The only assurance you get that what I have to say may be valid, is thefact that nothing I have to say is original. With few exceptions, originalityof conception is, I believe, a much overrated virtue. In certain circles, thedemand for it has led to the publication of large quantities of turgid prose,wrapped around small grains of trite thought, causing the unnecessary sacrificeof thousands of innocent trees on the altar of perceived scholarship.Originality of expression, however, is another matter entirely -- and onesomewhat related to the subject of this short talk, which is called "LiberalArts and Abstract Nouns." In truth, the title is more glib than apt, but itssound was too good to waste.
Like each one of you, I am inescapably the product of my parents.Biologically and emotionally, they were the chief architects of the person thatis me.
Like every Hamilton student, I am in part the product of this place. Itwas here that dormant facets of my mind were polished, while certain aspects ofcharacter were adjusted and sized to fit.
And, like some others, I am also the product of a great teacher. In mycase, a man who flourished in classrooms on this hill for over four decades,whose mind was extraordinary, but whose foothold on the slope of conventionalnormalcy was -- not to put too fine a point on it -- loose. He was the one whomade me curious.
To study the liberal arts, even at Hamilton College, is no panacea.Scholarly training cannot reconfigure the strands of DNA embedded in thestudent body. These pre-recorded genetic programs will be played back, onschedule, regardless of academic lessons learned.
Fortunately, what's left for education to tinker with is the wondrousinvisible essence that makes Homo Sapiens a mammal to be noticed -- thedistinctly human power of mind that fashioned, for example, one of thestrongest yet most subtle inventions of our species: the abstract noun.
Truth. Love. Good. Evil. Infinity. Although such concepts have beenthe subject of rarefied discussion for millennia, to spend four years chattingabout them is not the reason people go to a small, liberal arts college. Nor isit the reason why increasingly large sums of money are spent to keep themthere. But, within the context of academic discipline, requiring students toexercise with abstract nouns builds strength in the form of analytical skillsand critical habits that are both portable and adaptable, with application wellbeyond the academy. Indeed, I think the underlying function of a liberal artscollege is not to dispense specific knowledge, which in time is usuallyforgotten and often superseded, but to induce such habits and develop suchskills. Although having them may not ensure getting a good job, they will helpone to keep it.
During the past decade, like many other businesses, the company thatemploys me has periodically compensated for decreased revenues by cuttingcosts. People are expensive, and one way to drop the cost of doing business isto drop some of the people in the business. When feasible, volunteers wantingto retire or move on have been selected first. But in virtually every round ofcorporate slimming I have survived, some of the "downsized" were people who hadno plans to go and who wanted to stay.
By the way, one residual effect of having studied the classics is aninclination to appreciate etymology, and to shun jargon like "downsize," whichmakes a harsh act sound gentle, masking what is a painful process, obviouslyfor the employee whose job is taken away, but also, to a lesser degree, for themanager having to do the taking.
What cannot be shunned, however, is the reality that lies behind theeuphemism. The prospect of a linear career, propelled by inertia and swaddledagainst interruption by unswerving loyalty to a single employer, has becomeillusory. In highly developed economies such as ours, the reasons for this areat least partly rooted in the rapid metamorphosis from a manufacturing focus toone based on gathering, manipulating, and packaging what is variously calleddata, or information, or knowledge. The computer technology that permits theprocessing of bits of data at exponentially multiplying rates has become thesteam engine of this, the second industrial revolution, which is built,literally and figuratively, on sand.
One of the few things growing at a rate approaching that of computingcapacity is a consulting industry that offers a variety of slogan-basedgeneralities purporting to describe the things companies need to do with theiremployees, and the things employees need to do for themselves, in order tosurvive, and perhaps even thrive, in what the consultants shout is the new,extraordinary, technologically revolutionary and positively miraculousInformation Age.
"Embrace Change." "Reengineer The Process." "Add Value." These are buta few of the trendy mantras that seek to encapsulate allegedly new attitudes tobe developed, new actions to be taken, new approaches to be embraced, and newdogmas to be memorized by the "change drivers" of the new tomorrow.
So, why can I so clearly hear my old Greek professor laughing? Almostcertainly because the easily converted disciples of all these quick-fixphilosophies put him in mind of a phrase once uttere
