The utility we don't see

We all worry that what we're doing is useless: it won't help us in the future, it won't give us any benefits, or it's just too unpredictable. Let's not worry a thing.

When I talk to people about what I learn in philosophy courses, it's always difficult for me to explain why I learn those things. I gladly speak about my love of science and research at family get-togethers but my love for philosophy is something I usually have to hide or convey as something "on the side."

However, when we compare philosophy and engineering, it doesn't make sense to say engineers provide more benefit to society than philosophers do when we only take into account the benefits we can easily observe. We might easily see the engineers building automobiles and bridges, but it's difficult for us to notice the post-structuralist philosopher who re-shapes our ideas of subjectivity in such a way that it insidiously seeps through every aspect of thought and society - through arts, literature, sciences, policy, etc.

And we can't ignore it.

Much more than just wandering folk who pester people at the marketplace, philosophers provide benefits to society in forms and places we sometimes don't see. The benefits of philosophy are much more fundamental and non-tangible, but they're there - just as much as the benefits of any other field. Even in our everyday lives, many of us don't realize elements of New Age music can be traced back to Nietzsche while postmodern existential nihilism can be found in Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction." Beyond the arts, the abstract thinkers who value learning for its own sake form the foundation for movements in the social and political sphere.

In this sense, "practical" fields hardly provide more utility than our "theoretical" fields do. They just provide utility that is more easily observed. But when we only take into account the utility of the things we easily see, we are, well, blind. As economist-turned-philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote, "We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract."

And this willful ignorance fuels the rhetoric surrounding the value of a college education. As departments of fields in the humanities and theoretical sciences struggle to make the case why they're relevant, we need greater attention to the unseen utility.

And, if it weren't for philosophers, we'd all be wandering in Plato's cave.

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