[Serious] The Humanities

[LadyForCamus]

People currently consider questions of values, sympathy and the attainment of the good life outside of a religious framework, so it would appear to be a moot point.

Boru

That's right. And since the religious framework is no longer as persuasive, we can ask, "what framework do we use instead?" 

Matthew Arnold and others suggested we should look to the arts. 

It looks to me as though the norms of the marketplace as propagandized through pop culture are strong now.

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I’m still not sure what has been lost, and why we need supplement religion with something else.

For many years, in Europe and Euro-centric areas (e.g. the US and parts of South America) Christianity supplied the vocabulary and framework for thinking about non-marketplace questions.

What is valuable in life? What is our duty to others? How should I deal with my own moral failures? etc. etc. 

I AM NOT saying that Christianity gave consistent or even good answers to these questions. Only that Christianity was the framework. 

I AM NOT saying that Christianity is required for people to be moral. Only that if people don't have one system, they almost certainly have another. 

I AM NOT saying that only Christianity has done this in history; different times and places had different systems. 

I agree with Matthew Arnold that if Christianity is not the framework for answering these questions, then we should think carefully about what we do have. I happen to think that the arts and humanities -- the best that has been said and thought -- can help us with these issues. 

I also think that if we don't think clearly about our values we are likely to revert to some sort of unconsidered default system -- the non-thought of the status quo. And I think that since pop culture -- Harry Potter, Marvel movies, etc. -- do get across certain values whether they intend to or not, we should be careful about what influences us.

I don't think that having no system is a real possibility. It's the deepest ideologues who claim to have no ideology. When they say "that's not ideology, that's just the way things are," then you know you've met someone who hasn't examined his own thinking.

Sure...okay. But, need it be Bach for me to be Sufficiently Moved by a melody? Need it be Twelve Angry Men or It’s a Wonderful Life to have the waters of our human condition be stirred? I don’t think we should leave our values, and what should move our spirit, up to some small group of humanitarian “elites”. Some of the brightest creative minds killed themselves or drank themselves to death because they were so unhappy. It should be a collective effort. Regina Spektor’s song about a single mom of four who is dying of cancer moves me to tears, even though she won’t be in any history books. Watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia not only makes me belly laugh and appreciate being alive, but also reminds me of the mundane and collective self-serving cruelty people are capable of, though they likely won’t be remembered in fifty or a hundred years. I wept throughout the entire final installment of Stephen King’s the Dark Tower, but I’m sure they won’t be teaching it in any high school English classes. The human experience is what unites us. It’s what we can all relate to. Empathy, and a deep-seated, geneticsll driven instinct to care about the well-being of others. Just my two cents.