Becoming Human

Repeated viewers of this blog may notice the tendency I have to write about topics at least a month after I’ve encountered them. Oh well, here I am again.

Close to two months ago I read a column by David Brooks called “History For Dollars.” In it Brooks makes a perfectly logical and necessary argument for pursuing a liberal arts education in the humanities. He begins by pointing out how struggling labor markets and unwelcome economic forces have caused a nearly 50 percent drop liberal arts majors from the past generation. Instead of exploring areas like English and history, students today choose more vocational paths like accounting, information technology, and even journalism in the hopes they will lead to a job.

Yet by doing so, Brooks believes we run the danger of depriving ourselves an essential part of human existence, a friend he calls “the Big Shaggy.” He says, “Over the past century or so, people have built various systems to help them understand human behavior: economics, political science, game theory and evolutionary psychology. These systems are useful in many circumstances. But none completely explain behavior because deep down people have passions and drives that don’t lend themselves to systemic modeling. They have yearnings and fears that reside in an inner beast you could call The Big Shaggy.”

Let me start off by saying that for the most part, I agree with Brooks’ argument. Though I majored in journalism, I did lay claim to the rare and likely pointless title of “dual-minor” in English and History. While these classes might have started out as subjects I simply excelled in, they turned into a whole lot more. The classes I took, the books I read, the people I learned of, the teachers I studied under all cultivated my indispensable worldview. And as trite as it sounds, I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

Much like my intellectual superior David Brooks, I do believe these lessons played a vital role in understanding the feelings, desires, and actions of those around me. I can recall very vivid moments comparing my friends with characters from stories I read, or comparing current historic figures with old, and viewing this all as a part of human nature.

Yet unlike Brooks, I also believe there’s another component to this “Big Shaggy” character worth mulling over. What I’m talking about isn’t anything you can read or learn about, but interactions that are tangible, live and well…human. He seems to touch upon it when he says, “It’s probably dangerous to enter exclusively into this realm and risk being caught in a cloister, removed from the market and its accountability.” Yet the topical examples he gives prove that he’s missing this part of the picture.

He says, “this tender beast [the Big Shaggy] is also responsible for the mysterious but fierce determination that drives Kobe Bryant, the graceful bemusement the Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga showed when his perfect game slipped away, the selfless courage soldiers in Afghanistan show when they risk death for buddies or a family they may never see again.”

Maybe it’s just me, but it sounds somewhat presumptuous to conclude that the only way to understand the meaning behind such actions is to immerse ourselves in the humanities. While doing so may help us to draw comparisons and create analogies, in the end there is nothing that compares to firsthand experience. The reason we seek so desperately to understand why people act a certain way is so that we can try to harness their abilities in our own lives. This is a large part of the reason why many of us feel that public figures should act as role models. But it also may be shortsighted to think this is the only way to learn.

Most of us will agree that, as talented and cultured as he is portrayed, Kobe Bryant probably did not gain his “mysterious but fierce determination” from reading Thucydides’ accounts of the Peloponnesian War. Maybe a better Kobe historian than myself can say for sure, but his desire to win likely stems from childhood playground battles, where losing ate him up inside more than anything else.

So if Kobe didn’t receive his distinctive attributes by reading books, why should it follow that this is how we should receive ours? It isn’t wrong to point out the many laudable qualities of the liberal arts, but it is wrong to say they are the only way to get in touch with the inner feelings in those around us.

Though I would never detract from the merits of liberal arts teaching, I will say that understanding behavior is about more than anything you can learn in class. Part of why I enjoyed journalism was because I had the chance to witness people acting determined or benevolent or courageous every day. It provided the sort of real-life insight into the human condition that the humanities could only supplement or fortify.

Ironically, all this talk about humanity and firsthand interaction brings me back to something I did glean from my liberal arts education. It makes me think, for a number of reasons, about Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” Reading the book for one of my English classes this past year, I remember the professor telling us that “humanity” was Ellison’s favorite word. In my brief investigation of this fact I stumbled upon a quote of his that I feel best sums up what I’m trying to say. He said, “The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.”

I know it sounds confusing and redundant, but I believe he is trying to say that we can only learn to appreciate the art behind books, movies, all-star athletes and heroes once we have it for ourselves. Indeed in this and many other respects, this Ellison guy seems to have been onto something. You can never truly relate to anything unless you are relating to experiences ingrained in your memory bank and in your emotions. It’s chiefly out of those experiences that we have the capacity to understand the beauty, the passion, and even the despair in others, as well as we do our own.