The Tolstoy Bailout, Or Why The Humanities Matter

in History, Life, Literature, Philosophy | March 10th, 2009

Writ­ing in The New Repub­lic, Leon Wieselti­er offers a response to the Feb 25 piece in the NYTimes: In Tough Times, the Human­i­ties Must Jus­ti­fy Their Worth. His argu­ment is worth a read, and here is one lengthy mon­ey quote:

The com­plaint against the human­i­ties is that they are imprac­ti­cal. This is true. They will not change the world. They will change only the expe­ri­ence, and the under­stand­ing, and the eval­u­a­tion, of the world. .… It is worth remem­ber­ing, then, that the cri­sis in which we find our­selves was the work of prac­ti­cal men. The secu­ri­ti­za­tion of mort­gages was not con­ceived by a head in the clouds. No poet cost any­body their house. No his­to­ri­an cost any­body their job. Not even the most pam­pered of pro­fes­sors ever squan­dered $87,000 of some­one else’s mon­ey on a lit­tle rug. The cre­ativ­i­ty of bankers is a lux­u­ry that we can no longer afford. But now I read about “defend­ing the virtues of the lib­er­al arts in a mon­ey-dri­ven world,” as the Times says. I would have thought that in these times the per­spec­tive of mon­ey would be ashamed to show itself. What author­i­ty, real­ly, should the stand­point of finance any longer have for Amer­i­can soci­ety? Who gives a damn what Ken­neth D. Lewis thinks about any­thing? … The study of reli­gion, defend­ing itself to cap­i­tal­ists? …

In tough times, of all times, the worth of the human­i­ties needs no jus­ti­fy­ing. The rea­son is that it will take many kinds of sus­te­nance to help peo­ple through these trou­bles. Many peo­ple will now have to fall back more on inner resources than on out­er ones. They are in need of loans, but they are also in need of mean­ings.… We are in need of fis­cal pol­i­cy and spir­i­tu­al pol­i­cy. And spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing, lit­er­a­ture is a bailout, and so is art, and phi­los­o­phy, and his­to­ry, and the rest.  … Regres­sion analy­sis will not get us through the long night. We need to know more about the human heart than the study of con­sumer behav­ior can teach. These are the hours when the old Pen­guin paper­backs must stand us in good stead. It was for now that we read them then.

Very well said, and the log­ic out­lined here could be one rea­son why the con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion pro­gram that I help lead — which is heavy on meat & pota­to human­i­ties cours­es — is so far far­ing quite well.
via the TNR Twit­ter Feed (ours here)

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Ricky Gervais on American Optimism

in Comedy, Life | March 9th, 2009

Ricky Ger­vais, the come­di­an and brains behind The Office, talks here about the dif­fer­ence between British and Amer­i­can humor, and it real­ly gets down to deep cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences. Opti­mism, the belief that any­thing is pos­si­ble, ver­sus an ingrained pes­simism and pen­chant for the under­dog. I won­der whether UK read­ers would agree with this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. And, more so, I won­der which out­look, the British or Amer­i­can, can bet­ter get you through these dif­fi­cult times. The answer, to me, is not obvi­ous…

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The Life You Can Save

in Life, Philosophy | March 5th, 2009

If you’re not famil­iar with him, Peter Singer is an Aus­tralian-born philoso­pher who teach­es at Prince­ton and who wrote Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion in 1975, help­ing to launch the ani­mal rights move­ment. A prac­ti­tion­er of applied ethics, he has also tak­en con­tro­ver­sial posi­tions on euthana­sia. Nowa­days, he’s work­ing on less sen­si­tive issues. His lat­est book is called The Life You Can Save: Act­ing Now to End World Pover­ty, and it makes the basic point that most of us could be doing more, with very lit­tle effort, to save lives around the world.

