All three of the above responses to the pain and suffering of life seem unsatisfactory. If life is marked by pain, and pain is the direct result of our constant striving and willing, then so long as we strive we will be inflicted with the pain of existence. No matter how much we lie to ourselves that it’ll be okay in the end, it won’t. There will always be new troubles and failures. We can endure this by telling ourselves that it could be worse, and no matter how bad it is it’s only temporary. But life is still fundamentally a problem, something to be endured, cured, or if possible, avoided. Schopenhauer offers a response as well.
For Schopenhauer’s answer we need look no further than the top of the nearest cactus. Here we find our ascetic, one who has chosen to deal with the pains of existence by refusing to participate. If pain is caused by willing and striving, then quieting your will is the solution. Simply stop striving. Now this is easier said than done. After all, if we are at root will, and if will is an unconscious striving that pushes us forward, it seems to a great extent out of our control. We can try to stop, but truly ceasing to will or strive is going to be the result of nothing short of grace. So Schopenhauer’s response is self-renunciation to the best of our ability. You repudiate this life of constant struggle and failure, cease to will, and thus escape the pain of life as much as possible until released through the death of this mortal body. “In fact, nothing else can be stated as the aim of our existence except the knowledge that it would be better for us not to exist.”8 Life is a disease for which the cure is to stop participating. The answer to the game of life is simply to refuse to play. Yet, Seuss never gave this response. In fact, he goes out of his way to avoid concluding that we should just stop trying. But why do so if pain is the inevitable result?
Where They Never Have Troubles
The problem we face is nothing short of determining how we ought to value a human life marked by inescapable pain and suffering. Can our lives be redeemed? In this discussion the facts are not in dispute. Although people can debate the metaphysics of will and the nature of the universe, one can’t deny that our lives are characterized by constant striving punctuated with periodic successes and more frequent failures. So Schopenhauer is right on these grounds; life is striving, life is pain, and so pain and its absence seem to exhaust its possibilities. But this doesn’t mean we have to find life insufferable, worthless, or a disease best cured by the sweet release of death. Life can still be loved and enjoyed for what it is. It’s really a matter of perspective, or rather reevaluation. And Dr. Seuss finds a kindred spirit in Friedrich Nietzsche.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) is infamous among philosophers. Even many professional philosophers don’t know where to place him in the tradition or how to contextualize his work. And the picture of him most nonprofessionals have is more a caricature than anything else, and not a flattering one at that. The remainder of this chapter can’t fix that. I can’t provide a comprehensive account of Nietzsche’s philosophy. What I can do is provide a window into how he saw the world and how his perspective is an answer to Schopenhauer’s pessimism.
Nietzsche approaches philosophy like an artist approaches a canvas. His task is to paint a picture of life that is affirmative; a yes-saying in opposition to the asceticism, life denial of nay-saying pessimists like Schopenhauer. And in this regard his vision finds voice in Dr. Seuss, specifically Seuss’s work I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew.
As noted above, Seuss’s books often deal with life in its totality, focusing on the ups and downs. These books also often provide an answer to how we ought to deal with our troubles: optimism, denial, endurance, and so forth. But there is one response we have yet to consider, and it’s the response offered in Solla Sollew. “I’ve bought a big bat, I’m ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me” (Trouble). In this one stanza, in this powerful conclusion, Seuss communicates a message it takes many people a lifetime to learn, and one iterated throughout Nietzsche’s works. In fact, one might say it’s Nietzsche’s primary message: affirmation.
