I've read a number of articles recently on the subject here, liberal arts and money, and myself, being both a Catholic Christian and a free-market capitalist, was drawn to many thoughts on the area. Many people have bemoaned society's non-use for them or their job prospects. One article even featured a woman with a Ph.D. on welfare. The following paragraphs should outline a lot of my ideas on the liberal arts, man's well-being, money and capitalism.
The liberal arts historically are not about money. The word liberal pertains to freedom, as in the education a freeman would need. In many traditions, it's seen as a not truly practical education but a theoretical one based on the joy of knowledge and the journey towards truth. This is true leisure. This all goes back at least as far as Socrates and the Sophists. The Sophists would charge money for their teachings, but Socrates found this inappropriate. As a philosopher, Socrates felt one should not get paid for being a philosopher or spreading philosophy. Philosophy was for the sheer love of truth and virtue. You can't pay someone for that. Traditionally, a four-year liberal arts degree is coupled with grad school in a profession. The former enriches the person and can prepare them somewhat for grad school and the latter gives the person a marketable skill.
There are two major values, or actions, in life. They can be named by other dichotomies than this but I call them monetary and transcendent values. A monetary value is something you get paid for like a product, service, or job. A transcendent value is something we experience such as reading a good book, enjoying a friendship, or prayer. Transcendent values are generally more inner oriented whereas monetary values are more outward oriented. There is more to life than money and I believe the transcendent values of leisure are more important than money. Nevertheless, society will not pay you for self-improvement. It has no obligation to. In fact, to pay someone for a transcendent value would cheapen it. It's a shallow way to motivate the immature, such as when a mother pays her young children to read books over summer vacation. This a tolerable motivator for children, but it is a shameful way to deal with adults. A good entrepreneur will monetize a great many things, but we all need to know where to draw the line. We must be able to tell the difference between monetary and transcendent values.
Today's liberal arts education is a failure of the liberal arts system at many schools. One of the primary goals of a liberal arts degree is to promote critical thinking. The liberal arts system is supposed to be about creating modes of thought that can be used in original ways in the future. All the learning about literature, philosophy, poetry, etc. is supposed to be the basis for the beginning of productive, creative thought. Instead, our schools are places where children and young adults practice rote memorization of high culture trivia. The year of Aristotle's birth is one single fact. Understanding how Aristotelean logic works opens endless doors. People become so obsessed with learning more trivia about the past that they forget to use their critical thinking skills for the here and now.
Productivity needs to make a comeback in some circles. A.G. Sertillanges, a Dominican priest, in his book "The Intellectual Life: It's Spirit, Methods, Conditions" talks about pseudo-intellectuals who are merely voracious book readers. To him, a true intellectual is one who uses his mind in a theoretical manner and makes some new discovery in his field, not someone who memorizes rote facts. Look at your history books. The biggest names are the innovators, not the archivists. Many people want to be a movie critic because they think that movie critics get paid to watch movies. Actually, they are professional writers. Anyone can watch a movie. Next time you are reading a book, remember that the author of that book didn't spend his whole life reading. He went through a lot of creative "work" to make that book for your reading pleasure.
Money is a measure of perceived productivity value by society. Money exists to be a universal value signifier so we can get away from a deeply complex barter system. Money represents goods and services. It should never be an end unto itself. In a capitalist system, rarely does anyone become rich by any other means than filling some human need or at least a human want. President Obama talks about rich people "giving back" as if they contribute nothing to society until they pay their taxes. This can't be true because they would not be rich in the first place if they were not giving society something it wanted or needed. We put the rich where they are by purchasing their products and services. When the owner of a grocery store, even a large chain makes money, it is through giving people food. Without this convenience, we would all have to be self-sufficient farmers. Yes, they get paid. To some degree they have to. It is by no means charity, but that does not negate the good they serve. The people have validated this good by paying for it.
One of the biggest problems with today's job market and why unemployment is so high is that job openings are sitting idle and people are not being connected with the decent or better jobs that they are capable of doing. When I graduated from my college undergrad, I felt that I had a skill set that was not worthless and should be able to be put to use somewhere cool, but I had trouble with the job hunt and did not know what all my options were. There are so many worthwhile occupations in this country that people don't even know about. We need to connect people to jobs and leave opportunities for entrepreneurs, not give out endless checks to people who are going nowhere. Welfare is a short-term solution that only treats a symptom. If the lack of money is the ultimate problem, then people can be on welfare for the rest of their lives without seeing a problem in this. Every American is qualified to do some sort of paid work. They so often just don't know what or where it is.
What sorts of jobs are there for liberal arts majors? I don't entirely know. The liberal arts are not in themselves marketable. No one outside of a game show will pay you to "be" intelligent. They will pay you to "do" specific tasks that require intelligence, but no one will pay you to "be" anything. The market wants people who are proficient in performing specific tasks. Liberal arts is primarily about leisure, but no one will pay you to hang out at a bar and philosophize with your friends. They will, however, pay you to teach, to write, if you are good enough, or, as my brother tells me, work at a think tank, among other things. No matter what one's major in college, or even a lack thereof, you must find your knowledge and talent area's closest intersections with marketable tasks. I say intersections in the plural because one shouldn't be too narrow in job or life expectations. The government can't afford to fix everyone's personal problems and give everyone the exact life they desire. This all is why I'm going to grad school for film producing. I wanted to take an interest of mine which gives nothing to others by itself and turn it into a productive, marketable set of skills.
