Reviews from the Pews: Groundhog Day

Morality of Obligation or Happiness

“Blessed [is] the man who fears YHWH, [who] delights greatly in His commands” — Psalm 112:1

Why be Morally Good?

“Why be morally good?” On the surface, this question seems strange…almost too simple to answer…maybe even a little ridiculous. “Why should we be morally good? Because that is what we’re supposed to do! Because its the right thing to do! Because we have to!” Etc.

These are the typical, knee-jerk responses that might come to our minds. But you’ll notice that none of these responses actually answer the question. In fact, they're all fallacies; that is, they look or sound persuasive on the surface, but they don’t actually prove what they claim to prove.

Specifically, to say that one should be morally good “because you’re supposed to be good” is  the logical fallacy of begging the question. It is circular reasoning. It’s restating the conclusion as the reason for the conclusion, but without justification. It’s basically the same as saying “You should be good because you should be good.” Does that sound very convincing?

Furthermore, this is not a small matter. The question of why someone should be morally good is one of the most fundamental questions in life. The answer to this question will dictate the kind of life we live, the kind of person we will be, and the effect we will have on everyone around us.

So, why be morally good?

I’d like to explore two answers to this question using the help of one of my favorite philosophers, Plato, who has a lengthy discussion about this in "The Republic." I'll begin by stating the two responses and then expanding on them individually. I will then use this as a bridge to comment on the movie “Groundhog Day.”

        The two responses are:

1) People should be morally good out of obligation.

2) People should morally good because it leads to happiness and fulfillment.

The Ring of Gyges and Morality of Obligation

“And this, then, is a great proof that no one is just willingly, but only from necessity: for wherever each person believes he can be safely unjust, there he is unjust. For all men suppose that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice.” - Plato, The Republic, 360c-d

In Plato’s “The Republic,” Glaucon and Socrates argue, among other things, about morality. Namely, they argue about what motivates a person to be moral. Glaucon, quite cynically, argues that people are only moral because they fear punishment or social consequences. Take these away and people would quickly devolve into immorality. To make his point, he tells the story of the Ring of Gyges.

Briefly, the story of the Ring of Gyges centers around a shepherd, Gyges, who one day discovers a mysterious ring inside a buried brown horse that has the power to make him invisible (Sound familiar, Tolkien lovers?!). With his newly acquired powers, he uses the ring to slip unnoticed into the royal palace, seduce the queen, kill the king, and seize the throne for himself. Thus, the story raises the question: If someone could act unjustly with no consequences, would they be moral?   

Well, according to Glaucon, if this is the case then no one would be moral. Why? Because, in his view, human nature is as such that the good life consists in getting whatever you want. With this viewpoint, the only true virtue is power, because power allows us to get what we want. Deep down, no one actually wants to be morally good, they are simply good because of the fear of the penalty of being bad, or the fear of judgment from their peers, or because they lack the power to get whatever it is that they truly want.

So according to Glaucon, one should be morally good because one is not powerful enough to get what one really wants or they should be good because being bad would lead to punishment.

Now, this might sound crazy or silly when we read it. But, my dear reader, I want you to stop and think about how many people in the world actually operate according to this principle. How many people, if given the power to get whatever they want or if they had no fear of repercussions, would do or get whatever they wanted, even at the expense of others? Perhaps we are like this sometimes?

In response to Glaucon’s cynical view of humanity, Socrates counters that we should be morally good because the moral life makes us whole, healthy, and ordered. In short, it makes us happy.

Morality of Happiness

“Justice is the health of the soul.”  Plato, The Republic, 444c

“Happiness, therefore, must be some form of contemplation or virtuous activity.” —Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.13

For Socrates, however, human nature does not find fulfillment by indulging in base desires. According to his logic, this actually destroys humanity and the soul. Rather, Socrates insists that goodness is not simply about obeying rules to avoid punishment or to keep up appearances. Moral goodness is what allows a person to become whole, healthy, and harmonious in body, mind, and soul. When we act justly and do what is morally good, then there is harmony between reason and desire. The result is an inner life that is peaceful, integrated, and capable of genuine happiness.

Injustice, by contrast, offers quick advantages, but tears the soul apart from within. It pits desire against reason. Such a person will ultimately be enslaved to impulses they cannot control. Even if no one else sees the injustice, such as if one had the Ring of Gyges, the soul would still suffer the damage.

This is why he famously says that justice is the “health of the soul.” We should be morally good not because someone is watching, nor because society expects it, but because goodness is the only path to becoming the kind of person who can truly thrive. In the end, the morally good life is a life of freedom, flourishing, and fulness of life.

Groundhog Day

“What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same?” - Phil Conners, Groundhog Day

Enter Phil Connors, the main character of the movie Groundhog Day. Every year Phil, a local weatherman for Pittsburgh, is tasked with going to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to report on the local groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil (who, interestingly, has the same name as the main character) and the local Groundhog Day festivities. Phil is a cynical man (not unlike Glaucon) who makes very obvious his contempt for the town and his co-workers. After giving a half-hearted report, Phil and his co-workers find themselves stuck in Punxsutawney due to a blizzard. After spending one night there, Phil wakes up to find himself re-living Groundhog Day all over again. At first, Phil thinks he is suffering from deja vu and seeks the assistance of a neurologist and a psychologist. Once he wakes up and relives the same day for the third time, he realizes that he is stuck in some sort of time loop from which he can’t escape. Not only this, no one else is aware that they are reliving the same day except himself. What is Phil to do?

