In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth - NYTimes.com
Sad that the perceived 'market' value of humanity's cultural inheritance is sinking like Citigroup stock. More emphasis on history, ethics and an awareness of the dependence of the individual on a healthy social milieu might have spared us the current tsunami of financial greed and economic misery.
While the demand for technologists, scientists and mathematicians skyrockets, the lack of human perspective and vision in business management and financial 'planning' has created a maelstrom which drags the whole world down into chaos.
On the other hand, perhaps only the elite can be expected to "Know Thyself" as the ancient motto charges. Perhaps the rest of 'us' shall be proscribed to soulless machinelike lives, tuned to specific tasks like worker bees... If so, there's not a lot of hope for democracy.
The NYTimes article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html?em
