Excellent article by David Brooks here. It’s about how people tend to forego education in the humanities when the economy is down. Brooks, however, makes a compelling case for why the humanities are still important and relevant in the world today. He writes about how the humanities teach you to communicate, how they teach you the language of emotion, how they help you to understand analogies, and how they put you in touch with the “Big Shaggy,” that human inner beast that causes people to do crazy things. I’m not sure why Brooks named the beast after a character from Scooby Doo, but it works for me. It reminds me a bit of the Hairy Man from Iron John. If that’s where it comes from, I wonder if the imagery is or should be the same for women.
Anyway, I agree with him. Steve Jobs said that the most important class he ever took was a calligraphy class at Reed College, which helped him develop the thinking behind fonts at Apple. He’s not doing too badly these days.
I liked this quote:
If you spend your life riding the links of the Internet, you probably won’t get too far into The Big Shaggy either, because the fast, effortless prose of blogging (and journalism) lacks the heft to get you deep below.
It’s true–you need to delve deep. That’s why I always try to recommend books whenever I can. I also try to recommend travel–to get out of your comfort zone and to meet people face to face. Things look different when you feel another person’s humanity.
I like also how Brooks addresses the fact that not all systematic models work for humanity. Talking about the economics of dating, for example, is fun, but at the end of the day we’re driven by passion not calculations.
If I could do it all over again, I’d do only the humanities in college. Your education lasts you the rest of your life, and it’s best not to make decisions based on short term goals. I think too many Asian Americans and Asian American parents are focused only on survival classes–the sciences, business, law. We need to get in touch with Big ol’ Shaggy Waggy.
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Nice comment. As a creative writing major, I wandered for a long time before finding an outpost in corporate America. And yes, Humanities helped me excel at writing press releases, memos, and inter-office e-mails. I was surprised to work with many “writers” who had never read Hugo, Solzhenitsyn, or even Steinbeck. A literary reference was completely lost on them. They never knew that the bit of marketing lingo they liked came from Babbit, or a slogan for one of our events was almost directly lifted from Shakespeare by way of West Side Story. Those are wonderful, private moments you experience every day when you can see the seams.
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Thanks, Craig!
The great thing about the humanities is that they expand your expectations. They help you to see what is possible outside of the obvious.
Check out some of the comments under Brooks’s article. I’m amazed at the diverse range of opinions on the subject.
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