On Being Impractical - Walls, Ticket-takers and Kings

Among all of the crises we face each day, the crisis in and about the Humanities is surely way down on the list. In an absolute sense, if there was a crisis in the Humanities, it’s one where no lives are lost, no financial empires fall and no moral fibre is weakened. Yet, in our lives, jobs have been lost, people have been changed, potentials haven’t been realized and the future has been affected. There seems, then, to be a disconnect between all that comes under the word “Humanities” and our lives.

The problem is that, as Americans, we think we believe in the practical; we say “It’s good if it is practical”. We think we believe this but we don’t, of course.

For example, there is nothing practical when Americans spend $166 billion a year on alcohol, $157 billion on smoking, $110 billion on illicit drugs, $107 billion on overeating and $40 billion on gambling. These astonishing figures not only include the actual cost of the addiction but also the cost of treatment.

These are hardly “practical” values. Their effect is momentary pleasure and, ultimately, pain.

So, we argue that we see no value in engaging in the arts or the humanities. When school budgets are cut in America, the art and music classes go first. Others quickly follow.

The idea that anything connected with the Humanities must have practical value – and if it doesn’t we invent it – can be shown from an experience I had when I was in college, I was required to take either art or music appreciation. When I asked my advisor why these two courses – I was an English major and he was a Physics teacher – I was informed quite abruptly that those sorts of courses were “good for you” and would “improve your life.” I learned, of course, that this was simply claptrap.

Strangely, we don’t make the same arguments about science courses. I assume that only hard-core math or physics teachers would ever say that a course in Calculus is “good for you” or that a course in Physics at the Atomic Level will “improve your life”!

I want to suggest, then, that for the purposes of these remarks we abandon the idea that the humanities have any "practical" value and, instead, concentrate on the clear values – even if they are impractical -- that they do provide.

What values, then, DO the Humanities give us? (Parenthetically, the idea that they give us values is itself problematic. “Giving us value” implies that we can measure those values. We can perform such measurements in the sciences. If a scientist invents a new compound, one of the first results is to estimate what and how much value will be returned on the investment. This, I believe, is impossible in the humanities and when it is done, it returns false data. How, for example, could I possibly numerically measure how or whether a Shakespearean play might have meaning to one of my students?)

Without trying to measure the impact or value of the humanities we can – and many have – suggest broad ways that the arts and humanities can be important in our lives. Because they offer these insights, they should be regarded as significant and, thus, worthy of support.

My closest friend – Professor Wendel White – recently sent me a document written in 1964 which was the result of a national study of the role of the humanities. I think he sent it to me knowing how desperately I have been struggling with this speech and because the conclusions in the document were current and important when we founded the College. I would like to believe that these ideas can still be found at Stockton and can be seen in the curricula, in our assumptions about students, in the mission of the College and even in the design of the early buildings. More, perhaps, on this later.

The document concludes with the following observations:

1.  America needs a national ideal for which to strive; the Humanities can provide it.
2.  Our democracy demands wisdom from its citizens; the humanities can offer it.
3.  While we believe that we are a nation of materialists, the humanities consistently tell us we are not.
4.  World leadership cannot merely be about superior force, vast wealth or dominating technologies; it must be about leadership based on elements of the spirit.
5.  Americans have enormous amounts of leisure time and the humanities can make this time more significant.

These are all laudable and critical goals. Even though they were written 50 years ago, I have no trouble agreeing and supporting them.

But, the Humanities are only secondarily about democracy, the nation and the world. For me, the Humanities are about us – individual humans trying to understand who we are, what we are capable of and why we are here. These, too, are laudable and critical goals.

I want to spend the rest of our time together telling you about how I personally see the critical importance of the Humanities and giving you examples of my experiences teaching them for 40 years.

First of all, and I don’t want to be blasphemous here, but teaching is a kind of religion to me and it has one commandment – strive to find out what it means to be human. I devoutly believe that humans and, therefore, human life have meaning. It is my task to convince students of this and to help them pull the meaning from literary life and, by extension, expose the meaning of their lives as well. We don’t, therefore, read just for meaning; we read for us.

You and I – the “us” I just mentioned – live – at Stockton-- in a physical and intellectual environment steeped in Humanistic values. They are terribly practical here and, I submit, essential to a meaningful life. I cannot imagine Stockton without them. Let me see if I can explain.

You may have noticed, if you have been here long, that the college is constructed out of metal panels and that those panels can be changed at any time. Every wall throughout the older buildings can be taken down and raised again in a different configuration. While this made the original construction easier, it also made it possible – unlike traditional buildings where walls cannot be moved – for the building to match human needs. If we decided that we needed smaller classrooms, we could partition off a larger room into smaller rooms. Simple. Human needs should change buildings.

Those who created the College (I among them) were also convinced that privilege was a detriment to learning; inequalities caused class resentments and we can’t learn if we feel suppressed and unheard. Perhaps you haven’t noticed but there are no faculty parking lots, no faculty dining rooms or faculty lounges. Students routinely call me by my first name; Doctor and Professor are seldom heard. When I was an undergraduate, I saw the President twice in four years and I wouldn’t have thought about trying to meet with him. Our President can be seen everywhere on campus and will chat with you if his advice is needed.

