Dr. Seuss and Philosophy
Page 7
Relatedness is an object relation that distinguishes between the self and other. Rootedness is equated to “brotherliness” and provides a foundation to the self similar to that found in traditional family ties. Sense of identity is opposed to conformity and, thus, is a perspective of uniqueness. The need for orientation and devotion is about grasping the world as a totality and locating one’s place within it. Finally, the fact that humanity is endowed with reason means that humanity demands transcendence. Human beings are not content with a passive existence; they need to be active, to become more than they currently are. Humanity’s demand for transcendence defines it as a creator, not solely a consumer.9 This account grounds Fromm’s distinction between the “having” and “being” modes of existence and sets the framework for explaining why buying things will never satisfy the inescapable human need to become part of the community as a unique, active, productive member. This is the hard-learned lesson of the Sneetches and Gertrude McFuzz. It takes them a whole book to learn that it’s not about what you have but what you are.
Fromm’s major point with respect to the “having” mode is that it destroys one’s communion with one’s fellow human beings through the dissolution of social bonds. The Sneetches seek to be recognized by their fellows. They need to be accepted as a part of the group, yet all the Star-Belly Sneetches recognize are stars, not the Sneetch beneath. So the Sneetches without must buy their way in. Their comrades only recognize their status as a possessor of things. Instead of relating to other Sneetches as people with merit and worth, they relate to things; namely, stars. Since the Sneetches without want to be recognized as valuable, they seek to buy that which is valued. Like Sneetches, the average worker tries to own their way to respectability and acceptance because it’s not about what or who you are, it’s about what or who you own. Is your car, phone, or TV the newest model? Is your wife, girlfriend, or significant other the prettiest or most desirable? Are you? What could you buy to be so?
But when all relations become relations between commodities or things, consumption becomes the primary mode of meeting the demand for social recognition. Individuals unable to form human bonds sate their desire for belonging through conformity by means of conspicuous consumption. One can best describe the culture of consumerism as the unbridled consumption of commodities for the satisfaction of psychological needs that cannot be satisfied through the practice of consumption. Advertisers know this. That’s why commercials are premised around the idea that you are unacceptable as you are, but you may be able to remedy the situation through just one more purchase. Consumption becomes the way in which we orient ourselves to the world and others.
Human beings also have the uniquely human need for a sense of identity and self-worth. However, in a consumer culture this can only be expressed through one’s market value. Since all things become commodified, one is only worth what she can sell herself for on the market and what she owns. She views herself as an object that possesses exchange value but not value in itself. She can thus add value to herself through the addition of possessions, skills, degrees, etc. She can add value by becoming the idealized product—the prettiest, most stylish product around. Consumption is thus not only the means by which one conforms in order to belong but also the means to acquiring value and, thus, satisfying the need for identity and self-worth. One is infused with the value of one’s possessions.10 This desire for acquisition is maintained in perpetuity since comparative worth fluctuates as quickly as new innovations hit the market. If one is only as valuable as one’s possessions, and the value of possessions is relative to their relation to other commodities, then as new and improved products hit the market one must acquire these in order to maintain their relative level of value. And so we go round and round. “Off again! On again! In again! Out again!” through the machines, round and about again, star on and star off, until we are dizzy and broke (Sneetches). There is always something newer, better, prettier, and Fix-It-Up Chappies will always make sure you know you “need” it. So long as they can convince you that you aren’t acceptable the way you are, then they can prey on your need to be so by selling the snake oil of superfluous consumer goods and the image attached to them. Anyone with daughters knows exactly what I mean. Fashion and makeup are premised on exploiting a need to belong by promoting an ever-changing and unreachable ideal of beauty and style. The only way to win this game is to refuse to play and find value in yourself, although the social consequences of integrity can be difficult to bear. So in the end, our need to be related to others is so powerful that often our fear of isolation promotes conformity.
With regard to conformity, another notable Marxist scholar, Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), states: “From the day of his birth, the individual is made to feel that there is only one way of getting along in this world—that of giving up his hope of ultimate self-realization. This he can only achieve by imitation.”11 One gives up hope of self-realization since one knows his life will be defined by the job he must take. His life won’t be his own. The best he can hope for is survival, not self-determination. One molds oneself to meet social expectations and accepts these as acceptable criteria on which to base one’s sense of identity and self-worth. One becomes what society expects one to be, at whatever cost. So we see the Sneetches driven to madness in an attempt to become what they expect others want them to be, owners of stars. They will not be satisfied until they own the right thing and are thus the right kind of Sneetch, but they’ll never own the right thing since the process demands that there never be an end to the process. McBean will see to this. His business is built on Sneetch insecurity and his ability to exploit it. McBean’s a good executive—he knows how to make profits, and he doesn’t worry himself over the needs of his customers or the effect he is having on them and their society. He knows he is making money, and that’s enough.
