Why I’m keen to learn the Humanities

I remember being in year 12 and being forced to read a book where I had to analyse every sentence, searching for hidden meanings and how a certain character represented the meaning of life. I thought it was absolute baloney. 20 years on and I’ve finally worked out why all of this was so important.

I now believe learning the Humanities is possibly the most important educational experience you can have. It teaches you to think critically, how to act with more clarity and how to ask the most important questions. But most importantly, you learn how to think for yourself.

Where information is now ostensibly free for all, it’s never been easier to get away with not thinking. You can parade anyone else’s opinion around as your own and come off as relatively intelligent. All this repetition of opinions is hiding the fact that less people are working hard to actually think for themselves.

Why is thinking for yourself important?

A number of technological changes over the past century have empowered people to do work without thinking. TV and radio allowed anyone to listen other peoples’ opinions all day long for the cost of a wireless box. The internet gave anyone the ability to find any piece of information they wanted for the cost of a wireless subscription. And now AI can give you the average of everyone else’s thoughts within a few seconds on any topic for the cost of nothing. It’s always been easy to get away without thinking, but now it’s beyond easy.

Given how easy it is get away with not thinking, most people choose that option. So the supply of these thinker people is dropping. Yet the demand for these people is actually increasing. Gone are the days where you could learn about finance and settle into a banking job for your 40 year career, making minor adjustments to what you knew as you grew. Now, it’s not unheard of for people to go through five career changes in their one career. The only way to succeed in this type of world is to be adaptable, and the only way to be adaptable is to think for yourself.

Active Reading as a way to think for yourself

Learning how to think for yourself is a nebulous concept, so there is no clear cut answer to this problem. But I believe one way to give yourself a good shot is to learn true Active Reading.

Reading is more and more becoming an activity that is purely about information gathering. The most popular ways to consume a book these days is by getting a 15 minute summary, or reading a Twitter thread that summarises a book. People then parade around that they’ve read 50 books this year (not noting it was through Blinkist)! Farming information in this way requires next to no thinking though.

Active Reading is about gaining understanding. When you read like an Active Reader (also known as Analytical Reader in How To Read A Book), you are reading for true enlightenment, not just for information.

“To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth.” – Mortimer Adler

Reading is the one skill where you are alone and forced to think for yourself. If you learn from someone else for example, you can always ask them a question and get them to explain it further. If you don’t understand something while you’re learning through reading, you are alone in working out how to gain further understanding. This is precisely how we learn to think for ourselves.

“All of us, without exception, can learn to read better and gradually gain more by our efforts through applying them to more rewarding materials.” – Mortimer Adler (again)

Thankfully, Active Reading is something that we can all learn. It’s not easy, and requires the will to learn it. But in the end you end up with greater understanding of the world, you can be true to yourself and your values, and you’ll be a more valuable employee or founder of a business – all by being able to think for yourself. Seems like work that’s worth doing.