Inextricable Relation Between Humanities And Quality Of Life

On the pretext of quality of life, the arts take us into imagined worlds

created by different minds and enable us to understand how others

live. We are what we read, the museums we visit and the

performances we see and hear. They are as much us and

represent part of our memories, as the culture we inherit and the life

experiences we have. That entry into other worlds and minds does

give us a larger context for thinking about how to live and how to

confront and understand present personal and historic issues, even

while also giving us pleasure for its own sake.

Gaining knowledge is a piece of cake in today’s world. But,

knowledge is not the only aspect of an individual to be

concerned upon. A character is necessary too. How does a

character represents a person? Character determines one’s

success. How? What is a character? Precisely, it is the moral

strength or integrity which undermines the domain of the

behaviour of an individual who seeks pleasure in this real

world. We can say with some certainty that reading and

viewing masterworks in the visual arts or in attending

performances of great music, opera, or ballet

widens our horizons about how people behave and what

historical and cultural forces shape that behaviour which is

easily understood by someone who pursues humanities in a

deeper context.

“Our world is enriched when coders and marketers dazzle us with

smartphones and tablets, but, by themselves, they are just slabs. It

is the music, essays, entertainment and provocations that they

access, spawned by the humanities, that animate them - and us.”

As mentioned by Nicholas Kristof, humanities create a spectrum to

critically observe the world with the eyes of human behaviour.

Humanities not only include literature of both ancient and modern

languages, the performing arts, philosophy, comparative religion,

and cultural studies, but also history, anthropology, and linguistics,

although the latter three are often on the border between

humanities and the social sciences. Valuing culture, knowledge and

human experience about early life, learning aspects from the other

cultures such as language, lifestyle, etc, creates respect for others’

culture. The exploration of these studies makes one to critically

analyse and to think out of the conventions.

The subjects make people think out of the box. It makes

one critically think and analyse through the lens of a

rearview mirror from beginning as a past the learning the art

to predict future. By awakening our imagination, art

intensifies and complements our own experience. Art

represents people, cultures, values, and perspectives on

living, but it does much more. While bringing us pleasure, art

teaches us. While reading or contemplating a painting, our

minds go elsewhere. We are taken on a journey into a world

where form and meaning are intertwined. Eight Universities

namely Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell

University, Dartmouth University, Harvard University, The

University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University and the

Yale University which are particularly the part of the Ivy

League have many connotations of academic excellence,

selectivity in admissions, social elitism and reference to the

overall development offer subject courses in humanities

marking an epitome of importance of these subjects on a

wider acceptable benchmark.

Through exploration of the humanities we learn how to think

creatively and critically, to reason, and to ask questions.

Because these skills allow us to gain new insights into

everything from poetry and paintings to business models

and politics, humanistic subjects have been at the heart of a

liberal arts education since the ancient Greeks first used

them to educate their citizens. The relation between life

experiences and application of thoughts build one’s

character which is in the imaginative form of art – The

subjects of Humanities.

Resources: Schwarz, Daniel R. "Why Study the Arts and the Humanities?" The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 07 Oct. 2013. Web. 26 June 2017.

Stanford, Humanities At. "Why do the humanities matter?" Stanford Humanities. N.p., 03 June 2015. Web. 26 June 2017.