The Death of Humanism

My high school is a microcosm of society. There are the out-of-touch administrators who, much like our lawmakers, seem to care exclusively about securing funding rather than the mental health of their students. There are the outcasts, who eat lunch alone in the corners of the cafeteria but are some of the nicest people I’ve encountered. There are the teachers, some of whom are uncompromising sadists, others who are saints (may God bless their kind souls). There are the hedonists, who are popular in a superficial sense but lack any deeper engagement with life. There are the future finance bros who, on their college applications, promised to dedicate their lives to “empowering and uplifting underserved communities.” (By working at Goldman Sachs.) There are the activists who, intent on saving the world, repost Instagram stories to promote their thoroughly-researched political opinions. (Which they pulled off of Tik Tok.) And there are the college-application preprofessionals, whose lives revolve around working for a white-shoe firm or attending an elite institution of highest possible prestige. (I mean of higher learning, of course.)  

But public high school is more than just a representative sample of society. It’s almost like the Wicked Witch of West’s crystal ball: It offers the viewer a taste of what is happening in the world, what he will encounter there, and his place within it. Will he be a lawmaker, a banker, a doctor, a computer scientist? Or, God forbid, a philosopher, novelist, or journalist? Will he be a people person or a loner? A sycophant or nonconformist? Unfortunately, I’ve been stuck in this crystal ball for far too long, but because of that I’ve gleaned some insights on the nature of our society that I believe will stick with me for the rest of my life. One such insight, the one I’d like to talk about today, is that my school is an accurate representative of our zeitgeist; zeit meaning time in German, geist meaning spirit or ghost—zeitgeist literally means “spirit of the times.”

Zeitgeists have come in many forms over the millennia. The Age of Enlightenment, for instance, was a time of reason, individualism, and skepticism of the then-dominating religious, ideological, and political dogmas propagated by traditional institutions. This zeitgeist inspired the founding of America. The Romantic Era, from the late-18th century to the mid-19th century, was a time of rebellion—rebellion against the Industrial Revolution’s mechanization, against its exploitation of nature, against its subversion of emotion, and even a pushback from the strict rationalism of the preceding Age of Enlightenment, giving us some great philosophers of the Western canon in Emerson and Thoreau. The Scientific Revolution, from 1543 to the early 18th century, was another age of reason; it offered us calculus and Newtonian physics and the scientific method, some of the most important inventions in human history. This is all to say, some zeitgeists, some cultures, some ideologies have greatly advanced humanity both technologically and humanistically. 

Other zeitgeists have not. The obvious Western example is Medieval Europe. Sure, there were some technological improvements during this time, like the heavy plough and compass and some of the first universities, but for a race capable of critical thinking, it was a thousand years of absurd savagery. Life was by most accounts nasty, brutish, and short. Petrarch, a writer who many consider to be the father of humanism, eloquently described the prevailing attitudes of the times in a 14th century letter. “Often I am filled with bitter indignation against the morals of today,” he wrote, “when men value nothing except gold and silver, and desire nothing except sensual, physical pleasures.” His insight offers us a perspective on why the Dark Ages were considered “dark”: not much is known about it besides war and feudalism. Nobles were busy waging wars, knights were busy killing each other in those wars, and the peasants were busy subsistence farming on their nobles’ manors. The elites and clergy, rather than trying to advance humanity, seemed motivated purely by money and ego, and extracted as much wealth as they could from their peasants. In retrospect it looks more like barbarity than civilization, especially for a system that claimed to value chivalry and honor. The life of the average Medieval peasant seems to the ambitious capitalist to be a bizarre, wasted one. Nevertheless, it feels like the West has chosen (or been subconsciously coerced) to crawl back to the Dark Ages, albeit a modern variant where cathedrals are replaced with Facebook, town squares with Instagram, and feudalism with some sort of technofeudalism. (We’ll talk about this later in more detail.)