The problems with consumerism are expressed well through Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s (1903–1969) discussions of what they call the culture industry. Horkheimer and Adorno state: “The power of the culture industry resides in its identification with a manufactured need . . .”12 Manufactured needs like Thneeds, stars, or multiple feathers are the commodities capitalism trades in and can trade in since we as workers/consumers are willing to try to buy our way to satisfaction so long as we remain essentially dissatisfied. But we will remain perpetually dissatisfied until our lives are free expressions of our essential selves, which is impossible under a capitalist mode of production.
Since many people don’t or can’t express themselves through their work, they get no satisfaction from their lives. Instead, they spend the majority of their lives attempting to develop a sense of self and belonging through the consumption of manufactured needs or doping themselves into acceptance by popping not berries, but pills.13 Adorno explains: “In a supposedly chaotic world it [the culture industry] provides human beings with something like standards of orientation, and that alone seems worthy of approval.”14 Our genuine human needs become the condition for the possibility of our submission to a manufactured consumer culture and massive drug industry peddling “cures” to the problem of capitalism. The problem with Gertrude McFuzz and the Sneetches isn’t that there is anything wrong with either of them—every child sees this. The problem is that insofar as they are “human” they have needs that can only be satisfied through proper interpersonal relationships. But their culture has been set up so as to deny them this. Instead all they are offered is false cures. They buy stars or take pills and foolishly believe their dissatisfaction will go away. But the problem was never with them, it was with how their societies were organized. And no amount of stars or self-medication, no amount of adornments or medicines is going to fix Gertrude or the Sneetches, because they aren’t broken—their culture is; it is not a home for them.
You Can Teach a Sneetch
Human beings, like birds and Sneetches, are psychologically vulnerable as a result of specific needs that can only be satisfied through social interaction. T
hese needs, when unfulfilled, make one more vulnerable to manipulation. In fact, consumerism capitalizes on human vulnerability and exploits it. What Fromm and company argue is that a fundamental human need is to belong; that belonging, connectedness, and rootedness are necessary for a sense of identity and worth; that human beings are essentially social in virtue of these needs; and when denied the possibility to realize themselves as social producers, they compensate. But the answer to this problem is not newer gadgets or better drugs but to organize society in such a way that each person is capable of expressing themselves through their labor, through their productive activity—a society wherein one’s work is freely chosen and meaningful. The answer to these problems is not to dope the Sneetches or Gertrude McFuzz into complacently, not to tell them to deal and get along as best they can, but to reform society.
Is this idea of making society a home to all of its members utopian or idealistic? Yes. But what’s wrong with being idealistic? Isn’t that why we read Seuss to children, to teach them life lessons and ideals that we hope they’ll have the courage to exemplify as they grow older? The Sneetches learned their lesson. Luckily, they caught on that what matters is being a certain kind of Sneetch, not a certain brand of Sneetch. Gertrude McFuzz learned her lesson as well. “That one little feather she had as a starter . . . now that’s enough, because now she is smarter” (McFuzz). Gertrude learns that the ideal of beauty, of feather possession, is artificial, constructed, and meaningless and buying into that image leads to dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, and eating disorders. Better to be Gertrude McFuzz droopy-droop feather and all than a shallow copy of a corporate, mass-marketed “ideal.”
Marx objected to capitalism because of what it does to people. It harms their relations to themselves and others by denying them the capacity for self-
expression through free, conscious activity. People need to be recognized for what and who they are, and wage labor doesn’t provide that. But the need doesn’t go away just because it is unfulfilled, it manifests itself in other behaviors. When our work is unsatisfying we compensate with other ways of being recognized and belonging, ways that ultimately culminate in a culture industry selling worthless goods that are poor substitutes for true self-realization and meaningful relationships. Marx may be an easy target when it comes to everyday conversations. He’s demonized most often by those who know nothing about him. So stick to Seuss if you must. The Once-ler and McBean are notorious characters, and we’re surrounded by them. We read our children Seuss and tell them to be individuals, to be themselves, but then we send them off to school where we tell them to “play the game.” They continue on to college where we pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to buy them MBAs hoping they’ll become the next Once-ler. We do this while lamenting our jobs, the result of doing the same thing we now ask them to do, only hoping maybe they’ll make a little more money so they can have a little more stuff. Should we? Criticism serves the purpose of making the status quo justify itself by measuring it against what could or ought to be. Doing so helpfully makes us a little bit wiser. And if you can teach a Sneetch, we can’t be far behind.
CHAPTER FOUR
Socratic Seuss: Intellectual Integrity and Truth-Orientation
Matthew F. Pierlott
Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.
—U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN, 1991–2002)1
If philosophy is concerned with anything, it is concerned with developing and maintaining intellectual integrity in ourselves and others. Philosophy doesn’t aim only to further knowledge and to assess knowledge claims. It also aims to orient individual characters toward the truth and promotes self-reflection on philosophical practice itself in order to best guard against the disintegration of its methodology. It does so because it understands being oriented toward the truth as a component to living well. Why is the truth valued? First, it seems by nature we generally desire the truth for its own sake, even though at times we might fear the pain associated with knowing a particular truth. We are curious, and oh, the places we’ll go to satisfy that curiosity. Second, we certainly desire the truth for its instrumental value. Knowledge helps us navigate the world so that we can live as we wish. Think of Gertrude McFuzz being happy with one feather once she comes to understand the implication of having too many. So the philosophers within us want the truth, and intellectual integrity is an essential component of the properly philosophical character.
