An Incomprehensible and Unintellectual Piece about Intellectuals

by Susanna · UTC 6/23/2026

WokePersonal

“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”

This is a quote I have found myself returning to often. In modern society, we have little use for warriors. In fact, most people are scholars. Instead, there is a new distinction that has arisen within scholarly work, and that is the humanities and STEM. This separation seems almost natural; most young people around me, including myself, are drawn towards one or the other. But in the past, both of these fields would exist within the boundaries of the scholar. Many of the best mathematicians were artists and many of the best philosophers were scientists. Now, though, and for much of modern history, this divide has been at the front of social discourse.

C.P. Snow may be credited with starting this strange, unnatural conflict between the humanities and STEM with his book The two cultures and scientific revolution. He, as a scientist, argued that those educated in what we would call the humanities ridiculed the ignorance of scientists in the realm of literature, while having no knowledge of science, and therefore committing the same offense. He argued that this separation, and the inflated value society placed on the humanities over the sciences, hindered humanity’s ability to solve problems and to progress. This book met a polarizing debut, being famously torn apart by F.R. Leavis, who criticized Snow’s illiteracy, intellect, and naive view of the future. Leavis argued that Snow cared only about technological progress and not civilization, a common criticism we see today aimed at those committed to the development of technology. In response to Leavis’s scathing review, many took to labeling Leavis as the very type of Luddite Snow had been criticizing in his novel. How can you call yourself an intellectual, when you don’t see technological progress, arguably the largest piece of evidence for human intelligence, as an absolute good to the world? Once again, the type of criticism thrown at those skeptical towards modern technology.

I attempt to avoid speaking too much about my personal experiences in these essays, as they are not very unique or at all notable, but I often also doubt there is much I can add to any conversation absent my own perspective that is not a lackluster summary. A few months ago, another student at school told me that “out of the humanity-focused students I know, you’re the most locked in on STEM.” Indeed, I do find myself much more involved in math and science classes than other students that share my interests in art and literature. I often wonder what causes this aversion that more humanities focused students have towards STEM classes, as well as a similar aversion that STEM students have towards humanities classes. I have found that, strangely, these two things seem to happen for opposite reasons. It’s rare to meet a humanities lover that does not acknowledge the value and the difficulty of STEM, but finding a STEM student that has a strange need to devalue the humanities feels like trying to find a needle in a pile of needles. Humanities students often seem to be suffering a sort of self-worth crisis, where they are at the same time desperate to argue for the value of the humanities while being deeply insecure about their own intelligence. In contrast, STEM students are for some reason desperate to explain to you why their path to unemployment is infinitely superior and respectable than yours. So, though I am in no way a reputable source about anything worthwhile, I do notice certain patterns in the people around me. While the humanities students I know avoid STEM due to a perceived deficit in their own ability, STEM students avoid humanities due to a perceived deficit in the worth of humanities subjects. I wonder where this cruelty, either towards ones self or towards others comes from. Moreso the latter. If STEM is so fulfilling, why do so many that pursue it have their panties in a twist about others not feeling the same? Is it that STEM offers a promise of unchallenged intellect and infinite success, and the existence of a wholly separate field where the value of math and science and facts is not absolute causes discomfort? Though it may seem as though I am painting STEM students in an unfairly negative light, I can assure you that both of these phenomena are equally bad and equally annoying. I wonder what causes students that gear towards the humanities to be so set in generalizing all scientists, mathematicians and engineers as illiterate. They too write papers, no? I am in no way innocent of these crimes, I too have found myself feeling a need to prove my intelligence as something that exists despite my interest in art or literature or other unintellectual and simple pleasures, I too have cracked jokes about starving artists and self-congratulatory poets, and I too have criticized the abhorrently obvious AI use in STEM students’ English essays. We all feal a need to cement ourselves over the opposition, to prove our status as a scholar to anyone we may feel doubts it, but still we all find the work of our peers one hundred times harder than our own. I would be lying if I said I felt rather smart for being able to paint or what not, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel much more accomplished by doing well in math.

I would like to clarify that I will not be arguing about whether the vast subjects that the label of STEM encompasses are for some reason 1% or 10% of 0.000001% harder than humanities subjects. I will not be doing this because I find it to not only be an obviously stupid argument to make, but also one that holds little value if we do not also first spend one thousand years understanding what the virtue is in doing difficult things at all. Why are we so desperate to prove that the things we have chosen to do out of our own free will require more pain and suffering than something else we also could have chosen just as easily? Does this argument imply that no one truly enjoys math or science or anything else within STEM, and therefore those who pursue these subjects are performing some great righteous sacrifice for the sake of a subjective metric of progress? “Let’s all be poets!” or however the saying goes.
Then if not difficulty and if not intelligence, why do we fight so hard for this separation? Are we not all scholars? Why don’t we instead argue with the warriors or whoever else is opposed to intellectualism? I find there to be little truly beneficial reason for this gap to exist. Maybe we keep it around because we are all desperate to posture ourselves as above an opposition, whether the contrast is real or imaginary. Or maybe it is a natural conflict between truth and uncertainty. Professor John Horgan says “In your science, mathematics and engineering classes, you're given facts, answers, knowledge, truth. Your professors say, “This is how things are.” They give you certainty. The humanities, at least the way I teach them, give you uncertainty, doubt, skepticism.” But I find it hard to believe that two fields so vast can be such cleanly cut opposites, especially when they have been so intertwined for most of human history. Most of this strange rivalry, it seems, comes from causes much less romantic and much more economic. Humanities have fallen out of favor as society has shifted towards technological innovation, and STEM has become much more profitable and therefore more valuable. There is little hope, then, for the humanities enthusiast. We will all be poor and stupid forever.

But then again, things change all the time. Fields grow and the collapse, and those that make technology are not immune from becoming luddites when it’s their jobs in danger. There is little solution for the eternal cycle of rise and fall, and there will always be a group who must endure for their passion. What science was to Snow is what art and literature are to others now, and what science may one day be to someone else again in the far future. Perhaps we can all blame cruel systems and perhaps we would be right to do so. But, in the meantime, I do believe we must all stop feeding into a separation that exists for no identifiable reason. We may all be poor and we may all be rich and we may all be smart or stupid or anything else. We must all strive to be poets and warriors, lest we all become cowards and fools.