The problem with much of today's so-called hipster movement is that it hides behind cultivated consumption as an allowance for laziness. It is just pretentious consumerism. It's like, "I have no job and I contribute nothing to society, but at least I like better music than most job-holding philistines." Who cares? While I agree that leisure is the most important part of life, it is not a defense against zero productivity. Everyone prefers leisure! So what? Good taste in music doesn't pay the bills. There is no measure of cultivated consumption, especially of material goods, that makes up for no productivity. Some people need to take stock of their life priorities.
American history and identity seems to be a mix of independent, bohemian values and hard-working capitalist values. The thing that makes hipsters of today different from yesteryear's beatniks, drifters, etc. is the concern with material goods. How can they afford to have cultivated taste in all these areas that require the purchase of goods? So many people want that rebel image while enjoying the comforts of a bourgeois lifestyle. There are a lot of people who put on that independent, anti-authority image, but behind it all they are just big-government liberals. I respect those who really can live life on the fringes because to truly live that way takes sacrifice.
There's a famous short story of a man who spent his afternoons falling asleep on his boat after he had caught enough fish in the morning. An intrigued man came by, woke him, and asked why he didn't catch more fish. If he caught more fish, he could make more money and if he made more money then... Eventually he says that the man could be rich enough to waste his afternoons sleeping on the boat, which he is already doing. Now the man on the boat may be considered "lazy" from a hard capitalist perspective, but at least he caught what he needed and he didn't ask for what he didn't get.
Let's take one quick look at contemplative life. This is the ultimate leisure. First off, these men and women are so far beyond sitting on the couch, catching up with the hippest cable television shows. They are contemplating God himself within varying degrees of closeness to the most austere lifestyle possible. They have "chosen the better half." They are the only ones who can possibly claim their leisure completely trumps a lack of productivity. Even still, they make a contribution to the rest of humanity. They are constantly offering prayers and penance for the rest of us. Even if one does not believe in the spiritual, then one only need to look to the world's intellectual tradition to find contributions of monks in the arts and sciences, many of them very practical. Many monasteries brew beer and make other sellable goods, thus to some degree keeping them on the capitalist grid.
Ultimately, while the liberal arts have tremendous value to a person's well-being, we are all obligated to make a payable contribution to society and pull our weight as best we can. Transcendent and monetary values must have some sort of balance.
The liberal arts historically are not about money. The word liberal pertains to freedom, as in the education a freeman would need. In many traditions, it's seen as a not truly practical education but a theoretical one based on the joy of knowledge and the journey towards truth. This is true leisure. This all goes back at least as far as Socrates and the Sophists. The Sophists would charge money for their teachings, but Socrates found this inappropriate. As a philosopher, Socrates felt one should not get paid for being a philosopher or spreading philosophy. Philosophy was for the sheer love of truth and virtue. You can't pay someone for that. Traditionally, a four-year liberal arts degree is coupled with grad school in a profession. The former enriches the person and can prepare them somewhat for grad school and the latter gives the person a marketable skill.
There are two major values, or actions, in life. They can be named by other dichotomies than this but I call them monetary and transcendent values. A monetary value is something you get paid for like a product, service, or job. A transcendent value is something we experience such as reading a good book, enjoying a friendship, or prayer. Transcendent values are generally more inner oriented whereas monetary values are more outward oriented. There is more to life than money and I believe the transcendent values of leisure are more important than money. Nevertheless, society will not pay you for self-improvement. It has no obligation to. In fact, to pay someone for a transcendent value would cheapen it. It's a shallow way to motivate the immature, such as when a mother pays her young children to read books over summer vacation. This a tolerable motivator for children, but it is a shameful way to deal with adults. A good entrepreneur will monetize a great many things, but we all need to know where to draw the line. We must be able to tell the difference between monetary and transcendent values.
Today's liberal arts education is a failure of the liberal arts system at many schools. One of the primary goals of a liberal arts degree is to promote critical thinking. The liberal arts system is supposed to be about creating modes of thought that can be used in original ways in the future. All the learning about literature, philosophy, poetry, etc. is supposed to be the basis for the beginning of productive, creative thought. Instead, our schools are places where children and young adults practice rote memorization of high culture trivia. The year of Aristotle's birth is one single fact. Understanding how Aristotelean logic works opens endless doors. People become so obsessed with learning more trivia about the past that they forget to use their critical thinking skills for the here and now.
