The humanities are what make us human. Though this may seem obvious, the word humanities has two meanings. First, it is defined as a collection of all human beings, or as human nature. Second, it is the study of the classics. It makes sense then that literature, art, language – the food of artists and philosophers – are what make us human.
The classical arts and humanities rarely take the spotlight anymore; if they do, it’s often to highlight a divorce between A-list actors, to discuss an album drop, perhaps to talk about the growth of bilingualism in the U.S. Seldom do Shakespeare, Whitman, Dickinson, Plath, Monet, Michelangelo, or any of their peers get mentioned in popular culture. It’s disheartening when kids grumble about reading “Hamlet” or sigh at Sylvia Plath’s poetry. The classics, for our generation, have descended from triumphantly overarching to just old and dusty. The meaning is gone.
Young people now seem to find joy in rap, graffiti, social media, over-sharing, beach-reads, and their cell phones. All of those things are great in their own way, but moderation has gone out of fashion, along with Poe’s darkness and Whitman’s epiphanies. Why is this? Why have art and literature and philosophical questions that could change and shape our cultural lives lost meaning to us?
Created out of expression, rebellion, and pioneering, classical works are timeless – or so we thought. It saddens me when people say “Romeo and Juliet” is a love story. I cringe when a friend thinks Plath really just likes watermelons. There is no more hunt for deeper meaning or exploration in the humanities.
The need for instant gratification has taken control of Western culture. As-seen-on-TV ads, billboards, radio announcements, silly apps, and the like only hammer this home. The average person’s interest in art extends to a monthly movie theater visit and putting a highly pigmented filter on an Instagram photo with the tag #artsy. School essays are laughed at and great novels are Sparknoted just to nab the A. Learning now seems focused around a letter grade and a GPA, instead of learning for the sake of enjoying knowledge.
The humanities are what make us human. With them pushed under the rug, how human are we? Are we just mindless robots with our heads in our handheld screens? Are we fulfilling ourselves by supersizing meals and obsessing over celebrity tweets? What has our political system become focused on? I don’t know what is left that lets us call ourselves human.
We must restore public appreciation for the classics. We as a society need to move away from instant gratification and toward asking bigger questions about life, the future, the unknown. The classics can be written again. Written even in an adapted way, like an educational but modern musical, or retellings of classic novels. As our society adapts, so must the definition of “classic.”
It is up to our generation to decide what will make our discoveries and endeavors classics for the future. We must decide how the humanities can make us human again.