American society and culture is driven primarily by capitalist ideals and market-based values, which is reflected prominently within our education system. As an interdisciplinary major, I’ve had to think a lot about the value of a humanities-based education as well as how that education plays a role within my daily life. Many people believe that the humanities have no “instrumental” value within society, meaning that they offer nothing (or very little) in terms of economic gain or give people the skills they need in order to be successful in a capitalist society. Brody describes this way of thinking as “economism”, “It represents the intrusion of economic ways of thinking into areas of human existence for which such thinking is ill suited”. While the humanities can expand upon professions (such as Brody’s example of merging the humanities with medical studies in order to strengthen the teaching of ethics), I personally view the humanities as having more of an intrinsic value. This isn’t to say that I view my humanities-based education as less than say STEM-based education. For me, I pursue the humanities because the challenges and the things I learn about make me happy and allow me to look at the world and myself in different ways. I see my education as one that allows me to strive for personal growth and development, and to me that holds more value to me than then pursuing a major/profession, etc. solely for economic gain (although that is an entirely valid motivation). Clune, I feel, describes the intrinsic goal of a humanities-based education by saying, “It’s [education] to enable you to see things that were invisible, to hear new sounds, to understand what didn’t make sense”. The system of constant learning and personal growth that Clune describes is part of what makes the humanities valuable to me, regardless if it is assisting our economic system.