These disciplines provide opportunity for creative mines to continuously produce the sense of novelty at zero economic cost. The important idea here is ‘zero cost’. Math, Poetry, and Philosophy, and even perhaps the three act narrative, prevent the pseudoscientific, pseudo-rational, and pseudoscientific, if they are taught as measurement (math), experience (poetry) law (philosophy), and play (literature).
For those of us in ‘need’ of continuous novelty (and who would die of tedium and regularity), these disciplines provide endless opportunity for novelty. novelty prevents the depression of the jaded: nihilism.
As a child I would plan what I would think of when I would go to bed, because I needed a problem to think about or visualize to go to sleep. In college I suffered for studying art which required travel and supplies rather than philosophy which required nothing more than access to a library. As an adult I needed the same every day – software provides that – and when software became obvious and repetitious – economics and philosophy filled the gap. At this stage of my intellectual development I understand that narrative poetry in particular, (not the postmodern nonsense that is a substitute for it) is essential to the training of the mind as is math and law. And the fact that we do not teach literature as the science of continuous change of archetypes, such that the puzzle pieces of narrative are as logical as any other discipline – a lost opportunity for all.
We must understand that those lacking these abilities must in the end resort to entertainment provided by others, by consumption, or by self medication. And they much choose between nihilism and loneliness, or optimizing and socialization. And the answer is pretty clear which group is happiest.