January 7th, 2026
Today I had some revelations about myself. Nothing too crazy but we will get into it with my classes.
As stated before I was transferred to the online biology course so I didn’t go to my previous in-person, 8AM one. So this time I only had two classes which are humanities and theatre. For my humanities class we had to read the introduction chapter from Roosevelt Montás’ book Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation. Do any of you know him? You may find it interesting to know that he is originally from the Dominican Republic and his father was a Marxist with a sixth grade education who was involved in opposing the autocratic leader of the DR all those years ago.
I was actually late to class today due to the bus leaving the station later than it was supposed to. When I entered the class people were put into groups to, I guess, introduce themselves. I actually had to climb under the table to get to my seat because the path I would take was occupied by people conversing with those sitting at the table directly behind. I sit in a dark corner and the front of the class so this wasn’t as embarrassing for me. My professor (remember, sh taught my Modern Europe and French Rev. classes) came up to me to say hi and happy new year, he also asked if I wanted to join a group and I said “nope,” I may have come across as unsettling but I wasn’t trying to be. I just did not want to talk to anyone. I am well aware of the fact that I am self sabotaging myself but I was already pissed off due to the bus and am just not all there yet. Being a person is still really hard for me and I do not know why.
Anyway, this class was actually more of a discussion, no lecture, all based off the reading we did. The reading itself was about liberal arts and the defence of it. My professor wrote down questions on the board that we would discuss amongst ourselves and then answer for the class when she prompted it. While most people were discussing in groups I just wrote down my answers and tried to psych myself up into putting up my hand.
The first question was about the origins or liberal arts and what its purpose as education is. This concept of liberal arts education originated in Ancient Athens to prime free citizens to participate in political society, or thats what I wrote down as my understanding from the reading. This education concerns the understanding of the human condition and self determination. My professor wrote on the board: existence, not subsistence. Liberal arts is concerned with the liberty of the mind—civic virtue of citizens. A quote from the reading states “democracy hinges on the successes or failures of liberal arts education.” Training in liberal arts includes reading, discussing, and writing about the great “canon.”
The second question we had to answer was about what is the baggage of liberal arts. A student said that it is hard to find a job, the system is discriminatory against liberal arts degrees. Is this actually true? I know it is in western countries, I have literally been told not to pursue a history PhD as there are seldom jobs available (I was told to go into library stuff), but does this anti-humanities sentiment apply to non-western countries? Anyway, the student continued about how the authorities d not want critical thinkers.
My professor spoke, universities are mostly training for the job market, thus humanities is seen as frivolous. STEM is more lucrative and respected. Liberal arts seems like a privilege only for the upper class. Montás argues against this. We went over his background which I stated before so I will skip it here. He states that the liberal arts as being only for the elites continues the tradition of the working class being subservient and docile, they aren’t allowed to think bigger. People with liberal arts degrees tend to move on to high positions, like running the country, so clearly these degrees are not useless.
She then went on to talk about the concept of “false friends” which is mostly used in language learning but works in other cases too. It is about finding commonalities in places, like in history, and applying our current knowledge to it when contextually it doesn’t fit at all. I think I explained that really poorly. Here’s an example that was given in class: when reading Ancient Greek works and they talk of liberty, we have to understand that their concept of liberty was very different compared to our own. A question was built off this “false friends” concept, why is using liberal arts such a problem now? What is the baggage.
I actually put my goddamn hand up and said that the word liberal has been heavily politicized. Which I guess was correct and she asked a follow up question but it was phrased in such a way that I shamefully state that I did not know how to answer it. She admitted that she worded her question poorly so that made me feel a little better. The idea that she was going for and what another student answer is that the we liberal in how it is used now does not apply to the liberal arts. What people think liberal is rather than what it means in this context. The liberal arts are much older than our political party.
Two common critiques come up regarding liberal arts:
With context itself: the canon works are not representative of the human experience, they omit a lot of valuable insights from people of different class, race, sex, sexuality, etc. the “Dead White Dude” stereotype is associated as Western and thus the canon texts are incredibly western-centric.
There are concerns over practicality and applicability of the liberal arts in the modern economy. Politicians up a lot of emphasis on STEM training and “job-readiness.” They want a return on investment for students and also tax payers (my university is public, still have to pay tuition).
Nowadays apparently employers want people with diverse studies. Broad and flexible thinkers are a hot commodity.
She ended the class by sharing a quote:
“Science and technology cannot tell us what is fair and just.”
It was a much longer quote but I couldn’t write it all when class was ending right then and there, also the slides she was using are not available so thats all we have to work with. I know there was a part that said medicine can tell us about life but not about the meaning of living, or something like that.
Anyway after that I headed over to my theatre class. Which wouldn’t start until over an hour later. I spent my time catching up on my Semester 8 posts, which are all done now.
For today’s theatre class we learned about what theatre is and how t read a play. My professor gave some great advice on how to do this and I think it applies to non-fiction as well with some tweaks. We were taught about what signs and semiotics are, which took a minute for me to understand for some reason. The first play we would have to read for the class is called Medea and the advice given in reading plays was to look at the explicit text evidence; the implicit text evidence; the social world of the play; any transformations within the plot; who are the people in the play; how do you feel about it.
We were also given questions to ask ourselves while reading: what were our first impressions; what is the setting of the play and the period it was actually written; what happens; what are the problems, people, and relationships; how is the mood throughout; and what is the overall story. He told us to write down our gut responses to the play; any hard words we come across; take note of stage direction; who do we care about and why; and what happened and why.
