The Humanities: Killing Humanity Since, Well, Humanity

“So, what’re you studying?” If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard that in the last few weeks, I’d have almost half of what it costs to wash (and not dry) one load of laundry at Holy Cross. Having spent some time in the hospital, and so around medical professionals in general in the last few weeks (pause for applause), I’ve always felt uncomfortable giving a legitimate answer. Sometimes I just want to say things that don’t make sense like astronaut (not even a field of study) or big time pimpin’, but I never, ever want to say the truth: English and Medieval Studies.

The reason I blush when a doctor asks me what I study isn’t because I’m inherently ashamed of my life choices (though I probably should be). It’s because it murders conversations faster than the antibiotics I’m taking kill clostridium difficile. Well, that’s actually an overstatement. It does that most of the time. Occasionally, an especially genial medical professional will think that it’s awesome and ask me about the dames (it really isn’t a bad transition to the inevitable questions about your sex life), Dragon Age: Origins, or the quest for the Holy Grail. I usually smile, nod, and die a little bit on the inside. I can’t lie. That’d be a sin, and by that, I mean I’m not qualified to discuss any other field of study. And so, it ends. Silence generally ensues after a few more lines of generic dialogue. It often goes something like this:

Dr. Kevorkian: “So, what’re you studying?”
Me: “English and Medieval Studies.”
Dr. Kevorkian: “Oh, that’s different.”
Me: “Yeah, it’s a little out-there, but what isn’t?”
Dr. Kevorkian: “We’re gonna need to take your blood.”

And much like the above Dr. Kevorkian’s patients in real life, I am left feeling empty and lifeless. It occurs to me that people simply don’t respect the humanities. That somehow, because I don’t extract DNA for a living or try to usher in the robopocalypse, I am some antiquated font-bot barely fit to sell mechanical pencils out of my Gypsy wagon. People would rather I trained to rob the hard-working American people of their money by studying some abstract business discipline than to engage in a deeply humanizing educational process.

Now, I am a firm believer in a liberal education. Otherwise, I wouldn’t spend a fortune I don’t have every semester on a Jesuit college in urban Massachusetts. But even as Holy Cross viciously robs me of my future and the possibility of employment, I am hopeful. It’s not as if I think because I’ve read some Shakespeare and know who William Langland is that I’m automatically some kind of ascendant über-being to whom all lowly science-studying plebeians should bow. In fact, many of those studying the humanities spend more time reading Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault than engaging an actual text in any meaningful way. But I do believe, however, that to struggle with and attempt to understand the wisdom of our forebears is a formative experience.

I mean with all due respect, Socrates (for all his denying it) was probably wiser than Richard Dawkins will ever be. I tend to believe the same about Aristotle or St. Thomas Aquinas when compared to Isaac Asimov or Bill Gates. That isn’t to say scientists, engineers, and businessmen can’t be kind, cool, or wise. They just need to recognize that others can be those things to, that others aren’t wasting their lives. The human quest should be one for wisdom and not a rationalistic, technological understanding. There’s nothing wrong with attempting to innovate, with working to better our world. Just don’t look down on me because you think an English degree hardly prepares one for the breathtaking world of the business cubicle.

For as Fulton J. Sheen reminds us, “science is not wisdom.” And should we not strive for more than some misguided gnosis? Not to mention, have you seen Socrates’ beard? You don’t get one of those babies studying astrophysics.