This is to say, the astute observer glances at our society and quickly realizes that our zeitgeist is one centered not around a humanistic philosophy that uplifts man, but rather a materialistic one that atrophies him. Sure, we’ve built bigger, better computers; stocks are higher than ever; AI will supposedly eliminate the need to work. These advancements seem to be positive in the short run. But somewhere along the way, many of us lost things that are much more important in the long run: our attention spans, our ability to think critically, our curiosity, our creativity, our morals, our humanity. What good is the newest rocket if we use it as a bomb rather than as a vessel to explore the cosmos? What good is freedom if we don’t know how to use that freedom, or if others dictate how we should use that freedom? What good is money if we have no greater purpose other than making more money? 

As such, the problems of our generation are both external and profoundly internal. Our incurable plagues and existential threats of annihilation have been largely replaced with new, more day-to-day habitual problems induced by porn and Tik Tok and flawed institutions. At first glance, these problems seem much tamer than some of the ostensibly insurmountable, existential challenges humanity has faced in the past. Tik Tok doesn’t directly kill people like the plague did. But on a deeper level, these trends can be capsulized in one word: degeneracy. And degeneracy is arguably more dangerous than an existential threat, since it leaves people lost and confused and depressed, and has led us down a dark, explosive path toward a painful psychological (and in some cases physical) destruction from within. 

After observing the world closely through high school, both through direct experience and through literature, the many “why” questions that have bugged me for years are these. Why do people, myself included, seem dumber than ever? Why has schooling become a job rather than a joy? Why do people hate each other? Why has learning for the sake of learning largely disappeared? Why has curiosity largely disappeared? Why are many of those who purportedly care about society so extreme? Why do many people not care about the trajectory of our society at all? Why are so many people depressed? These questions can, in sum, be broadly streamlined into a misleading simple one. That is, why is our society in such rampant decline? 

As with most questions like this, there are no simple answers. Though it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what is causing this decline, there are four reasons that come to my mind quickly—problems that I can easily identify and speak to based on experience. Problems that I think if addressed seriously, honestly, and aggressively, may greatly improve the future of our society. They are 1) a loss of shared values, 2) a failed public school system, 3) social media, and 4) the loss of humanism. I should also note that it’s always easier to point out problems than to solve them, and though I seem pessimistic in this introduction, I do have hope for Western civilization. If we were to pair our technological prowess with a humanistic core, the West has the potential to be the great beacon of freedom, self-reliance, and prosperity for generations to come, the country our founding fathers envisioned it to be: a nation of hardworking, good people with a special outlook on life, liberty, and happiness for all. The end of the essay will reflect this attitude and explore alternatives to our vapid status quo.

1. A Loss of Shared Values 

At the core of any society is a set of shared values and traditions. Ancient Rome, for instance, revolved around the mos maiorum, or the “way of the elders,” a consortium of unwritten social norms that stressed pietas (duty), gravitas (seriousness),and disciplina (discipline). Or consider Sparta, which focused all aspects of life on the military. Take Athens, which emphasized knowledge and learning and wisdom. Take the Han Dynasty in China, which adopted Confucianism as its official state philosophy. Consider the Soviets, who rallied around Marxist-Leninism and forced atheism and patriotism onto their population. Say what you will about the merit of these values and the societies that cherished them. The point is that every ancient and modern society rallied around a set of easily understood values. 

Purpose is also important on the individual level. When people have nothing left to be proud of, they begin identifying with other things: their ethnicity, religion, skin color, gender, IQ, political party, nationality—things that, because they have nothing to do with individual merit, Schopenhauer believed induced “the cheapest sort of pride.” And history teaches us that it is also often the most dangerous kind of pride, the kind that leads to scapegoating, extremism, and eventually bloodshed. It is therefore important that we, the people, dictate what our values are before someone with more sinister intentions sways the frustrated crowds. 

But there’s a problem: Large chunks of the American youth are lost. There is no set of values we can all agree on. There is no nationwide project to feel proud of. There is no palpable existential threat everyone can rally behind. There is no tangible global, good-versus-evil war like World War II to fight. We aren’t sending a man to the moon or dealing with nukes in Cuba. The classical capitalism that defined much of early American success and enabled the coveted American dream seems to have died and been replaced with crony crapitalism and the welfare state. I am almost certain that if the founding fathers were to see the current state of the union they would faint on the spot. 

