Guiding lights are necessary in uncertain times.

With the world seemingly perpetually at odds with itself, it is important, and only natural, for us to cling to the aspects of life that bring us joy and comfort. Oftentimes, these things are elements of our childhood, pieces from our adolescence, or critical factors that significantly influenced our development somewhere along the through-line of our formative years.

For me, this significant element was, and remains, the Classics.

As I often attempt to do, and will continue to stress throughout my time writing, I am no expert on Classical History or Philology. In fact, I merely possess an undergraduate education in the field, with my life and career path having pulled me away from the field, as I suspect the necessities of life have done to countless other Classics and Liberal Arts majors. Nevertheless, we all owe a debt of gratitude (and often a significant monetary debt) to our studies, and the numerous ways that they have enriched our lives and equipped us with the critical thinking abilities necessary to strike out on our own and blaze a trail towards an altogether better future for all.

Unfortunately, despite these factors, it seems that the ongoing trends of demographics pertaining to Higher Education, coupled with the exacerbation of these trends by our current public health circumstances, are forcing the untimely closure of Classics and related Liberal Arts departments across the nation, and indeed the world. Beyond this simple fact, these realities, though perhaps necessary from a bottom-line standpoint, could not be coming at a worse time for the general public at large.

Critical thought is a core component of this and, while at the time, the term seemed to act as a simple buzz-word; a necessary reference point for faculty and administrators to point towards to justify the associated costs of studying fields that do not simply exist as ‘job-training’ or ‘pre-professional’; I have come to realize that critical thinking is indeed a crucial skill that does not come naturally to many, and is not a core feature of many academic disciplines.

As such, the ability to question things, discern patterns, and pick-apart data are absolutely essential today, in an environment where we are fractured along partisan lines, can not seem to agree on the most basic and obvious facts, and often seem to, in my opinion, have an overreliance on deferring to authority to inform us of the opinions that we ‘should’ hold. The truth of the matter is that these skills, encapsulated in the blanket term ‘critical thinking’, are not taught in many fields, most especially, the fields that solely exist to lead our young graduates directly into an associated job.

It seems to me that higher education was never intended to exist as a pre-professional experience, yet that seems to be the only frame through which we view our studies these days; from a standpoint of monetary return on investment.

While I am by no means attempting to disparage pre-professional job training, nor any associated degree programs, it seems difficult to deny that in an era where everything has been commoditized through a general prism of Neoliberalism, our young, our old, and our middle-aged have never been more unhappy.

Could this be due to a retreat from our roots, the very values and studies that for so long have informed our outlooks on how the world once was, and how it could be, if we simply took the lessons from our past and implemented them in the pursuit of a better future for all?

The challenges that lay ahead our copious, though it is a virtual certainty that they will no more easily be solved by shifting our passions and our studies further from the ‘academic’ and towards the ‘practical’.

As such, I am renewing my personal commitment to disseminating the lessons from our past to the public, in hopes of piquing the interests of many towards the pursuit of an appreciation for the Liberal Arts, and the solutions that may be found solely within their works. From mythology, to art history, politics, and all of the great fields that the Classics are composed of, I look forward to further exploring and discussing these ideas and works with you all.

Just remember, I may need corrected from time-to-time. As such, please do not hesitate to provide further context or let me know of any mistakes; it is my hope that I will not only hopefully bring further attention to these works, but also learn much more about each along the way!