We are living in the age of usefulness. Instead of seeking what is good, we hanker after what is useful. Both are different propositions, however. The difference is not merely linguistic jugglery. It's distinctively cultural. The former concerns the aesthetics of human existence while the latter develops a transactional mentality. If usefulness is the metric to determine value, then everyone ends up becoming disposable as soon as their utility loses currency. That's called the dehumanising cult of utility. It transforms friendships into social networking and professional interactions into a trade of self-interest. The knowledge that earns a job or that can be monetised has become the fulcrum of human effort.
Bertrand Russell, in his essay Useless Knowledge, writes: "There is indirect utility, of various different kinds, in the possession of knowledge which does not contribute to technical efficiency. I think some of the worst features of the modern world could be improved by a greater encouragement of such knowledge and a less ruthless pursuit of mere professional competence." Useless knowledge is defined as knowledge that is shorn of the immediacy of economic utility and instrumental values but holds intrinsic worth for its own sake. Also, useless here doesn't mean worthless. Phenomenologically, useless knowledge consists of personal insights that don't serve any immediate social function but are meaningful to an individual's own private experience, sense of being and sense of self-actualisation.
Russell argues that Greeks disdained practical applications of knowledge. They sought knowledge as a pursuit of delight. The Renaissance, a revolt against the materialistic utility of knowledge, was the revival of the pursuit of delight in the acquisition of knowledge. Some historians blame Muslim scientists of the first millennium for pinning practicality onto the Greek theoretical knowledge. Hellenic disinterestedness was replaced with empiricism. But that must not be a blame as all the scientific endeavours moving human civilisation forward owe it to this transformation of theory into experiment. A morbid gradual change towards a more practical conception of knowledge, which was going on throughout the eighteenth century, was suddenly accelerated at the end of that period by the French Revolution and the growth of machinery.
Aristotle in Metaphysics argues that philosophy begins in wonder and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, not for utilitarian ends. The deepest tragedy wrought by the cult of utility is the loss of human capacity to wonder. That is what Charles Dickens alludes to in one of the most haunting moments in his novel Hard Times when the schoolteacher Mr Gradgrind proclaims his philosophy of education with chilling clarity: "Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life." Nursery rhymes were not taught in his school. Dickens bears relevance even today as curiosity now is subordinated to credentialism. The pleasure of reading is gone: another casualty of this cult of utility.
The utility cult is poignantly visible in the lesser use of idioms and proverbs in our students' discourse. The basic English vocabulary of a few hundred words is deemed sufficient to ace language learning. Hence, speech is no longer viewed as something capable of aesthetic value. Now the sole purpose is to seek practical information, bolting away all metaphors and similes. Oscar Wilde calls seriousness - the fanatic pursuit of utility - the world's original sin. "If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different," he writes in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The modern age is obsessed with measurable outcomes and toxic productivity - unhealthy obsession with constant achievement. To be unhinged in the ecstasy of untargeted knowledge symbolises the beauty of human curiosity or the search for meaning beyond material concerns. Albert Einstein is known to have some of his best scientific ideas during his violin breaks. The antidote to the dehumanising cult of utility is to preserve spaces where utility does not have its say: library, love, silence, friendship, family, parks, poetry, prayer, music and memories.
