Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
I’ve spent my whole adult life within the ambit of the humanities. At an early age, perhaps junior high, the notion of a liberal arts education took hold. An education in disciplines for which an inner passion, a vocation, burns will produce the best person. Not, necessarily the best job. Just the best person.
Note, not a better person. But, the best person possible. Why? Our passions call from us the sum totals of our powers, render them available and useful. Therefore we might reach a peak of human potential, one described solely by our own history and our particular genetics.
Yes, this is a fuzzy idea, full of the wishy washy and the self-indulgent. Yes, it seems to come down right beside the point of an education, at least today’s education. Today it seems apparent to everyone that an education should enable you to get ahead. Get going. Start maximizing, not necessarily yourself, but your earning potential.
That is a far different thing from becoming the best person you can be. This is the person as tool, as instrument, sharpened and lubed for the truest fit in the gears of our economy. Not insignificant and a surprising number of people prefer to be tools, used by managers and companies, getting financial and status rewards along the way. Even so, tools, like their machines, need to be guided, shaped, aimed.
What is an appropriate, healthful, just, socially useful aim? Ah, now we have the entered the realm of the humanities. Weighing the lessons of one historical era against another’s. Investigating the variety of ways in which we can be human. Reading the tales and legends and novels and poems of others, so that we might know ourselves. No bomb will know where it should be dropped. Or why. Is the expansion of health care services to a population a wise, just act? How can we decide whether to go further than our moon? What brings beauty into our life? Who creates it?
Should the state interfere with individual’s nutrition? Exercise? Only with careful and sustained study of the human story can we make these kind of decisions. Ethical decisions. Aesthetic decisions. Social policy decisions. Even space exploration decisions.
Imagine. How might we decide as a world to engage a mission to Mars. Incredibly expensive. Dangerous. Exciting. Adventurous. I might begin with reading the diaries of Rogers and Clark. The journals of James Cook. Zeng He. The navigation methods of Polynesian islanders. Examining the archaeological record of human migration. What do we need to know? How have we come to know such things? What are the unexpected results of exploration? Are they cautions?
Of course, the politics and the economics of the day will press hard upon the answer, too. Here, too, the historical record, political history and economic history of joint endeavors would prove instructive.
My point? Neither the scientific feasibility, the economic practicality nor political realities can make us want to go. Can make us search for a way through the inevitable difficulties and barriers. Only decisions shaped by our common humanity, in the present and in the past, can guide us. Can make us decide it’s worth it, no matter what.
I don’t know. Perhaps this is all special pleading, the sentimental journey of one long committed to a life lived with books, ideas, art. All I can say is that the ancientrail of the humanities has been a rich vein for me. For my whole life. And continues to be.
