Beyond Utility: What Happens When We Stop Asking What Everything Is For?

Beyond Utility: What Happens When We Stop Asking What Everything Is For?

The Poetic Life | Research & Philosophy Series — Part 5/40


ResearchGate:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/414819789_The_Poetic_Life_What_It_Means_to_Live_Poetically

Amazon Author Page:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Nohil-Kodiyatar/author/B0G1K1F345/allbooks

Modern life teaches us to evaluate almost everything through usefulness.

We ask whether a degree will secure a job, whether a book will improve our knowledge, whether an activity will increase productivity, and whether our time is being spent efficiently.

These questions are necessary. But what happens when usefulness becomes our only measure of value?

A tree provides shade. A friendship offers companionship. A book communicates information. A walk improves physical health.

Yet these descriptions may tell us what something does without exhausting what it means.

The problem is not utility itself. It is reducing everything to utility.

In The Poetic Life, poetic perception begins when we allow things to possess significance beyond their immediate practical function.

A conversation does not have to produce an opportunity. A landscape does not have to serve as a tourist destination. A moment of silence does not have to become productive.

Some experiences matter not because they help us achieve something else, but because of what they are like to experience.

This distinction also matters in education.

If students study only to pass examinations, knowledge risks becoming a temporary instrument for obtaining marks. If they encounter knowledge through curiosity, discovery, and reflection, learning can acquire meaning beyond assessment.

The same applies to human relationships. When we evaluate people exclusively through status, professional usefulness, or personal advantage, we risk overlooking their complexity and intrinsic human significance.

However, rejecting utility altogether would be equally mistaken. We need practical reasoning to work, make decisions, fulfil responsibilities, and survive.

The challenge is to maintain a balance: use practical thinking where it is needed without allowing it to govern every dimension of existence.

Perhaps a richer life does not require abandoning our goals. It requires recognizing that not everything valuable must justify itself through a goal.

What if some of the most meaningful experiences are precisely those we cannot adequately explain in terms of productivity?

Have we become so accustomed to asking what something can do for us that we sometimes forget to experience it for what it is?

Research citation:

Kodiyatar, N. (2026). The Poetic Life: What It Means to Live Poetically. Nohil Kodiyatar.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22110352

#PoeticLife #Philosophy #HumanExperience #Education #MeaningOfLife #CriticalThinking #PoeticPerception

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