Justifying the humanities

Is the humanities really a luxury? The fact that we have the time or the "leisure" of critically exploring thought, is that something that we feel like we have to justify?

Why are the humanities important?

Behind the humanities is something soft and intangible. It is what drives civilization beyond the base. But can one really say that it is a luxury? But then again, isn't first-world civilization precisely that? We live in relative luxury, despite people having to work every day to get by. "Getting by" can still mean that we have food, shelter, running water, electricity, relative security, and, of course, an Internet connection.

Can we really get away with saying "it's important; you really can't see it"?

One of the best cases I've read on the defense for the humanities is that with the humanities, we would lose the ability to think critically. I think that by extension, because critical thinking is essential to survival, the humanities become essential.

Can the fight for equality, social justice, and all the problems of the world exist without the humanities? I would argue that the very movements that we go through stem from the thinking that is done in the humanities.

And yet...

Something about fighting for something intangible makes me uncomfortable. I feel like I'm grasping at straws, even if I know that they exist and they are important.

Society or perhaps the confines of my own mind has made me believe that somewhere and somehow, the things that I do and the things that I think are important to living are not "worth" it, that there is something fundamentally wrong with exploring the depth of nature, the mind, the human condition, the intellectual. Or whatever you want to call it. Or whatever you want to romanticize it to.

Whatever you  may think "it" to be.

What is it that we do? What gives it meaning? What makes it important?

Does there have to be justification?

What is the use? Should there be a use? To say that it is simply an exercise of the rich is to forget that entire movements have been forged from these "idle" thoughts and explorations of the beautiful. Entire civilizations have changed and the very foundation of the way society works has been shaken.

And yet...

Perhaps I'm too stuck on the tangibly utilitarian. If the palpable output of the humanities is an argument that the people in the past have done things that were interesting or revolutionary during their time but means nothing during ours, then what of it?

I don't think I'll ever get a pretty answer out of this. But I still feel that there is merit and worth in exploring the humanities.

Pictures

We try to capture moments of our lives or moments of beauty through pictures and it is never enough. The image we capture becomes an object that is distant from what we felt at the moment. We forget that memory captures best what pictures cannot. The moment into memory becomes the experience again. By absorbing all of that single moment into the memory of our senses, we can recreate the beauty that we so fruitlessly try to capture in a still image.

The clutter of one's past

I scrapbook or try to.

I feel like I have some kind of inherent desire to hold onto the past. Perhaps to record it so as not to forget it, which I often do. However, this desire to save everything ends up taking up space and I guess I ended up with this thought:

We clutter up our lives with things of the past and with it comes all the accompanying burdens that occupy both physical and mental space.

Perhaps I need to let go of things or just learn to throw my shit away. Honestly now.

On a completely different note, I've been watching a lot of TV shows lately. I think perhaps I need human interaction. Oddly enough, watching TV in some odd way seems to satisfy this desire (if it indeed is something that I feel like I need. I've come to realize that it's an unfulfilling waste of time because it's incredibly passive. TV allows people to be social without the risk and trouble of having to actually be social and deal with the navigation required for such endeavors.

I should get out more.