The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss: The Lorax

Psalm 8

July 12, 2015

Mark S. Bollwinkel

 

The first Earth Day was held April 22, 1970 as a national environmental "teach-in".  It was sponsored by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson.  For many Americans it presented new concepts for recycling metals, glass and plastic. Today we have organized recycling as a civic duty.  It introduced "ecology" to the American consciousness, the notion that the natural and biological systems of the earth are all connected.   What effects one aspect of the natural order has consequences for all.  Today, Earth Day is celebrated each year in more than 192 countries and is coordinated by the Earth Day Network.

One year after the original Earth Day, Ted Geisel, under his pen name Dr. Seuss, published The Lorax (Random House, 1971) a polemic fable illustrating the danger that corporate greed poses to nature.

In the story, a young boy living in a town visits a strange isolated man called the “Once-ler” who never appears fully in illustrations; only his arms are shown. The boy pays the Once-ler fifteen cents, a nail, and the shell of a great-great-great grandfather snail to explain why the area is in such a run-down state. The Once-ler explains to the boy how he once arrived in a beautiful, pristine valley containing happy, playful fauna that spent their days romping around blissfully among "Truffula trees". The Once-ler proceeded to cut down the Truffula trees to gather raw material to knit "Thneeds," a ridiculously versatile invention of his, "which everyone needs". Thneeds could be used as a shirt, a sock, a glove, a hat, a carpet, a pillow, a sheet, a curtain, a seat cover, and countless other things.

By cutting down the tree, however, he summoned the Lorax who "speaks for the trees, for the trees have no tongues" and warned the Once-ler of the consequences of cutting down the Truffula trees.   The Once-ler ignored him, instead calling his relatives to come and work in his factory.   Soon as the Thneed industry kept expanding, the once beautiful area became choked with pollution. Frustrated by the Lorax, the Once-ler declared his intention to keep "biggering" his operations, but at that very moment, they heard the very last Truffula tree get cut down. Without raw materials, his factory shut down; without the factory, his relatives left. Then the Lorax, silently, with one "very sad, sad backward glance", lifted himself by his posterior and flew away through the clouds.

The Once-ler lingered on in his crumbling residence where he dwelt in great distress, and he pondered over a message the Lorax left behind: a stone slab etched with the word "Unless". He realized that the Lorax meant that unless someone cares, the situation will not improve. The Once-ler then gives the boy the last Truffula seed and tells him to plant it, saying that if the boy grows a whole forest of the trees, "the Lorax, and all of his friends may come back." (paraphrased from wikipedia)

Despite protests by the logging industry, The Lorax became a huge best seller, was named one of the "Teacher's Top 100 Books for Children" by the National Education Association (2007) and was adapted for TV (1972) and made into a feature film in 2012.

Whether one agrees with its conclusions or not, this children's book vividly describes the challenge between self-interest and the common good. 

Few can deny the power and potential of self-interest in a society.   Individual creativity, initiative and determination, when harnessed by a great idea, are the engine of economic and technological development.  That's true of the farmer in India trying to increase the yield of a rice crop.  That's true of a garage full of young High School geeks who back in 1976 thought that there might be a market for personal computers.  Such individual initiative can make huge contributions to the common good.

Or not.

In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005) UCLA Professor Jared Diamond studies a number of historical examples of social collapse, the rapid decline or extinction of human communities.  He looks at the Iron Age Norse/Viking settlements in Greenland, the Polynesia society of Easter Island, the Mayan collapse in Central America and the East African Rwandan genocide in 1994 among other examples.  In each case he can point to environmental factors leading to civil collapse such as deforestation or slash and burn agriculture, the introduction of unsustainable livestock or climate change.  But more than that in each case the leaders of these societies put personal wealth, status or power above the common good.  The line between self-interest and the common good is crossed when greed enters the picture.  It can ruin a civilization, or so Dr. Diamond argues.  

On the positive side, the professor suggests that we can determine our future much more than external influences.   Haiti and the Dominican Republic are the perfect example; same island, same environment but a far, far different history of human choices along the journey of their development; the Dominican Republic an example of huge success, Haiti an abysmal failure suffering a series of collapses.  The choice is always ours.

In a scene from the movie version of The Lorax, the Once-ler and the Lorax confront each other over the plan to chop down all of the trees:

The Lorax: “Which way does a tree fall?”

The Once-ler: “Uh, down?”

The Lorax: “A tree falls the way it leans. Be careful which way you lean.”

“Be careful which way you lean”.  Self-interest and the common good or self-interest verses the common good, the choice is always ours.

In the first creation poem in Hebrew Scriptures “on the sixth day” it is written:

God blessed humanity, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.....God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. (Genesis 1:28-31)

Today we interpret the word "dominion over" to mean the stewardship of the earth not its “domination”.   Humanity's rule over the environment is meant to be as care taker, to mirror God's intentions in the creation itself.

That is one point from Psalm 8, our lesson for this morning:

Yet you have made [humanity] a little lower than God,

      and crowned them with glory and honor.
     You have given them dominion over the works of your hands...

When we steward the environment rather than merely exploit it we are the hands and feet of God who intended creation as an abundant and beautiful blessing for all.

In the inauguration of a new King in Israel, the priests and people sang the following words reminding the King that the environment's ability to provide abundant prosperity to the people was directly tied to his duty to insure justice for all:

Give the king your justice, O God,

         and your righteousness to a king’s son.
      May he judge your people with righteousness,
         and your poor with justice.
      May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
         and the hills, in righteousness.
      May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
         give deliverance to the needy,
         and crush the oppressor.  (Psalm 72:1-4)

The writers of Hebrew Scripture understood that the ethic of the common good included the earth.  In fact they knew that what was good for all people and what was good for the environment were intimately connected.  I would say spiritually connected.  Professor Diamond documents what happens when greed disconnects a society from that ethnic.  And Dr. Seuss reminds us of that in The Lorax.

Before you go out to hug a tree and spit on a logger, did you know that California among other states requires that for every tree cut down for commercial lumbering an equal number of trees must be planted? (Paul Frisman, OLR Research Report, "Reforestation Law in Oregon and Selected Other States", 10/16/2002).  Although greed can corrupt any industry, forestry is a completely renewable resource with proper stewardship. 

Our planet's addiction to non-renewable energy resources will eventually end just as the Thneed industry ended when that last Truffula tree fell.  How we get to that transition and how much damage will be done to the earth along the way is really up to us the consumers and our leaders.

The Lorax ends with the Once-ler entrusting the last and only Truffula tree seed to the boy who plants it and nurtures it into a thriving forests.  The animals return and the city rejoices...and in the movie version the boy gets the girl...this is Hollywood after all!

Dr. Seuss' point can be found in the dialogue between the boy and the Once-ler:

“But now," says the Once-ler, "now that you're here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.”

Our religious tradition would suggest that's a spiritual matter as well.

 

Amen.