It doesn’t take long for Phil to realize that there are no consequences for his actions beyond Groundhog Day. He can do whatever pleases him and no matter what, he wakes up in his bed the next day. Phil has, for all intents and purposes, become Gyges with his magical ring of invisibility. And Phil’s actions after this revelation reveal much about his character. It appears he too, like Glaucon, believes that the good life consists in getting whatever he wants. He operates out of a morality of obligation. Now that there is no obligation, whatever little morality he lived by goes completely out the window. Phil embraces a life of total indulgence: alcohol, smoking, binge eating, seducing women, robbery, etc. And, because Phil lives the same day over and over again, he is able to increase his knowledge of the day’s events in order to further manipulate things and people to his advantage.

Enter Rita Hanson, the female lead and co-star of the movie. She is Phil’s producer at the TV station and travels along with Phil and their cameraman to oversee the Groundhog Day assignment. She is principled, idealistic, innocent, and perhaps even a little naive. Her warmth and charm make her the perfect antithesis to Phil’s cold and smug demeanor.

Now, in a world where Phil is living the same day over and over again, Rita is the conundrum, the anomaly, the outlier, the veritable monkey wrench in his operation. We might say that she is to Phil’s everlasting Groundhog Day what Neo is to the Matrix. And what makes her an outlier is her consistency. That is, she is consistently good and pure (and Catholic!). Time and time again Phil tries to seduce her and fails, growing increasingly desperate every time. No matter what he tries to do, she always shuts him down. This desperation eventually leads to a loss of the will to live by Phil. He eventually tries to take his own life. But this too fails.

It is then that the audience sees firsthand what is the end result of a morality of obligation. A life that is solely focused on pleasure and self-love leads to depression,  desperation, and death. It is an un-fulfilling and unsatisfying life. If the purpose of life is pleasure, then once the pleasure is gone life loses its purpose. Those pleasurable things that once brought us happiness and joy, if we were to indulge in them forever, would not be a heaven. In fact, they would be a hell.

After repeated failures to end his life, Phil seeks solace with Rita. Why Rita? Especially after she rejected him so many times? Perhaps because deep down Rita is the kind of person that Phil truly desires to be: someone consistently good and firm and grounded in morals. Someone consistently kind and generous, attentive, and full of joy. She is what a character who lives a morality of happiness looks like. And, Phil starts to want this for himself. Rita is a reminder that, in a world where every day repeats and nothing seems to matter, goodness does matter, and that a moral life is what gives true purpose and meaning.

Thus, Phil starts to change, and the character change that he goes through is perhaps one of the most satisfying character arcs in modern film.

         It is interesting to note that there is no clear antagonist in Groundhog Day. Who is the bad guy? Every good movie needs a good villain to offset the hero, right? Well, one could argue that perhaps Phil was the villain in the movie, but that he slowly starts to become the hero. Though Phil can’t change anything in his surroundings, he starts to change himself. He learns to play piano, studies poetry, and learns various trades such as ice sculpting. Furthermore, with his foreknowledge of everything that will happen in the town, he uses his newfound talents to serve others. He rescues a kid every day from falling from a tree. He helps old ladies with a flat tire. He rescues a man who is choking in a restaurant, etc. In short, Phil does good just for the sake of doing good, expecting no reward knowing that tomorrow all will be forgotten. By the end of the movie, he is no longer his old, cynical self. He seems genuinely happy.

Conclusion

“We become just by doing just acts.” — Aristotle, “The Nichomachean Ethics,” 2.1

At the beginning of Groundhog Day, Phil Connors is a man who lives exactly as Glaucon predicts: once he realizes there are no consequences for his actions, he indulges every vice. He becomes ringed, invisible Gyges. But, something unexpected happens. Phil discovers that vice does not make him happy. In fact, it makes him miserable. The freedom to do whatever he wants is not actually freedom.  It is a prison where life grows stale and selfishness becomes suffocating. His life was empty. But slowly, Phil begins to change. Not because he is forced to, but because he discovers that doing good makes him good, and being good makes him happy. Phil becomes the man who is good not out of obligation, but because it makes him happy.

Reflection

“I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” - John 10:10

My brothers and sisters, it is at this point that I would like for all of us to reflect on whether we hold a morality of obligation or a morality of happiness perspective. Do we, Catholics, do good, come to Church, obey the law, etc. because we are afraid of God’s punishments? Or, is it because we love God and believe that He is a loves us, and that He came to reveal to us the secret to true happiness, to true blessedness, to true peace: living, with the grace of God, a perfectly moral life by imitating the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us answer for ourselves why we should be moral, for the answer to this will shape the person that we are and will become.