The Dark Side of Dr. Seuss

When the system lives in you

A lot of people probably don't know this, but Dr. Seuss, the guy who gave us these iconic cheerful children's books, actually had a dark side.

The artwork that he privately painted at night never saw the light of day while he was alive.

This collection of artwork is known as "The Midnight Paintings,".

Seuss intentionally kept it secret throughout his life.

Seuss tried his hand at writing books for adults, but they weren't well received. They didn’t sell.

So because he didn't want the midnight paintings to negatively impact his career in children's literature, Seuss instructed that the collection be released to the public only after he died.

I think a lot of creatives and artists go through similar experiences even today. They have ideas that they want to explore, but they also know that they have to make money.

Dr. Seuss' Midnight Paintings is another demonstration of how, when we live in a capitalist society, there's no preventing that capitalist society from also living in us. It affects the projects that we pursue. It affects the forms of self-expression that we choose to publicize.

It’s like the phrase says, “if it doesn’t make money, it doesn’t make sense”, if money is to central determiner of survival in a society.

How different the world would be if sustainability… or happiness… or well-being were highly valued instead.

-Felecia For The Win

Felecia is a software engineer by trade but a philosopher at heart who has amassed a following of over 500K on TikTok by talking about society. Felecia chats about social constructs, social experiments, social programming, and social psychology.