Abstract

Even without Alzheimer's or dementia, most of us are prone to “ordinary forgetting”. The Good Place and careful philosophical reflection can help us think through memory loss, relationships, and making a place for each other as we live through the human condition. Throughout The Good Place, Chidi and Eleanor help each other develop and sustain their moral selves as well as their relationship. Stories are fundamental to our sense of self, right and wrong, and the kind of people we are. To understand memory as a construction, we must understand the three stages of individual memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval. How we scaffold each other's identities and how we hold space for each other in the real world are ethical issues that have everything to do with memory and the stories we tell ourselves and each other. The Good Place can help us grapple with this.