Originally posted by: steppinthrax
I?ve always have had this conundrum in my head and I just want to get opinion from others. I?m obviously the scientific type of person. I?m non-religious and highly scientific. I believe science is the truth to everything and is the answer to all of our problems. I also feel people who major in the arts are more/less wasting their lives away. Degrees like English, Art, Psychology (B.S.). People, Mass Comm, Music, Sociology, philosophy. They provide little if any commercial value once one obtains such degree and are not highly regarded by others in the field of academia. Why would you spend thousands of dollars to get such a degree only making scribbles. It seems to me (just from knowledge) that these fields require little if any upper level thinking. Therefore they are easy to get and say you have a degree.
I would claim pretty much the opposite of you. I find degrees in business, marketing, management, etc to be worthless. These things aren't about knowledge, they're about jobs, and all jobs are worthless wastes of time that get in the way of everything that matters in life. Things like computer science aren't much better (unless you're in higher level theory) because again it's just about work, which is nothing. At least you do get to approach logic with such a degree, but science majors are often unable to apply logic to none science scenarios (ie they can't examine history for patterns and make logical conclusions because it's a different type of skill). I would further counter that most positive advances in humanity have come from thinkers, not workers (ie philosophers, etc) and that without arts (music, dance, theatre, painting, etc) there would be absolutely no point to life whatsoever so everything else would cease to have meaning. I challenge anyone who thinks it's a cake walk to get a BA in history with a minor (anthro, psych, poli-sci, etc). After three years (compressed coursework) I had to read/study over 300 books (most averaging 250-400 pages). I wrote about a thousand pages of essays myself, including two publishable works - one at 31 pages with 60 sources(including primary and original research), one 47 pages with 88 sources (including primary). That's on top of all the normal daily homework. I'm not saying it's harder, but it's difficult in it's own way.
I don't look down on science degrees (chem, philo, engineering, math, etc) especially the theory focuses which help to propel us forward (and since I'm more than halfway thru three of them myself). I do look down on education for career only, which I find ludicrous. The bottom line of this debate is that truth is subjective, which is something you'd learn if you took more psychology, philosophy, etc. Our personalities our different, which is also something you only learn about in the classes you belittle.