The Reboot of Humanities

The Reboot of Humanities

How many miles is it from Provo to London?  It is a distance of 4896 miles.  How big is the sun? It is roughly 1,300,000 times the size of Earth.  These questions of empirical trivia provide as much insight into human nature as the following question: how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?  While it is evident that science is useful in relation to medicine, travel, and basic functions science is not the answer to all of life’s questions.  Science does not claim to be the infallible source of knowledge which modern ideology ascribes it to be—rather that is Scientism or the philosophy that states that science holds all answers and that scientific principles can provide answers to any question.  In a commencement address given by Leon Wieseltier to the graduates of Brandeis University, Wieseltier makes the argument that while science is a blessing to society scientism is a curse.  He further argues that where once culture was made up of art, music, philosophy, literature, languages, history, and religion culture now consists of efficiency, utility, and convenience.  After a day spent among the youth who can argue that humankind is ruled by cell phones, ipads, computers, and other various gizmos and gadgets?

                Today’s world is Cartesian.  The pursuit of knowledge is only the pursuit of information.  The humanities, once the core of any education, are disregarded as useless degrees that qualify one to do nothing but perhaps teach.  Once a noble profession, the teacher is now of less use to the modern than Siri.  This sorry state of affairs that rises from the fire lit by Descartes so long ago needs no education, for they have information—if they so desire, in the palms of their hands.  With education went culture and all things beautiful until we are left with a cold and sterile life, in some clinic somewhere man once named Earth.  Descartes preached his gospel of scientism and claimed that the wide spectrum of philosophies and religion eliminate the possibility that anything but science can answer any of life’s questions satisfactorily.  Science, who knows no morality or ethic, who is beyond good and evil, who is unlimited by God rules the day and the result is a society without purpose.

The Enlightenment Philosophers claimed that the meaning in life came from the return to a state of nature or to the strict protection of individual liberties.  Hobbes sought to protect liberty with a leviathan.  Rousseau attempted to render us children again. Locke desired that we become obsessed with materialism.  Each threw aside the knowledge that was apparent to the ancients that the purpose of life is from the divine and is to rise up and above our current state by living morally and mastering our passions.  Each sought to justify themselves and their dissatisfaction with their lives by a philosophy that either absolved them of all responsibility or allowed for no divinely ordained morality. 

A few scattered voices warn of the effect of this wave of vanity and pride.  Edmond Burke raised his voice to question the merit of this materialistic purpose to life.  He opposed the idea of an ever expanding list of rights and liberties.  He opposed the idea that man must be made equal for he recognized the inherent risk of tyranny in equality.  Later Alexis de Tocqueville worried that liberty and equality, unless checked by religion, would be at war.  If he could see modern America he would realize how right he was.  Today in the name of equality we cede our liberty.  Formerly, liberty was ceded to protect our liberties now liberty is only useful if it makes us equal. 

What does this equality have to do with society’s love affair with scientism?  The humanities protected society from a fall into machinery.  Wieseltier makes the claim that soon we will be little better than our machines.  As we progress, or perhaps digress, to a state where our knowledge is purely empirical data, if we dismiss the parameters of morality, and forgot to question the meanings behind life how will we be different from a computer.  A computer cannot demand why it does a function.  A computer cannot ponder the meaning of its existence or recognize the difference between a masterpiece and a child’s finger painting.    As the humanities are relegated to the back burners of society all the progress gained over the centuries, all noble traditions, all natural feelings will be culled from us.  Life will be empty of meaning and purpose.  Equality is understandable to a machine, liberty is not.  Faith, so necessary to life, joy so central to our existence are just words comprised of characters on a keyboard to a computer. 

Wieseltier begs and pleads that we study our humanities, that we stand as a final bulwark of culture against the tides of the unwashed philistine who seeks to define life in all of its complexity as a one dimensional object.  While his call is noble and his cause is just it is not enough.  It is not enough to study the humanities and gain knowledge; instead we must act.  We must support the arts; learn languages to communicate with other people, sacrifice efficiency and utility for humanity and gentility.  Live life in a noble manner and inspire others to convert to our cause.  There is no going back to society as before, but there is always a hope for progress as long as there is a single work of fiction, a single painting, a single concerto.  As we embrace what moves us beyond the numbers humanity may rise to new heights and our understanding, real understanding, of the world around us will grow.  Thus out of the ashes of the Scientistic takeover we may rise again, sure in the righteousness of our cause and motivated by that which can inspire to love and be passionate, emotions no computer or iphone will ever understand.