Embracing the Useless

It's that time of year again. College and high school graduations come around and people start to wonder: "what use is all of this education?"  The question is especially piquant for the newly unemployed college graduates, the English majors who can't find a job, the Philosophy majors returning home to their parents, perhaps even the Political Science majors...

Rebecca Mead has a nice little piece in this week's "Talk of the Town" in The New Yorker, "Learning by Degrees," where she pushes back a bit against the pessimism surrounding liberal arts.  These paragraphs, in particular, caught my eye:

...Given the high cost of attending college in the United States, the question of whether a student is getting his or her money’s worth tends to loom large with whoever is paying the tuition fees and the meal-plan bills. Even so, one needn’t necessarily be a liberal-arts graduate to regard as distinctly and speciously utilitarian the idea that higher education is, above all, a route to economic advancement. Unaddressed in that calculus is any question of what else an education might be for: to nurture critical thought; to expose individuals to the signal accomplishments of humankind; to develop in them an ability not just to listen actively but to respond intelligently.

All these are habits of mind that are useful for an engaged citizenry, and from which a letter carrier, no less than a college professor, might derive a sense of self-worth. For who’s to say in what direction a letter carrier’s thoughts might, or should, turn, regardless of the job’s demands? Consider Stephen Law, a professor of philosophy at the University of London, who started his working life delivering mail for the British postal service, began reading works of philosophy in his spare time, decided that he’d like to know more, and went on to study the discipline at City University, in London, and at Oxford University. (A philosophy graduate in the Class of 2010, by the way, stands to earn an average starting salary of forty thousand dollars a year, rising to a lifetime median of seventy-six thousand. Not exactly statistician money, but something to think about.) Indeed, if even a professionally oriented college degree is no longer a guarantee of easily found employment, an argument might be made in favor of a student’s pursuing an education that is less, rather than more, pragmatic. (More theology, less accounting.) That way, regardless of each graduate’s ultimate path, all might be qualified to be carriers of arts and letters, of which the nation can never have too many.

Mead is, inadvertently I assume, invoking an argument from Zhuangzi: that which appears to be useless actually has a certain utility.  In a post last year, "Uselessness: Now more than ever!" I explicate this Zhuangzi argument, as well as two others in defense of uselessness.  Perhaps mail carriers now play the part of Cook Ting in Zhuangzi, doing a job that appears to be simple and undemanding but which proves to be a means of gaining a greater appreciation of Way (Tao). 

And while I'm at it: congratulations graduates!  Whether you have a job or not....

Comments

[The Rambling Taoist]

Years ago I earned a Master's degree in Social Science (political philosophy emphasis). To date, it specifically has not played a role in any career move nor any increase in pay. In fact, I dare say it hasn't helped me professionally at all.

That said, I wouldn't trade the experience for the world. It enriched me as a thinking being so much that I don't give a fat darn whether or not it will ever enhance my pocketbook or prestige within external society..

[Scott "Bao Pu" Barnwell]

If I may be so bold, I'm testament to the fact that one can "improve oneself" outside of the classroom. I'm sure having a teacher can help, but it's not often necessary. If you're going to rack up tens of thousands of dollars of debt, I think it's a good idea that it enables you to be in a position to pay that debt and more. I have a friend who racked up a nice debt studying philosophy at university. He's now working at Winners trying to pay it off!

[Mao Zedong]

tao
buddha
allah
jesus
batman
spiderman
mohammad
confucius

religion: dig a big hole / bury the past.

USA had slavery. USA civil war ended.

china had.

baby-emperor PUYI
Hanzi- 50,000 dead characters.
confucius
famines 1950s.
cultural revolution in 1960s.
civil war in 1949.

dig a hole / bury the past

live the future / bury the past.

[Mao Zedong]

social sciences: free free free

humanities: free free free

all social sciences / humanities is free free free at

1. library

2. bookstore

3. web. internet google.