As an an #anthropologist, #educator, and developer of others, I am concerned with the purpose and power of #learning. As a nascent practitioner in the #intercultural and #DEIB spaces, in which, one would argue, forging nuanced, complex, and often difficult conversations are de rigueur, both also increasingly exhausting and demoralizing in a fractious society and world with withering attention spans, David Brooks' piece for The New York Times on the purpose of #culture and the value of the #liberalarts is a beacon. Here's a quote that I am absorbing:
we have become so sad, lonely, angry and mean as a society in part because so many people have not been taught or don’t bother practicing to enter sympathetically into the minds of their fellow human beings. We’re overpoliticized while growing increasingly undermoralized, underspiritualized, undercultured.
The alternative is to rediscover the humanist code. It is based on the idea that unless you immerse yourself in the humanities, you may never confront the most important question: How should I live my life?
Brooks give us copious examples from writers, historians, philosophers, literary and artistic scholars that examine what a liberal arts education, with attention to the larger "human project," through we learn to immerse ourselves into the experiences and perspectives of , and develop our capacities for #imagination, #empathy, and #self-awareness, among other things, can be antidote for our divided, fractious, impatient, and cynical world.
Brooks points out that, through the engaging in reading, listening, observing and experiencing works of culture and liberal arts, we are exposed to the heights of human #creativity, the wonders of the human #imagination and the possibilities of joy, and the significance of #morality.
While these might seem flights of fancy, wouldn't you rather have leaders who have #morals, #imagination and exhibit #creative #thinking? Perhaps Brooks' perspective (and those of many scholars and thinkers that he cites) should be considered before you launch your next #leadership #development program.