Shakespeare wrote not just to entertain, but to inform and comment on what was happening at the time. Unfortunately many teachers don't do a good job, or don't have the time, to explain the background of the works. Students often don't know or understand that his works were often directed at specific royalty or other influential people. And so when we first read his works, we don't get the insults, slights, and compliments that would have been obvious to people back then.
Other classics speak about what it is to be human, and evoke imagery that most works never manage. What we consider to be the classics are only a small percentage of novels, poetry, and essays created in their time. There are works being written today that will become classics, but they have to be shown to be meaningful to future generations, just like the current classics have.
There are some games telling wonderful stories, and maybe they'll come to be regarded as classics in their own right. But the Super Marios, Warcrafts, and even Assassin's Creeds are not going to be among them. They're pioneers in their own right, but they don't actually have anything to teach us about the human condition, politics of their day, or have a timelessness that help towards enlightenment.
And here is the poem:
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
-ee cummings
The books in the western canon are important because they are good and went on to influence everything you consume today, even the narrative in super mario. Take some time to read a good chunk of these books and you will be wiser than most people you know on all sorts of topics.
This feels to me like a slightly tweaked form of an "appeal to novelty". The most insightful people alive today are not automatically more insightful than everyone who has died. Just because we are alive now doesn't discount the importance of previous works (and this is ignoring that today's society is based on our ancestors' philosophy and views).
Not to mention modern stories are often based on older stories, and those who write modern stories by definition were informed by older stories.
Those stories that "anyone could have told" went through the ages through these specific people, in this specific form.
When you have knowledge of history, of old texts, your self is equipped to be free from manipulation of those that pretend that "things weren't this or that way, but my way" for their own benefit, because you know, because you have something material that holds together, that went through the trial of time, that says otherwise.
The modern counterparts, for instance, pick hugely on old stories, old arcs, and old myths.
But you only get that when you care to read and appreciate old stuff.
We have our own culture now, we spend far too much time worrying about what the dead did with their limited free time.
Hamlet talks about the human condition and coming to terms with your own mortality. Where in Super Mario does that come up? Before or after world 4?
So? Who cares? I don't think I ever read Hamlet. It was just entertainment, no different than a television show today.
But that doesn't mean that books and other creative media made more than 40 years ago are useless. For one thing, books written in the past give us insight into our history (I hope we can both agree that learning about our history is a good thing). For another, some of the greatest thinkers are already dead -- the only way we can learn from them is by reading what they wrote. Our society is built on the foundations of our ancestors, and it's ridiculous to say that their thoughts have no worth. For one thing, history has a tendency to repeat itself -- so maybe learning a bit more about our history would help avoid future problems.
I can't imagine anyone trying to apply this logic to any field other than literature. "What's the point of learning calculus and kinematics? Newton died 300 years ago!"
It's about going obsolete. We don't teach people how to use an abacus anymore, or even write in cursive.
I'm not saying there's not a place for history, but it's time to stop fawning over things that happened 200 years ago and focus on more modern things.
You will see professors are already tying "classics" to current cultural products. Drawimg parallels, discussing patterns and influences.
We jumped from Nietzsche to Japanese manga.
It's not either/ or, it's both.
I was at SFSU and Amsterdam uni. YMMV.
> Went to see Granny yesterday, was quite cheerful, read though the poems in "When we were very young"[0], her original copy[1], given to her in 1928, how about that. She knows them off by heart and joins in when you read them to her
Q: When we're in our late 90s, how many of us will be able to consume 90-year-old-content that way?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_We_Were_Very_Young [1] It was first published in 1924