This is all great information and it didn’t hit me how reading heavy this class would be until i found that every play was over 100 pages long, which is fine obviously, but when I have to read a shit ton of pieces for both my humanities and history seminar? I did not think I could balance this course with the others so I ended up dropping it too. Sorry to disappoint, I just do not think that I am a strong enough person to handle that type of work load, I do not know. It is not just reading the plays but also having to write responses to them. While I only have to write responses to three plays, I also have to write a script analysis for something and a performance analysis. It’s just a lot when I have others classes to do. Maybe you understand, maybe you do not. Maybe I am just not smart enough. Which sucks because I have been having thoughts about my future but maybe I am not able to pursue anything.
I am rambling now, but seriously I have been thinking a lot about things. Over the winter break I binge watched The Pitt (have you seen it?) and it seriously had me fucking considering medicine as a career. Is that embarrassing? Maybe, who knows. I am still going for my masters but while I am at it, my last semester of undergrad will have two courses to finish off my degree and two upgrading courses (math and physics as I didn’t do the grade 12 classes in high school due to fear). The reason why I am upgrading is because apparently high school score are very important to post-secondary institutions in Cuba (which is a place I am considering going to after my masters, Russia is still on the table). Anyway, let me know if I am fucking crazy or not.
Also I watched Heated Rivalry as it was releasing weekly and I enjoyed every minute of it. Such a great show, would highly recommend unless you cannot handle sex scenes.
the canon works are not representative of the human experience, they omit a lot of valuable insights from people of different class, race, sex, sexuality, etc. the “Dead White Dude” stereotype is associated as Western and thus the canon texts are incredible western-centric.
This is the main problem with liberal arts education as it exists in practice in western universities rather than in the idealized story that liberal arts tells about itself with the whole “ancient Greece, democracy, civic education” myth.
Where STEM education exists to churn out productive workers to fill the demand for the specialized, high-skill labor that capital needs to maximize profits, liberal arts fundamentally exist to reinforce and perpetuate the cultural superstructure of a society, to give ideological justification for a society’s economic, social and political structures.
In social studies/political science classes you learn why liberal democracy is the best way to run a society, maybe even the only way; in history you learn that the West may have done bad things but the West’s enemies were still worse; international relations is a how-to guide for imperialism; and of course in economics you learn why free market capitalism is the only system that works and any attempt at a different system is bound to end in disaster.
Yes, some dissent is allowed on the margins, but only in a limited capacity - go too far in challenging the prevailing dogma and you will be treated as unserious by the academic community, blacklisted and written off as a “crank” - and there is always just enough nuance injected to maintain plausible deniability for being able to claim academic objectivity.
The bourgeoisie and its agents deliberately use academia to wage ideological war against the working class and revolutionary ideologies. We can talk for instance about how the CIA funded and through their media connections popularized historians who reinforced imperialist narratives and inflated atrocities supposedly committed by the USSR, China and other socialist states.
We can talk about the deliberate boosting of anarchism, of Trotskyism, and of other vulgarizations and perversions of Marxism like the Frankfurt school in order to suppress and delegitimize Marxism-Leninism, to replace any dialectical materialist thinking that managed to make its way into academia with liberal idealism under a quasi-radical guise. We can talk about how the CIA also through academic programs funded artists and writers who produced anti-socialist works.
It’s also no coincidence that most of those who get recruited by the CIA or the state department passed through Ivy League institutions. The same goes for Britain’s Oxford/Cambridge and their relationship with British intelligence and the British aristocracy.
Universities have always been where the ruling classes have trained and ideologically conditioned the next generation of ruling elites and imperial administrators. They are also an incubator for foreign puppet elites who get indoctrinated in US institutions and then go back to their own countries to lead proxy governments and parties that are ideologically and geopolitically aligned with the US, or who lead opposition media and NGOs that then are used to orchestrate color revolutions.
Of course there are always some people who genuinely do good work and manage to find their way to more radical theories through the academic environment, that possibility has to exist because it functions as a sort of pressure valve for the most radically inclined individuals, but by and large the result is that universities are there to reinforce, in the Gramscian sense, the cultural hegemony of the ruling class. After all, that is why the bourgeoisie fund and donate to universities.
So no, humanities are not useless, but you have to be aware of the broader social function that they serve. As an individual you can still get something useful out of them if you understand the systemic bias of western academia, learn how to fiter that bias and how to use the resources that you are provided with and the research methods you are taught in order to analyze primary and secondary sources with a critical eye and an openness to alternative perspectives.
Unfortunately nowadays most academics are just going through the motions when they write papers, just parroting the accepted mainstream line in liberal academia and taking as little risk as possible. Challenging the orthodoxy is not good for your career or your grant funding, and in some cases it can even be dangerous to your personal safety.
This is all great information and it didn’t hit me how reading heavy this class would be until i found that every play was over 100 pages long, which is fine obviously, but when I have to read a shit ton of pieces for both my humanities and history seminar?
if it helps, from my experience plays can be read pretty quickly because they are like 95% dialogue.
I totally agree that plays are nice due to being almost completely dialogue, but having to write an analysis based off of them on top of the work I’d have to do for other classes just wasn’t worth it. Maybe in further semesters I will be able to balance the work load better but for now I have to spread it out and prioritize.