As Rome lost its traditional values, Sparta its military, Athens its wisdom, and Han China its Comfucian ideals, each respective society fractured and met its demise, sometimes quickly, sometimes over an extended period of time. We should therefore expect that America, like any other society, will follow that general pattern once its fragile democracy fails. 

Our country, however, is not exactly like other empires. Since its inception in 1776, America has duly earned its title as the biggest political experiment in history: what began as “a city on a hill,” a settlement meant to be a strictly Puritan community, became a place of broad freedom in principle and, as mistakes like Jim Crow and slavery and rogue CIA operations were rectified, eventually a thriving nation that boasted broad freedoms in practice as well. While many governments and institutions throughout history silenced and murdered their people, the United States has proven, despite its many sins, that a pluralistic society can not only exist, but can flourish, and can lead the world with a unique vitality, one motivated by capitalism and individualism and a patriotism that naturally arises from stability and prosperity. It’s an energy, an aura, something in the air that uplifts the ability of everyone; it’s the American Dream. When my great-grandmother escaped the Holocaust and reached the docks Ellis Island on a steamboat, I can only imagine the look on her face as the New York City skyline faded into view. She knew then, just like millions of other immigrants who’ve come here over the centuries, that America was the poster child of multicultural excellence. 

At least, it used to be that way. 

What are the values of the average young American? Where are we headed? There are a couple of ways to tell: by looking at our politics, our celebrities, our buildings, and our everyday habits. In other words, by analyzing our culture. 

The obvious example is politics. Those on the progressive left complain about Trump, but also lament the fact that over 77 million Americans voted for him and what he stands for. Those on the MAGA right are not just against Harris, but are shocked that 75 million Americans voted for her and what she stands for. The center has fizzled out, partly because it will never win the presidency and partly because it's harder to be a moderate that researches both candidates and forms opinions on each individual issue. And, when looking at the various prejudices that dominate young attitudes, especially among young men on the far right, there’s been an obvious surge in nationalism, racism, antisemitism, and homophobia in these spheres. If Hitler rose to power in this new century, I feel increasingly unsure whether some of my peers would even reject his ideas. In fact, I suspect some would embrace them. I’ve spoken to gay friends, Muslim friends, black friends, white friends, and many others about this; they feel similarly uneasy. 

The other extreme is perhaps just as bad. Some people are so liberal it seems that they want to liberate our society from liberalism. The cancel culture of the Great Awokening, which sought to extinguish free speech in the name of inclusiveness, went so far that, according to Vox, a leftist media outlet, “white liberals have moved so far to the left on questions of race that they are now, on these issues, to the left of the typical black voter.” Activists, understanding this shift, have ditched any attempt at good-faith dialogue, and instead established simple narratives where an oppressor oppresses the oppressed, when the causes they advocate for or against are almost always anything but simple. Often, the issues are framed in purely moral rather than rational terms so that anyone who disagrees with the popular slogan is denounced as a Nazi.

Part of the reason our society is so fractured is simple: we’ve stopped asking the big questions. For instance, we no longer ask what beauty is. Take architecture as an example of this. The obvious question we should ask ourselves when scrutinizing design is why? Why is this building shaped in this way and not that? What is the architect trying to convey with marble over concrete, or with an arch over a beam? These things are important because architecture is the tangible expression of a society’s values. We see architecture on the way to school or work; on the way home; on the way to the supermarket; at the office, at the school, at the supermarket. Whole Foods buildings often feature steel beams and modern industrial light fixtures, with light brown wooden features for the warm, organic, minimalist feel. When we hear “New York City,” our minds conjure images of skyscrapers, perhaps the Chrysler and Empire State buildings, and therefore of capitalism. Dubai evokes materialism, while Vienna elicits culture. 

We also see it in literature. In 1984, Orwell goes to great lengths to ensure that the reader unmistakably feels the vastness and darkness of Oceania. He opens the book with a strange image of the clocks striking thirteen; he describes government buildings, which are massive 300-meter-tall white concrete pyramids that tower over the surrounding decay. Bradbury does something similar in Fahrenheit 451 when he describes massive billboards to catch the attention of drivers in speeding cars, and modernist architecture with TVs that cover every wall. Architecture encapsulates in steel and stone the values of a society. 