In order to promote a positive, affirmative view of life, Nietzsche has to be able to redeem our pain and suffering. This will not include an argument based on facts and figures, since these seem to point toward Schopenhauer’s pessimism. Instead, it will require a shift in perspective, a shift in how we interpret those facts and contextualize them within our lives. As Nietzsche says, “Life is no argument,”9 and in the voice of Zarathustra indicates it’s hard enough to remember his own opinions, let alone to be the “keg of memory” required to remember his reasons for them.10 One must make a choice on how to approach and value life in light of those things we can’t deny, like suffering. One can’t argue one’s way to the good life; one must craft it, like a work of art. Crafting one’s life requires that we see life as a work of art: a serious, creative, playful endeavor. Nietzsche’s writing is thus often geared toward transforming the reader, not convincing him. Beyond arguments, Nietzsche wants his work to create a shift in the reader’s mentality, very much like the works of Dr. Seuss. Most of Seuss’s more ethically or profound works have a powerful impact on their readers young and old, not because we can turn them into arguments that are more convincing than any alternative but because they present an image of life that gets us motivated to be better than we currently are. The works transform us, hopefully for the better. These books operate at the level of great art by inspiring and transforming the reader in a way that causes her to see and experience the world in a new way. Nietzsche’s works are geared toward a specific kind of transformation. In the face of pessimism or nihilism, the idea that nothing matters, Nietzsche wants to provide us a picture of life that is laudable so that we might transform ourselves into nobler creatures who can affirm existence in all of its ugliness, who can stare into the abyss of existence and still stand tall and say “yes.” Nietzsche maintains that this response is the only one adequate to Schopenhauer’s pessimism. He even laments Socrates’ plea in the Phaedo that a cock be sacrificed to Asclepius. Nietzsche ponders: “Is it possible that a man like him, who had lived cheerfully and like a soldier in the sight of everyone, should have been a pessimist? . . . we must overcome even the Greeks.”11 In order to redeem this life we must get past pessimism. We must overcome the view that life is to be cured in favor of the notion that it is to be celebrated. We can’t change what life is, but we can change how we react to and interpret it.
Affirmation (with a Bat!)
Instead of renouncing life and becoming ascetics, instead of quieting our wills and giving in to the unrelenting pain of life, and instead of resigning ourselves to the inevitable pitfalls of life and just bearing through it, Nietzsche advocates self-creation and affirmation. At first blush this may seem a nonanswer. After all, if suffering is caused by striving, how can more projects and more goals solve the problem? More willing will result in more suffering. Schopenhauer is right about that. Whenever we give ourselves goals, we are bound to encounter obstacles that will frustrate us. We will often fail, and the successes we do win will be temporary, often bookended with more pain and suffering. But it’s not the end result Nietzsche is concerned with; it’s our disposition, our attitude. We can’t escape pain; we can’t escape the essential nature of our lives. But we do have a choice. We can give in and relent, or we can fight, persevere, and create a life worth living, a noble life. Pain is a fact; our evaluation of it is a choice. Pain can be valuable, and even welcome. Our trials and tribulations strengthen us and prepare us for greater deeds in the future.
Since Nietzsche isn’t about offering arguments but painting a picture of life that is laudable and positive, he often wrote in aphorisms—short yet profound and dense snippets. His style also made him one of the most oft-quoted philosophers around. You probably unknowingly know a handful of Nietzsche quotes yourself. For example, on pain and suffering, Nietzsche states: “The poison of which the weaker natures perish strengthens the strong—nor do they call it poison”;12 “There is a recipe aga
inst pessimistic philosophers and the excessive sensitivity that seems to me to be the real ‘misery of the present age’ . . . the recipe against this misery is: misery”;13 “There is as much wisdom in pain as there is in pleasure”;14 and most famously, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”15 Pain can be a great teacher, character builder, and often times our reaction to it, our complaining and whining that “life is hard,” is more illustrative of our spoiled natures than it is the unappealing nature of our existence. We need to see pain in the right light; we need to contextualize it and develop a proper attitude toward life, one of self-mastery, creation, and ultimately a kind of playfulness. Then, each individual failure, each accident will be redeemed within the greater context of a successful life, a life of one’s own making. An integrous life revalues the bumps and slumps and lurches insofar as they are part and parcel to a noble existence. Nietzsche sees himself as a redeemer of accidents. This notion is best illustrated through a thought experiment Nietzsche offers in The Gay Science.16
In aphorism 341, Nietzsche asks us to imagine the following scenario. What if some day or night, during your loneliest loneliness a demon fell upon you and decreed that your whole life up to that point, all its successes and failures, every detail would be relived by you over and over again for eternity. Herein lies Nietzsche’s notion of the eternal recurrence of the same. What would your reaction be? Would you curse him, or would you praise him? Would you fall to your knees weeping, or would you celebrate your good fortune? Your response is indicative of your view of life and whether you can redeem it in its totality even in your darkest hour.
