I’ll grant the title is bombastic, but humans’ disconnection with humanities must be of some seismic consequence. An infamous quote from those at Google developing AI brings the consequence to bear: “why the worry over AI (artificial intelligence) and the loss of human connection, we spend much more time looking down at our phone screens than we do looking deeply into one another’s eyes?” This is an excellent microcosm of what the whole of Western culture faces. Do we want being human to be defined primarily by STEM (science, technology, engineering, math)? What type of humans will this produce? Should we embrace the androidification of the human race? Are humans really just complex science equations, routed through technology, social media, and phone screens? Does engineering and math produce better people? What do we even mean by “better?” STEM has a glaring missing piece: morality. Morality, by the way, is not the concern of those who embrace a faith. There are those who embrace the importance of morality while still being methodological naturalists. There are others who likewise find morality to be very important who have tried to ground morals as objective by appeal to a kind of neo-platonism rather than appealing to a transcendent Lawgiver (God). No, indeed, morality is important to many more people than only those inside a faith.
Humanities, it seems, is the contrast to STEM. Within humanities are history, rhetoric, argumentation, cinematography, speech, writing, singing, dancing, music, theology, administration, morality, ethics, law, politics, and social science. I am sure we could add more, but this list is warming. The amount of joy and satisfaction that comes just from music is a case in point. What would life be like without music? What warms the soul like a rousing speech? Why write if not to connect? Story-telling in terms of movies brings in outrageous revenue every year, testifying to the centrality and importance of this part of humanities. Why do we love a good story? Is it more human to spend time on humanities? If so, why the emphasis on STEM? Would less technology but more ethics improve the world? Would less science but more music make the world better or worse? These are difficult questions.
I would advocate for a return to the Renaissance ethos where all these subjects should be jointly pursued. Unfortunately, the Western countries are in a arms race over AI and space weapons. The only things that matter with those concerns are STEM topics, the rest just slow down the arms race. The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, and there is no reset button. In this sense, the demise of the West as a civilized world seems all but certain. How can we expect kids who have stared at screens most of their lives and concerned themselves mainly with computer programing–as an example–to act in accord with values, virtues, and civil behaviors, all of which come from the humanities? Its obtuse to suppose the type of dignified behavior that the Great Generation and Baby-Boomers (those born from roughly 1900s – 1960s) exhibited could be replicated in humans fixated on screens and STEM. The West has to decide if STEM is more important than, say, freedom. Likewise, is STEM more important than privacy? Is the 4th amendment, which affirms we can keep our finances hidden, more important than digital, online banking? Yes, the rubber meets the road with this question. Would we Westerns inconvenience ourselves by reorganizing our lives to protect our fiscal privacy since we cannot trust the government not to violate our rights? Is online banking really an affirmation that we don’t care about our privacy (humanities) and that STEM is worth giving up our rights? I presume that the present god of the West is convenience, and I think there are very few who have the discipline to resist worshiping that god.
Dr. Scalise