What will the humanities become in an age of infinite abundance?
We’ll become lotus eaters, maybe. There’ll be new kinds of humanities leisure. Taking up watercolours. Fiction writing. Studying ancestry. History, maybe.
The hobby-humanities, right? The leisure time humanities. Idler’s humanities. Something to pass the time humanities. The holiday humanities.
People will need intellectual stimulation. And artistic stimulation. And even philosophical simulation. All that stuff. The humanities will provide.
The humanities might bloom again – do you see?
Think of all those leisured people, looking for something to do. Something with which to occupy themselves.
There’ll be book clubs, philosopher. Watercolour clubs. Art appreciation lectures.
Might not be your idea of the humanities. Might not be all about overthrowing the world, or whatever.
The humanities won’t be the preserve of hysterical suburban misfits. It won’t be where weird working class chancers can hold back the desire to kill themselves for a while. It won’t be where the maladjusted wind up. The European-thought-identifiers – over identifiers.
Our kind probably won’t even exist anymore. There won’t be maladjusteds in the age of universal abundance. Everyone will be bought off …
Work in Progress 