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I've been on both sides of the fence on this one. My undergraduate major was in theater, and my grad degree is in rhetoric and media studies. However, I spent the last seven years managing research projects for academics doing work on brain development. And let me tell you, just because it's empirical doesn't mean it makes a damn bit more difference in the lives of people than a good play or song or novel. Apart from the direct intervention we're doing with orphans in Romania, the science we're doing may or may not make any difference, policy-wise, or even in the world of research. And whatever difference it might make is years away. The way I live my life on a day-to-day basis was changed just as much by, say, reading Chuck Palahniuk as by understanding the role of the amygdala in the formation of anxiety disorders.
For the most part, everything any person does is only additive. Even for the "greats" like MLK and Gandhi and Einstein that we all look up to, their work was just very large cogs in an even larger machine. If you want to touch people, be an inspiration to them through the way you live your life, not necessarily through the products of it. Do what you love, what inspires you and gets you out of bed in the morning, do it to the best of your ability, and let the chips fall where they may. If literature isn't it, keep looking till you find it.
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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
- Anatole France
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