Liberal arts: maybe not

You may need to look at the previous blog to understand what a cargo cult is. It is a belief that superficial material reflects the internal structure. The picture on the outside of the can of frozen food container is the source of the food inside.

Referring to something as a cargo cult means that the people involved are seeing something superficial as fundamental to the structure.

I began thinking about Liberal Arts as the consequence of our belief that our successful commercial-technical society is somehow related structurally to the presence of Liberal Arts.

I suspect that they are not related. Maybe Liberal Arts exist by itself without commerce or technology. We teach Liberal Arts as though they were inherent in the structure of commerce, inherent in our social milieu. I doubt it.

Most people during the Second World War and afterwards asked a similar question when they wondered how the Third Reich grew out of the sophisticated German culture of Bach, Goethe and Kant?  

I say it didn't. The Liberal arts had no effect on the creation or suppression of the Third Reich.

Liberal Arts do not promote or suppress commerce or technology. They are irrelevant.

When I say this I must recognize how excited I was as a teenager to go from being a science geek to studying the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago.  I loved what I was studying.

But the Liberal Arts were irrelevant to my future role in commerce. I was excited by the moral debates and issues that I encountered in dealing with literature. I was even more excited by the analysis and understanding of my society that came from the social sciences. I loved the ambiguity of my new found knowledge, I loved the classroom debates and I loved the challenges in the world of morality.

Nevertheless I believe we have cargo cult that thinks artists, musicians and liberal arts make a positive contribution to commerce and technology. They probably don't.

I think we need to distill out of the vast panorama of the Liberal Arts what genuinely contributes to solid intellectual thought.  It may be a small part.