It’s a giv­en that we would rush to save a small child about to step into oncom­ing traf­fic. That’s a no-brain­er, an instinct. But, if we’re told that we can save the lives of chil­dren world­wide by giv­ing token amounts of mon­ey each month, we often react indif­fer­ent­ly and then go out and con­sume. In this inter­view heard on San Fran­cis­co air­waves this morn­ing, (MP3 — iTunes — Feed), Singer gets into how small sac­ri­fices can make big dif­fer­ences, and why we should make them. And if you’re look­ing for char­i­ties that can help make these dif­fer­ences, Singer pro­vides a help­ful list on his web site.

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What We Can Learn from Past Presidents

in History, Life | March 2nd, 2009

Appear­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence in 2008, Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning his­to­ri­an Doris Kearns Good­win talks about what we can all learn from Amer­i­can pres­i­dents, includ­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly Abra­ham Lin­coln and Lyn­don John­son. This is not anoth­er talk about what makes pres­i­dents great. It’s more about the bal­ance between work, love, and play, and how we can gen­er­al­ly be pro­duc­tive, shiny, hap­py peo­ple.

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“Last Lecture” Professor Randy Pausch Dies

in Life | July 25th, 2008

Randy Pausch, the com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor from Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty whose “Last Lec­ture” caught the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion, has died of pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. Thanks part­ly to a Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle writ­ten last Sep­tem­ber, the pub­lic dis­cov­ered the remark­ably upbeat and uplift­ing lec­ture Pausch gave soon after get­ting diag­nosed. Titled “Real­ly Achiev­ing Your Child­hood Dreams” (see video below, or down­load on iTunes here), the lec­ture became a media sen­sa­tion and went viral across the web. And it served as the basis for Pausch’s bestelling book, The Last Lec­ture. If you haven’t seen the video, give it your time. It will teach you some­thing more valu­able than any­thing else we serve up here.

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J.K. Rowling Tells Harvard Grads Why Success Begins with Failure

in Harvard, Life | June 7th, 2008

Here’s J.K. Rowl­ing speak­ing with elo­quence at Har­vard’s grad­u­a­tion, 2008. You’ll find a lit­tle wit (although far dif­fer­ent than the kind on dis­play when Sacha Baron Cohen — a.k.a. Ali G & Borat — spoke at Har­vard grad­u­a­tion fes­tiv­i­ties in 2004). And then there’s the sage advice that she dis­pens­es. Some good thoughts on why suc­cess is ulti­mate­ly pred­i­cat­ed on fail­ure (thoughts that call to mind Steve Jobs’ now famous talk at Stan­ford), and why we need to exer­cise the pow­er of imag­i­na­tion — and empa­thy — in the broad­est sense. We have oth­er fine grad­u­a­tion speech­es post­ed below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

Bono Tells Grad­u­ates “Pick a Fight, Get in It” (2004)

Stephen Col­bert Dish­es Out Wis­dom & Laughs at North­west­ern

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Ira Glass on Why Creative Excellence Takes Time

in Creativity, Life | May 29th, 2008

Ira Glass, host of the beloved radio show This Amer­i­can Life, offers a help­ful reminder that excel­lence does­n’t come auto­mat­i­cal­ly. (See video below.) It takes work, years of it. And he revis­its some of his ear­ly radio work in order to prove it.

The Glass video has been added to our YouTube playlist.

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The Lecture That Captured the Public Imagination: From YouTube Sensation to #1 Best-Selling Book

in Life | April 20th, 2008

By now, many of you have prob­a­bly seen (or at least heard about) the last lec­ture by Randy Pausch, a com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor from Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty, who is dying from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. Enti­tled “Real­ly Achiev­ing Your Child­hood Dreams,” the lec­ture (see video below) is upbeat and uplift­ing with­out being the slight­est bit morose. And it sets an exam­ple for how we can think about liv­ing and dying. The lec­ture has been watched by mil­lions on YouTube, and it serves as the basis for a new book called The Last Lec­ture, which is now the num­ber one best­seller on Ama­zon. We’ve added the video to our YouTube playlist. If you haven’t seen it yet, give it your time. It will teach you some­thing more valu­able than any­thing else we serve up here. Also, you can down­load it on iTunes.

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