The fall of the questions

Over lunch the other day, Niklaus and I were talking about the fall of the humanities, and to a lesser extent the fall of social sciences, in the hierarchy of the academy. The disciplines aren't attractive, kids don't want to study them like they used to.

There are a lot of factors leading to where we are. Partly it's a function of the apotheosization of technology and money. These are things that get people excited. It's also fear driven. First globalization, now automation have greatly complicated careers. The sands are always shifting under our feet, change is accelerating, so everyone rightly worries about our childrens' futures. How will they take care of themselves in a future we can barely imagine? So we nudge everything towards the disciplines that seem to promise money, power, and a greater ability to surf through the growing swells of history.

But we cannot escape the big problems and questions that face us?  As the world's population expands and competition for resources heats up, how do we structure ourselves locally, nationally, and internationally to provide for a balance of growth and distribution of wealth? What is due to those whose jobs get automated away, those for whom the only jobs left seem to be concentrated in low status fields (food service, logistics, health care positions other than "doctor"?). These are not simple questions, there are moral and ethical components to them as well as technical components (how to manage organizations). One thing is for certain: they will not teach the answers to them in coding bootcamps.

These are the kind of things the humanities and social sciences should helping people think about, by helping us learn to frame questions and ponder how they interact with our values, whatever they are, but these disciplines got sucked into discursive battles about who could use more arcane jargon to talk about different aspects of this or that theoretical question, much of it revolving around identity politics of one sort or another. Not that it has all been bad, important questions have been raised, some good things have happened. But the soft side of the academy needs to broaden its focus and raise its game.

Or people like Atul Gawande, a doctor who has thought deeply about what he does, his values, and how physicians add to the world, will keep eating our lunch. Not that I would not be delighted to buy him lunch. Would love to.