What to do about the decline of the humanities.

Stop complaining and just read the best books that you can and talk about them.

Let’s assume it’s all over. I don’t believe that the humanities are dead, but let’s believe the hype. Let’s believe that college graduates using ChatGPT are going to be illiterate (how they can use ChatGPT if they are literally illiterate I do not know). We believe that books are dying, short-form video has fried our brains, and the kids are not reading anything anymore.

In my view, this is a fairly dire, but also a varied and complex situation. However, let’s focus on the negatives because the problem is big and time is short. The world is on fire.

So. What should we do next?

First, we stop the laments. Maybe it is a terrible thing. Maybe we are seeing civilization start to crumble. Will our complaints hold up the edifice? Will righteousness prevail at a certain number of clicks, likes, or howls? Will wickedness shrink away if we get loud enough?

Part of the problem is that the humanities are not only threatened: they are too often led by philistines. It’s not just the book-page editors who don’t read the classics and the professors who cave in and teach popular culture. Too many of the people engaged in the public profession of the humanities are acting like philistines as well. There’s too much doom and gloom, not enough humanism.

I am constantly told that we can choose what happens to us. So go ahead and choose. Choose not to be a philistine. In a darkening world, the best thing you can do is to keep the flame alive.

We say God and the imagination are one…
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

One simple thing you can do if you believe it is important for other people to read is to read yourself. Read in public. Talk about the books you enjoy. Read the classics. Set a good example. Be the light that draws others towards the good.

Choose to read Tolstoy and talk about it. Stop tweeting about Bad Things and start tweeting about your love for this great man. Tell me why Tolstoy distracts you from everything else. Tell me about the goosebumps you got during the fire of Moscow or the scene in the railway waiting room. Argue with a friend about whether Pierre is a harmless bumbler or the greatest hero in any classic novel. Be cringe. Be a nerd. Be bookish.

Stop sharing the same God-damned screen shots of Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and C.S. Lewis’ writing advice to a little girl. Just read a book and say something fresh, honest, and personal about it. Stop idealising the days when TV programmes still involved serious literary critics: those are still getting millions of views on YouTube. Stop telling me the problem is social media “content” while producing more content.

Some will regard this as a call to fiddle while Rome burns. But no! If you mean what you say, if you really think civilization is under threat, then be part of the alternative. Little that we do makes any difference at the national or the international level. But you can be the person reading in public. You can add your voice to the chorus of people in the background of someone else’s life saying, yes, yes, you really must read Tolstoy before you die, yes. Or Moby Dick.

God bless that man. Look at what happened with Middlemarch on Substack recently. More good was done in those few weeks than by whole years of the alternative. Maybe the culture is in free fall. The only way to stop that is to have more people read George Eliot and talk about her work. If you hate AI slop, share real art. If you hate the decline of humanistic education, read in public. Keep the difficult balance between lamenting the change and being the change you want to see.

Someone clever recently got 2.5 million views on Twitter saying this.

Reading books is now a waste of time. AI reasoning models can distill key insights and tell you exactly how to implement them based on everything they know about you.

This will never be true of Austen and Tolstoy and Shakespeare and Dante. Try asking ChatGPT to read Dickens for you, or Virginia Woolf. What’s the point? AI will never be able to read those books for you. You must do that for yourself, for its own sake.

Right now, the value of reading the classics is rising, not falling. Maybe not in every university. Maybe not for every individual. But as AI develops, finding other people who have read these books will become more valuable to you. Having activities “reserved” to humans will be more valuable. Being able to appreciate some of the peak aesthetic achievements of human society will be more valuable.

In a world of automation, slop, and endless digitisation, the people of learning and books of beauty hold their value. They rise in value. In a world of abundant dross, acquiring and developing a sense of taste becomes more valuable, just as gold holds its value in a recession. In a world of vices, the man of virtue is all the more admired.

Fire is the test of gold: if you think the world is burning, you need to start increasing your stores. If you think everyone is buying fool’s gold, then show them how brightly the real stuff can shine.

Go. Now. Pick up a book. Read. Enthuse. Be the light that draws the others in.

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Of course, I don’t need to tell this to you. The Common Reader is blessed with one of the best audiences of readers that I know of. You are all doing marvellous work! Sometimes, I just have to say something, you know.