Goodbye Blue Monday : Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 1922-2007

What follows was written as a contribution to the first dead Philosopher's Carnival (Philosopher's Carnival #60) hosted by Dialectic - The blog of the University of Newcastle Philosophy club. Kurt Vonnegut Jr is an American writer of German descent most famous for the novel Slaughterhouse 5. Other works include Breakfast of Champions, Cats Cradle and Mother night.


"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane"
- Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut Jr is the only writer that I have written in defence of to an Australian newspaper. At the time I speculated that I must be getting old to have been moved to write to complain about the opinion of a journalist, for after all, everyone knows that they're full of it.

His 2005 book, 'A man without a country,' was being reviewed and the article included an interview with Kurt Vonnegut. I was horrified. The article took comments made in the interview and implied that Vonnegut was a supporter of terrorism.

I thought that this was preposterous and comically ironic.

In response I described Vonnegut as "one of the most humanitarian of writers I have ever read," for:

“Vonnegut seems to understand that we individual humans don't really know what's going on, and that the reasons for things are often unfathomable and not quite as simple as they may seem. In this way sometimes these unhappy events can even be humorous, and by laughing at their ridiculousness and the stupidity of those involved, including our own political leaders, we can try to be more understanding and 'human'.”

Kurt Vonnegut was the honorary president of the American Humanist Association from 1992 until his death in 2007. Humanism has many varied definitions and can be hard to characterise, yet for Vonnegut being a Humanist meant that one endeavoured to be kind whether there was a promise of reward or not.

"I am a humanist," he said, "which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishment after I am dead." (Niose, D. 2007, The Humanist 67.4, p.22)

This implies that one acts in such a way not for the end result but for the act itself.

Philosophers often ask the question of why a person should act morally. They sometimes ask for a reason that can guide their actions. They aim to establish a moral framework that in some way or shape is reflective of a reasonable world. Yet for Vonnegut it is easy to get the impression that no rational or reasonable reference is needed for the claim that one ought to be kind.

There was only one rule that he knew of…

“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” (Vonnegut, K. 1965, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater)

If there is a God, you have to be kind. If there is no God, you have to be kind. It’s neither because of the end result that might occur from behaving like so, nor is it from the existence of an underpinning moral order. Instead it is just a piece of advice from a thinker concerned with how one is to get along in a world that can sometimes seem unreasonable and irrational.

Vonnegut's approach can be compared to an inverse idea that everything happens for a reason, an idea that is often evoked to provide comfort. That whatever happens, either way, everything has a plan. Vonnegut’s characters often believe that there is a plan. Yet often the plan, when discovered, turns out to be frivolous, failing to provide the secret meaning that we were after.

“We are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different”

An important point to note about Vonnegut's humanism is that it is not just about whether a given idea is noble, nor about the intentions behind it. Again and again Vonnegut writes of people who have good intentions yet these intentions can nonetheless cause harm. Ideas (or rather ideals) like freedom and democracy may indeed be well intended yet if inhumane actions result from these ideas then can they be considered humane?

His approach asks us to question our ideas, to acknowledge that if we put our ideas on a podium and claim certainty without a willingness to question what we believe then we can often cause harm. How far can our well intended ideas go before we acknowledge that they, in having inhumane consequences, are in fact inhumane? If living a life of luxury with electricity and oil does harm to the world around us, and to our selves, through pollution and war, then are we living in a humane society?

Vonnegut doesn't present us with an easy answer for this question however he urges us to ask it, to question our actions in order to act humanely. The lack of certainty leaves us in a postmodern world wherein we find ourselves without an absolute point of reference to guide our moral compass. Good and evil are not fixed and there is no divine order that we can use to justify our ideas or actions to ensure humane outcomes. Yet this does not leave us stranded without ethics; instead, there is an even greater need for us to question the ideas we promote and the actions we pursue.

Humanism is often characterized as the belief that we humans can better ourselves, and by consequence the world around us, through our own efforts without the need of divine intervention. Often ideas like truth, knowledge, rationality or science are evoked as the tools we use to engender human welfare. Yet Vonnegut does not replace a divine order with a rational order. “The fruits of science so far, put into the hands of governments, have turned out to be cruelties and stupidities exceeding by far those of the Spanish Inquisition and Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible.” (Vonnegut 1992 The Humanist 52:6. p.3)

Furthermore, “Napalm, incidentally, is a gift to civilization from the chemistry department of Harvard University” (Ibid. p.3)

We are not perfect, we are fallible and despite our good intentions we make mistakes. Yet, even more to the point, we do not have a method, be it reason or science or divine truth, that unerringly steers us towards a humane society. Holding tightly to the righteousness of our cause by the claim that we are right and fair, progressive and democratic, while making the inverse claim that others are not, does not make us fair. Yet, despite that we are confronted with uncertainty while contemplating the cause of making a better world;

"God damn it, you've got to be kind."


See also: Vonnegut.com