This is a brutal test, one I am sure a great many of us would fail, if we were truly honest with ourselves. But Nietzsche isn’t for everyone. Although his view of life is meant for all of humanity, most people aren’t ready for him. So imagine your darkest hour, your loneliest loneliness. Imagine that darkest hour when things seem not only gloomy, but hopeless. Think of that dark hour when the compassion of others feels like pity and reinforces your own self-loathing. When you truly feel useless and death isn’t merely the inevitable end, but a quietude sorely longed for, if only it would come more quickly. A time when there is no room dark enough and no blanket heavy enough to make it all better. The kind of despair that results after you realize your spirit died years ago and left only a hollow corpse to carry out the mundane tasks of the day, dragged out of bed each morning by only some vague notion of duty. This is your darkest hour; this is when you see what you’re really made of. Can you muscle through and burst out the other end powerful and ready to take on the day, or do you cower, whimper, and whine and like a pessimist pray for the end? Can you declare it is all worth it, and you’d gladly do it all again because life is worth it? Or do you run and hide? What is nobler? What is more praiseworthy? Who do you want to be?
Today they can “cure” this kind of despair with pills. But before our culture of self-medication predominated Nietzsche demanded that people deal with their problems, the inevitable bumps and bruises of the human condition. Our desire for constant contentment has led us to become weak and cowardly and unable to envision or deal with this scenario and life in general. Nietzsche sees this despair as instructive. If in this darkest hour you can affirm your life and declare you would do it all over again and gladly, then you redeem your life in a singular moment of affirmation. This requires a strong spirit. This is the spirit Nietzsche wants to cultivate in the reader, the ability to be a yes-sayer. Nietzsche offers a picture of life that is the remedy to the nausea and sickness of modernity, its pessimism and nihilism. And one image he uses, one apropos to Dr. Seuss, is the child.
I Was Real Happy and Carefree and Young
In I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, the child does make it to Solla Sollew. After enduring obstacle after obstacle, from a Midwinter Jicker and a flubbulous flood, to Poozers and a frightful black tunnel full of billions of birds, so many troubles in fact he declares, “I wished I had never been born” (Trouble), he does arrive at Solla Sollew. Unfortunately, the doorman to Solla Sollew informs him, “There is only one door into Solla Sollew / And we have a Key-Slapping Slippard. We do! This troublesome Slippard moved into my door / Two weeks ago Tuesday at quarter to four. / Since then, I can’t open this door anymore!” (Trouble). The doorman can’t get in and informs the child that he will be travelling on to “Boola Boo Ball / On the banks of the beautiful river Woo-Wall, Where they never have troubles! No troubles at all!” (Trouble). The child has a choice to make: Should he follow the doorman and endure another treacherous journey to another supposedly problem-free town? The message is clear, there is no Solla Sollew, and there is no Boola Boo Ball. There is no place on earth or in Seussdom where you can go and escape your problems. Suffering is a fact of human existence; running is no use. There’s no where you can go to avoid the inevitable pitfalls of life. So if you can’t run away or otherwise remove all the problems from your life and you want to redeem your existence in the face of this intractable pain, what do you do? The child holds the key, or in this case, the bat. “Then I started back home / To the Valley of Vung. / I know I’ll have troubles. / I’ll maybe, get stung. / I’ll always have troubles. / I’ll maybe, get bit / By the Green-Headed Quail / On the place where I sit. / But I’ve bought a big bat. / I’m ready you see. / Now my troubles are going / to have trouble with me!” (Trouble).