The Greeks and Romans understood this, and they shared a common concept of beauty. They understood that the eye craves symmetry, that it yearns for uniformity and comfort, but not to an uncanny degree. Their architecture reflects this mature, but for whatever reason “outdated,” realization. When I first stepped before the Pantheon armed with a camera in one hand and chocolate gelato in the other, I couldn’t help but feel as if I was in the presence of something infinitely sacred, something divine. The inscription on the pronaos reads M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT. In Latin: Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, made this building when consul for the third time. When I entered and when I looked up I became overwhelmed by awe for the palpable brilliance surrounding me: the tile, the walls, the dome, the oculus, the sculptures, the art. Each detail, each stone, was precisely placed. Each detail mattered and was given the attention it deserved. I knew instinctively that this was what science, what math, what intelligence, what philosophy, was for. This was the embodiment of genius. This building personifies what it meant to be a Roman, to be a chaser of knowledge, of learning, of glory; of transcendence above the here and now; theirs was a culture that valued creation and honor and courage above all else. Structures like the millennia-old Pantheon are likely a large reason why tourists flock to Rome and Florence rather than Houston and San Antonio. 

Unfortunately, the West is getting obviously uglier despite our much improved construction and design abilities. We have more wealth than ever before, and we can build essentially anything—a skyscraper that stretches half a mile into the clouds, a dam capable of controlling the strongest currents, a tunnel under the English Channel—and yet we choose not to pay attention to the details. A walk through Dallas, for instance, doesn’t exactly inspire one to pick up a pen and write the next Erasmian masterpiece. To be fair, these things are subjective. My idea of beauty isn’t universal, and that’s fine. What isn’t strictly subjective, however, and what should be subject to justified criticism, are things like streetlamps. I came across a delightful but depressing YouTube video comparing modern London lampposts to those lining the Thames from the Victorian era. What does this shift in design symbolize? It’s a testament to a simple but deeply unfortunate idea: that we no longer share the same idea of what beauty is; that “it’s not that deep”; that perhaps we don’t even know what beauty is at all; or that if we do, we don’t care enough to spend an extra penny on it. 

The facade of the Pantheon in Rome.

2. A Failed Education System

Socrates once quipped that democracy was only as good as the education that surrounded it. Without knowing how to think, democracy means nothing.

Our school system is in need of massive reform. Education is no longer a means to becoming a better, more enlightened, ethical human being. The “learning” part of school has become a bygone, an annoying obstacle in the way of securing a high salary. To understand why big public high schools are the way they are, it would serve us well to look at what they prepare the students for: prestigious institutions. Public schools know full well that affluent parents, wanting to improve Little Timmy’s chances of going to a Yale or a Stanford, will choose their school only if they can offer the most advanced classes, boast high average SAT scores, and exhibit a history of sending kids to such institutions. 

Our core curriculum is a prime example of this priority. It’s painful to even call it a core curriculum because it covers everything but what’s core, namely philosophy and everything philosophy entails: ethics, metaphysics, epistemology. It calls into question what our school considers “core” to the education of young men and women. And it begs a more fundamental question: What is the point of high school? Is it to mold creative children into obedient workers that exclusively work in STEM and finance? Or is it to produce critically-thinking, ethical human beings who truly change the world through a wide variety of fields? Unfortunately, our curriculum, inundated with AP math, science, and poorly designed humanities classes, suggests the former. 

If a student is interested in philosophy, screw that guy; there’s no philosophy class to be found! Same with German. What’s worse, though, is that students are “incentivized” to take as many AP classes as possible because they boost the student’s GPA. What this really means is that students forgo elective classes they find interesting, enrolling instead in classes they don’t care about but feel pressure to excel in. 

As I stated earlier, a significant reason why our society can’t agree on issues is that we don’t ask the big questions. We are no longer part of the Great Conversation, the ongoing dialogue of Western civilization. From Plato and Aristotle to Erasmus and Petrarch to Nietzsche and to Sartre, engaging in the Great Conversation means asking the big questions about the human experience: what is justice, happiness, beauty, love, and truth? What is the importance of truth over feelings? Because we don’t ask these questions anymore, it should come as no surprise that we have no answers or direction either.

Part of the reason why is that we don’t read anymore. Perhaps if we watched Antigone we would better understand the tension between the state and the individual; perhaps if we read Wiesel’s Night we could better sympathize with the victims of the Holocaust; perhaps if we indulged in the Odyssey we could better visualize determination and arrogance and cunning. But we don’t. Worse, these things must be taught from a young age. Instead kids grow up around social media, which reaffirms their idea that the answer to everything is money. Schools should input unremarkable kids and output remarkable ones. But that is far from happening.

An easy observation one can make about social media is that it has turned our society into one that must be fast, not slow; simple, not complex; short, not long; loud, not quiet. Why? Because fast, simple, short, and loud videos grab, hold, and monetize your attention for the longest. That way the corporation can make the most money. When I catch myself scrolling for an hour straight on Instagram, I realize that we are not far from being the Mildreds of the new century—and if Bradbury thought TV was bad, I wonder what he would’ve thought of Tik Tok. 

Social media also seems to exacerbate the desire for excessive material possessions. And while materialistic desires—money, expensive cars, elite societal status—are natural desires of most people, it seems like those who chase these things solely for the sake of material wealth sacrifice the qualities that are arguably more important, like morality and kindness and warmth and creativity, to achieve these goals. 

A big reason for this is that our generation has stopped reading. Because of the fast, short-attention-span culture promoted by social media and the modern economy, we don’t read books or articles or magazines for pleasure anymore. We only read excerpts, and only when we’re forced to. This is a huge problem. When I was younger, I read a lot: Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, Twain’s Tom Sawyer, my Kingfisher Children’s Encyclopedia. I loved reading because, as the saying goes, “a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.” Through books, I lived as a knight in the 5th century, sat around a round table in Camelot, and saved dames from death by dragon-fire. Through books, I lived in 19th-century Dickensian England and watched a convict escape prison and a boy named Pip live his tumultuous life out in the world. Through books, I learned how Venice was built, how the Duomo was engineered, and how chemical elements were discovered. Books gave me a sense of wonder, a sense of adventure, a sense of what it meant to live. And they also taught me how to live; they gave me a moral framework. 

This, among other things, is where our education system fails. Our public school system has gone from one based in the classics (a well-rounded education in maths, sciences, music, literature, and philosophy) to one that best prepares us for admission to “elite” colleges and, by extension, high-paying jobs—typically in STEM. We learn nothing about music, philosophy, and art in any substantial detail either because 1) courses in these subjects aren’t even offered, or 2) these courses are weighed less than APs. Put differently, if one wishes to be at the top of his class, he cannot take classes he finds interesting; instead he must replace them with AP courses that he may not find appealing to raise his weighted GPA. On top of this, students must pursue extracurricular activities closely related to their future plans for many years in a row to show commitment. In other words, to succeed, the implication is that by age 15, you should have a clear idea of what you may want to pursue in the future. This focus on the spike, paired with public schools’ flawed GPA system, has disincentivized the well-rounded individual. 

Even our education falls victim to the attention-killing speed of modern life. Look at the assignments school forces us to do. How is one supposed to achieve anything of substance in a 40-minute timed write for a standardized test? In an hour-long Calculus test of regurgitating formulas and practice problems? In a high-stress physics experiment? Is this learning? Is this gaining wisdom and using that wisdom for real creation? Or is it training the future workforce to be obedient, rigid, succinct thinkers? Da Vinci took three years to complete The Last Supper; Sibelius took two for his violin concerto; Salinger took ten for The Catcher in the Rye. None of the great artists rushed their work; why should we, when it’s clear that real creativity is not something you can put a time limit on? 

Thanks to these failures, the public education system, which is supposed to cultivate an enlightened citizenry (as Jefferson put it), has instead produced students that are sick of “learning,” feel depressed, and harbor a sense of disillusionment and bitterness toward the institutions that killed the creativity and fun in real learning. There is a reason why Twain proudly proclaimed, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

But there is hope: humanism, a philosophy that promotes everything modern society misses—an ideology that forces us to engage in rigorous self-study, self-examination, and self-reliance. 

Classical music, unlike many other types of modern music, forces the listener to slow down—to think as he listens to the music, to feel the harmony and counterpoint as he tries to understand why the composer did this instead of that. (Notice how all of these qualities of classical music are the exact antithesis of the qualities perpetuated by Tik Tok and modern education.) Classical music is extremely complicated, and that’s precisely what makes it so exciting! Listening to a masterpiece is like reading a compelling novel; it’s like embarking on an emotional and intellectual journey. The composer, like an author, must choose each instrument, each character, so as to best convey the intended emotion: perhaps a horn for warmth, a trumpet for militarism, or a violin for sorrow. The composer must choose the dynamics for each section, the different ways of using the 90-member orchestra to best convey the message he wishes to convey. The point is that a masterpiece like Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 exemplifies what it means to have actualized maximum human potential. It shows the listener what they are capable of doing if they put their mind to something and dedicate themselves to rigorous intellectual activity. That if you truly use your brain’s full capacity, if you push your gift of consciousness to its limit, then you can achieve something wonderful. Is that not reason enough to put down your phone and write an essay, compose a piece of music, or sketch a creative drawing? 

If that isn’t enough to convince you why you should engage with classical art, think of the Sistine Chapel. There’s a good reason why Michaelangelo’s image has outlasted that of the wealthy de’ Medici who funded him. His art has far outlived the culture, the benefactor, and even the century that birthed it, and his name occupies a special place in the public mind long after his body has decomposed. After engaging with these works of art, how can one not be motivated to pursue their own potential for great achievement? If the world is the sum total of contributions by great individuals who took the time to engage in deep, concentrated thought, why should not we also create lasting art that changes the world in ways that outlive our bodies, our material possessions, and our century? 

Or think of philosophy: how we choose to handle difficult circumstances, or how we choose to treat others, or how we build government. You may find a philosopher like Locke boring and difficult, but it’s because of him that you enjoy your right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Without the words of influential philosophers like Paine, you may be living under an oppressive monarchy right now. Philosophers like Socrates and Epictetus may have not been the wealthiest (in fact Epictetus was born into slavery), but they have influenced the course of history and will forever be remembered because of it, while their wealthy counterparts, the sophists, are not remembered so kindly. 

I wrote this article because I love classical art, music, and philosophy, and because these things that I revere and find intensely important are dying. You don’t need elite status or a large net worth or an expensive education to appreciate art. On the contrary, many humanists are usually just normal people who appreciate thinking. That’s all it takes: a willingness to think deeply. 

It’s comforting to know that a quick trip to Half Price Books and I can pick up Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to learn about kindness. Or that I can read Dickens’s Christmas Carol to learn what really matters in life. It would be foolish to say that engaging with art and philosophy and literature has made me a perfect person. But it has certainly made me a better person. 

By reading Nietzsche’s and Schopenhauer’s philosophy, and scrutinizing Friedrich’s and Michelangelo’s artwork, we give ourselves the opportunity to be more than just biological machines doomed to die and decompose; by analyzing deep emotion and questioning our beliefs through books, we can enlighten ourselves and ascend to a higher plane of existence—one in which relationships feel more fulfilling, one where we are more polite to our friends and family, one that deepens life to more than just money and status. 

I’m not telling you to be an artist or composer or writer or any other type of creative—not at all. If you want to be a wealthy banker, doctor, lawyer, software engineer, etc., then please follow that passion. But I hope that as you proceed through your life, you supplement your bounds up the societal ladder with deeply human endeavors, too, like art, literature, philosophy, music, and all the other classical, “lame” things that, in my opinion, make life worth living. I’ll leave you with lines from Gautier’s famous poem L’Art: 

Tout passe. - L'art robuste

Seul a l'éternité.

Le buste

Survit à la cité.

Everything passes. — Only art,

Sturdy and strong, endures for eternity.

The sculpted bust,

Outlives the city.