A week ago, I came across a LinkedIn post about the student protests in Delhi. It drew an analogy with the student movements in America during the 1960s and the 1970s, arguing that while many students believed they were changing the world through protests, the people who transformed society were those who went on to build Silicon Valley and lead the technological revolution, giving us the internet, the World Wide Web, and much more.
You might read posts saying that while some students were protesting in Delhi, some were launching rockets the same day.
Something about that comparison didn't sit right with me. It assumes that history is shaped only by those who build technologies or businesses, while those who question create noise. But protest is not just about opposing a government or a policy. At its core, it is an expression of ideas. It raises important questions such as what is just, what is fair, and what ought to change. Those are philosophical questions before they become political ones.
Why Dismissing Humanities Is Wrong
I started thinking about it more broadly. We often dismiss philosophy, sociology, history, and other humanities as impractical or useless. They are seen as disciplines that produce ideas but little value. Yet the more I read, the more I realised that many of the biggest shifts in business, technology, culture, and politics begin not with a new invention, but with a new way of thinking.
The student movements of the 1960s and 1970s in the US changed how people thought about free speech, equality, and individual rights. Students questioned whether universities should decide which ideas deserve to be heard while feminists challenged unequal rights and opportunities.
Decades later, the internet flourished in a culture that increasingly valued open access to information. Its decentralised architecture not only reflected this cultural shift, but also reinforced it. Open-source software and the creator economy are examples of how these ideas spread further in the digital age.
The same is true of movements against racial and caste discrimination. Had people not challenged these injustices, millions would have remained excluded from education, jobs, and economic opportunities. Today, they are not just citizens with greater rights but also part of a much larger consumer and workforce market.
We cannot judge the impact of dissent the next day. Such movements change the culture around us, slowly, and laws and businesses respond to these shifts, even more gradually. Therefore, I now see fancy words such as conscious capitalism, mindfulness at work, work-life balance, and corporate social responsibility as outcomes of ideas and acts of dissent that began a few decades or even centuries ago.
Capitalism's Forgotten Roots
Deep down, the birth of capitalism itself had religious or philosophical roots. Max Weber, in the book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, traced how Christian ideas created the cultural conditions for capitalism. However, the original engine of capitalism was not greed. He warned us that if those values disappeared, capitalism could turn into an 'Iron Cage,' a world where efficiency and profit become the only things that matter, leaving little room for purpose, values, or meaning.
If ideas have always shaped economies, why do philosophy and business seem like two completely different worlds today?
The answer lies in how the pedagogy and modern 'work' evolved. As knowledge became more specialised, subjects that were once closely connected, such as philosophy, science, mathematics, and the arts, were separated into distinct disciplines. That gave us immense technical power, but we lost the philosophical vocabulary. Educational institutions no longer teach us critical thinking and ethical reasoning. And that creates citizens who may be valuable to businesses but may lack kindness, empathy, and the ability to defend democratic values.
Philosophy Is Back
For decades, economics assumed that people make rational decisions. That belief was challenged by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, whose work showed that humans make decisions based on biases, emotions, and cognitive shortcuts. Their insights transformed economics, public policy, and even marketing.
Now AI is forcing companies to ask a different set of philosophical questions. How should an AI system reason? How should it make moral choices when there is no single right answer? That is why leading AI companies are hiring philosophers alongside engineers.
As AI takes over more of the coding, humans need to develop reasoning and judgment, and ask better questions. That is why Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Argenti wrote in Harvard Business Review that engineers should study philosophy because it will make them better programmers.
Final Take
We celebrate profit growth, competitive moats, and breakthrough technologies. We admire entrepreneurs who built companies, scientists who made discoveries, and industrialists who created jobs and helped build nations. Their achievements are visible, measurable, and easy to appreciate.
But we rarely notice the evolution of ideas. We forget painful journeys of dissent, discrimination, imprisonment and even deaths, in some cases that gave us freedom, equality, dignity, or justice.
The world does not progress because of businessmen or philosophers alone. It progresses because both need each other.
Entrepreneurs build. Philosophers question. Business gives us speed, scale, and execution. Philosophy gives us direction, values, and purpose. One asks, Can we do this? The other asks, Should we do this?
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of NDTV Profit or its affiliates. Readers are advised to conduct their own research or consult a qualified professional before making any investment or business decisions. NDTV Profit does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented in this article.
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