Friday, April 4, 2008
The Advanced Generation and Humanities
Are technology and science able to install the same personal values as humanities? What we take from playing with gadgets and then applying it to the real world, is it the same as applying the use/knowledge of humanities? My answer would be…uh no. In some shape or form, everyone experiences humanities. Whether it is reading a good book, listening to music, seeing a play, creating art, etc., the humanities will always influence a number of the people. Regardless of funding, humanities will ultimately fight to survive. There will be those who hope for the best and devote their careers to their passions. I fear however, that the power of technology will create complete laziness among other problems. This may likely diminish the source of humanities (those who produce them), and create a whole new sense of the world. Humanities do not work in a negative way, they only enrich and enable the individual. I don’t see how a dominating technological society will do the same. At least most all of us acquire some form of education in the arts, but can you imagine a world without them or just growing up on technology alone? It’s a scary thought. With or without humanities, do you think you would be a different person and/or society would be a place?
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4 comments:
I think that without the humanities in our world, if all we had was science and technology we would all be just a bunch of robots with no opinions or individual thought processes; we would just be fed facts and information. I do think though that as technology continues to grow and advance, the humanities as we see them today (in the form of books and what not) will adapt and reinvent themselves according to the technology. I don't think the humanities will ever be truly lost, they may be different but not lost.
I don't think that the necessity or the importance of the humanities is in question, but whether we should fund literature departments to study humanisitic texts. It's true that everyone's had an experience with the humanities, whether it's through music, dance, or english literature, but the question do people actually apply the morals and values they learn from these texts to their lives. The only exceptions to this are the religious texts. I think that the humanities will always be needed to remind us of those moral and values, whether we follow them or not.
I agree. Hahaha, I've wanted to say that all semester. I agree that the humanities will fight to survive. If we viewed our culture as a person, the humanities would be part of the soul and part of the right hemisphere of the brain. We need both of these and even if they survive in fragmented reading clubs and private colleges, they will survive. Some people will always recognize the value of the humanities. I also have to express my appreciation for the expanded definition of the humanities. I think Stanley Fish's definition was narrow minded and simplistic so as to assist his construction of a solid argument. The humanities is so much more than just text. It is those many forms of expression that relate to writing. Music lyrics are poetic, play scripts are dramatic, so on and so forth. I think that we would be drones that lived off of meaningless entertainment without the humanities. I also firmly believe we would see a drop in morality and ethics with the halting of humanities education. Maybe si, maybe no.
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