If we want to solve our complex problems we must be fully versed in the history and cultures of our combined humanity
What type of government makes decisions which
will further kill off the country’s ability to equip ourselves with the
skills to work out ways of adapting to major changes ahead for both our
humanity and the environment?
In this most uncertain time, why would we want to stop creating better skilled people in the humanities for the nation’s workforce, or decrease the number of students who strive to accomplish the highly developed human literacy skills and emotional intelligence, empathy and cultural agility, to work for change in the world for the good of all?
After having come through a prolonged drought in our drying continent and crippling inaction on climate change by our governments, accompanied by a string of more frequent unprecedented climate events that were capped off by the December bushfires, we literally fell into 2020 in a state of shock.
We were silenced, broken and paralysed by the scale of the
catastrophic bushfires that grew more monstrous before our eyes and
could not be extinguished for months.In this most uncertain time, why would we want to stop creating better skilled people in the humanities for the nation’s workforce, or decrease the number of students who strive to accomplish the highly developed human literacy skills and emotional intelligence, empathy and cultural agility, to work for change in the world for the good of all?
After having come through a prolonged drought in our drying continent and crippling inaction on climate change by our governments, accompanied by a string of more frequent unprecedented climate events that were capped off by the December bushfires, we literally fell into 2020 in a state of shock.
Then, before the last fire was doused, and before we could even fathom the massive toll of these fires on our country and what would come next summer, we moved into another emergency.
This time we had to save ourselves from a global pandemic of a deadly virus that quickly closed down the world, and which has so far infected over eight million people globally, killed nearly half a million people, and still remains a threat to all.
So what do we say to this one hell of a wake-up call?
What do we say to witnessing the world helpless with panic, and the frightening scenes of those in our community stricken with the horrific illness of Covid-19, and the coffins of hundreds, and of the thousands consigned to makeshift graves? What do we say to the massive discrimination that continues in many countries, including our own, and that boiled over in intense and determined worldwide Black Lives Matter demonstrations that brought tens of thousands out in the streets in the middle of a deadly pandemic after the killing of another black man, George Floyd, in the United States?
I would have thought from all that we have experienced this year that we have to get smarter about global climate change, inequalities and pandemics. We are running out of time, if we haven’t already, with climate change. We will all be working towards a future that is going to look a lot different to what it looks like now. With the likelihood that the planet will get warmer, this means a far hotter, drier Australia. Global warming is exactly that: global. This will mean more inequality, far more health risks, and far more desperate and landless people than we can presently imagine.
We do not all come from privileged backgrounds, but it has been both through our ability to be able to study and have our cultural, social and historic works examined in the humanities, that Australia is now recognised for its world class creativity and originality across the arts.
We are among the leaders in the humanities. Our art and literature are celebrated in this country and across the world. Many learn from what we do to create and spread our knowledge of diversity, history and culture. This knowledge improves how a nation thinks about itself, and tries to make more room for those who are less fortunate.
I wonder how we will be able to survive in an uncertain future if we deliberately set out, in the worst of times, to make studying in the humanities unaffordable for those less able to afford it.
Isn’t this an act of censoring access to knowledge, and crippling future capacity? We are going to need the greatest creativity we can find to work on the ever-increasing complex problems facing our combined humanity. We cannot afford a government censoring education and knowledge.
The road ahead is hard, and will get harder. If we will ever come anywhere near solving our complex problems as we move into the future, we will require greater emotional intelligence, and a higher level of analytical skills fully versed in the history and cultures of our combined humanity.
Knowledge can never be just for the privileged who can afford to pay the government’s increased fee for a university education in the humanities.
The world will keep moving towards greater changes that will challenge us like never before. We cannot afford to move into the uncertain world of global warming while leaving possibly millions of people outside the disciplines of university knowledge creation and building greater creativity.
We will need people from all backgrounds to be more creative than we have ever known, with the competence to examine the interconnected world in which we live.
Governments must have the capacity to explore the widest possible ways of sharing and improving knowledge to address our major problems.
Of course we will require a greater workforce in health and technology, but we will also need an even greater workforce with the imagination and passion to improve the health of our combined humanity, and our connectedness with the only planet we can survive on.
We have only just begun this journey, and it is long from finished.
• Alexis Wright is an author and Boisbouvier chair in Australian literature
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