YEBIGA you really don't like people who study something useful do you? Something that might actually help a productive society become more so.

No indeed, YEBIGA prefers students study a subject that only offers a living by sucking at a taxpayer's teat.

YEBIGA my dream is a world is one where everyone is paid what they are worth to the rest of society. Those involved in the humanities would be those raggedly dressed bunch sitting on a park bench chattering.

Right, Has been; And while we're at it let's tear down all the libraries; ban History and English in secondary schools; stop 'wasteful' and 'expensive' elections; And let's centralise all the media in a single monopoly - to save on 'wasteful expenditure' on 'non-productive' activities. And then we can do like Hitler did and force the unemployed into big projects in the form of 'labour conscription'. (ie: work for the dole) Oh right - Abbott's already doing the LAST of these... Again he's not a Hitler - But he'd probably feel more comfortable, say, seeing himself as a modern day Franco....

Hasbeen: YEBIGA you really don't like people who study something useful do you? Something that might actually help a productive society become more so. YEBIGA prefers students study a subject that only offers a living by sucking at a taxpayer's teat.

I agree entirely Hasbeen. Anything that is useful to Society is priced way out of peoples means. Engineering, Electronics, Science, Medicine etc. The Humanities produce nothing but, as you say, are a drain on Society. Their navel gazing is 200 years out of date & not relevant in todays world. I guess Society is changing too fast for their discipline to keep up. Studying notions someone had 2 to 300 years ago & applying it to the 21st. Century is a nonsense. Interesting to read but of no real use. A part from that, the Humanities have been taken over by biased special interest groups that believe that their cause is greater than everyone else's. They spread dissent in their own interest.

Jayb; So I guess you're saying capital and labour, state and civil society, class structure and the division of labour "no longer have any application" today? And that philosophical materialism versus philosophical spiritualism 'is not of any relevance". (which must by why religions have billions of adherents; and militant atheism has a growing support base in the West....) Who are you to judge the philosophical and social scientific traditions of humanity going back hundreds of years? (evidently without even understanding them)

To say there is no place the humanity to reflect upon its condition; and to seek a better existence; This is what Conservatism has come to in this country...

But if you want to have it that way then I suppose we would do away with the study of Edmund Burke as well?

While we're indulging flights of fancy, my dream is of a world where we're all more or less equal in terms of wealth and want, thereby liberating our genuine distinctiveness and allowing "individuals" to truly flourish--what the Greeks called eudaimonia.
It's a sick joke that what we have, what the liberals celebrate as individualism, is nothing of the kind. The Liberals vaunted "freedom" and "individualism" is delusion, their very opposite. Witness some of the comments above, from the pathetic dupes of the system, ideologically enslaved, unable to conceive that there's anything wrong with this world, let alone of "better" one. As if all was just as God intended; as if it was sustainable; as if it was conscionable or morally defensible; as if the system's minions were one tenth possessed of the wisdom they congratulate themselves on possessing; as if they were more, each one them, than obsequious little jokes and an offence to what they might have been. All truly is vanity when so many can gloat with self-satisfaction at the destruction and misery their complacency begets--all the while denying it, or not caring a toss, or indeed blaming the misery of others on them! (It's cynically amusing that left thinkers go on dreaming of a universal ethics based on the "other"! Meanwhile the right goes on blaming them, ridiculing them (the hated other, the spoiler) for their scruples! for their want of opportunity, or for their want of viciousness!
Well we're not all entrepreneurs in this wealthy country, damn few of us are and the rest who've raked together their pathetic piles have nothing to congratulate themselves on and no right to despise anyone.
Sadly, in this world an education in the Humanities teaches us only how bad things are, teaches us that ignorance reins, supreme and oblivious.

T.E.: So what does a Humanitarian do other than Navel Gaze & share his Navel Gazing with his kindred spirits. Does it actually have any influence on the world in General or even in bits of the world? What practical benefit does it offer the General Public?

Oh, Edmund Bourke 1797. Pre 1800. (Name drop. 40)& how did he actually his writings actually benefit the world & how do they fit in with the 21st. Century?

T.E.: So I guess you're saying capital and labour, state and civil society, class structure and the division of labour "no longer have any application" today? And that philosophical materialism versus philosophical spiritualism 'is not of any relevance".

Never said anything of the sort, but your Discipline doesn't have any effect on them. All you can do is observe & try & fit what's happening to someone's 300 year old writings, somehow, after the event.

T.E.: Who are you to judge the philosophical and social scientific traditions of humanity going back hundreds of years?

One of the people who pay you to gaze at your navel for no return. Humanities is really a bad investment.

T.E.: (evidently without even understanding them)

Isn't that what drug addicts say when you question them on taking drugs?

T.E.: To say there is no place the humanity to reflect upon its condition; and to seek a better existence; This is what Conservatism has come to in this country...

If there was some actual benefit that came out of your studies I would support the Humanities but the fact is there really isn't. Dilemma, some people say I'm conservative, some activist. I can be either anytime I want to & sometimes both. Question, Question.

T.E.: But if you want to have it that way then I suppose we would do away with the study of Edmund Burke as well?

Study all you like for interest sake, but he's not relevant in the 21st century. He lived in an era where the Church governed everything anybody did or said so his writings had to conform within those limits.