The importance of Humanities

I just finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Demon Copperhead’, a reimagined retelling of Dickens’ David Copperfield, set in modern day America in the backdrop of rural poverty and opioid addiction. Highly recommend the book – although it is by no means an easy, fun read. Through this, I got to imagine what it means to be poor coming from a demographic that we often derisively (and reductively) call ‘red-neck’ in rural America. So if you are looking for a light read, skip this book – but if you do pick up the gumption to read it, I am pretty sure you will come out at the other end of it with a little more empathy and humility.

Over the holidays, I have been thinking about the stories and experiences that we grow up us with, and how  they largely shape our world views. I think that the notion of echo chambers and bubbles has always existed in cultures and we seem to be hard-wired to protect and propagate these bubbles. I grew up in a conservative, upper-caste, upper-middle-class context. I went to colleges in India which was largely filled with people like me. And from there it was into the corporate world, starting in India and now in the US. In all of these years, I have barely met, let alone get to know, anyone who did not come from a similar background. This is clearly not an accident – given the lack of social and economic mobility (both in the US and India), the odds of meeting someone who comes from a different background is diminishingly low. And this is going to continue to be the case in future generations as well – just as social media has created cultural bubbles, our economic systems have created these walled social and economic gardens as well.

So the question is: does it matter that we are increasingly distant from the ‘other’ – i.e. folks who do not have access to the same set of opportunities and economic securities that we have been blessed with? Instead of casting this as a moral question (which makes it an easy one – the answer of course is yes), should we think about what we and our next generation lose by having no real idea of the struggle an overwhelmingly large part of the world is going through, against impossibly low odds, to get to the lifestyle and opportunities that we are taking for granted? And as we head into a future with ever increasing uncertainties in geo-politics (think wars, refugees), and economics (think climate change), the notion of these walled economic and social gardens will increasingly be challenged. 

And we undoubtedly want our next generation to play an active role in solving these big problems. As a starting point, it is important to start by developing empathy, and my sincere hope is that this will motivate us to take steps to bridge these gaps, and who knows, our next generation might even devote their considerable talents and resources to do something meaningful about reaching out and participate in solving the problem of inequality of opportunity.

Which brings me to my final point: how do we start? I think a good place to start is to be able to imagine, through stories, the life on the other side of this divide. And humanities have a critical role to play here – help us to  grow beyond the lens of sympathy or worse, entitlement and truly appreciate and empathize the stories and experiences from the marginalized. I am encouraged when our children pick up books like ‘Demon Copperhead’, choose to study alternative views of social and human thought. And as a first generation immigrant parent, I am very confident that our children will take a broader view to the world around them, much more than we were willing or could afford.