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche explains the need to become a child by describing it as “innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling out of itself, a first movement, a sacred yes-saying.”17 To become a child is necessary in order to play the game of self-creation and affirmation; that is, a playful approach to life wherein we revalue and redeem its accidents in the face of our own creative potential. How fitting that Dr. Seuss’s protagonists are almost exclusively young. He writes for children using the image of a child; one who is adventurous, takes chances and risks, is not beholden by convention, demands, commands, and rules. The child is a creator, one who revalues his own life and plows through the world of wiggled roads and frightening creeks to come out the other side with a smile on his face. In fact, one common trope in Seuss’s work is breaking rules, going beyond borders, and traversing new lands in an attempt to create a life worth living. All is redeemed when that child lives his life, his way. That is success, 98 and ¾ percent guaranteed. It’s just too bad we forget this lesson as we grow older, complacent, and frightened.
Nietzsche’s response may seem simplistic. But he is not promoting naïve optimism or self-delusion. In fact, Nietzsche’s response is not only in line with pessimism but also only holds water if we presume the core of pessimism is correct—life is suffering and in need of redemption. Nietzsche recognizes the inherent suffering of life; that our existence is riddled with inescapable pain. But he refuses to give in to it and renounce life. Instead he approaches the pain joyfully, playfully, with vim and vigor. “For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is—to live dangerously.”18 Nietzsche declares we should head our ships out into uncharted seas. After all, as Seuss would say, “It’s opener there in the wide open air” (Places).
Nietzsche offers a perspective, one the reader has to come to through a transformative movement. Nietzsche offers us a style for living. Simply put, pessimism leaves a bad taste in Nietzsche’s mouth and a foul smell in the air. As a prescription for life it fails due to its sheer ugliness. But affirmation is much more florid. “To ‘give style’ to one’s character—a great and rare art.”19
Although Nietzsche doesn’t offer us arguments in the traditional sense, he is attempting to persuade us. How successful he is depends on the receptivity of the reader. Some will find this approach flawed or perhaps even fraudulent. After all, aren’t philosophers supposed to offer irrefutable arguments premised on absolute, objective truths? But Nietzsche chooses to venture into dangerous waters chartless and free to create novel answers and new app
roaches that are ready to be taken up by those who are ready for him. Such an adventurous and playful approach to life requires a strong and free spirit, one that is rare and must be cultivated. Nietzsche declares, “I place this new tablet over you: become hard!”20 In this life a strong yet playful constitution is needed, and a nice big bat helps, too.
CHAPTER THREE
Gertrude McFuzz Should’ve
Read Marx, or Sneetches
of the World Unite
Jacob M. Held
Pairing Dr. Seuss and Karl Marx (1818–1883) is risky. Doing so associates Dr. Seuss, beloved children’s author, with the specter of Marxism. This is problematic because some people might find such a combination infelicitous, not because Dr. Seuss and Marx are incompatible but because most people have a built in knee-jerk hostile reaction toward all things Marxist. Unfortunately, this reaction is not the result of being well informed on the topic; it’s probably because of the exact opposite. But I am going to use Seuss to explain and illustrate Marx and Marxism. My motivation is that I both like irritating people and think that several themes in several of Seuss’s works are illustrative of an important aspect of Marxism. I am going to focus on one paramount aspect of Marxism: alienation. My goal is modest. I plan simply to explain the humanism of Marxism by offering an account of alienation; what it is, its causes, and why it’s bad. But alienation as a phenomenon needs to be put into context, and the context is the capitalist mode of production.
You Capitalist Old Once-ler Man You!
Even if you’ve never picked up a political philosophy textbook or read a sentence of Marx you know one thing already: Karl Marx didn’t like capitalism. Why? Short answer: He was morally opposed to the capitalist way of distributing property since it seemed fundamentally inhumane. Long answer: Keep reading!
Dr. Seuss and Philosophy Page 5
