Is Humanities In Decline ?

Humanity is a term having multiple meanings, ranging from a virtue linked with altruism to a discipline of systematic studies. In one sense, it refers to ethics, love, compassion, kind feelings, fairness and justice in attitudes towards all human beings. In another sense, it refers to the entire human race. It is a word for the qualities that make us human as opposed to irrational animals, with such ability as to be creative and critical, not simply be a robot machine or an alien being existing in a different world from that of humans. This article, however, focuses on humanities, a collective discipline of studies that supposedly inculcate the sense of humanity in all humans that would make all citizens imbued with advanced civilization and culture. 

It seems that we are heading towards a place different from what our earlier sages had envisaged. The religious leaders of all religions in all ages and places tried to inculcate the notion of virtue and vice into the minds of millions. Their concept of heaven and hell created two worlds where the virtuous would be allowed to go straight in heaven whereas the wicked would be doomed to hell. Despite a wide ranging impact of the concept of heaven and hell, millions of people on earth are in pursuit of happiness on here and now. In explanation of most religious leaders, there would be no place on earth where humans would create a heaven. 

Ideal republic 

In ancient Greece, however, Plato envisioned an ideal republic where all citizens would be enlightened and there would be a philosopher king to rule the enlightened citizens. His dictum was the best ruler is one who is the most reluctant to rule. This concept of the philosopher king in an ideal republic never came to this world despite its dire need. In the present world situation we can find the opposite of it. Even under democracies, many political actors are willing to get to power by any unfair means. In the eighteenth century Europe, another idea of an ideal world emerged. According to the eighteenth century philosophers, all humans would be rational. Their ideal world would be based on the notion of conscience, wisdom, and ethics. Human mind, therefore, should be at the center of all to create an ideal world.  

These egalitarian principles did not come true even in the nineteenth century. In mid nineteenth century there came a veteran materialistic German philosopher named Karl Marx (1848) who propounded a concept of communism where the proletariat would be the rulers after winning the battle against the bourgeoisie. His staunch follower Lenin tried to put this principle into practice in Russia, which unfortunately did not last for even a single century. At present the Chinese government claims that they are practicing socialism which too is not without controversy. It is thus difficult to precisely say what is in essence. 

The present world situation seems to be the opposite of what the philosophers envisioned.  Civilization seems to turn into decadence. The subsistence economy is turning into commercialism. Production industries are becoming weapon manufacturing factories. Green economy has been a utopia. Good governance has become a mere slogan. Joy has turned into sorrow, pleasure into pain, comfort into trouble, and hope into despair. Thomas Jefferson’s concept of the pursuit of happiness (1776) has turned into Sisyphus’s futile struggle. People of the third world countries are moving to the first world in pursuit of happiness but they are running after the job for bare livelihood in the new land. It seems humanity is degenerating. It looks like we are heading nowhere. Something has gone wrong and we have gone awry somewhere. There is no substantial evidence to claim that that we are in the right direction.

What is to blame for all these mishappenings? Nobody is to blame individually. As a longtime experienced person in educational field, I would like to blame the educational system which at present seems to be ignoring human science education. It was once assumed that life transforming education was human science. Even a half century before in Nepal, higher education essentially meant human science education. Today we are experiencing an alternative trend in understanding the mainstream education as technical education. No one can deny the significance of technical education in the changed context. 

But what is rather unnatural is we are running after technical education ignoring the value of human science education. If a fallacious understanding of this kind continues, nothing can be more unfortunate than this. In higher education, human sciences are academic disciplines that study different aspects of human society and culture, human condition, and the relation between life and the universe. This stream of education includes such disciplines as history, culture, anthropology, religion, language, literature, art and the like. These are the basic academic discipline that started centuries ago and are still continuing in many universities across the world, if only without a discernible focus in the present century. 

Transformation

Despite the lack of uniformity in views about what is education for, one purpose of human science education is quite understandable – education is for transformation of human life. Human science education transforms human life through knowledge and wisdom that educationists are trying to educate with throughout history. Many higher education institutions are focusing on knowledge apparently ignoring the wisdom which is closely connected with knowledge. 

The education authorities should understand that technical education focuses only on knowledge without due weight to wisdom. Albert Einstein disseminated unequalled knowledge, most notably physical science. But unfortunately the users of that knowledge manufactured life-threatening nuclear weapons which devastated human civilisation as byproduct of technical education. Not to blame him for his contribution to the field of science, his knowledge nevertheless seemed to ignore wisdom that would only save human civilization of ages and ages. It is thus essential to understand that knowledge without wisdom is lopsided the latter of which seems to be ignored in the current educational system, so educational authorities should place equal weightage to both human science and technical education.

(The author is the chairman of Molung Foundation. bhupadhamala@gmail.com)