{"id":4464,"date":"2025-10-15T15:00:45","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T21:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=4464"},"modified":"2025-09-10T20:42:42","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T02:42:42","slug":"book-how-to-be-perfect-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/15\/book-how-to-be-perfect-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: How to Be Perfect (2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft \" src=\"https:\/\/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com\/images\/S\/compressed.photo.goodreads.com\/books\/1643102140i\/58485505.jpg\" alt=\"How to Be Perfect\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" \/>How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question<br \/><\/u><\/strong>Year: 2022<br \/>Author: Michael Schur<br \/>Length: 553 minutes \/ 9.21 hours<\/p>\n<p><em>The Good Place<\/em> is one of the best television shows of the last decade. Its approach to morality and ethics may have been more &#8220;pop psychology&#8221; than anything else, but it presented these questions in a way that was relatable and legitimately funny. Of course, if you have seen this show, may I suggest also reading the companion book written by its creator, Michael Schur? <em>How to Be Perfect<\/em> is basically the behind-the-scenes notes on how the show obtained its morality subtext.<\/p>\n<p>I appreciate how this book uses humor to soften incredibly difficult concepts but still presents them in a way that&#8217;s understandable to the average person. Of course, one of its flaws is that the topic of moral philosophy has been discussed in such depth for so long that there really isn&#8217;t a satisfying &#8220;conclusion&#8221; at the end of it other than to shake our hand and say, &#8220;Good luck!&#8221; Still, as an introduction to a very complicated area of study, <em>How to Be Perfect<\/em> is a great primer on these different schools of thought, providing pros and cons for each belief system in a way that isn&#8217;t judgmental toward any of them.<\/p>\n<p>While this topic was certainly a heady one, I still managed to follow along pretty well with the audiobook version thanks to the tones that indicated when footnotes were being narrated. It also helped that it had the cast members from <em>The Good Place<\/em> also narrating examples throughout so it wasn&#8217;t just the author nerding out on all the ethical philosophy. I might pick up a physical copy sometime to read through it again so I can ponder the challenging sections more thoroughly.<\/p>\n<p>A funny primer to moral philosophy, I give <i>How to Be Perfect <\/i>4.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/> <strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/> 1\/2<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/bmw-the-critic\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"820\" height=\"312\" src=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4100\" srcset=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3.png 820w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3-300x114.png 300w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3-768x292.png 768w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3-640x244.png 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral QuestionYear: 2022Author: Michael SchurLength: 553 minutes \/ 9.21 hours The Good Place is one of the best television shows of the last decade. Its approach to morality and ethics may have been more &#8220;pop psychology&#8221; than anything else, but it presented these questions in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,54],"tags":[3107,55,104,4286,4282,4283,4285,1921,4288,8,4287,4284],"class_list":["post-4464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-5-stars","category-book","tag-3107","tag-book","tag-comedy","tag-ethics","tag-how-to-be-perfect","tag-michael-schur","tag-morality","tag-non-fiction-2","tag-philosophy","tag-review","tag-the-correct-answer-to-every-moral-question","tag-the-good-place"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4464"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4472,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4464\/revisions\/4472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}