Don’t Dismiss the Humanities. Dismiss the University
These paeans to the humanities and the self-congratulatory comments they draw from the staid professional class are a superb illustration of why studying anything within the walls of an institution is not a good idea. These places do not create human beings. What they create is a cosseted cadre of milquetoast crawlers, devoid of all passion and verve, who grow wet about the eyes when contemplating the miserable lot of humanity, then sidestep the shambling hobo on their way to work, gaze averted.
Young people! If all you desire from this life is a safe and comfortable shelter from which you can practice compassion at a remove, by all means take to the university. By the time you reach middle age, you can look back with a self-satisfied air and tell your fellow New York Times readers how enriched your life has been, how your wonderful offspring are now following in your footsteps and are poised to clinch that rewarding career. Meantime, the masterworks on your walls are submerged in sea water and the depraved hordes, heretofore an abstraction, have become a terrifying corporeality.
Read, read, to see the wounds in yourself and others. But if you are to salve the wounds, you must be in the world; you must be with the people, live as they live, feel as they feel, one among equals. We need no more thinkers perched atop their gilded boughs, watching with dismay as humanity marches over the cliff. To be an aesthete may be gratifying, but it is nothing like being a human.