Productivity needs to make a comeback in some circles. A.G. Sertillanges, a Dominican priest, in his book "The Intellectual Life: It's Spirit, Methods, Conditions" talks about pseudo-intellectuals who are merely voracious book readers. To him, a true intellectual is one who uses his mind in a theoretical manner and makes some new discovery in his field, not someone who memorizes rote facts. Look at your history books. The biggest names are the innovators, not the archivists. Many people want to be a movie critic because they think that movie critics get paid to watch movies. Actually, they are professional writers. Anyone can watch a movie. Next time you are reading a book, remember that the author of that book didn't spend his whole life reading. He went through a lot of creative "work" to make that book for your reading pleasure.
Money is a measure of perceived productivity value by society. Money exists to be a universal value signifier so we can get away from a deeply complex barter system. Money represents goods and services. It should never be an end unto itself. In a capitalist system, rarely does anyone become rich by any other means than filling some human need or at least a human want. President Obama talks about rich people "giving back" as if they contribute nothing to society until they pay their taxes. This can't be true because they would not be rich in the first place if they were not giving society something it wanted or needed. We put the rich where they are by purchasing their products and services. When the owner of a grocery store, even a large chain makes money, it is through giving people food. Without this convenience, we would all have to be self-sufficient farmers. Yes, they get paid. To some degree they have to. It is by no means charity, but that does not negate the good they serve. The people have validated this good by paying for it.
One of the biggest problems with today's job market and why unemployment is so high is that job openings are sitting idle and people are not being connected with the decent or better jobs that they are capable of doing. When I graduated from my college undergrad, I felt that I had a skill set that was not worthless and should be able to be put to use somewhere cool, but I had trouble with the job hunt and did not know what all my options were. There are so many worthwhile occupations in this country that people don't even know about. We need to connect people to jobs and leave opportunities for entrepreneurs, not give out endless checks to people who are going nowhere. Welfare is a short-term solution that only treats a symptom. If the lack of money is the ultimate problem, then people can be on welfare for the rest of their lives without seeing a problem in this. Every American is qualified to do some sort of paid work. They so often just don't know what or where it is.
What sorts of jobs are there for liberal arts majors? I don't entirely know. The liberal arts are not in themselves marketable. No one outside of a game show will pay you to "be" intelligent. They will pay you to "do" specific tasks that require intelligence, but no one will pay you to "be" anything. The market wants people who are proficient in performing specific tasks. Liberal arts is primarily about leisure, but no one will pay you to hang out at a bar and philosophize with your friends. They will, however, pay you to teach, to write, if you are good enough, or, as my brother tells me, work at a think tank, among other things. No matter what one's major in college, or even a lack thereof, you must find your knowledge and talent area's closest intersections with marketable tasks. I say intersections in the plural because one shouldn't be too narrow in job or life expectations. The government can't afford to fix everyone's personal problems and give everyone the exact life they desire. This all is why I'm going to grad school for film producing. I wanted to take an interest of mine which gives nothing to others by itself and turn it into a productive, marketable set of skills.
The problem with much of today's so-called hipster movement is that it hides behind cultivated consumption as an allowance for laziness. It is just pretentious consumerism. It's like, "I have no job and I contribute nothing to society, but at least I like better music than most job-holding philistines." Who cares? While I agree that leisure is the most important part of life, it is not a defense against zero productivity. Everyone prefers leisure! So what? Good taste in music doesn't pay the bills. There is no measure of cultivated consumption, especially of material goods, that makes up for no productivity. Some people need to take stock of their life priorities.
American history and identity seems to be a mix of independent, bohemian values and hard-working capitalist values. The thing that makes hipsters of today different from yesteryear's beatniks, drifters, etc. is the concern with material goods. How can they afford to have cultivated taste in all these areas that require the purchase of goods? So many people want that rebel image while enjoying the comforts of a bourgeois lifestyle. There are a lot of people who put on that independent, anti-authority image, but behind it all they are just big-government liberals. I respect those who really can live life on the fringes because to truly live that way takes sacrifice.
There's a famous short story of a man who spent his afternoons falling asleep on his boat after he had caught enough fish in the morning. An intrigued man came by, woke him, and asked why he didn't catch more fish. If he caught more fish, he could make more money and if he made more money then... Eventually he says that the man could be rich enough to waste his afternoons sleeping on the boat, which he is already doing. Now the man on the boat may be considered "lazy" from a hard capitalist perspective, but at least he caught what he needed and he didn't ask for what he didn't get.
Let's take one quick look at contemplative life. This is the ultimate leisure. First off, these men and women are so far beyond sitting on the couch, catching up with the hippest cable television shows. They are contemplating God himself within varying degrees of closeness to the most austere lifestyle possible. They have "chosen the better half." They are the only ones who can possibly claim their leisure completely trumps a lack of productivity. Even still, they make a contribution to the rest of humanity. They are constantly offering prayers and penance for the rest of us. Even if one does not believe in the spiritual, then one only need to look to the world's intellectual tradition to find contributions of monks in the arts and sciences, many of them very practical. Many monasteries brew beer and make other sellable goods, thus to some degree keeping them on the capitalist grid.
Ultimately, while the liberal arts have tremendous value to a person's well-being, we are all obligated to make a payable contribution to society and pull our weight as best we can. Transcendent and monetary values must have some sort of balance.
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