You just need to make some small changes in the way you live. You walk outside, see a plastic cup on the street, pick it up, and throw it away. That feels good! Yesterday you might have ignored that garbage and kept on walking, but not today, baby. Today youre better. At the grocery store you spend a little extra to buy cage-free eggs and milk from humanely treated cows. It makes you smile to think of those cows munching happily on organic grass instead of being cooped up in some awful factory farm. Remembering an article you read about the impact of the beef industry on climate change, you even pass on the hamburger meat in favor of veggie patties. Now the cows are even happier! Because theyre not dead!

Youre doing great today. The New You is crushing it.

You take a quick jog around the neighborhood (for health!), help an old lady across the street (for kindness!), watch a documentary (for knowledge!), check the news (for citizenship!), and go to sleep. What a great day.

But then you lie in bed, staring at the ceiling. Somethings nagging at you. How much goodness did you actually achieve? You feel like you did some good stuff, but then again you also felt like you could pull off wearing a zebra-print fedora to your office holiday party last year, and we all know how that turned out.

So now imagine that you can call on some kind of Universe Goodness Accountant to give you an omniscient, mathematical report on how well you did. After she crunches the numbers on your day of good deeds and the receipt unspools from her Definitive Goodness Calculator, she gives you some bad news.

That plastic cup you tossed? Its eventually going to flow into the ocean, joining the Texas-size trash island thats threatening marine life in the Pacific. (You read about that when you checked the news before bed, but you didnt think you had anything to do with it.) The veggie patties were shipped to your local store from someplace very far away, rendering their carbon footprint massive, and the cows you pictured are in fact penned up in a factory farm, because the legal definitions of organic and grass-fed are embarrassingly loose thanks to shady legislation written by agribusiness lobbyists. The cows arent happy. Theyre sad. Theyre sad cows.

It gets worse: The sneakers you wore on your jog were made in a factory where workers are paid four cents an hour. The documentarian who made the film you watched is a weird creep who likes to sniff strangers hair on the subwaynice work putting ten bucks in his pocketand the streaming service you watched it on is part of a multinational conglomerate that also makes killer drones for the North Korean air force. Oh and by the way, that old lady you helped collects Nazi memorabilia. But she seemed so sweet, you say. Nope! Secret Nazi. She was actually on her way to buy more Nazi stuffthats what you helped her across the street to do.

Well, great. Now youre miserable. You tried to be good, in your own small way, and the world smacked you across the face. Youre also angry. You had good intentions, and at least you put in the effortshouldnt that count for something?! And youre discouraged. You cant afford to do much more than what you did, because youre not a billionaire who can start some giant charitable foundation, and given everything else we have to deal with in our everyday lives, who has the time and money and energy to think about ethics?