Liberal arts degrees aren’t for everyone, but I sure wish more people understood the teachings of history, sociology, philosophy, and the arts. It’s also telling that in this economy the jobs available to young people are increasingly condensed into unlivable metropolises.
I don’t have any answers to all my questions, but I know something’s not balanced in this equation.
I had a friend in college who had a way with words and was an activist. But her dream was as a fiction writer, and last I checked in on her she has gotten nowhere with that.
The things she could have accomplished writing nonfiction...
You know how we sometimes don’t talk to childhood friends because they saw a better or more hopeful version of us and it’s too painful to think what the person we were would think of the person we’ve become? Turns out that goes both ways sometimes, and the reason you haven’t heard from them might be that they don’t want to remind you either. It would be cruel, maybe even dishonor the time we had together.
I don't think this really is limited to liberal arts and big city urban life. I know this group might be highly represented but you have many other types of people who struggle with the exact same problems.
Not everyone who gets lung cancer smokes but it's a hell of a risk factor.
A lot of debt without a clear "shovel ready" career path to pay it off combined with a high cost of living sure isn't a recipe for a fulfilling life outside of work and if your work doesn't do it for you you're SOL at that point.
It's possible to reject the notion that one has to justify one's existence in a capitalist society by getting The Right Degree and spending Forty Hours A Week Making Money For Someone Else.
In this case it seems like the author has only halfway rejected that notion. If you're gonna do it, you gotta do it all the way lol.
The great thing about a capitalist society is that you get to decide for yourself what you want to do and how you want to live. And fortunately you don’t get to decide for other people.
That's not true - you HAVE to do what society has decided is productive. We're under a person mocking liberal arts degrees.
This in spite of the fact that we throw away enough food to feed the world.
Capitalism isn't inherently evil but it isn't by default the best methodology just because America claims it is. A great example of rampantly shitty capitalism is in the phillipines, for example, where we don't even have to mention wage slavery to point out the issues with capitalism.
> We need to warn our young people against falling into similar traps. It’s not victim blaming, it’s just honesty about what’s happening.
It is victim blaming.
Rather than warning young people about the dangers of a solid education, we should make getting that education not dangerous. We fucked up universities with layers of bureaucracy, bizarre funding and compensation schemes, and vocational focus. Admitting and fixing that is being honest about what's happening. Telling people not to get degrees in the fields that might fix this just makes it worse.
Liberal arts aren't a solid education for survival. I'd rather the major/minor system to allow people to study these things while getting a useful qualification alongside.
