[1] https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L178005...
I wouldn't interpret Adams as saying that the humanities have no value until after the war is over and the nation established—I think he's saying that he doesn't have as much time to focus on them as he would like to have, and he hopes that future generations will have that time.
At the beginning of the letter he says this:
> Since my Arrival this time I have driven about Paris, more than I did before. The rural Scenes around this Town are charming. The public Walks, Gardens, &c. are extreamly beautifull. The Gardens of the Palais Royal, the Gardens of the Tuilleries, are very fine. The Place de Louis 15, the Place Vendome or Place de Louis 14, the Place victoire, the Place royal, are fine Squares, ornamented with very magnificent statues. I wish I had time to describe these objects to you in a manner, that I should have done, 25 Years ago, but my Head is too full of Schemes and my Heart of Anxiety to use Expressions borrowed from you know whom.
Note that he does say he took time to view and appreciate the things he found in Paris—what he laments is that he does not have the mental focus to study and describe them in detail to his wife.
I do think there's an interesting level, where when it's suddenly difficult to have art & culture, we value it higher, it's need is more apparent.
I do worry that the path of alienation & isolation capitalism has walked the world down has distanced us from meaning in such a way that art & culture no longer have the capacity to stand as (especially valued/positive) signifiers as much, that art & culture is both under supply side risk from a more brutal & unrelenting mechanization that makes art less accessible to make (few can afford the luxury of being an artist/cultural producer), while also slamming many arts (especially non bougouise) from the demand side - both for the same economic there-is-no-surplus-for-labor/no one-can-afford art problem, but also in the sense that we're so alienated, that we dont resonate positively or cherish art- we dislike so much of the state-of-ourselves, are so roundly enmiserated by the mainstream we are suffused in, that art/culture dont have the essential power it ought have.
We (everyone other tham Ukraine presently) forget what culture we had. Squid Games anti-culture is what we're left with.
That is amazing.
Quote was made by diplomat and revolutionary. It expresses his personal values and needs rather then universal needs in bad times.
A nation devoted to poetry and porcelain isn’t sustainable.
And certainly he must have been aware of how cyclical history is versus a linear march towards artistic pursuits. The US since it’s inception has been involved in a significant war in nearly every decade. Post-Vietnam through the 1st Iraq war was one of the rare periods where a US citizen could have been of military age without a major hot war. Although the Cold War certainly brought it’s own level of fear.
Costa Rica is the largest country I know of that has no military.
There are very few examples of countries that have survived without a military.