The Jehovah’s Witnesses have long preached that going to college is a waste of time because the world as we know it is going to end soon.
“No doubt, school counselors sincerely believe that it is in your best interests to pursue higher education,” advised the faith’s official publication a few years ago. “Yet, their confidence lies in a social and financial system that has no lasting future.”
This admonition sounds a lot like the Nov. 5 viral tweet from Notre Dame professor Alexander O. Hsu, who claimed to be “tired of defending ‘the humanities’ every five seconds.” [emphasis, links added]
Mr. Hsu asked: “Given the very real risk of climate extinction due to capitalism, what are some defenses of business schools? What possible justification is there in making more businesspeople?”
As a humanities person, tired of defending "the humanities" every five seconds. Given the very real risk of climate extinction due to capitalism, what are some defenses of business schools? What possible justification is there in making more businesspeople?
— @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social (@AOHSUsometimesY) November 5, 2023
It would be interesting to know how soon Americans actually think the world is going to end. A growing number of secular progressives have begun echoing the apocalyptic rhetoric of religious sects.
Their views aren’t driven solely by fear of imminent environmental doomsday. They believe the whole “system” is broken and don’t want to bring children into a world plagued by structural racism, sexism, and irreversible oppression.
It is one reason campus protests are so common, with some spilling over into violence. According to this worldview, there’s no time for considered political persuasion.
But the Jehovah’s Witnesses have a point. If one thinks the world will run out of time to save itself from climate catastrophe in 2030, as the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declared in 2018, then there isn’t much point in going to college or planning for the future.
American higher education began as a religious enterprise, with most colonial-era colleges serving as training grounds for ministers.
Church and academic leaders understood that while the world might end at any time, they still had a duty to understand God and man, along with the secular order.
Their writings reflect a seriousness of purpose in this enterprise that many schools should emulate today.
If 18th-century American scholars decided that the world would soon end, they wouldn’t have inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
When those institutions abandoned their religious roots in the 20th century, they embraced the progressive view that the world could be improved by the acquisition of knowledge and intelligent political reform.
No matter how misguided that premise might have been, its advocates believed that they were working in the direction of progress and the relief of man’s estate. …
At a school of 20,000 students, few are convinced of the importance of studying the humanities. Many more are choosing majors such as computer science or nursing, which have clearer connections to post-college employment.
But today, unlike in the past, those who are engaged in these practical majors may have more hopeful views of the future. No one who seriously thinks the world is ending soon would go to the trouble of starting a business or undertaking years of professional education.
Americans who train to be nurses and doctors, or embark on careers in finance or law, are looking for ways to support themselves and their families decades into the future. They may even think about creating a nest egg, buying a home and eventually doting on grandchildren.
In a different era, a few might have been tempted to study philosophy or English literature to find inspiration from the best that has been said and written in the past about the enduring challenges everyone faces.
That was a worthwhile course of study, but it is no longer what students receive today.
What they tend to get instead from the humanities is a message that the world is meaningless, there are no truths to be discovered, and they are guilty of wrecking the environment or oppressing people here and abroad.
It is no surprise that more young people hear these messages and say no.
The belief that the world is ending has a long history in the West, dating to the ancient world and the Book of Revelation.
Norman Cohn, in “The Pursuit of the Millennium” (1957), wrote that this outlook proceeds from the idea that the world is controlled by an evil power of great destructiveness—a demon that will eventually be overthrown on a specific date by God’s designated messengers.
It usually happened that when the end didn’t arrive as predicted, leaders would recalculate their calendars and repeat the process.
Cohn noted that this outlook is also embedded in some of our modern secular ideologies, including fascism and communism, both of which identified demonic powers that had to be overthrown.
It is also present to some degree in the climate movement, which designates capitalism as the great evil and identifies rolling dates when the world will end if nothing is done to end the burning of fossil fuels.
By the looks of things, the climate catastrophists may have to move up their end-of-times calendars. They are losing followers fast.
h/t Steve B.
Read full post at WSJ
The Jehovah’s Witnesses believed that the Great War (WW I) was Armageddon. They then claimed to have been out by 70 years, and pointed to 1984 as the End. Wrong again, and many of them lost their faith. Net Zero by such and such a date deludes the climate faithful. Fossil fuel consumption will escalate for decades, to the benefit of the non-believers. We need more non-believers at election time.
Keeping kids awake all night is not right and especially for the false threat of Global Warming/Climate Change. The UN/Globalists and their plans for World Government under their Thumbs
A few years ago there was a religious prediction that the world was coming to an end on a specific date. Many people believed it. One young man quit his job to hand out fliers in New York City. When the end didn’t come, he had no job, no way to pay the rent, and a pregnant wife.