Words I welcome hearing

Just read a very thoughtful article over at Brain Pickings. It begins with a quote from an American educator and thinker named Abraham Flexner. 

"Now I sometimes wonder whether that current has not become too strong and whether there would be sufficient opportunity for a full life if the world were emptied of some of the useless things that give it spiritual significance; in other words, whether our conception of what is useful may not have become too narrow to be adequate to the roaming and capricious possibilities of the human spirit."

Flexner wrote these words in 1939, and they still ring true today. Too often do we limit ourselves to the pursuit of things that we feel will have practical, useful applications. We remember that as humans there are things we know, things we don't know. But we often forget that there are things we don't know we don't know. If we view the body of human knowledge as complete and rigid we deceive and limit ourselves. Maria Popova speaks to this in her introductory paragraph, stating,

"I frequently worry that we are leaving little room for abstract knowledge and for the kind of curiosity that invites just enough serendipity to allow for the discovery of ideas we didn’t know we were interested in until we are, ideas that we may later transform into new combinations with applications both practical and metaphysical."

Also, both Flexner and Popova remind me that usefulness is actually a subjective term. What one may perceive as being useless another may see as being invaluable. It seems to me Everything has a use, if you just stop and thing about it for a second. Some thing that many dismiss as useless actually serve a great purpose to delight and give us pleasure. And as Charles Eames said, "Who would say that Pleasure is not Useful?"