Love of wisdom.
The last issue of Grok was sitting on the library counter this morning.
And due to lack of patrons to serve, I had a flip through and read it. I came across an article entitled “Life After Arts Degrees” by Jessica Craig Parker. Being an Arts Grad myself, it piqued my interest and I decided to read it.
When I reached the end, I found myself feeling inexplicably saddened by its content. Not because it was badly written, (quite the opposite, it was wonderfully written and thoroughly enjoyable to read!) but because it highlighted that prevailing ideology in the world today that an arts degree is useless.
I have long been used to the playful jibes from my friends,
“Oh. You know you could get your degree off the back of a cornflakes packet right?”
“Can you even do anything useful with philosophy anyway!?”
“Who cares about Literature! No one actually analyzes it anymore anyway!”
The comments were made in jest by budding psychologists and aspiring engineers. Jaded law students and cynical occupational therapists to be. The only meaning behind their words was a playful one, none of them seriously believed my degree was worth any more or less than theirs. As a good friend of mine studying Multimedia and Tourism said “Universities in Perth today are just places where you go to buy a degree. They’re not making us learn anything. We’re just going through the motions so we can come out with a piece of paper that says we’re worth something.”
Certainly, my partner, who studied broadcast and print journalism at university says the same thing. All through his degree he was harping on about how he didn’t feel as if he was learning anything in his core units. And the only classes he really enjoyed were his history electives.
So here I am. The arts grad. The one with the cereal box degree, and I seem to be the only one of my friends who doesn’t feel like my studies were a waste of time.
My Mother is never ashamed to tell people that her daughter studied an arts degree. She says it proudly. When people roll their eyes or suggest that I wasted my time and money, my Mama, she just laughs at them.
“Oh, I don’t know.” she says, “My daughter seems to know more about the world than most of us.”
It’s touching my Mum thinks that. But why is it that she thinks that way?
I certainly won’t pretend to know the answer. (One thing I learned whilst studying metaphysics and existentialism was that there’s no point pretending to understand the way another person thinks.) But what I will say is this…
In my first year of tertiary study my philosophy professor reminded us what the roots of the word philosophy really meant. phileîn, and sophía are the ancient Greek words which make up the modern word Philosophy, and they translate simply to “love of wisdom”. My Prof, who I will probably list as one of my hero’s for the rest of my life, went on to say that as long as one was always inquiring, always searching, always seeking, they would be honoring a proud tradition which has brought so much to our world.
What can you do with philosophy? An interesting question. What have the bright minds of our past done with it? The answer lies all around us. Science, Politics, Psychology, Sociology… and these are just a few disciplines I’ve pulled from the top of my head which have their roots in philosophy.
Who cares about literature? Every single one of us. We care about recording our ideas, our thoughts, we care about creating a testament to the time we live in, and trying to understand the times which have passed before.
Could I have got my degree off the back of a cornflakes packet? Certainly, I could probably have bought it from some website lurking in some corner of the cyber realm.
But if I did that, would I have learnt the patience to interpret Nietzsche, Hume and Descartes? Would I have discovered the joys of Kierkegaard and Husserl? Would I have delved into the post atomic bomb psyche of the Japanese? Would I have ever read A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul? Or Things Falling Apart By Achebe? Would I proudly quote Fanon when speaking passionately about the dangers of nationalism? (Because ‘National Consciousness which is not Nationalism is the only thing that will give us an International Dimension’ Thanks Frantz!) Would I care so deeply about social divide in the middle east, or the exploitation of people in South East Asia by Global conglomerates? (Perhaps, but would I look to philosophy and literature to try to gain an understanding of it!?) Would I still state proudly that Shakespeare taught me that past is prologue, that only by dwelling upon what has gone before us, can we write a new chapter for tomorrow?
Would I spend my time sitting here, typing up all these rambling words and projecting them out onto the internet for strangers to read?!
Probably not.
Without my ‘useless’ arts degree, I would probably never spend my time questioning the dangers of apathy, or wondering how C.G. Jung’s theories of archetypes can help us understand different cultures. I wouldn’t attempt to apply post colonial theory to Vietnamese and Soviet literature, to try and understand what the voices of those oppressed peoples were trying to explain.
I wouldn’t think about any of these things, because I would have never been exposed to them. But I was exposed to them. And rather than feeling like that exposure was a waste of time which just let me use (as Ms. Parker put it) Cunt and Voltaire in the same sentence. I graduated from my degree feeling emboldened by what I’d learned. And ready to keep searching for answers to the questions which we as human beings are eternally asking.
No time spent learning, is ever time wasted. Regardless of what it is you’ve learned.
There is at least one thing me and the author of that Grok article agree on. An arts degree really is what you make it. So make it into something. Don’t be afraid of it.
