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Too often, business leaders and innovators are so fixated on their immediate concerns that they lose track of the bigger picture. Literature allows them to overcome this deficit by conveying important truths that are necessary for all people.

Literature is our cultural heritage, the words of wisdom passed down from generation to generation. It is not important just for English majors but speaks to those of all backgrounds.

I had the privilege to attend St. John’s College and study the Great Books. By focusing on knowledge instead of majors, the school develops the soul of the individual and transforms readers into thinkers. During my time there, President Nelson often hosted literature discussions with various businesses to demonstrate how this course of study improves the mind. The Liberal Arts prepares the reader to handle all situations.

It is our duty to teach the the next generation that there is honor and dignity to be found in the world and that it is right and good to sacrifice for something greater than yourself. This is the central lesson of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, a novel that first convinced me to pursue the Classics and seek truth in the writing that came before us.

In today’s modern age we are told by politicians that we need to focus on Math and Science, the STEM programs, because they are necessary to our careers. We are constantly told that school is meant to prepare people for the work force. We forget that education is actually meant to prepare us for living.

Are we just automotons, existing solely to work? Is our value only as good as our ability to produce? Is success better than friendship? Money greater than truth? Mindless entertainment more satisfying than art? These are the questions that Twain tackled head-on when he sent a 19th-century everyman into the England of Arthurian Romance.

Through most of the novel, the Yankee attempts to provide the medieval English people with his superior understanding of politics, economics, and technology. Often, he is rebuked, but the audience is shown that only the ignorance of the previous generation is to blame. Our ancestors are incapable of seeing something greater than their own state, and they are too stupid to understand what is best for them. However, Jonathan Swift teaches us that “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own,” and Twain concludes with a demonstration that modernity and progress are two different things.

When the Arthurian court falls apart following the king’s death, the Yankee tries to establish his perfect kingdom. Soon after, he is beset on all sides by the armies of the knights still loyal to the old ways. Having only a few score of troops, the Yankee relies on 19th-century technological advances to fend off tens of thousands of troops.

The first, and most useful, is electrical fencing: “We crept along on our hands and knees until we were pretty close, and then looked up. Yes, it was a man—a dim great figure in armor, standing erect, with both hands on the upper wire—and, of course, there was a smell of burning flesh. Poor fellow, dead as a door-nail, and never knew what hurt him. He stood there like a statue—no motion about him, except that his plumes swished about a little in the night wind. We rose up and looked in through the bars of his visor, but couldn’t make out whether we knew him or not—features too dim and shadowed.”

The knight is killed without suspecting the trap. There is no glorious fight, no grand challenge, and no battle for honor. There is simply a quick death. But Twain, not one to stop there, takes the lesson further: “We heard muffled sounds approaching, and we sank down to the ground where we were. We made out another knight vaguely; he was coming very stealthily, and feeling his way. He was near enough now for us to see him put out a hand, find an upper wire, then bend and step under it and over the lower one. Now he arrived at the first knight—and started slightly when he discovered him. He stood a moment—no doubt wondering why the other one didn’t move on; then he said, in a low voice, ‘Why dreamest thou here, good Sir Mar—’ then he laid his hand on the corpse’s shoulder—and just uttered a little soft moan and sunk down dead. Killed by a dead man, you see—killed by a dead friend, in fact. There was something awful about it. ”

There is something awful about it. Modern technology allows him to slaughter not only foe but friendship. A simple desire to help a friend in need, compassion, leads to death. There is no room for even civil virtue when the ends become most important.

Technology allows the individual to lose track of his humanity, and death no longer matters: “The thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten thousand. They halted, they stood their ground a moment against that withering deluge of fire, then they broke, faced about and swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. A full fourth part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment; the three-fourths reached it and plunged over—to death by drowning. Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance was totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four were masters of England. Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us. ”

But the Yankee, though victorious, is not a victor. He is returned to his own time after showing the superiority of modern technology over the past. Superior, yes, but only in destroying anything good or beautiful in the world. Perhaps a true victory is more than just numbers on a page.

We are told that what is modern is better, but how can we be so sure? When we strip out the ideal and destroy the Romantic, what is it that we have left? Through art, literature, religion, and philosophy, the soul cries out to the universe, seeking truth, and these things cannot be dismissed to focus only on “career” fields. Once you abandon your cultural heritage, you give up on your birthright and become callous to the world around you. By sharing the Liberal Arts, you share the collected wisdom with the next generation.

We must ask ourselves if we are like the Yankee, quick to abandon what is right in pursuit of a goal that we are convinced by our pride we should pursue. We must turn inward to see if we have limited ourselves and become empty husks that are unable to be satisfied yet crave more and more material items. Is there ever enough power and money to fill a void created because we gave up our soul?

How can you, as a leader, inspire and teach those who work beside you? Try reading Plato’s Meno with your staff and discuss the nature of virtue and how we learn. Ask why Euclid begins the Elements with a definition of a point and how such a simple statement can be so very complex. Discuss if the voice Augustine heard in his garden was divine or if it even matters. Explain why Francis Bacon, in The New Organon, says we must study nature before we can conquer her. Argue over what John Keats means by “Truth is beauty, beauty truth” in a world where truth can be cruel and beauty be false.

A version of this article was originally published as Are We Progressing or Regressing on March 19, 2015.