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Quote of the Day: Are Good People Only Happier in Fiction? (Great Plays and Philosophy, Part 1)
Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde:
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
I have often failed to find this line funny because I find it so easy to think of it as just a straightforward statement of how fiction should be written. Plato’s Republic suggests exactly this, and Oscar Wilde was too smart to not know it.
Yes, Oscar Wilde was definitely playing with Plato here: In Socrates’ suggested strategy for the Aesopization of poetry, the good must end happily and the bad unhappily in fiction. And I’ve always thought that this is actually the default way for fiction to go–at least children’s fiction.
Yes, I know, I know–the world isn’t quite that simple, and the good suffer, and the bad seem to prosper sometimes, etc., etc. Plato was well aware of that issue–ask me about Book X of the Republic sometime! And I’m way ahead of you, actually. In this article, I wrote about these complexities of the real world, Plato’s Republic, Plutarch’s response to Plato, the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, and more!
But of course, the line actually is funny if you read it the right way, especially if it’s delivered well, which I’m not quite sure I did myself.
Yes, yes, I did indeed play Miss Prism.
My senior-year English class put on this play, and some of the guys had to play female roles. Say what you like about Judy Dench’s Lady Bracknell, but I say Kevin’s Lady Bracknell was even better.
Next time we’ll try with a splendid one-liner playing with Aristotle! Until then, here’s Miss Prism from the 1952 version, and the line is delivered admirably:
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Published in Literature
I once heard a program on a college radio station where they played a short radio drama in which the villain or the devil (I don’t remember which) triumphs. The ending was quite startling because the bad guys won, and the story ended right there. It left a very disturbing taste in my head. The announcer then came on and noted the harsh psychological impact of a story in which the bad guys win, pointing out that almost all stories end with the opposite result. It had never occurred to me before that that was the case throughout literature and drama.
I will draw a parallel from my own profession as an artist. Throughout history, paintings were almost exclusively made to provide beauty or make you feel better about certain people or subjects. When a painting’s purpose is to provide ugliness or to repulse you and make you feel bad about people or subjects – that is called “Modern Art.”
And beauty has something to do with fittingness, doesn’t it?
Not that it shouldn’t tell the truth. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, and heroes fall to avada kedavra. But Voldemort wouldn’t have lasted forever even if he had won the war, and part of a good story is showing how Voldemort isn’t happy even when he is winning–like in the King’s Cross scene. We don’t need a close look at the afterlife to understand that it’s better to be Benaiah son of Jehoidah than to be Joab son of Zeruiah.
I never thought of it that way, but I guess that is appropriate.
I’m afraid I haven’t a clue who those people are. My wife is the Harry Potter and Biblical Hebrew scholar in the family. She’s read both several times over.
When Harry met Voldemort, you see, . . . but never mind that terrible wordplay.
I only know the English myself. Benaiah was one of David’s greatest warriors and generals. Went into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. Wonderful fellow. Joab, David’s nephew, murdered Abner. Benaiah was good. Joab was a necessary evil who could not be punished until much later.
That’s a real shame, because I really liked Abner. His wife Gladys was a hysterical nut who kept spying on the neighbors, but he was always cool, calm, and collected.
Maybe that was in some part of the Apocrypha that Protestants don’t often read.
No, that was in “Bewitched!”
When our focus is on high profile people or leaders, then this plays out. Good men and women who are raised to leadership do things that cause the not good to attack them and tear them down. In that case, it would seem the good die unhappily, but fiction certainly inspires us to be good anyway… maybe hinting that perhaps our happily ever after isn’t for this life.
But I think a good many “good” people that are common and average and unassuming, everyday people can live happy lives while their counterparts do not. Certainly, I’m happier in my docile and simple life full of sports, music lessons, and church than a murderer on death row or a drug addicted 25 year old living on the street.
The afterlife and the eschaton are perfectly adequate reasons to be good. “Will not the judge of all the earth do right?” “Know that for all these things G-d will bring you to account.”
And then there’s Proverbs chapter 1: Stay out of crime, and you’ll sleep better! And Godfather: Part III.
“The rain falls on the just and the unjust.”
But we don’t know going in whether, if we’re good, we’ll wind up like Abner or like Benaiah son of Jehoiadah. And the bad may end up like King Eglon instead of like Joab! Happens often enough.
And I’d still rather be Abner than Joab. Even without factoring in afterlife and eschaton.
https://ricochet.com/1093761/quote-of-the-day-do-the-good-end-unluckily-great-plays-and-philosophy-part-2/
It’s also called “America in the 2020s.”
Read another book! >:(=)
Edmund’s sinful pleasure left him miserable and unsatisfied. That’s how it works when you eat that kind of food. Honest potatoes at Beaversdam are better than magical Turkish delight.
The Good can never be happy because to be happy about being Good is to commit the sin of Pride and sin is Bad.
That’s if the source of happy is self… which is not necessarily true…
But beyond this, I’m going to play a Mark Camp card and ask “what is good?”
Seems like you’ve managed to convince yourself that unhappiness is morally correct.
Who said we’re supposed to be happy about being good? We’re supposed to be good by being happy about good things–things other than ourselves.
“No one is good except G-d alone.”
No, somebody can be Bad and also unhappy.
Therefore the Good cannot know they are Good, which means they must think they are Bad, which will make them unhappy.
No, the good just aren’t worried about themselves all that much at all.
So, Goodness = Apathy?
Is self the only thing to care about? You keep leaving off a lot of other options.
If Good and Bad are binaries, then there are only four options for one’s opinion of oneself.
The Good cannot believe they are Good because that is prideful, pride is a sin, and sin makes Good people unhappy.
The Good may believe they are Bad, but that will also make them unhappy since Badness = Sinfulness.
If one is apathetic about the question itself I find it highly unlikely that the person will be Good. If one doesn’t care if one is Good or Bad then it seems much more likely that the person will end up being Bad.
That leaves only ignorance as a path to happiness, but total ignorance on this subject would be phenomenally difficult to achieve unless one is mentally disabled. One is highly likely to at least suspect that one is either Good or Bad, and as we have already demonstrated the Good cannot be happy if they believe they are in either of those categories.
Therefore, ignorance is bliss, but sufficient ignorance is difficult.
Just the opposite. Goodness means delighting in what is real and good, and not turning inward on our own small, ridiculous selves.
Not that I’m giving the full picture here. We’re also supposed to work on our own vices, and value ourselves as well as others, and, if we recognize any good in ourselves, thank G-d for it because we sure didn’t put it there!
Goodness comes in degrees. It’s not binary.
Who says a good person must recognize that they are good to be happy? Can’t happiness be the byproduct of DOING what is good rather than in thinking oneself is good? Maybe the issue is who is determining someone is good? If I look at someone I think is good and see they are happy, that does not reflect on whether they see themselves as good – because they don’t consider themselves.
This is not your strongest Devil’s Advocate :p
So we agree that in order to be happy The Good must not believe they are Good.
If Good and Bad are not binaries then it follows that in order to be happy The Good must not believe that they are more Good than they are Bad, because they means tipping the scale towards believing that one is Good, which is tantamount to simply believing that one is Good.
But to be happy The Good also must not believe that they are more Bad than they are Good, because that means tipping the scale towards believing that one is Bad, which is tantamount to simply believing that one is Bad.
Therefore in order to be happy The Good must believe that they are neither Good nor Bad.
I see only two ways to do this.
Once again, we arrive at ignorance being the key for The Good to be happy.