Hello, I'm Dr. Anadale and I teach philosophy at Mount Saint Mary's University and Seminary
in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
My comment today in defense of the liberal arts begins with the observation that the
average new worker entering the workforce should expect to change jobs up to a dozen
times, and to change careers perhaps three to four times, over the course of their working life.
In order to interpret this and provide some perspective on the liberal arts, let me first
introduce the philosophical concept of post-modernism.
Post-modernism is defined by the French philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard as “incredulity toward
meta-narratives,” literally grand recit, big stories.
And what this means basically is that the big stories that have given our lives meaning,
the big stories in which we've been able to situate ourselves and find meaning for our
activities and our relationships, are no longer plausible in a postmodern culture.
So the lure of the capital-N Narratives have collapsed and have been replaced by multiple
competing small-n narratives.
The big stories are gone; we only have little stories now.
This takes many different shapes in different realms of culture. In politics,
for example, post-modernism means the end of a consensus about the meaning of American
identity, about the role of government and about constitutional interpretation.
Instead of one big story now in politics we have many competing little stories.
We have the tea party story, the black lives matter story, and many others.
These rival stories are incompatible with each other and they're often incomprehensible
to each other.
So much of our politics can be occupied with people wondering how it is that
anybody can be so wicked or stupid as to believe that rival narrative.
There's also a certain amount of triumphalism that comes about in postmodern politics.
As the partisans of one small story seize power, they quickly put out the word that
their narrative is the new meta-narrative.
That is: “We now speak for the silent majority, everybody agrees with us, and there's no point
in resisting any longer.”
This is always a lie, the claim of a little story to be a big story.
And the truth about American politics is that it will from now on be a turmoil of constant
change with no new big story emerging.
In economics, post-modernism takes a different shape based upon
which meta-narrative we see collapsing.
One meta-narrative from economics that seems to be gone now is the meta-narrative of the
blue-collar worker who would join a factory, say, a General Motors plant, early in his
career, acquire seniority, work up to better job assignments, expand his skills, perhaps
with the union negotiate better working conditions and better benefits, and be able to retire
still young enough to enjoy his grandchildren, with a fair amount of financial security.
This big story is no longer plausible for young workers entering the workforce today.
Another meta-narrative that is gone in economics would be the pattern of joining a large corporation
like Marriott which promotes from within, and then working your way up the corporate
ladder as far as your ability and ambition will take you.
Working up, say, from line cook to restaurant manager to regional executive or perhaps an
executive position in the headquarters.
And again both of these meta-narratives are gone in economic life.
No one believes in these big stories anymore.
What we have instead are many competing small stories of how to succeed economically:
I can go into this field, go pursue this degree, this credential… and nobody has any quite
any sense of what the right answer is.
Now, how have people reacted to economic post-modernity as I've described it?
Well, they've concluded, quite rationally, that they lack the information they need in
order to make a rational calculation of how to invest their limited time and money
in education. One reaction to this has been panic, and people stampede toward credentials
as a substitute for a big story in economics.
Twenty years ago the credential of choice was a law degree.
When I was a young man, this was the golden ticket.
People reasoned: “Everybody needs lawyers, the government needs lawyers, corporations
need lawyers, get a law degree and this will give you a reasonable expectation of financial security.”
What we find now, two decades later, is we have a glut of law degree holders, many in
debt and many underemployed.
Today the golden ticket is a STEM credential, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
That seems to be the best bet, everybody thinks, politicians, corporate leaders, for guaranteeing
people some kind of financial security in the future.
And I want to suggest, as with politics, that this is a case, in both of these cases, of
small stories pretending to be big stories, of over-selling their appeal, to appeal to
people's sorrow at the absence of a governing meta-narrative.
So how can one survive in a postmodern economy?
Well, the first thing to do is to remember that there are no more big stories.
The big stories are gone forever. They're not coming back.
There is no golden ticket, there is no credential which will provide you with an expectation
of financial security.
The second thing to do is to recognize that the most important fact about the postmodern
economy is the presence of multiple competing stories in it.
And therefore the solution is cross-narrative skills.
You need to be the kind of person who can work across different narratives, in two ways.
The first way is cross-narrative communication skills.
You need to be the kind of worker, to succeed, who is able to walk into a room filled with
engineers, marketing people, perhaps executives of client firms, you need to be able to understand
what each of them wants, what each of their governing narratives are, value system is,
and find a way to speak a language that they all understand.
If you are the one person in the room who speaks language across narratives, you will
be in a position to be a leader of this team, of this project, of this meeting.
And you are invaluable to your organization for that reason.
The second kind of cross-narrative skill that people need is a skill in synthesis, that
is, in articulating and selling a view that would be common to a project, to a unit, or
to a corporation, to holders of the many different small stories.
This is part of what it means to be a corporate leader, is to be able to synthesize a vision
that can appeal to people across their different narratives, without acquiring the pretension
of being some kind of new meta-narrative.
So the new worker in a post-modern economy requires tremendous flexibility and adaptability.
She should be able to encounter people, make careful observations to determine what their
value system or governing story is, and then find a way to speak in a language that respects
that story and that leads people to endorse the common goals of a project or a team or
a company. These are precisely the skills that are taught by the liberal arts.
I think a good liberal arts education, well taught and diligently pursued, will create
the kind of workers who are able to survive and thrive in a postmodern economy.
That's my comment for today. Thanks for watching; goodbye.