Explain me how History and other human sciences are not a complete waste of time

Explain me how History and other human sciences are not a complete waste of time.

In many cases, it is.
Being a waste of time won't stop people from enjoying it.

I'd go onto a slew of applicable intellectual gain from the material, but that should be reason enough.

But the problem with it is that its a bleak and sterile subject, where funds and effort are completely wasted. It also breeds a caste of intellectuals

Well, it is, but if you enjoy it, it's not. Don't you think working hours in a fluorescent room for the majority of your life, being a slave, isn't that a waste of time?

>Don't you think working hours in a fluorescent room for the majority of your life, being a slave, isn't that a waste of time?

the "being a slave" as you call it, is a productive job that contributes to society, while an historian is hardly than a leech.

Im litterally paid the double of a factory worker to play puzzles with fucking greek papyrus.

Everything that you are doing right now will be history someday. So in the end what you're doing is also pointless as it is just an eventuality that society will die.

Therefore, let us enjoy our little hobbies without being a dick

It teaches you how about human behaviour on individual to nation scale. It can be usefull for economy, diplomacy and politics in general or military.

Also history is FuN.

Almost all forms of leisure are wastes of time and resources. It's simply done for pleasure.

You can have a job that benefits society and still explore your own interests.

I could, for example, spend most of my day researching a cure to cancer, then spend my evenings reading historical texts.

"Productive job" that's what they brainwash you to be, to work your whole life, being paid to minimum wage as close as possible, while the people at the top profit. Then they brainwash you into consumerism to make you buy shit you don't need, live an endless cycle of hedonism where you over stimulate yourself with pleasures on the weekends, then slave again on weekdays. Any job is completely replaceable and easily outsourced. Society tells you to work your whole life, with the majority of your life being spent on something you hate, being a slave to someone else, and then in your break time you mindlessly consume advertisements, TV, alcohol junk food, you talk to your SO/family a few minutes day. Consumerism tells you that you need to buy a bunch of cars, pay that mortgage for 30 years, only to have it be empty when you finally pay it off, with your kids moved out, your SO probably dead/dying soon. I quit the corporate cycle, now I'm an entrepreneur, I outsource annoying tasks I don't like, and I pay them shit. The majority of my time is spent in enjoyment, with my wife, reading, going out, etc.

>mfw you've become the person you hate

"productive" jobs are destroying the planet m8

You see humanities were liberal sciences, in the original, not the contemporary sense of the word liberal, meaning pertaining to free men, unencumbered by the toils of labor, production and utility. To them the question of whether or not this or that pursuit was a "waste of time", that is unuseful for the purposes of mechanical increase and multiplication of material goods, and gratification of the body and senses, and in short every sort of menial utility, this question would have been frankly meaningless to them. What art thou, like a laborer or some other thing?

The tragedy is that in our contemporary world, where every youth is conscripted to serve in the army of industry and materialist production, many don't realize, or are lied to, that humanities are professional trades when they are not.

Yup, I'm showing how "productive jobs" are a meme, to keep you into slavery. That's why they tell you anything spent in something you like is a waste of time, so you keep working like a mindless minion.

>sterile

aka 'stop having fields I don't like' aka 'degeneracy for whole foods shoppers'

History is a waste of time. And not all history should be remembered. There is a ton of filth out there, created by pseudo historians seeking to create an "alternative viewpoint" to expand our limited knowledge on the particular subject. Wading through this vast sea of trash to create a context is our great act. An example of creating an alternative viewpoint that is harmful to society would be denying Japanese war crimes. Which is a very real, very serious problem in Japan today. Without the study of history we wouldn't know great lessons of the past; why women are more susceptible to the snake, why communism fell, why America is the greatest country in existence.

TL;DR You are not alone. You must interact with other humans. That is why human sciences are not a complete waste of time.

>The tragedy is that in our contemporary world, where every youth is conscripted to serve in the army of industry and materialist production, many don't realize, or are lied to, that humanities are professional trades when they are not.

Spoken like someone who doesn't know what books are. The 1800s called they were looking for another member for their Gentlemens club.

Spoken like a true and loyal worker bee ;^)

If you spend your life being-productive you're worse than an industrial machine, because at least machines were designed as such.
Before the industrial revolution nobody cared if their existence was a "productive" one.
What are you doing on Veeky Forums?
Ultimately it doesn't matter; Historians won't be discouraged from history, and anti-historians will never jump from their (well-oiled) ships into the sea of humanity; It's best they both hold their biases.

I'm but a product of society.

...

>is a productive job that contributes to society, while an historian is hardly than a leech.
This doesn't address why contributing to society is a positive or why leeching from it is a negative.

I like history because I like history, contribution is meaningless to me.

You can't know where you are without knowing where you've been, and you can't know where to go next if you don't know where you are. Hence, history.

I mean, there are a lot of different human sciences. They all tend to specialized study areas and help us better understand those areas. I'm not sure what you're complaining about.

How's that myopia towards life treating you?

People's opinion regarding anything related to humans should be proof enough that we need a lot more of the human sciences.