Remember Puppet Man, and the big laugh I had at his expense? I hadn’t seen Michael Barone, of all people, defending his choice as an exercise in creativity and liberty, something only possible under advanced capitalism. Laugh all you want at Puppet Man, Barone says, but realize that the fact that he thought (wrongly, alas) that he could make a living doing what he loved, puppetry, is a tribute to how much better our country at providing for its people’s job satisfaction than back in the day when most people had to do agricultural or factory work because that’s all there was for them. Barone:

In the America of our time a lot of people make livings as actors, musicians and, yes, as puppeteers. I think it’s a safe assumption that they get more satisfaction and sense of accomplishment from their work than they would as file clerks or factory workers with significantly higher pay.

Therrien bet $35,000 that he would be able to find work he loved, and I think well of him for it even though he has at least for the moment lost his gamble.

I appreciate Barone’s point. I, too, would rather live in an America where a guy who sees his vocation in puppetry can feed himself by following his dream. I still can’t see that Puppet Man’s was a wise choice, though, but I confess I would feel otherwise if he had gone into debt pursuing an advanced degree in literature or music. This reflects my belief that literature and music are worthwhile fields of study, whereas puppetry is kind of silly. I mean, I recognize that there are some seriously talented people doing puppetry, but it’s … I don’t know, it seems trivial. Maybe that’s my prejudice talking, but I think that if we don’t have puppeteers, nothing essential will be lost to our civilization. Not so with cello players (though I think it would be a net positive if we lost the critical studies crackpots who have made the study and teaching of literature a miserable exercise in navel-gazing and grievance-nurturing.) Anyway, let me add that in retrospect, I am probably more amused by the fact that The Nation magazine, which brought the plight of Puppet Man to our attention, finds his situation to be emblematic of a society terrorized by Wall Street. And then they came for the puppets, and there was no one left to occupy anything for me…

But I do think Will Wilkinson, who went into debt pursuing a philosophy Ph.D. (which he didn’t finish), makes an interesting, if somewhat diffuse, point in this piece:

Maybe Joe [the Puppet Man] and me [sic] caught the tail end of the era in which America could afford to handsomely subsidize the whimsical life choices of its comfortably middle-class sons and daughters. If we could jump-start growth by, say, shuttering all the State U music departments, it’s not so clear that the market for cello teachers would thereby improve. If we’ve got to screw over all those tax-eating cello professors in order to eke out a better growth rate, we might as well tell it to them straight: your life is a luxury we can no longer afford.

The whimsical life choices of its comfortably middle-class sons and daughters. Harsh words, but necessary ones. And they compel us to ask what constitutes a “whimsical” vocational choice. Because we’ve been so rich for so long, we — well, we in the upwardly mobile middle class — have gotten used to thinking of education as training for a fulfilling job. In other words, we have seen it primarily in the mode of self-expression. As Barone and Wilkinson point out, this may not at all have been an irrational way to see things in a time of a rapidly expanding economy, when people had the money to spend on relatively rarefied luxury goods, like tickets to puppet shows.

But now? There’s a lot less money to go around, which forces certain choices on us. Students have to face the hard fact that society is unwilling to pay for them to follow their dreams. Society, in turn, has to ask itself which aspects of the arts and humanities — none of which are strictly necessary for economic growth — we are willing to subsidize (mostly indirectly, through transfer payments to universities and their faculties) for the greater good. Liberals and conservatives can both be irritating on these points. Liberals typically don’t see any reason why any choices should be made in arts and humanities funding. Let a thousand MFAs bloom! Conservatives, on the other hand, typically take a thoroughly Philistine approach to arts and humanities funding, acting as if the fine arts should pay their own way entirely, and if they can’t, they deserve to die. Let the market decide!

This attitude aggravates me because it’s so self-centered and contemptuous of our history and cultural patrimony. Personally, I don’t care for opera, but I’m happy to have my tax dollars subsidize opera companies, because I recognize that opera is an important part of our common cultural heritage, and that it’s important to keep it going. And who knows? Perhaps I will develop the critical skills and the aesthetic taste to appreciate opera. Or my kids will. The point is, too many conservatives are too quick to sign onto a market-egalitarian view of the arts and humanities, neglecting to ask themselves just what it is about our civilization that we ought to seek to conserve. A conservatism that is only about keeping tax rates low is not a conservatism worth having.

All that said, what are we to tell the young person who would like to study and teach poetry, or violin, or … puppetry? Where do we draw the line and say, “Society is likely to support you if you follow your dream in this way, but not if you follow it in that way?” The choice is never put to us so starkly, but these decisions get made in the form of big budget cuts at public universities, which are happening now and will continue to happen. We can’t afford it all. Which forms of the arts and humanities do we consider necessary to the character of our culture, and which ones are merely whimsical, therefore expendable?

What do you think?