Why we need the Humanities

The Sciences teach us how to deal with machines and mechanisms. Even Psychology is primarily interested in what we have in common with Rats and Pigeons. The Humanities, as the name implies, deal with what makes us uniquely human. Any job that requires us to deal with humans as humans is best prepared for by studying the humanities. This is because humans, unlike machines, cannot be understood fully by reducing them to mathematical algorithms. You learn to understand people by hearing stories about them: in History and in Literature. In Philosophy, you learn about the relationship between these different ways of understanding people and the mechanical world. If you don't learn to step back from the assumptions that are made while viewing the world scientifically--something all of the greatest scientists knew how to do--you end up treating everything, including people, as machines that are only there to serve your ends.

Society needs for everyone to be able to take that kind of broader perspective. That is why a college education is designed to teach you not only how to do a job, but to think carefully about what sort of job you ought to do. I think one of the reasons for the present financial and moral collapse is that the richest and most powerful people never took courses--or at least never took them seriously-- that forced them to ask questions of that sort. This produced a group of people who grew up with a value system that no sane person would ever embrace seriously if they took the time to question it: "He who dies with the most toys wins." Unfortunately, that is the value system subconsciously adopted by those who never question their value system. They got their toys and we lost.