Perhaps the most important of these Humanistic values here at Stockton is choice. Stockton students have an enormous range of choices compared to other institutions. You can choose classes, can choose which days of the week to be on campus, can choose preceptors, where to eat, where to park and even what to wear. When I was an undergraduate, all men wore sports coats and ties, women wore dresses, I had almost no choices of classes, when I would be on campus, where I would park or where I would eat.

The choices you have here may not seem important but let me assure you that they are. Choice was a fundamental value when we founded the College; our early documents are full of discussions about the need for choice and how having choices will better prepare you for your lives when you leave the College.

My point is that values that center on the human CAN BE practical, are democratic and allow us all to learn about ourselves in powerful ways
I want to close with some comments about a short story and a tragedy; both illustrate powerfully “what it means to be human”.

One of my favorite texts is a short story by Bernard Malamud called Idiots First. In this story a father (Mendel) has a retarded son (Isaac) and he is desperately trying to find someone who will take care of his son after his death. You see, he has been visited by Death (Ginzburg) and was told that he has just a few hours to live. Mendel visits three friends – a pawnbroker, a rich man and a rabbi – begging each to take his son and care for him. All refuse.

Finally, Mendel decides to send his son by train to California to his brother who will, indeed, care for Isaac. The problem is: will he get him on the train before Death appears? After much frustration they arrive at the train station but Death is there – as a ticket-taker -- blocking their way. The train is close by and ready to leave but Death will not let Mendel and Isaac pass. I quote Malamud:

Mendel, in a burst of rage, grabs Death and says: You dog you.” Mendel lunged at Ginzsburg’s throat and began to choke. “You Bastard, don’t you understand what it means human?

Ginzburg is unrelenting but at the moment of Mendel’s death, Malamud writes: Clinging to Ginsburg in his last agony, Mendel saw reflected in the ticket collector’s eyes the depth of his terror. But he saw that Ginsburg, staring at himself in Mendel’s eyes, saw mirrored in them the extent of his own awful wrath. He beheld a shimmering, starry, blinding light that produced darkness.

Death understands at that moment what it means to be human and the awful power being human has to accept and forgive and also to resist. This is what the humanities offer us – the most profound insights into what it means to be human.

The tragedy I want to mention is Shakespeare’s King Lear -- a play with which I have wrestled for 40 years because it seems to me that this play – as difficult and as terrifying as it is – also offers some final, profound insights into what it means to be human.

Shakespeare wrote The Tragedy of King Lear sometime between 1603 and 1606. It is one of his last plays and is, arguably, his greatest work. The plot is fairly simple. Lear, at the beginning, is old and to prevent civil strife among his daughters after his death, offers to divide the kingdom for each daughter on the basis of how much they love him. The eldest two of his daughters declare their love; the youngest cannot and so is banished.

Lear, who has arranged to spend long periods of time with each daughter, is rejected by both and is driven from safety into the wilderness. There he has periods of madness blaming his two daughters for his fate. Eventually, in the depths of insanity, he is rescued by the invasion of his youngest daughter coming to save him. His sanity returns but in the final terrifying scene his youngest daughter dies just before he does.

All tragic heroes – either by their own arrogance or by others’ power – abandon family, responsibility and culture. They reject being connected in favor of the isolation of their pride.

If the play was a comedy, Lear would start being isolated and disconnected and end up integrated into a large community. But, of course, the play isn’t a comedy. Lear must experience isolation, loss, disconnection as a King so he can learn the value of the Human. Ironically, being a Human is exactly what he has forgotten and, yet, what he thinks he has an abundance of. The early Lear insists that he is gracious, generous, tolerant – all human traits – but, in fact, he is petty, rash and ignorant of his situation. It is that humanness that he must learn.

He also utterly rejects failure and error. It is, he asserts again and again, his daughters’ ingratitude (they are, by the way, Shakespeare’s finest harpies) that is the cause of his fall. His errors, misjudgments and blindness to the Truth cause him to falter but he maintains his innocence about such failures until almost the end.

In addition, he cannot imagine that he might be wrong because to do so would, he believes, destroy himself. He is safe in the present and demands that it continue without change. As he is abandoned by his daughters, he – more importantly, abandons Self and, finally, abandons Reason – the one trait that signifies our humanness.

Lear’s fall is not the result of being too human but of being too little human. As King he has forgotten that rule long before the play opens. If he is to come to an understanding of his condition, he must loose himself to gain himself. As all good LITT majors know: you’ve got to go down to go up.

The terror for the tragic hero – and, by extension, for us -- is explained by Lear’s experiences. We are afraid that we will loose ourselves in trying to preserve ourselves. Lear, in the middle of the play, begins to understand this though he cannot bring himself to accept it. What if, in fighting the Human , we become inhuman?

The fact is we need other humans, we need to recognize that in this society where error and failure are considered almost sinful, accepting them aids us in becoming more human. We also need not to be afraid – as we certainly are these days – of what we don’t know, of what we can’t understand, of what we haven’t experienced. We need to see that fear will keep us from becoming the humans we need to be. This is what I try to teach, this is what literature teaches and it is what the Humanities teach.

Lear does not understand what it means to be human. He rejects the human as inadequate, inappropriate, faltering, error-prone and ridiculous. But finally he sees being human as transcendent, powerful, absolutely capable and, ultimately, loving.

Ah, there it is! At the center of being human when we are least deserving of that word, the possibility of love is offered. Being human is to love and to be worthy of love. How simple and how profound.

[These remarks were delivered at the 2010 Graduation Ceremony of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey on December 19, 2010]