Nicholas kristof and jaweed kaleem humanities

discussion question
Subject
Other

School
Southern New Hampshire University

Question Description
Then discuss whether you agree or disagree with the ideas presented by Nicholas Kristof and Jaweed Kaleem on the value of the humanities. Explain why or why not. Then, review the article Extraordinary Outsiders: The Makers Who Don't Know They're Artists. Do you think the creative process is good for the average person? Explain why or why not.   Keeping Alive The Big Questions RELIGION 09/07/2013 02:12 pm ET | Updated Dec 06, 2017    EDITION  Keeping Alive The Big Questions By Jaweed Kaleem Boy looking into grave of pet. Twenty years ago, Evgenia Cherkasova and Elena Kornilov were doctoral students in their mid-20s, living in the same housing complex at Penn State University. As they pursued their degrees — Cherkasova in philosophy, Kornilov in physics — both started families, and to take a break from studying they found themselves meeting for wine or tea, or watching their young children on the playground. As their friendship deepened, their conversations often veered into the Big Questions on their minds: How could they live a “good life” with purpose, happiness and success? What did those words mean? After graduation, Cherkasova and Kornilov went their separate ways, keeping in touch via letters and weekly phone calls, sharing the details of every aspect of their lives – their kids’ first days of school, their academic research, their relationship hurdles. On March 4 of this year – Kornilov’s 48th birthday — her doctor called to tell her she had breast cancer. Even as she hid the diagnosis from other friends and some family members, Kornilov confided in Cherkasova, and the two went over her treatment options. Some, like chemotherapy, were physically intrusive, but would greatly increase the chance of remission. Others, like hormonal drugs, were easier to handle, but came with a higher risk of a tumor returning. Suddenly, the conversations and questions that guided their friendship over the years took on a new meaning. They weren’t just idle speculations; they were real, urgent, full of consequences, perhaps now even a matter of life and death. “We started talking about how you deal with these situations, especially when it’s a patient with a potentially terminal disease,” recalled Cherkasova, now a philosophy professor at Suffolk University in Boston. “She told me, ‘it’s a question of the quality of life versus length of life. You have to decide: If you want to prolong your life, then what do you do it for? What am I doing in life at this point? What’s happiness?” *** This fall, as the latest crop of freshmen arrives on university campuses across the country, many students will find themselves debating similar questions, and not only in early-morning 101 courses. In dining halls and dorm rooms, as they come together with people of vastly different backgrounds and perspectives, they’ll continue the typical college traditions of late nights, long conversations and self-discovery. And when they graduate, they will face a challenge much steeper than any college exam or doctoral dissertation — carrying that spirit of inquiry with them into the real world. Statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests this is easier said than done. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which takes an annual measure of how Americans use their time, the average person spends about 45 minutes daily “socializing and communicating.” Watching TV, meanwhile, accounts for nearly three hours of the average American’s day. And today’s laptop-scattered coffee shops don’t seem to foster environments of conversation and debate, like the salons of France, often credited with incubating philosophical discussions that ushered in the Age of Reason, or the cafe culture, a backdrop for the Existentialist musings of Jean-Paul Sartre and his contemporaries. Of course, it’s much easier to measure TV-watching than America’s intellectual engagement and introspection. But for some time, scholars and observers have been documenting, often with alarm, a shift from a society structured around social gatherings to a culture of technology-driven individualism — or, depending on your point of view, isolation. Writing more than a decade ago in Bowling Alone,