Reviews tagging 'Cultural appropriation'

How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur

2 reviews

torturedreadersdept's review against another edition

hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Minor: Ableism, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Bullying, Child death, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, Suicide, Violence, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Cultural appropriation, Alcohol, Colonisation, Dysphoria, War, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

skudiklier's review

challenging funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

5.0

Going in, I was a little worried How to Be Perfect would have too many references to The Good Place (even though that's one of my favorite shows of all time), or would be too funny or quippy to really get to the core complicated issues we need guidance on. And it's true that this book is on the whole relatively light-hearted in tone, and Schur definitely includes a fair number of jokes and silly scenarios to keep the book entertaining. But at its heart, How to Be Perfect addresses really serious questions about what it means to be a person living with other people. It's very clear he thinks this is all incredibly important, and has thought about this himself a great deal; after having finished it, I'm grateful to him for sharing this so that readers can use this to become better people.

He addresses so many things I worry about—how much should I donate to important causes vs. how much do I allow myself to spend on things I enjoy? What do you do in situations where you feel hopeless because there's no real ethical consumption under capitalism? Where do you draw the line on consuming art made by people who have done bad things? How and when do you address a family member's racist comments? What makes a good apology? How do you reconcile supporting one thing and condemning another?

Another thing I appreciate is that he doesn't let himself off the hook—even when he explains how he realized all banks are terrible and that switching banks would be really difficult and maybe it's okay to not switch banks, he later looked more into it, found some less terrible banks, and did all the annoying terrible work to switch his account. Then he reflects on how a lot of why he justified it to himself was laziness, and uses that as an example of how we need to do the work to be better, when we can.

And that "when we can" part is important. After going through the major philosophical concepts and how we can use them to think about complicated situations, he also addresses so many important factors in this conversation, like privilege and class and context. This book doesn't ignore anything, and I appreciate that so much. I've come across a lot of books written by relatively famous people that just sort of skate across the surface without getting into anything actually challenging, and I was relieved that this was not one of those books.

While How to Be Perfect doesn't actually give you the right answer to every moral question, it does put you in a much better place in terms of how to go about figuring out what you think the right answer is. And it encourages you to keep trying to be better, even though you'll inevitably fail; learn from your mistakes, and do better next time. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the chance to read and review this ARC. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cursing, Racism, and Sexual assault

Minor: Ableism, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Drug use, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Incest, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Sexism, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Transphobia, Xenophobia, Vomit, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Religious bigotry, Car accident, Abortion, Fire/Fire injury, Cultural appropriation, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, War, and Classism