Our culture must not be defined by our technology

Essex university has announced it is cutting positions equivalent to about 150 full-time roles, potentially affecting over 500 staff, BBC News reports.

The staff being lost are “disproportionately concentrated in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS), where 85% of all staff placed at risk of redundancy are based”. It is not surprising; the role of education in the humanities, once the main form of higher education, has been strongly questioned in today’s world. What is the use of knowing ancient history, or English literature? What is the point of learning obscure languages? How will that help society?

Yet I would argue that it is actually essential to society. People with a humanities education are absolutely necessary for our society as a whole, and especially to Christian churches. The humanities teach ways of thinking that enable us to work through complex problems with fine nuances. Learning the humanities teaches us about ethical thinking. They teach skills basic to learning and understanding God’s Word. There is hardly any aspect of Christian maturity that would not be helped by some background in the humanities.

By “the humanities” I mean disciplines largely based on texts (broadly speaking History; Literature; Philosophy; Theology; The Arts; Classics; Archaeology; and Anthropology). Humanism came to the fore in the 16th century, when people sought anew to find the original meanings of texts. Today, the humanities revolve around the kind of skills that help us think about and understand human life and culture. They ask questions about interpretation, meaning, ethics and what it is to be human. Learning the humanities might lead you to consider not just “How does this thing work?” but also “What does this mean?” and “What ought we to do about it?”.

When you are learning one of the disciplines of the humanities, you learn to read your world carefully– its texts and pictures, its history, its culture. You learn to look for assumptions, and how meaning depends upon context. You learn not just to absorb information, but to evaluate that information and place it within a larger web of meaning.

From the humanities we learn to consider the big questions of life, not just the technical mechanisms that make it more efficient. How can we use technology justly? What is the good life that we want for people? How do we value each other?

Such questions, and the skills to think about them deeply, are becoming more and more important. All the time we are surrounded by forcibly presented views from people sure of their ethical stance, but often this is not backed up by any ethical reasoning or historical knowledge. Sadly Christians can fall into such shallow certainty, too.

Studying the humanities also helps us understand other people. We can learn about people in cultures and times very different from our own, and so have a deeper appreciation of these marvels of God’s creation. We learn how to speak the truth in love in a way that others will understand.

This is another important aspect – the humanities train people to express their ideas clearly, whether through speaking, debating, or writing. Far from being useless, the humanities actually give us the abilities and skills that are basic to having a functioning society. Democracy needs people who can understand arguments and weigh up debates, to see what is true and what is just. It needs people who are not swayed by emotive slogans, but can see past them. It needs people with a level of critical judgement.

A good training in the humanities is where you find a good training in what it means to be human. It helps us think through why it is not enough to think of ourselves as mere machines, or bags of chemicals; it is not enough to reduce human beings to their genetics, or their functionality, or their abilities. Humans are more than their productivity or their efficiency.

We must not let our culture be defined by our technology. Technology can provide useful tools; but tools need to be operated within a framework of meaning. We need to keep the ability to ask not just what can be done but what ought to be done – and that has to remain a dominant value. We need thinkers who can make sure that technology serves humans, not the other way around.

Most people would agree that the big questions of AI, genetic engineering, identity and personhood need more than just technical expertise. They need people who understand what is necessary for meaningful human life. Especially, they need people well equipped to apply God’s Word to these questions, and so give society the meaning they crave. We must continue to value the skills that make this possible.