What is intellectual integrity? However one eventually defines it after philosophical debate and reflection, it will probably involve all of the following
aspects: (1) being open to different ideas; (2) carefully considering the strength of the support for those ideas; (3) drawing out the implications of those ideas, including their coherence with other plausible ideas; (4) reflecting on the limits of one’s ability and methods to carry out the previous two tasks; and (5) honestly representing the results of the previous three tasks both to others and oneself. While there may be more to include and philosophers have and will explore complications even with these components, these aspects serve as a basis for beginning to think about intellectual integrity. What ties them all together is how they promote truth-oriented activity. If I care for the truth (which I should, of course), I will try to develop my capacities and habits with regard to these tasks.
One threat to intellectual integrity in our own person and in others is sophistry, the use of seemingly plausible and persuasive rhetoric for ulterior motives (e.g., either to deceive others or to impress them for personal gain). The traditional story about the Sophists of ancient Greece has Socrates opposing them in principle and practice. They charged a fee, while he did not. They claimed to be experts, while Socrates humbly admitted his limits. They taught how to be clever in one’s words in order to make weak arguments appear stronger, while Socrates modeled clarity in thought to expose arguments for how strong they really were. They promoted persuading others to further your own agenda, while Socrates emphasized self-examination for the sake of the truth. In short, Socrates attended to his own intellectual integrity and promoted it in others, while the Sophists did not. So, Socrates is praised for striving for wisdom, not just its appearance, and becomes the model for genuine philosophical inquiry.
If we accept that my list above is fair, then we should expect Socrates to embody those aspects fairly consistently. It’s not clear to me that he always does. In Plato’s Apology, in particular, Socrates appears to engage in sophistry. For example, he gets his accuser Meletus to specify the charge of impiety toward the gods as an accusation of atheism.2 Then he argues that Meletus accuses him of teaching new spiritual ideas, and since Athenians traditionally believe spirits are gods or their children, Meletus must think that Socrates believes in gods.3 Of course, what Athenians conventionally believe and what Meletus accuses Socrates of are both beside the point. Does Socrates believe in the traditional gods, or not? Socrates cleverly diverts our attention from the question at hand, obscuring the truth in the process. Nevertheless, the character of Socrates does spur reflection on the nature of intellectual integrity and its value, as well as threats to it. Thus, the stereotype of the Sophist can regulate our own tendencies if we are mindful not to imitate it. Furthermore, our resources are not limited to Plato and Socrates. After all, we have Dr. Seuss.
Next, I will explore how Seuss helps us stay alert to the potential dangers of becoming distracted by interests other than the truth in our interactions with others and with respect to our own endeavors. Seuss helps us by giving illustrations both of the drives and desires that engender dishonesty and those that if left unchecked can also end up misaligning us. Like Plato’s Socrates, Seuss acts as the gadfly, biting us awake whenever we’re weary of attending to our intellectual integrity.
Green Eggs and Bull
If Sam-I-Am asked you if you liked green eggs and ham, what would you say? I once tried to make this Seussian treat for my young children, using green food coloring in scrambled eggs. My
daughter took a look at my masterpiece and scrunched her nose. “I don’t like it,” she reported. Whether you blame her or not for her response, one thing is sure: like the protagonist in Seuss’s famous piece, she had not tried them. So, what are we to make of her definitive claim that she does not like them?
Obviously, her claim is meant to ensure that she doesn’t have to try the odd-looking food. But the claim is not one she can really verify, since her experience of the green eggs was limited to its looks. One extreme possibility is that her claim is a lie. She is stating as a fact something that she does not know as a fact and is therefore engaging in a deceptive activity, trying to avoid an unusual cuisine. Of course, interpreting a four-year-old’s simple response as a conscious effort to mislead is rather presumptuous. Perhaps it is better to just say that she, like Sam-I-Am’s friend, is spewing “bullshit.”
While it may seem surprising, “bullshit” has become something of a technical term in philosophy. Ever since Princeton’s professor emeritus of philosophy, Harry G. Frankfurt, reprinted his essay “On Bullshit” in 2005, philosophers have started to explore the concept in greater depth with renewed intensity.4 According to Frankfurt, a liar retains an implicit respect for the truth, while a bullshitter does not. Frankfurt states, “One who is concerned to report or to conceal the facts assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and knowable.”5 In the act of lying, a liar assumes that there is a truth to lie about, wishes to hide that truth from her victim for some reason, and intentionally speaks falsely or at least misleadingly.6 In other words, a liar is still truth-oriented, just like a truth-teller.7