Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [61]
Postmodernity doesn’t seek to discover and communicate eternal truths. Postmodernity expresses a perspective, a point of view of a doubter, questioner, and adventurer. The Postmodern is about limitlessness. This perspective is often uncomfortable for the same reason Socrates’ questioning was unsettling; it requires that we always admit our ignorance while valuing the journey. It takes courage to walk beyond the boundaries and begin negotiations with the unknown. But this approach makes up for its lack of certainty with its beauty, a style of life worth living. It’s okay to head straight out of town and into the pagus; remember, “it’s opener there in the wide open air” (Places).
CHAPTER EIGHT
From There to Here, from Here to There, Diversity Is Everywhere
Tanya Jeffcoat
So often, when people talk about diversity they immediately start worrying about political correctness and thought police. But respecting diversity is about recognizing the cultural diversity surrounding us and analyzing the ways we treat people who are in any way different than us. And those differences are often so slight that strangers might not even recognize the distinctions—after all, to a stranger a Sneetch is a Sneetch. But within Sneetch society, the presence or absence of a star becomes a marker that determines the lived experience of each individual Sneetch. Whether according to skin tone, nationality, gender, sexuality, or possessions, humans exhibit the same sort of in-group/out-group behavior as the Sneetches. And, as Frantz Fanon so vividly points out,1 there are physical as well as psychological ramifications for those deemed as out-group, far beyond “moping and doping alone on the beaches” (Sneetches).
Too often, the anger and depression associated with being a member of the out-group becomes desperation to join the privileged, even if it means forgetting (or despising) what we are. The Plain-Belly Sneetches modify their bodies to fit the ideals of the Star-Belly Sneetches, and humans likewise turn to a variety of “Fix-It Up Chappies” for alterations toward some totalizing norm or standard against which we must conform. Some turn to skin lighteners or plastic surgeries, while others attempt to purge their accents or deny their sexual preferences, and yet others sacrifice their families and their health in their attempt to climb the socioeconomic ladder, but, to one extent or another, all have fallen prey to the totalizing, one-size-fits-all tendencies and the normative hubris of the status quo. Dr. Seuss recognizes the harms that humans visit upon one another based upon such beliefs, yet still finds hope that “We can . . . and we’ve got to . . . do better than this.”2
If we’re to do better, then we must determine what stands in our way. The first obstacle is normative hubris, which is the arrogance that assumes that one way—OUR way—is the best way, not only for ourselves but for everyone else. Every society has norms or standards; without them, societies couldn’t function. But there is a difference between noticing that different communities drive on different sides of the road and making the claim that WE drive on the correct side of the road (or the more logical or morally superior side) and that everyone who does differently is wrong, illogical, mentally warped, or immoral, even if their way of doing things works just fine.
We see normative hubris in The Butter Battle Book, as the Zooks and the Yooks both are absolutely certain that their way of buttering bread is the best and only way to do so. Each group assumes the other is somehow inferior for having made a different cultural choice: The Yooks go so far as to claim that “you can’t trust a Zook who spreads bread underneath! / Every Zook must be watched! / He has kinks in his soul!” (Butter).
Normative hubris thus provides the first stumbling block to doing better, but it sets the stage for totalizing tendencies to develop within people. Once people decide that