Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the arts and humanities have been standing on thin ice under the rise of technology. Now, with the current technological revolution that AI has prompted, the humanities are not only declining, but being replaced. AI-generated drawings, stories, music, and even movies are blurring the lines between what is human-generated and what is not. In a time like this, the study of literature and the arts becomes crucial.
There is a reason why the word humanities stems from human. Since the beginning of time, humans have expressed a necessity to create, to take their emotions, and turn them into something new. Moreover, the process of creation is not solitary. Humans also enjoy looking at others’ creations, which is why literary scholars study literature, artists study art, archaeologists study cave paintings, musicians study music, and so on and so forth. We are social beings, and we get gratification by contemplating what other humans can create from scratch – not to do so would imply a detachment not only from art, but from society.
It is extremely important that literature does not cease to be taught, and that children learn through it and learn to appreciate it. If literature ceased to exist, we would become bodies of bone and flesh that walk around, breathe, and eat. Human relations would become cold and superficial. The death of the arts could only be followed by the death of the human soul.
The study of degrees like literature brings us closer together as a community. Through literature one can look deep into writers’ inner thoughts and wonder why they choose to narrate something a certain way — and not a different one. And the value of analysing literary pieces is not about whether you are correct in the interpretation, but about being capable of reflecting on what they try to convey — something that comes naturally to us, as humans. Especially because anything that is produced by a human mind is always going to have something to offer; you might like it more or less, but it has the power to always make you feel something.
I have often found myself searching for meaning in what I do, and when I try to find an answer, it always comes back to the same place: art, as it is the clearest way to show that something is alive. Without literature and humanities degrees, we lose the collective identity that we share as humans. Without art, what would distinguish us from a plant? Other than the obvious anatomical differences, both plants and humans are living beings. But humans have emotions, emotions that need to be released in order not to become numb.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash