The Death of Humanities… Or the Death of Humanity?

Why the Humanities still matter & What happens if we lose them.

The School of Athens, flourishing in the Golden Age

• THE CRISIS

In 2024, West Virginia University proposed cutting over 30 academic programs

The first in the line of fire?

Languages, Literature, Art, Music and other long-standing humanities fields

It wasn’t an isolated case. According to American Academy of Arts & Sciences, In the past decade, Admissions in the Arts and Humanities majors have plummeted by nearly 30% all across the United States.

In India the numbers are much higher.

Not just that, if we look globally, enrolment in humanities has been steadily declining, their funding has been cut, Budgets have shrunk, Departments are shutting down and the niche subjects have been abandoned

Entire disciplines — literature, history, philosophy, art — are now being quietly pushed away to make space for the growing demand and dominance of the science and technology fields.

Even the most reputed universities that once took pride in producing great thinkers are now busy churning out just efficient workers for the new world order.

Especially in a country like India, where we don’t even need to look at statistics to sense this shift, we have seen it grow quietly in our mindsets

“Science or commerce… and if nothing works, then maybe arts.”

This line almost inevitably comes with a quiet assumption about your intelligence…. or the lack of it. A judgement of your inability to “fit in” elsewhere in the “bigger leagues”

There was a time when the humanities weren’t an “option.” They were the foundation.

Poetry wasn’t decorative, it was a form of expression.

Art wasn’t a hobby, it was a way of seeing.

Philosophy wasn’t abstract, it was how people made sense of living.

But somewhere along the way, we decided we don’t need them anymore.

Why did this happen? How?

===================== ========

• THE CAUSE

Let us not look at it emotionally but rather rationally as science would want us.

This didn’t happen because people became foolish. It happened because people became more logical.

Science, Technology and Business — these are the core fields that build the world we live in.

They help us save lives, create opportunities, solve real world problems.

They deserve respect, investment, encouragement and admiration.

Science v/s Humanities was never a war between disciplines.

It was the conflict of interpretations, which is completely fair.

It becomes a problem only when one grows and the other is quietly starved.

We’ve begun to measure education by immediate utility. Can it get you a job? Does it pay well? Will it scale? And in that ruthless calculus, the humanities seem… indulgent. Optional. Even irrelevant and deemed excessive

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: what we are cutting away is not excess — — — it is essence.

We must strike a balance.

The humanities don’t compete with science. They complete it.

Science teaches us what things to do and the humanities ask us why we do them.

Science builds systems of incredible efficiency, Humanities ask who do those systems serve?

Science can extend life, Humanities make it worth living

Without one, we struggle to progress and without the other we don’t know what we’re progressing towards.

Science gives the what while Art gives us the why

Along with that Art gives us our greatest luxury- that is the liberty of having free thought and forming an opinion, it allows us to be flawed, to be imperfect, to be human. It allows us to take actions guided by emotions.

And that matters more than we like to admit.

Because a world without empathy doesn’t collapse dramatically — it erodes quietly. Decisions become colder. People become numbers. We become excellent at solving problems, and terrible at asking whether they should be solved that way in the first place.

Maybe we all know this? So if we know this, at least subconsciously — — why do we still move away from it?

This shift that we see, it isn’t just institutional, it is also practical.

Most people don’t reject the humanities consciously. They just chose not to engage with it…. or they don’t care for it And honestly, why should they?

They have everyday jobs to do, Families to feed, They live lives that demand urgency, not reflection. You cannot expect someone to pause and read poetry when survival itself requires momentum.

So yes — most people don’t care about the Arts.

Until something breaks….

When life is steady, art feels like an accessory.

When life collapses, art becomes necessary.

=============================

•THE CONTRAST

When something extremely bad happens, people don’t reach for instruction manuals.

They reach for music.

For films.

For poetry.

For stories that don’t fix them — but understand them.

Because in those moments, information is useless. People need meaning. Survival doesn’t cut it anymore…… people need sustenance. They need something that makes them feel alive again. And in here lies the irony that we all fail to acknowledge.

The same person who once dismissed music as unnecessary, now drives home listening to a song- that conveys what they couldn’t.

The same person who never cared for poetry finds themselves quoting it at a wedding — or a funeral.

The same person who ignored literature and philosophy ends up asking its oldest questions at 2 a.m.

The same person who said Art doesn’t make sense, pays top dollar to hang a painting in their living room- hoping it says something about them.

The same person who discards history as a relic of the past, waits in long queues to visit monuments and sculptures that have mesmerized the world for centuries.

We don’t outgrow the humanities. We return to them

We seek them when we are at our most vulnerable self.

A sense of comfort in our darkest times. A way to cope with this world a little bit better, that is what the Arts & Humanities give us. They give us:

~Empathy — to step into lives beyond our own.

~Depth — the instinct to question, challenge and not just accept.

~Emotional intelligence — to understand people beyond their words.

It shapes our communication, creativity, memory, identity and above all, it gives us something we all search for, but rarely find.

Art gives us joy.

Despite what today’s rushing world has tricked you into believing, Joy is not a luxury. It is a gift! One that almost always comes wrapped in some form of art

A gift we deserve each day. A gift that only Art can provide.

So what happens when we slowly remove this gift? Or ignore it?

=============================

• THE COST

The cost of ignoring it is not immediate, it shows up later, slowly.

In leaders who can strategize but not empathize.

In systems that are efficient but unjust.

In conversations that are loud but shallow.

In people who are successful — — but devoid of meaning and morale.

We may become faster, sharper, more efficient.

But also, we become impatient, incoherent, more indifferent.

We start treating problems like statistics. Conversations like transactions. Life like a checklist.

We don’t become robots overnight, We become something much more unsettling:

Humans who function almost too perfectly… but feel a lot less deeply.

That is not a failure of education.

That is a failure of imagination.

The real danger is not that fewer people now study the humanities.

But it is the fact that we think they no longer matter.

That they are fallback options.

For those who “couldn’t do better.”

So they are declared indulgent, secondary, unnecessary.

Because the moment a society starts thinking that way —

It doesn’t just lose artists. It loses perspective.

So what do we do?

=============================

• THE CURE

We don’t need everyone to become artists, poets, or philosophers.

But we do need to stop treating the humanities like a backup plan.

We need to fund them — not as charity, but as necessity.

We need to teach them — not as ornament, but as foundation.

We need to respect them — not because they’re easy, but because they’re essential.

Encourage them in schools, Fund them in universities, Respect them in conversation.

And most importantly — Stop looking down on the child who chooses art.

Because that choice is not a failure of ambition. It is a commitment to understanding the world in a way numbers alone cannot.

We may side-line them in classrooms, cut their funding, question their relevance, and look down on those who choose them.

But when it matters — when it truly, deeply matters — we need it, we really need it for our heart and soul.

Because in the end, this isn’t an academic debate.

It’s something far more personal.

Because no matter how practical we become —

At the end of the day, we still sit alone with our thoughts. We still search for meaning. We still try to make sense of love, loss, time, and ourselves.

And when that moment comes

We don’t turn to formulas or frameworks

We turn to something that feels like it understands.

A piece of Music on a quiet morning

A film that stays with you long after the credits roll

A line in a book you underline because it captures your truth better than any word you’ve ever spoken.

A lyric you want to dedicate to the one person you love the most in the whole wide world.

A painting that calms the chaos in your head

A dance form that breaks you free from yourself.

Humanities give us our most humane quality: Humanity

The only thing that sets us apart from any other species to ever walk the earth.

That is why, our real concern should not be just that we are witnessing the death of the humanities.

But that we’ re deciding how much of our humanity we’re willing to live without.

When the chips are down, Humans have always turned to Art to save themselves from the crutches of life itself. It’s time to return the favor, Save the Savior.

We need to Save the Arts before the Arts stop saving us.

The Thinker, fading away in the Modern Age