Chapter 45: Human Nature, or Just a Bad Week?
On The Good Place, Michael tells Bad Janet about a week halfway through the experiment that made things worse because of Brent, yet despite the setback the team regroups. On the podcast, Leora Kling Perkins and Jon Spira-Savett mull over the Talmud-era debates on whether humans should have been created in the first place. Does addressing questions like that even matter for our actual moral lives? How can truth, about the big picture or another human being, coexist with hope?
Texts
(Go to Jewish Lexicon on this site for more on Jewish terminology, names of texts and other background. The links here in the citations take you to the specific quotes in their full contexts.)
Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13b
The Sages learned:
For two and a half years, Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel disagreed.
These say: It would have been preferable had humanity not been created than to have been created. And those say: It is preferable for humanity to have been created than not to have been created.
They were counted and concluded: It would have been preferable had humanity not been created than to have been created. However, now that humanity has been created, let them examine their past actions. And some say: let them scrutinize their planned actions.
Midrash Bereshit Rabba 8:5
Said Rabbi Simon:
At the hour when the Blessed Holy One came to create the first human, the serving messengers/angels became different groups and different circles.
Some of them said: Let them not be created; and some of them said: Let them be created, as it is written (Psalms 85:11), “Kindness and truth met up, righteousness and peace kissed.”
Kindness (chesed) said: Let them be created, for they will do deeds of kindness.
And truth (emet) said: Let them not be created, for they are all lies.
Righteousness (tzedek) said: Let them be created, for they will do deeds of righteousness.
Peace (shalom) said: Let them not be created, for they are all conflict.
What did the Blessed Holy One do?
God took truth and cast it to the ground, as it is written (Daniel 8:12), “And cast truth to the ground.”
Said the serving messengers/angels before the Blessed Holy One: Master of all time and space, why are you scorning your chief of the garrison? Truth will rise up from the ground, as it is written (Psalm 85:12), “Truth will sprout from the ground.”
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