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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   30242 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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for a decent job, you need qualifications. For qualifications, you need college. If college, no early marriages and child-bearing. And the current economic structure is, as I said, both of you better be working or forget it.

This is a choice everyone's making, yes. Because we value qualifications more than we value children. As far as the things that humans need other humans to do, many, perhaps most, don't really need college. I like college, I enjoyed going, and am the sort of person who might have just kept going forever if I could have, but it's not actually the case that the only jobs that need to get done are chopping onions 10 hrs a day, or academic tasks. And AI is set to gut the college level tasks before the manual ones anyway. If our civilization is wealthy enough to provide it, I'm basically still fine with every young adult getting to go make friends and read books for several years, it's lovely, but it's not inevitable.

I agree with other commenters that both parents working outside the home is also, to a large extent, a choice most people are making, because otherwise we'd have to make a lot of sacrifices for unclear benefits. Being a stay at home parent of young children is exhausting and frustrating. Being a stay at home wife without children, or with older children, is not respectable. I know people who are homeschooling their children while their husbands work perfectly ordinary lower middle class jobs, it's possible for people who really want to do it. It's just kind of frustrating, lonely, and tedious for those who aren't naturally inclined that way (which seems to be most people).

As far as the things that humans need other humans to do, many, perhaps most, don't really need college.

The first college students studied under professors without college degrees!

Almost 1000 years ago - I think the only autochthonous universities are Paris, Bologna and Oxford with all subsequent universities being founded with professors who graduated from existing universities.

And even if you go back to the three original universities, there is a continuous development from cathedral schools to universities. The doctors who granted the first degrees were learned priests who had a formal education and a formal certification from the Church that they had completed it, even if it wasn't called a degree. So the original authority to grant degrees comes from God, not from a group of autodictats declaring themselves the first professors.

The first chicken was born from a non-chicken.

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