The Most Important Humanistic Ideas To Study In Humanities

When taking the course of Humanities in college, it isn’t just defined for specifically human beings; it’s more than that. It is defined as learning about what, how and why humanity functions in societies of every culture. The reason it is important to understand Humanities is studying the characteristic values of what makes human beings the way they are, both personally and culturally. The ideas that are most important for students to acquire from Humanities to understand it is studying about Community, Self-Concept, and Spirituality.

When reviewing about Community, it is about everybody coming together to restore historical wounds to preserve harmony with another community. A speech was made at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco to encourage racial diversity to be embraced in the South by not only through historical experiences growing up in the South before and after the Civil Rights Movement but also education and open discussion of race in the future. An article about former residents of the forgotten Rosewood, Florida tries to educate people about the false allegations of a black resident assaulting a white woman that led to racial riot through reparations but raise money to restore Rosewood. Another article stated about five missions turned to Museums to preserve the forgotten history of Native Americans throughout Texas in San Antonio-from life during Spanish rule and beyond-and appreciate Native American culture and community since the 1960s. As future generations learn about preserving harmony with people from another community through history, not only they understand that history but also lives in harmony with that particular person by not repeating history or rubbing on the historical wounds.

To understanding Self-Concept in Humanities, there is an explanation of differences between individualism and collectivism. A first article states while individualism oppose social hierarchy, place personal interests above group’s goals and values independence, collectivism supports social hierarchy, place group’s interests over personal goals and values dependence on such groups, such as family, friends, and community; the same article also states that collectivism places high expectations on respect, loyalty and allegiance towards unquestioned authority within one’s group, no privacy in terms of child rearing and displays bias towards one’s group while individualism places freedom, equality, enjoyment and short-term goals for oneself (Goleman). Another article stated that Independent Individualism in America originated from democracy, Protestantism, Transcendentalism, and Capitalism, and collectivism in Asian countries, like Japan, China, and South Korea, are influenced from Confucianism. Once the differences between individualism and collectivism are laid, individualism is more in line with the Self-Concept than collectivism, because individualism revolves around just one specific person and collectivism revolves around one specific group.

As defining Spirituality for Humanities, spirituality is an individual worship within yourself and religion is a collectivist worship upon not only the entire community but also society as a whole. The article states that religion is man-made meant to control society, force morality onto others and distrusts others who are not part of that particular religion while spirituality is personally born in God’s eyes to revolve around the person and makes people loving towards others who are different from them (Cline). Another article states that religion makes people follow and depend on certain path through installing fear onto people who plan to break the rules and punishment and excommunication for those that break them, and spirituality encourages each person to be brave to follow the path that suits his or herself and understand the good and bad consequences of the actions he or she committed. Spirituality was created since the 1960s when it served not only as a backlash but also an alternative to traditional religious authority, and in America nowadays, it’s becoming more popular throughout time. Spirituality and Religion are what makes them both part of the human characteristics in every community, due to their unique differences in moral guidance and worship.

Examining and studying the human values of Community, Self-Concept, and Spirituality in forms of documentation and media such as quotes, music, literature, and art for a better understanding of them as important relations to Humanities. For example, one of Confucius’ quotes on Community explain that bad things and hatred arrive earlier, yet good things and love arrive later. This quote best describes of the two racial communities due to facing racial tensions with one another through hatred in the past and restore the racial wounds later on with love in the present along with the future harmony. Another example is, in the story of Two Kinds, the author came to America with her family to basically be her own person but ended up studying a lot and facing high pressure and comparison to other kids to work harder from her mother which is something she didn’t want to do at all; when she complained to her mother about the work schedule, her mother saw it as disrespect and slapped her. The author’s story serves as a perfect example of individualism clashes with collectivism. The author pointed out, in her childhood, she never wanted to study and work too hard and complains to her mom about it, but Chinese culture didn’t tolerate questioned authority, from child to parent, and must be followed at all cost which is the reason the mother defended her schedule decision. Finally, the song of Freewill explains the artist decides to choose free will and make the choice that suits him, despite facing negative judgments and excommunication from people. This serves the example of Spirituality clashing with Religion as Spirituality represent the artist’s decision to follow what his heart desire, despite knowingly he’ll be judged and criticized for his decision as he feared at first which represents Religion. Documentations and media relating these values help understand them better to get the idea and the context of what they mean as long as that particular work is examined and studied better for a clear meaning of those values found in Humanities.

Community, Self-Concept, and Spirituality serve as important humanistic characteristics to study in Humanities for an understanding of someone who is different from oneself. Majority of the world live in religiously, collectivist societies where even in those societies there will be a clash between individualism and collectivism in future decades to come. If those values aren’t studied in Humanities, there would not only be lack of understanding of a person from a different culture or how humanity functions but also harmony and good communication.